“This essay aims to be a political critique of the aestheticization of capitalist accumulation through technology.” This is how the philosopher describes Michael Nieva (Buenos Aires, 1988) his latest book, capitalist science fiction (New Anagram Notebooks), whose subtitle reads: How billionaires will save us from the end of the world.
From Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse, a concept stolen from the novel Snow Crashby Neal Stephenson: how the precarious can live a parallel reality of luxury; to the search for immortality undertaken by Peter Thiel (Paypal) and Jeff Bezos (Amazon), who shares with Elon Musk (SpaceX) the dream—or nightmare—of interplanetary travel.
Let’s start at the end: the conquest of space or the extension of life are projects of technological billionaires intended only for a select few rich people.
Messianic projects to save humanity from ecological, economic, political or biological catastrophe are technologies that only the plutocratic minority of Silicon Valley will be able to enjoy, such as traveling to Mars, extending life or uploading consciousness to a cloud.
The paradox is that these speeches state that the Earth’s problem is not capitalist destruction, but technological insufficiency, so the only way to solve it is to accelerate technology.
Thus, to make Mars habitable, they propose using the same technologies that contaminated the Earth, because Mars is a cold planet and to warm it up it would be necessary to massively release carbon dioxide, launching atomic bombs at the poles so that the water melts.
The Martian solution is far-fetched.
The book continues Mark Fisher’s thesis of “capitalist realism.” Margaret Thatcher proposed that there was no alternative to adjustment policies and Fisher said that capitalism had managed to impose that the only possible reality was neoliberalism: “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
We have entered a stage in which capitalism has already imagined its continuity, which is the fantasy of Mars: “Let’s finish destroying this planet and let’s go destroy another one.” However, there is no alternative to solve Earth’s real problems.
Hence Elon Musk’s slogan “Occupy Mars”, which does not discuss the equal redistribution of wealth. [como Ocuppy Wall Street]but to accelerate the process of conquest of space. A capitalist delirium.
A “worldless humanity”, embellished by the aestheticization or romanticization of technological capitalism.
The great science fiction of our time is produced by capitalism itself, both in the aestheticization of its products and in its ideas, inspired by the mythology of books of the genre and its authors, some hired as futurists by large companies.
Elon Musk criticizes taxes—and, by extension, the State—but in his day he received aid from the Government, like other technology magnates.
That Californian idiosyncrasy, which emerged in the 1990s, had the hacker as a kind of icon and rebellious person who fights against an oppressive State. They take that idea to model the figure of the billionaire who fights against the restrictions of the State, although it is still hypocritical, because their companies were possible thanks to the tax benefits they received because the technologies they develop are of war and logistical interest.
You maintain that this technological utopia, which sounds more like a dystopia, is more effective if it is led by the figure of a savior. A “patriarchal fantasy.”
It is so effective because it connects the seduction produced by cutting-edge technology with a very archaic narrative structure of the patriarch. This produced a change in the figures of technological capitalism, because Bill Gates’ generation embodied the austere and Protestant businessman who benefits society with donations. Now they are narcissistic and egomaniacal messiahs, who have to do with the very logic of the social networks they own, which promote hate speech that later crystallizes in politics.
In fact, you connect capitalist science fiction with the new fascisms.
Companies like X, Instagram or TikTok realized that this type of speech produces more engagement and hate. Furthermore, the monopoly of this technology, concentrated in a single place in the world, also enables fascism and a single way of thinking. That is to say, this technological application clearly induces fascism, as we are seeing in the world.
It also doesn’t help that progressive discourse, according to you, has failed and become obsolete. In fact, African Americans and Hispanics have also voted for Trump.
Liberal democracies made the work of the majority even more precarious. Let’s say that they justified themselves with an ideological discourse in favor of minorities that was completely empty, so that many working majorities, precarious by liberal democracies, were not even redeemed by that discourse, because they were workers. white trash who were not even considered in the discourse of progressivism because they were seen as privileged white men.
This breeding ground for the hatred of the majority has been conveyed by these white messianic leaders. A failure of the liberal Democratic parties, which no longer even represent the supposed minorities they defend in their speech, because the black and Latino communities also voted for Trump.
How will technological advances, including artificial intelligence, affect workers?
Artificial intelligences are developed by corporations that want to maximize profits from the corporate world. Many jobs are already being considered obsolete, so employees are being replaced by apps. It is difficult to know what will happen in the long term, but it seems that it is tending towards precariousness. There is a reason why the great defenders of artificial intelligence are fascist leaders like Trump or Milei, whose fantasy is a State managed by artificial intelligence, so that no one has to be hired.
These millionaires propose a future on another planet when their catastrophic formula—which they describe as libertarian and environmentalist—depletes the Earth’s resources. That is to say, while their technologies contaminate the environment, they plan to transfer that extractivist economy to space, as if the problem were the solution.
The name Silicon Valley is already based on the dependence on minerals, because microprocessors were manufactured with silicon… This utopian fantasy is possible at the cost of the ecological consequences in the global south. Tesla cars do not emit carbon dioxide, although their manufacturing is not sustainable, because each battery requires 70 kilos of lithium. A monstrous amount, because those batteries were intended for small equipment such as mobile phones, not for vehicles. The extraction of the mineral is not sustainable for the planet at an energy level, nor is the use of artificial intelligence. In other words, the technology that is going to save humanity requires energy consumption that has destroyed the planet.
Is there room for optimism?
Optimism is trying to think of alternatives at a time when capitalism has achieved total omnipresence and omnipotence of technology, politics and the economy. That is, we are completely tied to technology, but we never question that this technology is created with the cosmogony or idiosyncrasies of Silicon Valley. I think it is important, more than ever, to think about another cosmogony of technology.
For example, in ‘Capitalist Science Fiction’ he proposes the alternative of Lenin’s cosmic ecosocialism.
In the book I try to think of another alternative to space conquest, which is the Marxist version. During a meeting with HG Wells, Lenin criticized the thesis of war of the worlds and proposed that, if there were a civilization more advanced than ours, that alien species would have to be socialist. That is, it opened the door to a socialist intergalactic communion.
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