Dystopias are reactionary!

[WeepingElf]

(This is a translation of a blog post I made a year ago.)

The title of this post is worded in a deliberately provocative way. No, not all dystopias were made with the intent of disseminating reactionary thought. In fact, most aren't. Authors like George Orwell (1984), Philip K. Dick (who provided the story on which the Blade Runner film is based) or William Gibson (Neuromancer) were or are rather progressive minds. They wrote their dystopias to show where certain misdevelopments in their time could lead, and their dystopias are still relevant today.

But the dystopias have an effect that certainly was not intended by these authors. They incite a perception that the future will be worse than the present and stir up fears of the future. And they dominate the currently prevalent image of the near future at least. Everybody knows films like Blade Runner or The Matrix. Positive, progressive visions of the future exist, the genre even has a name - "solarpunk" - but the genre is still in an early stage of its development. I know of a few solarpunk novels but not a single solarpunk film.

And from the idea that the future was dark and unpleasant to live in there is only a tiny step to the outlook that the past was better, and it was desirable to return to this past. People perceiving things that was are also susceptible to the treacherous promises of reactionary politicians who offer to restore that seemingly better past. In this way, dystopias have a reactionary effect.

So here goes my appeal to all authors concerned with the near future: No more dystopias! More positive visions! Because the future is too important to leave it to the pessimists, and the yearning for a better past is dangerous. Only who has hopes of a better future will be engaged with such a future, and is not susceptible to backwards-oriented promises. So leave the toad in the terrarium! Visions, not sermons of repentance. Get the shiny top product out of the gunny sack!

[Raphael]

Word! Word! Word!

I'm glad to know I'm not alone in seeing things this way.

Back when I was still trying to work on a novel, I made plans to put the following into a kind of brief afterword:

While this story is not intended as a complete Utopia – I don’t believe that complete Utopias are plausible – it is meant to get as close to a Utopian setting as I think people might realistically get. Now, as long as the world looks like the way it does now, a story that is set in a fictional scenario which, while it has its flaws, is not meant to be dystopian, might come across as trivial, silly, or escapist, and completely divorced from the real concerns in life. But Utopianism, or the “Almost-Utopianism” of this book, can still be defended.

In recent years, dystopian setting have been all the rage in science-fiction. Even some fictional scenarios that had started out Utopian have been re-imagined in more dystopian ways. And I understand the impulse behind that: First, tearing down society’s comfortable illusions and self-deceptions has been an important part of activism for a long time. And second, you could argue that depicting over-the-top versions of real horrors in fiction is a good way to motivate people to fight against those real horrors.

But at the same time, the more you portray every possible future as dystopia, and the more you insist that even future scenarios that might look Utopian at first glance must always be exposed as having been secretly dystopian all along, the more you’re sending the message that things could never possibly be any significantly better than they are now. And that message is both simply false – some aspects of life have improved seriously at some points in history – and not at all desirable for people who want to improve anything.

So I’d argue that, if you want people to work towards positive change, it is useful to at least sometimes give them an idea of how a better future might look like. Which is why a revival of a form of Utopianism – not as naive as the Utopianisms of the past, but still hopeful – would be a good thing.

A different argument that people sometimes make against Utopian writings is that they simply make for boring plots, or for no plots at all. Everyone seems to agree on that. And it might be true for stories set in creepily “perfect” Utopias. But scenarios that keep enough
distance from “perfection” that there is still room for conflict will have room for drama, too.

In recent centuries, Humankind hasn’t had much experience with Utopian societies. (To which extent they existed somewhere in earlier times is a different question.) But we do have some experience with environments that looked somewhat close to Utopia if you were very good at not looking too closely, and at overlooking a lot of things. I’m talking about upper class communities in some times and places.

Now, of course the societies to which these communities belonged weren’t in any way really Utopian, because the comfortable lifestyle of the upper class was and is based on the systematic exploitation and oppression of many other people. But the thing is, individual members of the upper class have often been very good at simply not noticing all those many other people. So from their own perspective, looking at things through their own eyes, they lived in near-Utopian environments.

And despite that, some celebrated writers have created works set entirely, or almost entirely, among the upper classes of some times and places. So, in principle, writing interesting stories set in a fictional future in which people in general have something like the material standard of living of the upper classes of earlier times and places shouldn’t be any more difficult than writing interesting stories set among the upper classes of those earlier times and places.

Those are some of the reasons why I decided to try my hands at near-Utopian science-fiction.

[WeepingElf]

Word! Word! Word!

I'm glad to know I'm not alone in seeing things this way.

Back when I was still trying to work on a novel, I made plans to put the following into a kind of brief afterword:

[lengthy quote snipped]

And I am glad I am not alone in seeing things this way, too. And you should try to work on your novel again. It will give you the sense of meaning in life which you currently seem to be missing.

It is indeed such that even some solarpunk novels, where the world is saved, tend to have dystopian streaks. In one novel I have read, the world is saved by a strong AI that runs a Ponzi scheme to finance itself and its world-saving plan, and for much of the novel I sympathized with the state attorney who investigates against it. In another novel, it is the People's Republic of China that blackmails the other nations of the world to invest in their geoengineering plan. And so on. The world is saved, but the result is nightmarish nontheless. The devil is exorcised with a beelzebub. Such novels result in the notion "I'd rather accept 3°C more and more frequent droughts and thunderstorms than live in a world ruled by an AI/a totalitarian regime". Of course, an exciting story needs challenges the heroes have to deal with, but why can't it end in a way that can serve as a model to follow? Nobody claims that the transition to a more attractive and sustainable lifestyle will be easy!

[Raphael]

And you should try to work on your novel again. It will give you the sense of meaning in life which you currently seem to be missing.

Part of the problem is that I'm currently working on something else. Another is that I'm not good at plot ideas.

[Raphael]

Somewhat related to the "left-wingers with a dystopian outlook"-thing, here's a meme I made a while ago:

conleftmeme.jpg (55.36 KiB) Viewed 5583 times

[Travis B.]

Of course, there is its mirror image fully automated luxury gay space communism, a.k.a. left-accelerationism when seen through a positive light rather than as "let's let the capitalists destroy the world and that will somehow bring about Teh Revolución".

[Travis B.]

Note that stories that involve both dystopias and a better future are not necessarily mutually exclusive -- take the Mars trilogy for instance, which involves rule of Earth and Mars by transnational corporations and environmental collapse on Earth along with the eventual establishment of an independent socialist Mars in the Second Martian Revolution (after a failed First Martian Revolution followed by years of repression by the transnats).

[WeepingElf]

Ah, Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy. The Martian society established in the end has many attractive traits, but my main critique of it is that it is a Planet B story (further points are that the Martians resort to terrorism, use nuclear instead of renewable energy (their reason not to use fossil fuels being that Mars of course has none), and do not even manage to abolish the death penalty). There is no Planet B, and I doubt that terraforming works. When a planet is inhospitable, that has reasons that have to do with things not easily changed, such as the size of the planet and its distance from the sun. Mars simply is too small and too far from the Sun to be habitable. Why can't we have a better society here on Earth? That is what truly progressive science fiction ought to be about. In my second novel project (the first is a novel about the Elves and their attempts to heal the world), I set up a conflict similar to that in the Mars Trilogy on Earth, between a progressive Democratic Alliance and a reactionary League of Sovereign Nations. There is no war between them, only a cold war culminating in a cyber-war that badly harrows the Internet, and the Democratic Alliance wins in the end.

[Raphael]

I generally kind of react to "Mars is colonized, and a while later the colonists declare independence"-stories the way some other people react to "Romeo and Juliet transferred to Scenario X"-stories.

Ah, Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy. The Martian society established in the end has many attractive traits, but my main critique of it is that it is a Planet B story. There is no Planet B, and I doubt that terraforming works.

And, if terraforming should work, it should work on a post-ecological-collapse Earth, too. Even a post-ecological-collapse Earth would probably still be closer to being habitable than Mars is now. So, if you could actually use terraforming to turn what-Mars-is-now into a habitable place, you should be able to use terraforming to turn a post-ecological-collapse Earth back into a habitable place, too.

[WeepingElf]

I generally kind of react to "Mars is colonized, and a while later the colonists declare independence"-stories the way some other people react to "Romeo and Juliet transferred to Scenario X"-stories.

Yes, it is basically a re-run of the American War of Independence.

Ah, Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy. The Martian society established in the end has many attractive traits, but my main critique of it is that it is a Planet B story. There is no Planet B, and I doubt that terraforming works.

And, if terraforming should work, it should work on a post-ecological-collapse Earth, too. Even a post-ecological-collapse Earth would probably still be closer to being habitable than Mars is now. So, if you could actually use terraforming to turn what-Mars-is-now into a habitable place, you should be able to use terraforming to turn a post-ecological-collapse Earth back into a habitable place, too.

Indeed! If you can change Mars into a habitable world, you can more than ever heal an ecologically collapsed Earth! That should be much easier. Still, I'd better not wager that we can do it, and it is certainly much better still to avoid the ecological collapse of our planet. Much damage has of course already been done, and we probably cannot undo much of it (often, the best solution is simply to let nature heal itself, even if that takes much time).

[Travis B.]

further points are that the Martians resort to terrorism

Do you think that the Martians in the story would have gotten freedom from the transnats simply by begging for it?

Edit: Frankly, I think that those who think that we can achieve real socialism peacefully just by voting in a Socialist Party which will legislate socialism into being are fooling themselves -- even in that case, I would expect coup attempts by the supporters of capitalism and attempts at armed intervention by outside capitalist states in an effort to 'turn back the clock'. The reason why we haven't seen this in some places where ostensible 'Socialist' parties have been elected is that those parties are actually social democrat, and social democracy is merely a kinder, gentler capitalism rather than the outright replacement of the capitalist system with socialism.

[zompist]

Frankly, I think that those who think that we can achieve real socialism peacefully just by voting in a Socialist Party which will legislate socialism into being are fooling themselves -- even in that case, I would expect coup attempts by the supporters of capitalism and attempts at armed intervention by outside capitalist states in an effort to 'turn back the clock'.

This leads nicely into a point I wanted to make: most sf is not about the future at all, it's a satire of the present. SF has gotten darker because late capitalism has proven so dire. And most writers— and pundits for that matter— can't get much beyond "Like now, only worse, forever." It's also worth noting that pessimism is always easy, hard to refute, and has a broad market.

Of course, SF also adds things we don't have, but most of the time, they are pure fantasy, like FTL, portals, or unobtainium.

But for the same reasons I don't think your political pessimism is justified, any more than an 1980s SF writer's feeling that it will always be the 1980s. The easiest proof is to look back 80 years. What did the 1940s look like to Orwell, a perceptive and progressive writer? Pretty shitty. The most dynamic and terrifying states were totalitarian, either fascist or communist. The capitalist states he knew were either weakened by poor leadership and a harrowing depression, or already conquered. He didn't like any of the alternatives, but he didn't think British capitalism could last.

I think he would have been rather surprised that the two totalitarian alternatives disappeared, and even more surprised that Europe mostly chose, not laissez-faire American capitalism, but a hybrid social democratic type.

I'd also note the system you have promoted is within spitting distance of social democracy. Replace all the corporations with Mondragons and you're almost there. You don't need to repeat the 1917 Russian Revolution— nor should you particularly want to; revolutions only very rarely accomplish their goals.

In my own (quite optimistic!) SF timeline, the right is completely discredited because their policies lead to war and social collapse. Which is pretty hard on the people of this century, but it's historically grounded. Fascists overreach and don't last long; laissez-faire capitalists bankrupt and discredit themselves in depressions.

[Travis B.]

Frankly, I think that those who think that we can achieve real socialism peacefully just by voting in a Socialist Party which will legislate socialism into being are fooling themselves -- even in that case, I would expect coup attempts by the supporters of capitalism and attempts at armed intervention by outside capitalist states in an effort to 'turn back the clock'.

This leads nicely into a point I wanted to make: most sf is not about the future at all, it's a satire of the present. SF has gotten darker because late capitalism has proven so dire. And most writers— and pundits for that matter— can't get much beyond "Like now, only worse, forever." It's also worth noting that pessimism is always easy, hard to refute, and has a broad market.

Of course, SF also adds things we don't have, but most of the time, they are pure fantasy, like FTL, portals, or unobtainium.

But for the same reasons I don't think your political pessimism is justified, any more than an 1980s SF writer's feeling that it will always be the 1980s. The easiest proof is to look back 80 years. What did the 1940s look like to Orwell, a perceptive and progressive writer? Pretty shitty. The most dynamic and terrifying states were totalitarian, either fascist or communist. The capitalist states he knew were either weakened by poor leadership and a harrowing depression, or already conquered. He didn't like any of the alternatives, but he didn't think British capitalism could last.

I think he would have been rather surprised that the two totalitarian alternatives disappeared, and even more surprised that Europe mostly chose, not laissez-faire American capitalism, but a hybrid social democratic type.

I'd also note the system you have promoted is within spitting distance of social democracy. Replace all the corporations with Mondragons and you're almost there. You don't need to repeat the 1917 Russian Revolution— nor should you particularly want to; revolutions only very rarely accomplish their goals.

In my own (quite optimistic!) SF timeline, the right is completely discredited because their policies lead to war and social collapse. Which is pretty hard on the people of this century, but it's historically grounded. Fascists overreach and don't last long; laissez-faire capitalists bankrupt and discredit themselves in depressions.

I don't think achieving socialism is impossible without reenacting the particulars of the Russian Revolution by any means, I just don't think that the supporters of capitalism will simply give up and let it happen without a struggle.

If let's say democratic socialists manage to take over the Democrat party and get themselves elected to control both the Presidency and both Houses, and then, need be, pack the Supreme Court to neutralize remaining conservatives sitting on it, and then mandate that all corporations adopt worker control of at least 51% of voting shares effective immediately, I would expect the Republicans to fight back, ranging from January 6th-style coup attempts on the minor end to attempts at armed secession by remaining Republican-controlled states on the other end.

And that's from the point of view of the US, which is probably the case where the risk of foreign intervention and capitalist encirclement is probably the lowest and where trying to achieve socialism through the existing political system is still theoretically feasible. (I would say that there would also be a low chance of foreign intervention and capitalist encirclement in the event of a democratic socialist revolution in mainland China, but I think that pulling off democratic socialism there would be less feasible for Reasons. There would also be limited risk of intervention and encirclement if a socialist EU were attempted, but the difficulties there would be in attempting it in the first place due to its relative political disunity.)

From the perspective of a body less economically and militarily powerful than the US or China or the EU as a whole, trying to achieve socialism there alone would be at a much higher risk of foreign intervention, whether overt or covert, and encirclement. Maybe I am thinking anachronistically here based upon the past history of military coups instigated at least in part by the US and foreign interventions by the US such as that which is being threatened towards Venezuela (not that that is any model of democratic socialism, of course) right now, but given the past century I would foresee any large-scale attempts at democratic socialism in a smaller country to be faced in the very least with encirclement even if no overt intervention occurs.

[zompist]

If let's say democratic socialists manage to take over the Democrat party and get themselves elected to control both the Presidency and both Houses, and then, need be, pack the Supreme Court to neutralize remaining conservatives sitting on it, and then mandate that all corporations adopt worker control of at least 51% of voting shares effective immediately, I would expect the Republicans to fight back, ranging from January 6th-style coup attempts on the minor end to attempts at armed secession by remaining Republican-controlled states on the other end.

What if the the Democrats got 61% of the presidential vote, 78% of the Senate seats, and 77% of the House? Impossible, you say? I'm describing the 1936 US elections.

Is that going to happen in 2028? No, I don't think so. But history can change directions spectacularly, and regimes that look impregnable can collapse suddenly.

Again, I don't see revolutions as a very good model for how to implement "real socialism". People who take power by violence usually want to keep power by violence. The rational way to get to your workers' councils is gradualist: you want to try it on a small scale, work your way up, work out the problems. The more likely way is after disasters caused by raw capitalism, which is how Roosevelt got elected.

[malloc]

Currently it seems difficult to imagine any kind of future but dystopia. Reactionaries are taking power everywhere and modern technology allows them to crush revolts and spread propaganda far more effectively than other despots throughout history. Worse yet, popular support for reactionary politics is growing rapidly. The past decade has honestly tarnished my opinion of humanity and left me increasingly convinced that humans are simply too evil for society to improve. Most people would rather see rival tribes crushed than embrace policies that benefit both themselves and their enemies.

[Travis B.]

Currently it seems difficult to imagine any kind of future but dystopia. Reactionaries are taking power everywhere and modern technology allows them to crush revolts and spread propaganda far more effectively than other despots throughout history. Worse yet, popular support for reactionary politics is growing rapidly. The past decade has honestly tarnished my opinion of humanity and left me increasingly convinced that humans are simply too evil for society to improve. Most people would rather see rival tribes crushed than embrace policies that benefit both themselves and their enemies.

To be completely honest, the current popularity of the far right is probably a fad, which will pass once people realize their promises are for naught. Hell, Trump is already at his most unpopular ever now that people have caught on to that his promises of bringing down costs were simply a lie.

[Travis B.]

What if the the Democrats got 61% of the presidential vote, 78% of the Senate seats, and 77% of the House? Impossible, you say? I'm describing the 1936 US elections.

Is that going to happen in 2028? No, I don't think so. But history can change directions spectacularly, and regimes that look impregnable can collapse suddenly.

Again, I don't see revolutions as a very good model for how to implement "real socialism". People who take power by violence usually want to keep power by violence. The rational way to get to your workers' councils is gradualist: you want to try it on a small scale, work your way up, work out the problems. The more likely way is after disasters caused by raw capitalism, which is how Roosevelt got elected.

I personally think that the most realistic means by which a society organized around councils would be brought about is by progressively building them from the ground up as parallel structures to the existing structures, such as creating informal neighborhood associations (or taking over and reorganizing HOA's to be more democratic) and workplace groups (or in cases where there is some degree of workers' organization within workplaces, such as the scrum teams where I work where we already elect our scrum masters and like, repurposing this organization to serve the workers' purposes) and building up from there.

I personally think that this approach would be more effective at bringing about true socialism than my example of democratic socialists taking over the Democratic party, getting elected, and voting in socialism as that would not involve the organic building of democratic workers' organizations that could actually exercise workers' control effectively.

Note that while there may be a "revolutionary moment" where power is finally formally wrested from those who were previously in control of capital, by that point much of the work of building the new society would have already been done. The coming of the new society would be a fait accompli more than anything.

This is most likely to be peaceful if it occurs homogeneously throughout society, such that there simply would not be effective opposition from any significant sectors of society that would be left largely untouched. It is less likely to be peaceful if, say, police are not integrated into the new society and workers are forced to raise their own militias to protect their newfound gains (which is a concern, since police are often one of the most right-wing sectors of society).

[zompist]

I personally think that the most realistic means by which a society organized around councils would be brought about is by progressively building them from the ground up as parallel structures to the existing structures, such as creating informal neighborhood associations (or taking over and reorganizing HOA's to be more democratic) and workplace groups (or in cases where there is some degree of workers' organization within workplaces, such as the scrum teams where I work where we already elect our scrum masters and like, repurposing this organization to serve the workers' purposes) and building up from there.

Probably true!

I'm curious though what you think is undemocratic about HOAs. (Homeowners' associations, for our friends abroad.) They have all sorts of bad reputations, usually for pettiness or imposing weird rules-- and again, I could tell you horror stories about our last condo association-- but they're elected by the owners, and there are generally recall provisions. If they don't work well, that could be bad news for your proposed neighborhood councils.

[Ares Land]

A few thoughts: most if not all Philip K. Dick novels are technically dystopia but really I think they're in a class of their own.

One reason there are so many dystopias around, I think, is that a novel plot is often about things going wrong -- and if you start with the premise that things have gone horribly wrong, the story practically writes itself!

Iain M. Banks had a neat solution for the problem; most Culture novels are about horrible dystopias but the presence of the Culture makes it clear that there's a way forward.

I'm curious though what you think is undemocratic about HOAs. (Homeowners' associations, for our friends abroad.) They have all sorts of bad reputations, usually for pettiness or imposing weird rules-- and again, I could tell you horror stories about our last condo association-- but they're elected by the owners, and there are generally recall provisions. If they don't work well, that could be bad news for your proposed neighborhood councils.

That's probably a good example of why democracy isn't everything and why the 'liberal' part in 'liberal democracy' is important too; there needs to be an understanding of what a given body, however democratic, can't do.
It's interesting that we don't have HOAs here and seem to get on fine without them. In fact the whole idea feels like some weird imposition. (For houses, that is. I think apartment buildings are run in much the same way, with all the drama you'd expect.)

[bradrn]

One reason there are so many dystopias around, I think, is that a novel plot is often about things going wrong -- and if you start with the premise that things have gone horribly wrong, the story practically writes itself!

Iain M. Banks had a neat solution for the problem; most Culture novels are about horrible dystopias but the presence of the Culture makes it clear that there's a way forward.

I recall some author — Le Guin, I think — commenting that even in a utopia things can go wrong: no social system can remove all interpersonal conflicts and dramas. (Not if you want to be halfway realistic about it, at least.) Those in turn allow for stories even in a utopia. It does require more imagination than dystopias do, though.