Friday 20 January 2023

Still Room for Hope

Kim Stanley Robinson's latest foray into "cli-fi", the sub-genre of near-term science fiction has earned itself the plaudits. From the UK paperback edition we learn it was one of Barack Obama's favourite books of the year. Who'd have thunk a centrist pin up would endorse a thinly-veiled Marxian critique of capitalism in the age of climate breakdown, and one for that matter with Negrian characteristics? For sure, The Ministry For the Future is an important work, and it's testament to Robinson's skills as a writer that some pretty radical politics are presented as commonsensical solutions to this century's most pressing problem.

That said, while Ministry is a novel, it would be more accurate to describe it as a manifesto. The plot, such as it is, is thin. Beginning with an extreme heat event that kills 20 million Indians a few years hence, a chain of events unfurl in which the world undergoes a combination of ecological modernisation, geo-engineering to prevent ice cap melt, and social revolution. Mary Murphy as head of the Ministry for the Future, a UN agency established by the Paris Climate Accords to look after the interests of the not-yet-born, is the main viewpoint through which the story proceeds. And variously the action moves from meetings with central bankers and other assorted important people to those either on the sharp end of climate disasters or at the forefront of mitigation efforts. Peppered along the way are quick, accessible dives into science, economics, and social theory.

On top of its timeliness, Ministry interests for two reasons. There is its theory of social change. As a work of sociological imagining, Robinson describes the decades-long transition from neoliberal, extractive capitalism to something else. Mostly, governments and financial institutions are tools for stripping back capital's supremacy, and are forced by popular pressure and by what Hardt and Negri refer to as 'exodus'. I.e. People cooperating and forming their own circuits of social reproduction independently of capital. This is illustrated by the repatriation of data to individual users, requiring social media platforms to hand over fees if they want access to it as per current business models, cooperatisation of swathes of industry, and the emergence of tough regulatory regimes for international finance that ties capital down and to social obligations. At the heart of this project is the introduction of the Carbon coin, which is issued in its trillions to states and multinationals for keeping their fossil fuel reserves in the ground, and is awarded to anyone and everyone who draws carbon from the atmosphere, either by traditional means (tree planting) or employing capture technologies. Also of interest is the use Robinson imagines for block chain. It effectively provides a ledger for the carbon coin, so its transactional history can be tracked. What might have Orwellian implications in the context of an authoritarian state forms a system of open surveillance, which over times works to exclude all other forms of money that remains dark. Hence speculation and tax havens become a thing of the past, and eventually limits on maximum wealth are introduced. But none of this happens because of a light bulb moment. Violence via ecoterrorism plays its part by targeting polluters, such as executive members of fossil fuel firms, and Robinson writes of attacks against air liners and container ships using legacy fuels, and sabotage on coal-fired power stations. Each encourage the take up of greener alternatives, which in turn spurs innovation that renders fossil fuelled combustion engines obsolete and expensive. Throughout the transition, Robinson never indulges a year zero moment. There are protests and revolutions, but there is no clean sweep of the Leninist imaginary. Everything is messy, everything is a struggle.

In his critique, Francis Fukuyama - he of the end of history fame - argued that Robinson's projection is unrealistic. It's too optimistic because, when all is said and done, the right political decisions are always made. Yes, but this misconstrues the point of the book. As a fictionalised manifesto, Robinson is pointing us toward a future which will be difficult but is by no means bleak. It requires we draw on our collective talents and make a concerted effort as a species to undo the climate, environmental, and species extinction impacts of the last 300-400 years. In other words, by positing the best possible outcome of our mitigation efforts, what Robinson is demonstrating is how it is possible, that we can make a better future. It is well within our powers to achieve it. Mindful of Fredric Jameson's famous "it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism", Ministry - like much else of Robinson's science fiction, from his Mars Trilogy to his previous novel, Red Moon, the problem the end of capitalism is dealt with and more open, alternative futures are imagined. Here, by explicitly tying action on climate change to action on capitalist relations of production, Robinson is making the point that a sustainable society is not possible on the foundation of extractive, exploitative economics.

There is a lot to The Ministry of the Future, and it adds another weapon to our armoury. Dystopian fiction is exhausted, nihilistic, and ultimately conservative. This is its opposite. In the face of looming catastrophe, Robinson reminds us that there is still room for hope.

Image Credit

4 comments:

Blissex said...

«There is its theory of social change. As a work of sociological imagining, Robinson describes the decades-long transition from neoliberal, extractive capitalism to something else.»

That's not quite a theory, it is a sequence of events for which no "materialistic" prime-mover is given, they just are described as happening because various people decide they should happen, ideas triumph.

«Mostly, governments and financial institutions are tools for stripping back capital's supremacy»

That's a bit wistful :-).

«There are protests and revolutions, but there is no clean sweep of the Leninist imaginary. Everything is messy, everything is a struggle.»

That's a realistic part.

«It is well within our powers to achieve it. Mindful of Fredric Jameson's famous "it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism" [...] the problem the end of capitalism is dealt with and more open, alternative futures are imagined.»

There are important differences that statement glosses over:

* Nothing is forever, so we are pretty sure "capitalism" will end, the questions are when, and what will replace it.

* "Capitalism" as defined by Karl is the organization of production based on work-for-hire, and according to a materialistic view it is an inevitable consequence of the industrial system of production.

* The current phase of "capitalism" is "private capitalism", where the employers are private individuals or privately owned organisations.

* "Capitalism" itself will only end when a different system of production somehow happens, and it is hard to imagine another system of production with current technologies. Work-for-hire is here to stay for probably a long time. It is easier to imagine a regression to earlier systems of production if some of the current technologies become unavailable.

* That Karl guy thought that "private capitalism" would evolve into "collective private capitalism" (by way of shareholding) and then into "social capitalism" ("socialism") and then into "communal capitalism" ("communism") via changes in the type of ownership, not in the system of production.
Given that "private capitalism" has already evolved through several different variants, it is easy to think that it will evolve again, whether as predicted by Karl or as described by Kim Robinson is difficult to guess.

Blissex said...

«Robinson is making the point that a sustainable society is not possible on the foundation of extractive, exploitative economics.»

Just in passing sometimes there is a bit of a confusions between two completely different concepts:

* Whether the system of production has extractivjavascript:void(0)e, exploitative economics by all humans towards *the environment*.

* Whether the systems of production has extractive, exploitative economics *among humans*.

It is entirely possible to imagine (because it was the norm in the past) that the society running a system of production that does not have exploitative and extractive economics towards the environment, but still does among humans.

The viceversa is also imaginable: that a "socialist" or "communist" society runs a system of production that is exploitative and extractive towards the environment, because members of society collectively and democratically want for living standards to be maximized for them now, and without regard to sustainability for the environment and the unborn.

Indeed there are some sci-fi novels that imagine a future
ecological theocracy that delivers long term sustainability by viciously repressing their population's attempt to grasp higher living standards now at the expense of the future environment.
In some sci-fi novels the ecologists plan the extermination of their own species because they believe that it is impossible in the long term to repress humanity's drive towards extractive, exploitative economics against the environment.
In other sci-fi novels it is given for granted that it is not possible or desirable to repress humanity's unsustainable extractive, exploitative economics against the environment, but that the environment is the whole solar system, Orion arm, galaxy, so that humanity can suck dry and poison one planetary environment after another, but move to a new planet when that happens.

phuzz said...

The first chapter is harrowing in it's description of a heatwave killing an entire town. That part stuck with me for a long time. Overall though I was left with some hope, and I'd recommend the book just for that alone.
It's interesting to compare this book to Neal Stephenson's recent book 'Termination Shock', which cover's very similar themes from a much more technocratic direction. It's more concerned with just geo-engineering though, mostly ignoring large scale societal changes.

Anonymous said...

I confess I decided not to read this book, though I usually enjoy Robinson's work, because I found it implausibly positive in its premises, given the current situation.

I did read through his New York 2140, which is even more implausibly positive in its premises (a popular New York politician and a handsome New York hedge-funder manage to beat off the proletarian uprising and save the day by regulating neoliberal monopoly finance capitalism).

I also read through his Aurora, which is a bit more realistic in its assessment that interstellar and even interplanetary colonisation is impossible (I'd say this is probably the case under current technological conditions) although it is fundamentally conservative (very unlike the Mars trilogy) in its assumption that there are some things Man Should Not Even Try To Do (rather like Frankenstein but less Romantic).

I think, on the whole, that contemporary science fiction is growing more conservative and doctrinaire. Consider also the deterioration displayed in William Gibson's latest trilogy, where the first book was an edgy and technologically fascinating riff on some Philip K Dick ideas and the second book was a stodgy piece of U.S. Democratic Party propaganda. Perhaps the future is just too unpleasant to contemplate -- although in the 1950s science fiction had no real problems in contemplating an apocalypse.