Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life after Consumerism

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A timely rethinking of the usefulness of the utopian tradition in the light of climate change and the consequent necessity to add in sustainability as one of its essential components.”—Gareth Stedman Jones, author of Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion My book commences from the premise that the state of the earth’s environment has passed from the critical to the catastrophic stage. Accordingly, if we do not act dramatically swiftly, we are unlikely to save the human species and much of the natural world from complete destruction. My own response, after following this scenario across some forty years, is spelled out in a new book, Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life After Consumerism. My arguments rest on accepting the premise that the current scenario is as dire as can be, that we do genuinely face the prospect of extinction, and therefore that tinkering with the present system is a waste of time. Much more radical solutions, and a much more radical “green new deal”, are required, which will include a fundamental change in our outlook towards nature and towards the consumption of resources.

Note: The post gives the views of its authors, not the position USAPP– American Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics. Eleventh, we must eliminate the expectation that speed of delivery and the volume of the product are the ultimate goals in consumption. This process, sometimes termed the McDonaldization of society [George Ritzer. The McDonaldization of Society (9th edn, Sage Publications, 2019)] places a premium on quantity over quality, and haste (‘fast food’) and instant gratification over sociability and delayed satisfaction. It also encourages indebtedness (‘buy now, pay later’), and the downward spiral of shopping-to-compensate for the depression we feel from being indebted as a result of shopping too much. Slower is often better.

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We doen er alles aan om dit artikel op tijd te bezorgen. Het is echter in een enkel geval mogelijk dat door omstandigheden de bezorging vertraagd is. Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life After Consumerism, by Gregory Claeys was published by Princeton University Press in 2022. Gregory Claeys is Professor of the History of Political Thought, Royal Holloway, University of London. In the face of Earth’s environmental breakdown, it is clear that technological innovation alone won’t save our planet. A more radical approach is required, one that involves profound changes in individual and collective behavior. Utopianism for a Dying Planet examines the ways the expansive history of utopian thought, from its origins in ancient Sparta and ideas of the Golden Age through to today’s thinkers, can offer moral and imaginative guidance in the face of catastrophe. The utopian tradition, which has been critical of conspicuous consumption and luxurious indulgence, might light a path to a society that emphasizes equality, sociability, and sustainability. To the doomers, in one corner of the ring, despair freezes action, and a sense of chilling remorse is supplanted by numbness which denies the possibility of any reprieve. To the denialists, in the other, none of this is real, and abundant profits await those willing to continue the exploitation of nature.

The excision of science fiction leads to an overly narrow account of the development of the utopian tradition in the twentieth century. It means that much of the most innovative and influential writing on imagined futures is sidelined or redescribed as if it didn’t form part of the genre which helped to shape it. Indeed, I would suggest that during the twentieth century, and especially its second half, utopianism and science fiction became largely inseparable. The utopian tradition, in other words, was reconfigured. Science fiction was and remains the dominant register in which visions of the future, or of alternative worlds, whether utopian, dystopian, or something else, are imagined. It is where the “futurological function” has found its most widespread and powerful expression. The massive expansion in the popularity of science fiction, in literature, film, television, and computer gaming, was itself a reflection of the ever-growing dominance of technoscience in societies throughout the world. Science fiction is the principal reflective literature of twentieth century technological modernity – its most authentic literature, as J. G. Ballard often commented. Of course, there were utopian texts – Huxley’s Island (1962) is a famous example – that challenged the value of technoscientific visions of society. But like William Morris’s classic News from Nowhere (1890), they form part of a minority tradition, a counterpoint to the dominant trends in twentieth century techno-utopian thought. Reducing consumerism requires at least twelve strategies. Firstly, we need to end planned obsolescence, or the deliberate design of goods to have the shortest viable shelf-life. Our attitude must be, to paraphrase Aldous Huxley, that mending is better than ending. [ Brave New World (Penguin Books, 1955), p. 49.] In the face of Earth's environmental breakdown, it is clear that technological innovation alone won't save our planet. A more radical approach is required, one that involves profound changes in individual and collective behavior. Utopianism for a Dying Planet examines the ways the expansive history of utopian thought, from its origins in ancient Sparta and ideas of the Golden Age through to today's thinkers, can offer moral and imaginative guidance in the face of catastrophe. The utopian tradition, which has been critical of conspicuous consumption and luxurious indulgence, might light a path to a society that emphasizes equality, sociability, and sustainability.You discuss the concern that utopia’s alleged drive towards perfection makes it totalitarian. How do you respond to other arguments that utopia is authoritarian because it requires or enforces a certain type of participation from individuals, e.g., that their behaviour is somehow improved, that they are more community-minded, kinder to one another, etc? Do you think that there is anything to the accusation that utopia is illiberal in this sense? In the context of the climate crisis, do we have the time to be worried about this type of concern? There can now be no viable political theory which does not centrally offer an analysis of humanity’s long-term future. And all forms of existing social and political theory which rely on ideas of an indefinite expansion of production, consumption, and population growth, which include most forms of both liberalism and Marxism, are no longer relevant and must be superseded. So we are at a real turning-point in history. For four reasons I have chosen to portray this response in terms of the long tradition known as utopianism, which dates from the publication of Thomas More’s famous Utopia (1516), but stretches through to early socialism and Karl Marx to the early environmentalist writers and the deeper green thinkers of the 1980s and later.