By Paris Marx (@parismarx)
With 2020 coming to a close, we need hopeful visions for the future more than ever, but they can’t ignore the challenges we face. This collection of articles forces us to think critically about what’s necessary to build a better future for the working class, while taking inspiration from the organizers and activists fighting to make their visions a reality.
Pushing back against capitalist futures
For too long, imagining a future beyond capitalism has felt near impossible, but with resurgent left-wing movements putting forward visions that address the climate crisis and seize technology to serve the working class, that no longer feels to be the case. These pieces consider the flaws in dominant approaches to futurism, how capitalism is impeding a better future, and the flaws in the futures of tech billionaires.
+ Utopia, not futurism: Why doing the impossible is the most rational thing we can do – Uneven Earth, by Murray Bookchin
+ Europe’s response to COVID-19 and the climate crisis shows that a new form of capitalism is in the making. – ROAR Magazine, by Kai Heron
+ How the Global Tech Elite Imagine the Future – ESRA, by Anna-Maria Murtola
+ We Don’t Need Space Colonies, and We Definitely Don’t Need Jeff Bezos – Jacobin, by Paris Marx
Responding to the climate crisis
The climate crisis is the biggest threat facing humanity, and it requires a radical rethink of how we organize society. Dominant liberal environmental futures focus on electrification of energy and transportation as the silver bullets to save us from climate apocalypse, but we need to think more critically about the challenges that a century of damage wrought by capitalism on our social and environmental systems presents to dealing with the climate crisis.
+ The Tragedy of the Worker: Towards the Proletarocene – Salvage
+ Seize and Resist: The Global Supply Chain is Up for Grabs. – The Baffler, by Thea Riofrancos
+ Ecological crises and equitable futures – ESRA, by Sy Taffel
+ The 2020s Must Be the Decade of the Green New Deal – OneZero, by Paris Marx
Shaping technology for our ends
Technology is frequently positioned as the solution to our problems: if we can only get more powerful computers, everything will be solved by the machine. But we know that technology interacts with a whole range of other systems, and its promises are often oversold in service of narratives which benefit the tech elite. These articles and podcast present a more critical analysis of our relationship to technology, whether it should shape the future, or whether it should instead be shaped by the future we collectively decide to work toward.
+ A World Without Work? – Dissent Magazine, by Aaron Benanav
+ What Rural China Teaches Us About the Future of Tech w/ Xiaowei Wang [Podcast] – Tech Won’t Save Us
+ From Manchester to Barcelona: Building a better story about the internet. – Logic Magazine, by Ben Tarnoff
+ The Ad-Based Internet Is About to Collapse. What Comes Next? – One Zero, by Paris Marx
Imagining a better future
That leaves us with wondering how we begin to have a broader collective conversation about the future we wish to see, the values that should be embedded within it, and who, ultimately, is served by it. These articles and video provide essential reflections on these questions.
+ A War Without End – Verso Books, by Ursula K. Le Guin
+ Imagining the End of Capitalism With Kim Stanley Robinson – Jacobin, by Kim Stanley Robinson
+ To Build a Future Without Police and Prisons, We Have to Imagine It First – OneZero, by Walidah Imarisha
