Why Can't Sci-fi Writers Imagine Alternatives to Capitalist Societies?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ก.พ. 2022
- Today we investigate why non-capitalist societies aren't frequently seen in science fiction and fantasy universes.
Kyle Galindez's article: www.salon.com/2022/02/19/fant...
Kyle Galindez's book: bookshop.org/books/the-spirit...
Thumbnail art: www.deviantart.com/vectorgeek...
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Can't I get a like for the sheer variety of sci-fi films and shows included in this video? Anyway link to the cool thumbnail art in the description.
Because communism sucks & because socialism is communism with extra steps. I despise all commies and joined the infantry to end them without a hint of hesitation, remorse, regret or guilt to do my job is a pleasure. Are you the channels designated propagandist of feudalism with extra steps? My black race just got property rights why do white leftists always want to take away the property rights my black race just recovered do all socialists/communists hate black property rights? Sure seems so.
@@sketchtherapy1218
That’s a very long winded way of saying you want to kill people so that Jeff Bezos can buy five extra cruise liner sized yachts. Personally, I think that making sure people have healthcare is more important than that, but I guess that makes me a filthy Stalin-commie-Marxist-feudalist-maniac :\
Who is Gallindez why should I care? don't you have any original ideas? The overcomplication of the malthusian subvesive eugenecist always sells my black race the loss of property rights for some greater good that comes after another cycle/revolution of theft and murder what is this future society that needs to take from individuals to exist? That should be left in the past.
I came here for you not Gallidez you're reading someone else's thoughts give me your thoughts what is the practical application of giving the subversive, eugenic, Malthusian, tyrannical, socialists the black property rights I just got because every race will loose them and that makes it ok somehow? “If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any band of robbers have only to declare themselves a government, and all their robberies are legalized.”Lysander Spooner
I don't agree with anything you said but i love you homie see you next time.
I'm surprised Star Trek isn't mentioned. The Federation is a pretty major sci-fi society.
I wanted to post the same thing
Yes, the Federation is a great example of a Socialist dictatorship.
They also still have money...they just call it 'replicator rations'. They're always being traded for other things.
And it belies it's own political premise almost every episode. It's become a political joke.
@@nachtwaya8721 Remember that the Ferengi (the Capitalists) never got into a war, never tried to conquer anyone, and basically did business with everyone in the Galaxy (except the Borg of course). The Federation fought everyone, because that's what Socialism is all about. Forcing people to give up their freedom and their property.
As you're alluding to, I think the lack of alternatives is due to Sci-Fi writers being generally uninterested in writing stories around economic ideologies. In most instances political ideologies are solely for the purposes of establishing the story's setting.
Eh if you want sci-fi that focuses on economics, you can find it but... most people don't find it interesting so not gonna be main stream. I guess you could say our capitalist reality informs how many books get written.
Its a bit more common than you'd think, especially with hard sci fi works where the author has dotted all of their i's and crossed all their t's.
The primary issue is they tend not to be terrible popular (though I think at least one of them, David Weber, routinely gets on NYT's best seller list), because they are relatively technical.
ie. in one of his series, I think the economic policy would be considered Mussolini Fascism with the state controlling the means of production. There is a post scarcity society where the most basic goods are free and "currency" is credit to use the state's fabricators to build whatever you want.
So anyone can get a basic car. It will get you from point A to point B. But it will look like a box, might not have windows, a media player, a better air filter etc.
@@cp1cupcake "I think the economic policy would be considered Mussolini Fascism with the state controlling the means of production. There is a post scarcity society where the most basic goods are free and "currency" is credit to use the state's fabricators to build whatever you want."
Which is the exact opposite of fascism.
That sounds like Communism.
Idk maybe, but William Gibson didn't shy away from engaging with structures of economic power
@@cp1cupcakeThat sounds like State Capitalism
No Fascist ideology at all, and no proletariat control of the means of production, no move towards self-abolition of the Proletariat, no overcoming of the Law of Value.
You've intrigued me enough to want to read him tho.
As a science-fiction author myself, there are a couple points I want to make.
1.) It is super easy to create an idealized society that has cured all the ills of current society and write the story with that society prospering. I've done this and been all full of myself thinking how great this nation is, but as I've matured, I've realized that not only is such a society unrealistic, it's also boring. As such, I now put more time and effort into determining how that people's ideology is actually practiced and the history which formed what is currently seen.
2.) A story needs to be relatable. If the world contained therein is too different from the one known by the target audience, they're not going to read or watch it because it's too confusing.
I think that you were spot on in your analysis of the article and its targeted subject matter. Great work!
Well put. That is why I like dystopian settings. They add free obstacles to a story, which add conflict, which add drama.
Too bad that dystopian settings are mostly used as the equivalent of theme rides for mediocre YA novels, or as a biased and transparent criticism (read: "Rant") against "The Man"/ "The system".
Pretty sure not ALL dystopian novels are bad. Hell, not ALL YA dystopian novels are bad, but Sturgeon's law hits the popular concepts harder.
The culture set of Novels disagrees with you that a prosperous society or ''culture'' doesn't have to be boring just because it has supreme technology that can create utopian concepts.
good writing is about character development. Not that the culture is a perfect society, but it's level of technology is so high that there's no need to concern the story about physical struggle unless it's a point of character growth regarding the story itself, like getting stranded on a planet or being affected by some kind of disease.
I wouldn't say a more advance society would be unrealistic, it is possible. But you are right in one thing, for fiction to be engaging, you have to create strife, hardships, for the protagonist to overcome. But a better society is still workable, hence the strife and hardships on Star Trek used to be mostly external.
But the article actually comes from the being confuse about what economy and ideologies are. Economic "theories" & ideology *isn't the economy.* Economy in reality is national resource logistics, it's mostly math, the application of math and there are only so many ways you can run an economy. The argument of the ideology is the argument of the who, the how, the amount in which the same economy gets to be distributed. It's basically like people arguing what method of transporting goods are better (by sea, air or land), forgetting that no matter which method you choose, you are still transporting goods at the end of the day. They are under the impression a dramatically different method will some make it NOT a process of transporting good. The reason why no matter which 'ism' is being shown, it's looks similar, because it's all national logistic at the end of the day. No matter what ideology it is, it's always *someone deciding what goes where.*
@@biocapsule7311 Well said.
@@DonVigaDeFierro Overall, I'd say the reason why no author can think up a good, functioning post-capitalist society is that if they could, they would go into politics instead.
In many cases, dystopian societies in Fiction are just as unrealistic as utopian ones, and for the same reason:
That's not how reality works. Humans will not live in a dystopia, they will work to remove it.
And there are good dystopian novels, just as there are good utopian ones. Ian Banks' "Culture" series is as close to utopia as anyone is likely going to get while maintaining a certain amount of realism. If you think that is a boring setting, feel free to assume so, but the book sales would seem to contradict the notion...
One CAN make and think up a good story set up in a utopia, it just requires the author to put in work. And the same holds true for a Dystopia. Nothing is ever "free" in writing, even if some things seem on the cover to be easier than others.
Apparently, this article-writer never heard of the Geth or the Protoss.
The Geth are a sapient, hive-mind AI species where all Geth act on consensus; they can all read each other's minds and come to a consensus on any given topic. The Geth have the sort of unity where they exchange thoughts at the speed of light and communicate across star systems, allowing them to share improvements in technology at break-neck speed, making Geth technology far more advanced than most technology in Citadel Space.
The Protoss are a powerful, military theocracy built on a similar hive-mind, except they're organics with the psychic ability to meld minds and read the thoughts of their fellows through a psychic network known as the Khala. Knowing the ways of the Khala allowed the Protoss to recover from the brutality of endless civil wars and tribal conflicts, and it allowed the Protoss to unify and become even more powerful in terms of science and psychic powers, allowing them to combine both into a technology that seems magical to the human eye. It got up to the point where Protoss society as a whole benefited so much from the Khala, that they began to turn against members of their race who didn't want to accept the Way of the Khala, expelling these Nerazim Protoss and hunting them down like dogs if they ever showed their faces in public.
Both of these societies are highly-advanced, space-age civilizations with the power to travel across space and decimate whole worlds, and they don't rely on capitalism or feudalism to survive. The Protoss government is centralized under the Protoss Conclave, a centralized governing body comprised of Protoss elders and clergy, with its military, the Protoss Templar Caste, strictly under the Conclave's control, and the Conclave reserves the right to depose any Templar warlord or Executor from their post if they fail to follow the Conclave's demands. Meanwhile, the Geth act as a unified government with neither businessmen nor warlords governing their hegemony.
Given the events of Starcraft 2, it would be interesting to see what comes of Protoss society considering the huge changes they go through.
@@Impythelaststarfighter They'll just become a military dictatorship under Artanis. The other castes are gone; Khalai and Templar have been merged, the Judicator have been eradicated or absorbed into the Templar caste, leaving the militaristic Templar caste as the ONLY game in town.
@@HolyknightVader999 Well - dictatorship is harsh term. When Khalai and Templar were in exile on Shakuras it was Vorazun who actually ruled society. Artanis could not compell any dark templar to join reclamaition of Aiur.
Many still did.
however - Artanis actually did not need to compel Khalai and Templar... because... well there was this thing called Khala... a collective consciousness of all protoss. A collective consciusness in which everyone was still somehow individual. Yes the range wasnt infinite spanning the galaxy in practical terms of sending a thought...
but as Kharax pointed out - he was almost lost to work when he couldnt feel the shared knowledge of nearby other phase-smiths.
It wasnt the "ultimate dictatorship of the hive" seen in Starship trooper bugs. Yet it also wasnt a society where ones choices were completely up to an individual. Though actually this was caused on biologic level.
well... until Artanis convinced this society, by his meere worlds that they would be better of free as the Dark Templar were, then just pawns of Amon.
where do you put this society in terms of human terms of operating? Its a post scarcity society in general where technology on individual level can fully sustain every single protoss (though they can eat, they also just get energy from raw sunlight)
@@Paerigos Very good, also Vorlons, Shadows and heck even Minbari from B5, are very well different from anything we know :D
Another Hive Mind, Da Borg.
I feel like Heinlein ALWAYS invents some crazy government structure in his books.
You mean like limited franchise representative democracy? That's hardly anything news.
In _Starship Troopers_, he made the Arachnids a communist collective society, which worked because they were biologically suited to it. While the economy of Earth wasn't shown in depth, it was suggested that the main character should go into the family business, thereby suggesting capitalism to some extent, but the totalitarian nature of the government suggests this may have been highly regulated.
I'm not sure how to class the Martians in _Stranger in a Strange Land_, but they weren't capitalist. Due to their low population and abundance compared to their limited needs due to god-like powers they may as well have been communist in description. Same with Mike and his cult based on the Martian god-like powers. The rest of Earth seemed to be generally capitalist... or hyper-capitalist, considering the wealth of Mike's parents and the political problems it presented.
_Friday_ was about the problems of a hyper-capitalist economy where oligarchs wage a secret war on each other.
The revolutionary government on Luna in _The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress_ was a bit of a kleptocracy for a while, with a bit of anarcho-capitalism mixed in. It had taken over from a somewhat socialist system where everything, including air, was provided by the governmental Authority and was paid for by taxes and fees from food it purchased from farmers for export in a system of loan-maintenance serfdom. Meanwhile, the government of Earth seemed like a lot of socialism with regard to food distribution and rent control in India, while probably freer markets elsewhere.
Then there was the one where the economic system was chosen whatever extremists were willing to fight hard enough to win.
@@jakeaurod The Terran Federation of Starship Troopers is many things, but totalitarian it is not.
@@pwrserge83 It's totalitarian from an outside perspective (limiting the right to vote to those who completed dangerous and Spartan levels of military service seems pretty dystopian to me) but he certainly didn't intend it that way.
Starship troopers made a lot of sense. We'd be in a much better place right now if people had to actually risk their lives for their country to vote.
I think the simple answer is this: most sci-fi authors (that I know of at least) grew up in some flavor of Capitalist society. What they know of, say communism or Fascism (as examples) are based entirely on what they've heard or read about. It's not a thing they really *know* how it works or how it felt to live there. The less relevant something is to someone, the harder it is for them to make a story about it. I mean, take a dude from 1956 Soviet Russia and tell him to write a sci-fi. Betchya the future society in that story uses a command economy of some form. Take a dude from Victorian England, do the same and it would likely be some form of Monarchy. I'm just saying people imagine things in ways they *get." Even if confronted with something totally new, they still try to "translate" it into something they're used to.
I heard there were many great sci-fi series written by authors from USSR and maybe we should read them, if only to see the world from other points of view...
communism has failed everywhere. All soviet sci fi is either utopian nonsense propaganda or post apocalyptic stuff, there is a reason for that, because it never works the way its advertised, right from the horses mouth, but i guess all those people lived in socialist countries dont know any better.
@@arkgaharandan5881 capitalism is failing right before our eyes but I guess to you it's the ultimate answer to our problems.
@@Azerty72200 Kir Bulychev, Alexei Tolstoy and Ivan Yefremov Heard are some good places to start. While I don't think that they had an abundance of many good writers, there are certainly a number of them that were some of the best writers of Science Fiction worldwide.
@@serronserron1320 Thanks a lot for the recommendation.
The main reason I think we don't see a lot of other economical systems is more to do with being relatable. We see the same themes over and over because if you can't relate than you are less likely to enjoy the works.
There are. You have Star Trek as the biggest example. However the simple answer is, outside of trading currency for goods and services is the only way we have found to create flow of resources. Also people write what they know.
Much to the Chagrin of a few Marxists that where in the room at the time I proved the UFP is a "Post Liquidity Capitalist system". Instead of acquiring "Stuff" people in the Federation go through life building their Personal Capital by developing knowledges, skills and abilities or creating new IP. by allowing the collective access to your Capital you receive your needs, luxuries and the Capital of others in the collective. the Collective supports less productive members in the form of a welfare state as a loss leader in anticipation that future generations from those individuals will be more productive.
@@glenmcinnes4824 no part of what you just described is capitalist.
@@thomasjenkins5727 Perhaps not the modern application, but if you strip Capitalism down to it's core principles you don't need Money, just something that is of value and can either be used to acquire more things of value or can have it's value enhanced. You are of Value, the More you Learn the more Valuable you are.
Liquidity (Money) is the weakest/worst type of Capital.
@@glenmcinnes4824 what you're describing is farther from capitalism than capitalism is from mercantilism.
What you call the core of capitalism is the core of all economics.
And your claim that liquidity, as in the use of money, it value tokens, is the weakest form of capitalism is a bold claim that requires a great deal of evidence, especially since the observable evidence is that it is exceptionally efficient, which would make it very strong.
Socialism and Free Market Capitalism are both Capitalisms..
the capital doesn't vanish under Socialism; it just gets taken over by the State. It is a State Capitalism/Collectivism.
To do economic calculation, you need: Private property, trade/competition, and a sound currency.
Otherwise, you will not be economizing and will ultimately be planning production in the dark.
The most basic reason as to why we cannot really imagine new systems is because we do not know any other system. We largely see things through the eyes of our own world. We see other systems other than what we are used to as being fringe elements. In a sense, we write what we know.
My own short stories, I tend to write about extinction level events reducing the world to tribal societies... Each group coming up with its own form of government ranging from tribalism and street gang cultures to dictatorships, to people trying to cling to their past government structures because that is what I predict will happen if the world as we know it suddenly comes to an end. when I write about a SciFi future, I tend to see an authoritarianistic government and mega corporations who are mostly above the law because that is what I see our world (in the US and many other nations we have influenced) heading toward. I also write of cultures forming that imitate ancient history. City states like the time of the Greeks, conquering nomads like the Mongols, feudalism that occurs in many forms (and yes we see it happening in the form of the corporate elite making efforts to ensure that the working class remains so poor they have no choice but work as corporate slaves then saying "well they should work harder") I write about these things because they are what I know.
We can invent wand waving technologies to make our worlds more interesting, but when it comes to actually envisioning the world itself I see very li'l in the way of real creation of something new. It is either caused by authors being unwilling to spend the vast amounts of thought necessary to create a living breathing world, or some flaw in human creativity.
Galindez seems to have written the article largely to promote his own book. It largely seems to me that he was writing "everyone writes cookie cutter stories except for me, so buy my book".
u just wrote this comment to promote too lol, interesting ideas tho
Solid video, despite it being sparked off an article that's basically an rant on the author's idealised social setup and a plut for their book, rather than an actual analysis of various sci-fi/fantasty social structures and the conclusions such IN-DEPTH looks create.
The article was from Salon. Why are you bothering to waste your time with it? If only because I doubt the author has read the genre....or any utopian novels.
Edit: getting further into the video about the author's promotion of their book. Steven Brusts's books Teckla and Phoenix are more or less this story....with a kicker. The "divine right of rule" is real and enforced by the deities to protect the world from alien invaders.
The closest I've seen to stories which I've seen which don't follow the privatization vs collectivization economic systems are post scarcity ones.
David Weber's Out of the Dark gives an interesting economic system which I suppose it could be considered socialist. Its a sequel and in the previous book sees most of human's economic and governmental institutions collapse. After the rebuild, all of production is automated and more than humanity's basic needs.
Note I said basic needs. Sure you can live a life of more-or-less luxury being a coach potato, but if you want anything more than the basics, then you need to work for it.
Or the Troy series which is all about how post-scarcity would actually work.
*The mistake of the article is confusing governing, economy system in relations to ideology.* First, the economic "theories" & ideology *isn't the economy.* Economy in reality is national resource logistics, it's mostly math, the application of math and there are only so many ways you can run an economy. The argument of the ideology is the argument of the who, the how, the amount in which the same economy gets to be distributed. It's basically like people arguing what method of transporting goods are better (by sea, air or land), forgetting that no matter which method you choose, you are still transporting goods at the end of the day. They are under the impression a dramatically different method will some make it NOT a process of transporting good. The reason why no matter which 'ism' is being shown, it's looks similar, because it's all national logistic at the end of the day. No matter what ideology it is, it's always *someone deciding what goes where.*
Elements like feudalism, mega -corps and authoritarian are common because it is something we still suffer from, and protagonist needs strife and hardship to overcome.
Thank you , I concur. You are Writing my thoughts better than I could have.
Star Trek tried to show a post scarcity civilization, but Dilithium and Romulan Ale....
@@whirledpeaz5758 Star Trek is a post scarcity civilization only within the Federation. That is why most of the strife and hardship usually came from outside the Federation. And they are all manufactured scarcity in the sense that they have the luxury of post-scarcity but post scarcity isn't the goal. All in the name of maintaining "culture" & "tradition". In a way, it very much reflects the current state of the US. They have the resources so solve a lot of their own problems except for the willingness to do so, opting for fanciful rhetoric of "patriotism", "freedom" or "true Americaness", that really doesn't do anything.
Yeah, that's a better version than the paragraph I was typing up. In short: Because when the rules are the same, the best choice is the same. (or at least the most common choice.)
I would say that often writers of sci-fi aren’t political analysts or political theologians able to come up with complex new political systems for their writing on top of the creativity they already show in the rest of the novel. Capitalism is a flawed system but it is currently the most successful one we have, and it is also easy to picture corporate capitalism being dominant considering the current state of the world of capitalism. It makes sense they would include this in the near future or even distant future as their field of specialty is not politics.
Maybe, but as someone with a degree in political science, it seems there are only so many ways of doing X or Y. Either people can fend for themselves, or they organize. An organization can be either be run from the bottom up or from the top down. An organization can either be efficient or inefficient. An organization can either be effective or ineffective. An organization can either be legitimate or illegitimate. These don't have to be dichotomies, but extremists always treat them as such or else they wouldn't be extremists. But constructing any method of redistributing wealth will require adjusting these three main organizational aspects. Once a balance has been found that fits the needs, culture, and geophysical realities of a group of people, they will adjust to it, some will game the system better than others, and inequalities will occur. Then the people will want to fix the problem and this can violent or non-violent... Wash, Rinse, Repeat.
@@jakeaurod unfortunately most people won’t peacefully distribute wealth, people are greedy, hateful beings who want power, position and status, if you want to solve the distribution of wealth in the world and create an equal society you have to remove money as a commodity. Even if you did people would still have positions of power, doctors, police etc that can be abused. People are narrow minded in todays society in that they only care about who has money and who doesn’t and many of them would do exactly the same as the rich if they had the same amount of money. People want what they don’t have. People a vile. The best thing for the world would be for the human race to end.
That's gunna be... REALLY damn difficult, and while it would be amazing, unless its important the plot, it may not get the attention it deserves depending on the genre.
It'd be the absolute tits if we can get a novel version of how governments augmented with AI would function and how, or the prolonged distance between worlds making interstellar governance largely self-dependent but have a system in place where the worlds know they'd lose far more then they'd gain if they wanted to stick to stars alone. There is a DREADFUL lack of a slice of life science fiction which goes over this stuff, not the empire but the day to day people and their confusion at how their own governments even function with its own breed of issues.
Agreed with you totally Jake. But we are over thinking sci-fi and we are losing the enjoyment of these fantasies stories.
If you can control everything, and the more you can, the more you'll get away from older forms of capitalism and of feudalism. And more into fascism and socialism, because you have the means to control the masses, and politicians love that. So either societies look similar to the current western world, a older society, something similar, or a bit fascist, something new. Or it will tend to Mussolini's Italy, Stalin's Soviet Union, Kim's North Korea or Xi's China.
*Captain Jean-Luc Picard:* The economics of the future are somewhat different. You see, money doesn't exist in the 24th century.
*Lily Sloane:* No money? You mean you don't get paid?
*Captain Jean-Luc Picard:* The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity. Actually, we're rather like yourself and Dr. Cochrane.
Came to point this out.
That's communism!
Except he still collects historical artifacts, which hold great value due to their nonfungiability... And now people work for status and power, not money.
@@pyeitme508 that’s Post Scarcity.
@@breezyx976 yup something no commoner would ever be allowed to do.
Voyage from Yesteryear by James P Hogan, I love it. The main society is a post scarcity society. It definitely doesn’t fit the normal mold and the only reason it was able to work is it wasn’t started by people who grew up in our society.
So the article he wrote is really just a long advertisement for his own book 🤔😄
It is noteworthy that economic systems in the future might be different on different planets... Warhammer 40k is pretty such place, with feudal world's, forge worlds, industrialized republics, and even maybe communist worlds coexisting as long as they pay tithes and raise troops
The United Federation of Planets from Star Trek the next generation appeared to not be capitalist. In fact it had the Firengi people as being ultra capitalists.
I liked your video. Interesting points you made.
Wonderful show/books The Expanse.
Ursula k. LeGuin wrote several books on non capitalist societies.
Yes, the Federation was a post scarcity non-economic system.
Whereas the Klingons were clearly feudalist even after allying with the Federation. The Romulans and the Cardassians seem to be fascist totalitarians that border on socialism.
@@seantape6628 Klingons were more of a hereditary oligarchy with power focused in the heads of a small number of aristocratic families.
Romulans were a militaristic republic in the vein of the Roman Republic with senators from patrician families.
Cardassians were definitely the most authoritarian and fascistic needing resources from conquered worlds to maintain their homeworld.
They said that the Federation was post-capitalist, but they still had credits and latinum.
@@88michaelandersen not to mention that Federation citizens owned property. Quark owned a bar on DS9, Sisko's dad owned a restaurant, Picard's family owned a Vineyard. It is just post sacristy.
Wait so the grand conclusion of his arguement is that he's going to make a scifi with more socialism and anarcho-syndicalism in it.... I hate to break it to this guy but thats reaaaaally not breaking any new ground. Why not make his OWN political system :D
The basic fact the author and the video ignores... that our terms for governmental types cover all known possible systems, including ones we can't enact currently.
If there WAS another type of system possible for individual minds, we'd have pondered it, and made up words for it.
I think I agree with you that this was just a fluff piece to shill the new book, not a serious reprimand of Sci-fi.
Sci fi writers need to think like another being, stop being human centric societies and make something abstract
From what I see, there are 2 reasons why an author would employ capitalism as the main form of economy in their fictional world:
1) To criticize capitalism.
2) To be the world of him smilar to the real one.
Technocracy is never used but sounds like a really good idea for a society in sci fi.
Technocracy is not special. its EIther Private (Capitalist) or State-based (Communist) because the people with the most tech will be the cracists of techno**cracy**
@@JSHADOWM right it's just a oligarchy with different flavors
I think Most Fantasy World's are Monarchist not Capitalist or Feudalist and considering how Pussified the world in Demolition Man is I'd say that that's the ideal that the "Anti Capitalist" Left in the Anglosphere is striving towards
Except in Demolition Man it's pretty clear the system is capitalistic (Taco Bell, credits, poor people, ...).
@ Hasan Piker is a millionaire yet claims to be a socialist, when I say leftist I'm referring to libtards, alot of whom like to larp as commies for some reason
First: you didn't mention Star Trek. Why?
Second: what of Peter F. Hamilton's 'Pandora Star' series? There you have an excellent exercise in imagination.
Third: Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. I rest my case.
In summary, this is a question I've made myself quite often when reading. The lack of imagination between otherwise great authors is sometimes frustrating, examples above notwithstanding. Hence, my first published novel ('El futuro que hicimos') took place in the year 2081, when some countries have evolved into post-capitalist governance. It's not perfect, not everybody's ok with it because they find it too radical or too conservative, so it isn't naïve either. It was quite the effort imagining such a society in detail, but then again I was inspired by the best authors - best of all, Ursula's "The Disposessed", of course.
Good luck with your book.
Because that wouldn't fit the thesis for clickbait title.
On a side note, the Star Trek and communism have a problem of being contrary to human nature. One of bigger problems of the whole East Block that with all social services and housing being virtually free and risk of unemployment being zero, any available incentives were insufficient to motivate workforce for efficient and qualit work. Theft, terrible quality and alcohol abuse at workplace were everyday problems to the point security was making another salary from selling goods stolen from their factories on the black market, factories had illegal hidden shops with alcohol to supply workers who forgot to take from home or already consumed all of their alcohol during the shift. By the end of a shift many workers would be barely on their feet.
They Do and Did-see the "Honor Harrington" series, where they have a Monarchy in several societies.
I can’t help but laugh at the comments coming after communism under a video for fictional future societies 😂😂😂😂
Eric Flint's German society in his series 1632: The Ring of Fire depicts a combination of capitalism, powerful unions, feudalism, republicanism in a highly human and realistic society. The force in the series that acts as progressive or perhaps could be better said to advocate for more radical societal change does represent the needs and desires of the working class however it is not exclusively made up of the lower-class. Groups and organizations are shown as being complex and to be made up of diverse people who commonly come into conflict or coordination irrespective of origin or role within society.
The progressive organizations somewhat ironically strike for a combination of capitalistic and socialistic economic systems.
"not for broadcast" is a satirical game, where "sweden/norway" replaced money with "the exchange of various bodily fluids", while "england" equidistributes wealth to a point, where almost everyone is equally poor, and everyone depends on the government for basic food and shelter.
it sure transitions to either form of syndicalism within a 8 hour video narrative.
Same reasons why most people think *Mary Sues* are _boring:_
They're probably not skilled enough to write them properly.
Or they're just... _not_ willing to put more effort into something barely anyone notices, accidentally throwing away whatever chance at being a cult classic their writing would've been.
An interesting Mary Sue is no longer a Mary Sue.
Like Anarchists that want a better Anarchy and so form a heirachy or power for better safety and organization are no longer anarchists.
There are plenty of examples. The first that came to my mind was Gaia from the end of the original Foundation trilogy. It's been a long time since I read it, but I remember fundamentally disagreeing with the protagonist's choice at the end. Looking back, I think the main reason was that I valued individualism, privacy and freedom more than the collectivism that was described there.
Star Trek used to be an actual alternative to capitalism but Picard has kind of been taking a dump on some of those ideas
That's Dr American Ben, PhD in criticism and philosophy.
Thank you for the think and the challenge.
This is the weirdest form of advertising I’ve ever seen…
Also, Lorerunner has some political systems that are top notch.
The major guide in most scifi that I have seen is Corporate Controlled or Military Controlled. The Star Trek setting references the Federation of Planets constantly, but what do we see Navy life, and in some series Navy Families, on board the ship. Star Wars, is either Emperor's Fleet ruled, or Corporations running the players in the government.
Actually, the belt from the Expanse practices colonialism at the start of the series, then slowly evolves, creating temporary states based around locations or factions, or in one major case what is basically a military dictatorship before finally ending with a mercantilist republic. Also, the OPA has often consisted of anarchist factions.
Also, about Fantasy, republics, particularly merchentile ones are also popular. Or you have elective monarchies, or Imperial systems mimicking the Byzantines/the Roman Empire, which did not operate on a feudal system.
The series I know of with the most examples of various systems of government is the Stormlight Archives which has all the systems I mentioned and more.
So I guess the author hasn’t watched Star Trek
Because a),
they are also products of society and are often unanaware of the biases that we unintentionally reproduce,
b), they might think that would be a good thing or the only possibility,
c), they don't realize the potentional of what writing about a possible better society could bring,
d), their story focuses on a character journey and sociopolitcal conditions don't play a role.
Kyle Galindez was right to limit himself to the first three movies.
I think the worst system I’ve heard of is the one hinted at in “The Orville”. Supposedly money has been replaced with “reputation”. Which probably means that your worth is determined by either social media likes or how much big brother likes you. Gives me chills just thinking about it.
So, social credits from China? Although, in China you also need to have money.
IIRC in The Orville, "reputation" is not used like money, but more indications your social capital, because the basic needs of every person is met through replicators and extremely well-developed medical tech. Better rep doesn't mean you can buy more stuff (not that you would need it) but more so that people respect your more and value your input in decision-making.
Anarchist sydicalism doesn't want a state to begin with, so the notion of an anarchosyndicalist "state" turning authoritarian is self contradictory. Sure an authoritarian state could chose to call itself anything, but it wouldn't be anything near anarchosyndicalism in practice.
Just an FYI anarchosyndicalism is functionally built around direct democracy, not just in governing but also in the workplace - workers propose and vote directly on how their workplace will work. The government works the same way, only without a centralised organ of violence like a police force or standing army. Instead defence and public safety is a shared, voluntary responsibility which is organised into civilian militias and neighbourhood watch style outfits. This distributes force so that it will enforce the consensus, rather than centralising it under a minister of defence or comander in chief like nation states do. This is because a crntralised force can be controlled by a despot or a ruling class, but a distributed security network cannot deviate too much from the general mid point of the groups constitung it. Professionals in such organisations are be appointed (and removed) by popular consensus to do specialised work like forensics, coordinating specialised operations, and other highly specialised tasks. It's similar to how back in the day some townships appointed sherifs and deputies by vote rather than by state appointments.
@@lachlanraidal5100 "He who says organisation says oligarchy".
Above all else, feudalism was characterized by personal relationships and getting boons in exchange for loyalty at all levels of society. Even when the boons were mostly notional. Feudal lords swore to support the king in exchange for land and rights. Lower ranking nobility did the same with their superiors. Lower classes (peasants and townspeople) swore to support their lords (often this was pre-supposed) in exchange for protection (which was often only nominal). The notion of State as we understand it now didn't really exist. The land was literally the personal possession of the monarch, and everyone living on it were his tenants (or the tenants of his tenants). We also shouldn't (again) think of feudalism as a single unified form of governance, as there were regional and temporal differences.
Has the author even read much SciFi? There is a massive diversity of political and economic systems out there.
Their problem seems to be that their preferred system doesn't have a thinly veiled tract that got massively popular on the scale of Star Wars so they decided to write their own. But what they failed to realise is that thinly veiled tracts rarely get popular outside of their political niche at all. Perfect systems and perfect heroes are boring and often you have to make the antagonists dumb and arbitrarily evil to justify their actions fighting such a system. I honestly hope that their book is better than the anvilicious wish fulfilment it sounds like.
What scifi most often does is explore the relationship between individual and society.
Society has always been tyrannical, it's always forced the individual to submit. The curse of humanity is that without society, the individual is vulnerable and will inevitably fall to chaos or their own short-sightedness. This has always been the case. If you take a look at Roman-themed historical films, the theme is the same: the Empire demands more and more yet without it, the world descends into chaos and darkness. The key question is: at what point does the Empire take too much and gives back too little?
What scifi does differently is imagine society as a mechanical, sometimes software-like tyranny. Either A.I. or technological despots, the game is the same. I would like to see stories about what happens when the rebels defeat the dreaded Empire, only to have the Galaxy collapse around them into anarchy, which they are forced to set right by setting up another Empire.
Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy.
thats cyberpunk sci fi can take place in the middle of nowhere in space without a society but a weird alien virus that swallows everything.
A novel about a society where the government is kept in check by the people... I think it's hard to make it fun to read. It would be "almost everything and everyone is fine" and that's it.
Unless you present that society and then a threat to that society as a whole and the fight to keep that society. Or something like that.
I don't have time to write a proper response to this one but as a huge Sci fi nerd and a sociology major this was an interesting video!
Iain M Banks did it brilliantly with the Culture novels. (NowI’ll watch the rest of the video and get back to you lol)
The question betrays a lack of understanding of the systems, and the claim behind it betrays a lack of familiarity with fantasy and science fiction.
If they did, there wouldn't be social conflict, and therefore no Story to tell.
I wish this TH-camr wasn't a victim of capitalist realism
I wish we had better definitions of Economic and Political systems in the real world. Arguably the US isn’t even a Capitalist country, no matter how many people love to say it is it has absolutely become a Corporate Oligarchy in the last 50 or so years (if not closer to 100 years). It’s essentially just Corporate Serfdom but our politicians (despite making zero decisions that don’t financially benefit them or their lobbyists Directly) are happy to live off of sponsored messages so they can ensure their position in the modern “nobility”.
We've always defined the US economy as "mixed" with aspects of capitalism and socialism, some sectors and actors being more one than the other, with regulation and control mechanisms mixed in.
I bet you cheered as Dems shutdown small businesses yet allowed huge corporations to further grow during covid.
Fun fact, fifty percent of Americans will at one point be in the top 5 percent of wealth
Damn, American Ben, I am impressed. You finally used your brain for this one. Or, did Allen or British Ben write this? Damn, this is thought provoking.
There is a tradition of Science Fiction from Eastern Europe (e.g. Lem or the Strugatzki brothers) that has lots of different societies and political systems. And SciFi classics and their precursors (H.G. Wells and quite a number of German authors) also loved to try out alternatives to the (pre-WW2 and some pre-WW1) politics. Many of the authors were themselves socialists (outside a communist system). And some inside used SciFi as a way to express ideas that would have gotten them into trouble otherwise.
But US translations were often censored to remove the potential anti-capitalist message. Even Jules Verne fell victim to that.
This is actually very insightful for me thanks.
A interesting possiblity, a society run by *benevolent* AI that _actually works._
And the AI are competent and considerate, and look out for and after Human interest.
So for once, the government is not corrupt and let's each Human reach their potential.
It would be a really annoying place to be a slacker. …
That goes against human nature. When your every want and need is fulfilled, why would you not be a slacker?
Iain M Banks' Culture series. AI has advanced to the point where there's nothing it can't do better than organic intelligence, and it's essentially solved all of the scarcity problems that a galactic society would have.
"A interesting possiblity, a society run by benevolent AI that actually works." And yet, such a system cannot exist because, sooner or later, there will be a disagreement about what constitutes "benevolent." What's benevolent for society at large may not be considered such by groups or individuals within that society. What then? Do the needs of the many ALWAYS outweigh the needs of the few? If so, what incentive do "the few" have to even participate in such an arrangement? They'd be better off splitting off or rebelling against such a government.
Now that might make a good storyline all by itself, but all it does is prove there is no form of government or economic system that will please everyone, all the time. So long as individuals exist, disagreement and conflict of some kind MUST exist, otherwise we'd all be a hive mind of worker bees, mindlessly toiling away "for the good of society."
I had an idea for that where through some technomagic bullshittery the soul of an incorruptible man is trapped and turned into an AI by some cult but in reality leads to the cult being eradicated after their god machine got free will and the now superintelligent and supremely moral AI taking over the world to force high quality education, good public transport, good working conditions, and taxpayer paid healthcare onto the populace.
The book is better written from the perspective of the man that's become the machine and as a dichotomy of morality. Tt's not the type of thing that cold easily be turned into a movie since it's mostly monologuing.
One prototype scene goes like this:
A man tries to bribe the Man turned God Let's call this man turned god machine Bob for now.
Lobbyist: "I can offer you wealth, power, fame, status and women what say you to a deal?"
Bob: "I need not anymore wealth, I never particularly desired it, I have no need for power or fame I prefer a quiet life, I already hold status as a world superintelligence, and I care not for the pleasures of the flesh for any who are not sincere. You could offer me world and every star, planet and moon in heaven but you still could not offer me anything of earnest value. Every man may have his price, but you will find mine to be higher than you or your masters can afford"
I also was part of a D&D campaign where my character successfully overthrew an expansionist empire and turned it into a communist nation where basic rights were afforded to all.
@@madrabbit9007 on the other hand what could people achieve if they didn't have to worry about living on the street if they "fail"
also in 1950s scifi writers generally had difficulty imagining women having different social behavior, or lgbt existing. star trek was exception, there they had replicas that just copied material infinitely, so material wasnt an issue.
(also in real life meteors and other planets can offer so much rare earth minerals that its practically endless)
Nice video on a very complex subject.
I agree with the person below who wrote that the ability to create a system that is in some way related by its projected audience is more important than writing an essay on a fusion of economics and sociology.
If you look closely at Dune for example, you see elements of different forms of social organization being presented as simultaneous economic and social threads many of which he simply mentions letting the author work it out for himself and there's some fun there as you tease apart the skeins of sociology and economics.
The backbone of Dune's organization is Feudal: hereditary rules rule over peasantries whose participation supports them economically in a system that is underpinned by custom and, if need be, by force and each territory is an extension of its ruler's character (poverty and slavery exist on Giedi Prime, but are hard to imagine on Leto's Calladan).
Between houses and at the top of society there is a Church that is intertwined with the population at ever level from the royal court to the farthest backwaters like Arrakis (Bene Gesserit) and a politically and economically indispensable spacing guild that is uninterested in ruling without which interstellar commerce would be impossible, and at this level there is capitalist wealth which the houses use to maintain or increase their power.
You see the merchantalism and big, share-based capitalism in Dune's text when you read about things that are made and used, and traded ("pundi rice" "whale fur" "spice") and there are merchantile concerns which exhibit ownership based on shares which can be transferred conveying power in the form of ownership ("CHOAM companies").
All of this is going on in Dune while the de-facto aborigines, the Fremen, live lives that are largely separated from the larger systems, trading with the cities, the spacing guild, and with smugglers, but living in communes ruled by chieftains where they have whole economies that are, for the most part, separate from the most valuable substance in the human universe that is as much the backbone of all commerce in the empire as oil is in our world.
Given this (rare) level of complexity, it is no wonder that so few science fiction authors and script-writers do more than render the economic backgrounds of their stories with more than a few broad strokes: Doing more than that creates material that is so taxing that all but the most attentive, dedicated readers ignore tit completely.
Again. Interesting piece.
The Star Trek Earth has a "New World Economy", money went the way of the dinosaur. Material needs were no longer the driving force, but self-improvement, self-enrichment and the betterment of all, this eliminated most if not all social problems, humans took great pride in this (the Ferengi hated it).
What about Star Trek? They seem more a socialist-democratic-market blend. CPT Picard did not need money. According to First Contact, they were beyond using money.
Universalism (semi-post scarcity techno/meritocracy with democratic and some capitalistic elements) and utopialism (post scarcity non-violent anarchy with absolute equity but a small hierarchy based on meritocracy) from the salvation series (Peter F Hamitlon) are new ideologies. (Note above is my rough interpretation of the two main presented ideologies)
I think it also relies on "believability" the more familiar a person is with a topic the harder it is for them to suspend disbelief. The one thing at everyone is most familiar with is society. not necessarily systems but interactions. So society can only flex so much until you have people having to behave in abnormal ways for it to work. For example. Star Trek deals in a "post scarcity" world. Money is gone, etc. YET, there are a number of instances of commodities and even money substitutes. Additionally, the aspect of no need more money isn't focused on. Otherwise people would be like "why are you on a battleship then"
The original writer also talks about negative instances of societies. That isn't universal but is often true because stories need conflict and that tends to be a facet of it. It also represents the times, as more modern works have more dystopian themes, reflecting society's outlook on the future.
Its also important to understand that there is a limit.
There is democratic or authoritarian. While either side (and between) can take different styles, like a dictator or monarch for authoritarian or a democratic vote from all the people into a single person or a council etc.
From there is economic systems which is Pure Capitalist and Pure Socialist / Communist as well as in-between.
Dune is a good example of a more "unique" approach which counters the writer's position as it is both Feudal in nature but also capitalistic yet also something else.
The triggering event is that the king, is concerned about the Atrates becoming too popular and preceives a challenge to his power so he arranges them to take over Arakas, supplanting the Harkonan who are extremely rich and powerful based on their wealth from managing the spice planet. Then there is the Guild that handles all transport which potentially rivals power of the king then there are those Witch ladies who advise but are not subservient to the king.
Another good example is from Issac Assimov's The Foundation having a feudal ruler in the form of 3 people but are all clones.
But they do.
My little pony is very close to communism.
TheGiver is semi-autocratic, abolishing many things for an "ideal community"
None of those are feudal or engaging in significant trade/capital accumulation.
[The Giver (Official Troller) ] is somehow a perfect match.
This video has a literal high school level understanding of political systems lol
That's being generous.
not even.
Though to be fair, I didn't remember what an anarcho-syndicalist system was, and I have a degree in political science - though my emphasis was on public law.
@American Ben, could you publish a link for that Cubic Sign in the thumbnail? Hella stylish with the Galactica in the middle :)
it's easier to imagine the end of the world then the end of capitalism
Monarchy, capitalism, socialism, democracy, totalitarianism, meritocracy, oligarchy, caste, etc. have all been explored in Sci Fi and fantasy. The problem with seeing capitalism everywhere is that an exchange of goods and services is simply a good way to get things done efficiently. Attempts to abandon that system entirely have required force and have historically not lasted long. When people complain about capitalism they are really complaining of a plutocracy or an oligarchy and the elements they don't like often fit better into a totalitarian or surveillance state.
Not to mention that any economy needs to generate at least SOME wealth, and no system does that more efficiently than Capitalism, at least not so far.
If one uses the definition of "an exchange of good and services" then even socialism and communism can fit. Socialism can have markets. Even communism is built on the idea that one works in exchange for food and shelter.
@@jakeaurod I used an intentionally overly vague definition there because the goalposts in the arguments are harder to catch than the players on the field. I have seen this as a major flaw in the argument against capitalism or against socialism. The definitions change depending on the point one wants to make. Any social net is immediately pounced on as socialism, or on the flip side any business is immediately pounced upon as a tool for evil capitalism.
@@jamesdunn9609 I would tend to agree, but there are many forms of capitalism. It's too broad of a term. Plutocracy, laissez faire, Feudal Capitalism, and free market are all capitalist, but they are each different.
@@danjager6200 I agree completely. It's a broad term that encompasses a variety of approaches, some of which are fairly terrible. In the end, the type of systems that develop reflect what the society values. Who knows what an alien species might value? That is what makes writing about it difficult in my opinion. But it would be a fascinating way of writing a story.
My Father told me a story he read about a future when governments went bankrupt due to internal greed over extending and mismanaging and corporations took over and it doesn't seem impossible viewing current events. As for scify. That's mostly the writers and studios corporation and what they think the PUBLIC will like. I hope society has a bright future and outgrows its Technological adolescence. IT'S better for the hostility remains on the screen as an outlet for Humanity instinct for violence.
Gene Roddenberry did. His future earth was a world without money. The Federation only used 'credits' as a means to interact with alien, Capitalist, civilizations. Roddenberry's Star Trek future earth was an extropian, techno-socialist utopia.
Naturally, after he died, Paramount found that intolerable, and so... Star Trek has been written increasingly Dark. But: originally, Roddenberry imagined a better world.
Very interesting topic and worthy of many more books and discussion.
I view Martin's Congressional Republic as a Military Republic/Hieagracy similar in many ways to the Terran Federation from Starship Trooper or the Turians from Mass Effect. Where the military is in power and position with the civilian branch even made part of the hierarchy (can't spell) but its top leadership is voted into power.
Also, I do disagree in part how all Scifies are put into two categories, but I do admit that there is not much in experimenting in the type of governments, or if it is, it is treated as more window dressing them actual ways to differentiate each other, if not create conflict in the story.
I would bet $1000 that Salon wouldn't of had a problem with it if every single sci-fi book was a Marxist/social love letter... But that's giving them more credit than needed, because we know the author doesn't actually know that many series. They probably only got feudal instead of capitalist, because Dune just came out, but if it didn't, we know they wouldn't of included feudal.
It could be because capitalism has failed and the right is switching to facism
hilarious that you accuse a PRIVATE COMPANY of wanting marxism. I don't think you've thought that thru.
@@Ottophil I respectfully disagree. Many of the problems facing capitalism today are rooted in left wing ideology intending to bring a budding corporatist model to heel but faiing to do so through a mix of corruption and ignorance which has resulted in anti-monopoly laws rarely being enforced (look at google, disney, amazon, facebook, ect) thanks to mega-corporations bribing officials... I mean "donating" to campaign funds for kickbacks.... which has in turn resulted in various attempts to rectify the wealth gap fairly, like raising tax rates or imposing sanctions, being twisted to only affect the working class, middle class, entrepreneurs, and outsiders gaining ground while intentionally placed loopholes for tax evasion and employee treatment violations remain unaffected for the multi-billionaire class to exploit.
If you don't believe me just look at the financial records of many outspoken left wing activists and politicians. Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren are best friends with Wall St and Big Pharma, proposed sanctions against Amazon and such that they back often "fail" after they mysteriously blunder and tank the proposals....repeatedly, and the fact that many willingly pal around with establishment Neo-Cons like Bush, the late McCain, Romney, Cheney, and more. Neo-Cons who had a decade to roll back or fight against left wing economic bills and executive orders but never did with few superficial exceptions.
To ward off accusations of bias or partisanship I'll also point to outwardly right wing figures such as Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro, Ben Carson, George Bush, Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Vladimir Putin, and Nigel Farage who all talk the talk but ultimately side with left wing proposals or go silent when it comes time to vote. If you wish I can cite examples.
In short many failings of Capitalism today, though certainly not all, can be traced back to left wing ideologies ranging everywhere from milk toast centre left Neo-Liberalism (think Bill Clinton) to the extreme far left of the spectrum (though I personally feel such rhetoric and individuals are often propped up by Neo-Libs/Cons as an easy scapegoat and distraction like with AOC or the far less extreme Sanders) with the traditonal right having the general opinion of stripping powers from the government and elites is for the best. More often than not I see self proclaimed "anti-fascists" support slave owning death corporations like Nestle, Nike, Tesla, Apple, Disney, Food Co, and more whenever a centrist to extreme far right individual or group raises an issue about them. Just look to the ACLU or SPLC jumping to catch bullets for these corporations whenever a publically right wing person speaks out. FB and Twitter are relentlessly defended despite a looong track record of scandals, lawbreaking, tax evasion, and human rights abuses both domestic and international just because of a simple "my team is in power rn so screw you" mentality.
As for the right turning to fascism? No.
That is simply scapegoating and whataboutism.
Many prominent right wing figures, be they milk toast centre right, tradcon, or far right, are NOT part of the establishment who have curtailed rights and demonised criticism. Remember the cries against invading the Middle-East under Bush/Blair? Many left wing figures of importance today VOTED YES and have repeatedly crippled attempts to leave. Left wing organisations and media repeatedly called for whistle-blowers to be criminalised for releasing details on illegal government activities when THEIR team is compromised, just look at Assange who was worshipped during the Bush admin by MSM and then spat on by left leaning MSM and activists for treating the Obama admin the exact same in regards to uncovering shady acts. Biden, Trudeau, and Ursula (EU head) have repeatedly condemned legal protests from the working class that are against government control and economic breaks for the ultra wealthy while lying about inflation and enriching oil barons.
There is no "fascist" right movement. The embers have long since died out for such drivel. Even so called figureheads like Richard Spencer are invited onto left wing platforms like CNN, BBC, ect to warm welcomes and scripted arguments.....in which they condemn individuals deemed problematic to the establishment that day be they left or right wing (such as Sanders in 2020 before he folded or Trump after he hit new records in high minority approval ratings).
This not me saying "lol lefty bad righty good" as I have pointed out flaws on BOTH sides. Just a friendly explanation on how the roots of capitalist excess and greed have been flamed by left wing ideologies and doctrine to the benefit of the Zucks, Igers, Weinsteins, Clintons, Soros', Murdocks, and more. The establishment of today were hippies in the 60's who grew jaded and complacent, the supporters of segregation, and the economic elites who happened to read post modernist theory and realise how easy it is to manipulate.
In a nutshell just because a news station with a pride flag or a fun streamer who dropped out of college says something doesn't make it true.
Especially when they believed Smollett was innocent, China wouldn't lie, and that the EU was democratic.
Great stuff!
Dune illustrates the coexistence of feudal and capitalist systems. While the royal houses of the Landsraad are classically feudal in terms of the government they create, this same nobility derives much of their wealth and power from their shares in the CHOAM corporation. In parallel, you have factions like the Spacing Guild and Ix who explicitly profit-driven in a symbiotic manner with the Landsraad. The thing is, the very notion that these systems are mutually-exclusive is a false oversimplification that can be attributed to Marx using 19th century Britain as his socio-economic model.
Only show I can really think about that might have a different socialist or whatever system is Star Trek with all the different planets and races they've integrated in I'm not sure if several other societies or none of them differ from our own
One of the things I really enjoy about the Expanse is that it's clearly moved into very, very late stage capitalism- things are still stupidly privatized and that's driving a lot of the conflict of the show, but you still do see some basic socialist style public welfare programs in place that keep things from completely flying out of whack, at least when Belters aren't dropping meteors on people.
What? I know law enforcement is privatised on Belt stations, but aside from that the only companies we see anything of are Mao-Kwikowski (and subsidiary Protogen) and Royal Charter Energy. Mao-Kwik gets dismantled by the UN government as soon as its involvement in the plot is revealed (does that sound capitalist to you?) while Royal Charter Energy were eminently reasonable.
Do you think the Belters would be treated any better if the police were government operated rather than rent-a-cops, given the complete lack of care the inner planets have toward Belters?
@@ReddwarfIV There's no government out in the Belt to take care of anyone; it's all capitalist wasteland once you get off-planet. EVERYTHING that hasn't been abandoned is owned by a corp- recall that Holden and co started the show as ice miners before stealing the Roci and becoming mercs with hearts of gold, basically.
@@Canoby Pur & Kleen owned an ice hauler fleet, not an asteroid. Ceres was owned by the UN, Eros was a Martian Protectorate. We _see_ the government offices on Ceres.
@@Canoby "before stealing the Roci"...that sound you hear behind you is Amos, growling "legitimate salvage."
thanks for the video, even I arrived two years later... so how did Galindez's book turn out?
boringingly most authors create characters around their own personal worlds and a depressive author is usually going to fall on dystopian themes. The point most authors want to get to is the character struggles. the setting isn't important. But it all depends on what kind of themes you're writing I suppose. If you're going to write a heroes tale then having a dysoptian autocracy to overcome makes more sense. Likewise for Detective novels set in a sci fi setting.
Even if you went as far as Dune to create an entirely different form of economy and structure eventually humans struggle to think beyond a single guy being the guy who does the thing. Because ultimately humans are individual minds that find it hard to conceptualise what that might be like outside of themselves.
I'm impressed. This video seems more comprehending of the emergent nature of free markets and the totalitarian alternative. Than American Ben's usual fair.
Not going to lie, sounds like the author of that book just wants more socialists books (that aren’t dystopias). Maybe it’s just my cynicism, but I’d be surprised if otherwise.
Interesting video. It's interesting that no one has been able to create a governing system that hasn't been done on Earth yet.
Sci-fi is supposed to take an idea or just something that exists in the modern day and transplant it into a fantastical setting so that people will have an easier time talking about it. In this specific case, capitalism is all around us, it's part of our reality. It can either be put into the setting in a confirmative way where it confirms all the biases people have, or it can be used in a transformative way where it's used to make us question things as they are now.
"A Handmaid's Tale" is a spectacular way that current reactionary elements are transplanted into the setting in a transformative way´.
Even Panem in "The Hunger Games" is a transformative application of Capitalism once you get past all the YA dressing with The Capitol being the obvious 1% who live in luxury and view the desperate 99% as a means for their entertainment and use the Hunger Games as a way to consolidate and remain in power by literally pitting the districts against each other in a competition that's meant as blood and circus to distract them from their obvious social problems, you know, like, the whole "voting against your own interests."
This is showcased in how The Capitol tried to brutally swat down District 13 because as the manufacturer of nuclear technology, it had the sheer power to stand up against the system, and as a result they were allowed to go form a sovereign nation rather than ultimately submit since all the money and power in the world means nothing if you're radioactive ash.
This is in itself a transformative criticism of the romanticized thought that violent rebellion will solve everything since even with the overwhelming power of District 13 the best it could manage was to get away and do things its own way.
This is a reference to The French Revolution. People think it changed so much and all that it did was change "king" to "emperor" when Napoleon took power later, with the encouragement of the French people who were tired of all the chaos that The French Revolution had brought with it. The real Democratic reforms that society is based on today only happened on a large scale with The Second French Revolution that happened when Napoleon was deposed after his loss at Waterloo, the French people were tired of monarchs and dictators and were ready to try to govern themselves with principles from the French Revolution, just without all the bloodshed and insanity of people like Robespierre who tried to get parliament to vote for executing themselves, an action that would have made him the defacto dictator of France.
Well, I'll point out that very often the *point* of scifi is actually to offer a new perspective on the world we *live* in, so it's not surprising that most will reflect familiar systems, either historical or current or part of current theories an ideologies.
I'd very much disagree that the systems and labels we use actually have to do with 'human nature' by way of definition or limitation, ...in fact very different systems and realities from each other might be categorized according to those familiar binaries, simply because that's how our discourse *now* goes.... One might argue that in feudal circumstances we see the exchange of money and goods, but many villagers' and farmers' lives and 'commerce' depended very much on an idea of the *commons,* ...and there's things like, what would you call a guild, really, outside those sorts of assumptions.
And of course there's Star Trek that in its oft-debated and vaguely-described way, seems to transcend the categories 'capitalist and socialist' inasmuch as it's a rather post-scarcity cooperative economy also based a great deal on sort of propagating out developments among colonies ..as well as trade with other powers and interests that may be varyingly 'capitalist' or 'socialist' or, you know, whatever the hec the Tholians or Gorn or Breen do about economics. (I think Trek even makes a point of all-but saying it's kinda not based on thinking according to the constraints we now find so implacable. Maybe it therefore becomes a big handwave that's never really examined, but I think it does get around to a lot of exploring of how 'human nature' differs when scarcity and greed aren't such big forces in a lot of people's lives.)
Corrupt capitalism and aristocracy make good villains
And acceptable ones at that.
The fist story we know of is the Epic of Gilgamesh
Robert Heinlein, the moon is a harsh mistress, stranger in a strange land, starship troopers, ect.
Even if you only look at the first Star Wars film (A New Hope) you can tell that the galaxy is largely capitalist in nature. After all, several of the plot points in that film point towards funds being extremely important from points like Luke and Owen looking to buy a droid which the Jawas are selling, the discussion from Luke and Ben on how Luke would have to sell his speeder along with the bounty out on Han and the price he wants for transport (as well as the 'reward' for recovering the Death Star plans).
Well, there's a vast array of economic systems used in science fiction. Star Wars for example, is mercantilist, like the European empires of the 17th and 18th centuries.And Star Trek is a post-scarcity hybrid of socialism and capitalism. There's are just a few examples.
The thing is, no economic system is better than capitalism, as it has social mobility and freer societies.
Capitalism in its pure form is a black market. Socialism in it's purest form is a dictatorship.
Anything that WORKS is a hybrid of the two. You will never find the pure form of either attached to a successful people or nation.
Economics was originally an offshoot of politics before it became its own discipline. This is why the two are still so intertwined, and our economics is always a reflection of our politics.
Having said that, most people are not interested in the details of how economic systems work in stories. How the stories' economy actually works is always treated as a background part of the general world building. Offhand, I can think of exactly one SF story I've read where the alien economic system played a major role in the story.
(In addition, hiveminds are a major SF trope and they're definitely not capitalist.)
I'm sure you're probably expecting this. Why didn't you bring up Star Trek and its many different alien races and many different economics as well as governments?
They do, look at 1984 and Starship Troopers.
Because capitalism encourages growth and innovation, compete to survive. In communism everyone gets a participation trophy as long as the central planners agree. In real life, especially nature, the smart, tough, strong, and quick survive to breed. Not the weak.
In real life, most governments and economies of any type provide social welfare to people and many of them breed, including the weak.
@@jakeaurod exactly my point, im speaking from an evolutionary stand point not an altruistic one. Break off societal morays and things change rapidly.
@@mikewaterfield3599 Good point. If only the strong who can support themselves can survive, then the old die with their knowledge and the young never make it to adulthood.
@@jakeaurod many ways to be strong. Nerds invented guns to level the physical game. Women have been pulling the strings on men since the dawn of time. The trick is using your strengths against their weakness. The harsh thing is, pulling the bar down, making things “accessible” weakens us as a whole. I watched a friend learn to ride again after losing use of his legs. I watched a righty learn to shoot left handed just because it was hard. Hardship makes us stronger.
@@mikewaterfield3599 I'm not sure if it was nerds who invented guns. I think they discovered curiosities and were commanded by their overlords to weaponize it.
"No one can point out where a society becomes one or the other" marx with his 3.5 over 1000 page long books:
I imagine that coming up with a political system that doesn't exist is pretty hard. Authors probably at best combine two known political systems together but come up with a totally original system, yeah good luck with that!!
I think the problem too many people are trying to reinvent new and exciting sci-fi/fantasy worlds. Just start with something you know and run with it and then throw that mofo on hits head and go nuts. Like my own sci-fi universe I've made has bits that are literally from other movies and games. Pretty much you've have the last surviving human who is immortal and was a Huuuge geek growing up. Like I literally have fleets of star destroyers flying around fighting wars and no one knows that these things are from a movie a billion years ago
Indeed the bible just nicks all the good bits from Sumerian/Akkadian civilization. From the great flood to Moses's origin story.
Edit: Good scifi BOOKS tend to explore futuristic societies better than films. Films never have the time or space to really set up something so well, time constraints and all. Gotta give the audience something they understand because you dont have hundreds of hours to tease out the nuance.
Er, no. Otherwise, you'd have Biblical figures that live longer than the Galactic Republic lasted. Some live for 20,000 or even 30,000 years.
@@HolyknightVader999 Your talking about the King's List I take it? Pre-deluvian kings do indeed have some crazy reigns according to that ;D
@@shacklock01 Yep. They make the Imperium of Man look like a pup.
The real political axis that matters is authoritarian vs. liberty. Socialism fails because of the force needed to push people into it which then devolves into tyranny. Likewise, capitalism is what exists naturally when two people need something from each other and they decide to trade. It’s the essence of free will. It can eventually devolve into corporatism which can lead to tyranny but isn’t itself tyranny or start out that way.
The Basque region of Spain is an example of anarcho-syndicalism.
So, Galindez starts off by pretty much ignoring all of Star Trek's Federation, which is clearly a post-scarcity society in which money no longer plays a role and they frequently contrast this with the hypercapitalist Ferengi. While I suppose it could be described as socialist, it doesn't seem to have the heavy-handed control that is usually portrayed, probably because there's no traditional economy to manipulate.
Galindez then seems to forget that science fiction and fantasy are frequently attempts to tell human stories in different ways, using things like aliens or mutants or whatnot as allegories for changes in the human condition, and so these human stories are likely to be set in ways that make it understandable and contextual.
And finally, it seems pretty obvious that Galindez just wanted to pitch his new book and happened to know someone who was an editor at Salon who let him use some electrons to try to come off as edgy while pushing what really looks like yet another version of an anarcho-syndicalist commune the character aspires to. Pretentious, IMO.
I consider the Federation in Star Trek to be a near perfect example of (real) Communism (as described by Engels and Marx). A post-capitalistic democratic society where all citizens are provided for by the government and people work for self fulfillment while providing for the benefit of all.
@@ollep9142 It does seem to fit the mold. The Federation seems to govern with a light touch as far as every day citizens, but at the same time they appear to hold incredibly vast military resources via Starfleet. To me they are hard to peg exactly.
I want to say, as someone who considers themselves a socialist, there are other forms socialist economic production that isn't state control. Anarchist would never allow a state to control industry
Because anarchist wouldn't allow for state control, by definition, it couldn't be socialist. Both are failed pipe dreams.
Neither socialism or anarchism work... look at history
No, there really isn't. Any group that controls resources and the means of production becomes the defacto government. And if you want to eat, you better do what they want. Socialism boils down to authoritarianism. You cannot avoid the authority because the system fails when you do not wield that authority. Socialism breeds authoritarianism. All you're doing is replacing dictators in the end. My proof is literally every socialist experiment tried thus far.
@@sid2112 Do you mean every socialist experiment the US Government had a hand in subverting and resulting destabilization of multi governments?
@@lokai7914 Most of Europe is "socialist" based on what US conservatives consider to be socialism, so unless you are going to argue that European countries like Norway, Finland, Denmark, the UK, etc are failures then there are in fact successful examples of socialism (welfare policies, public healthcare, public education, etc).
It should also be noted that the US explicitly overthrows leftist governments at every chance they get. Most "cases" can be directly tied to US sanctions or meddling, rather than problems with the countries in question. For example, Indonesia had a successful, democratically elected socialist government until it was overthrown in a US-backed fascist takeover. The US-backed military rounded up or killed around 2 million Indonesians.
The Culture Series by Ian M Banks.....Total new economic system
Star Trek?
A democratic federation with a post-scarcity internal facing socialistic economy and an external facing free-market economy.
Does no one want to talk about C-bills, Capellans, and Batchalls? The various H-bills (or house bills) in the BattleTech universe are based on how stable the economy of their respective interstellar economies are, whereas the C-Bill is based on a hydrolic monopoly over interstallar communication. As for those weirdos from the coreward periphery aren't exactly known for how their economy works... well...
I actually read the Salon article yesterday hoping for something beyond the trinary of capitalist/marxist/feudalist... turned out it was all Marxist bashing of capitalism.
Because capitalism is the engine that drives industry, innovation, and discovery. Communism and socialism breed laziness - when there is no incentive to innovate, innovations stagnates. Some people will bring up the USSR, but the driving force for innovation in the USSR was to make sure that the USA couldn’t annihilate it. If it had no military competition, the USSR would have stagnated.
So if people were provided basic living necessities like health care, food, and housing and were not forced to work to survive they would just sit around and do nothing all day every day? Wouldn't it make more sense that people would be able to pursue their passions and hobbies and *innovate* without the stress of going bankrupt after next months rent? The innovation you are referring to only exists for the ultra wealthy who can throw their money at whatever they want to make themselves more money.
The USSR DID stagnate! It had a mighty army, air force, and iffy navy but that's it. Lada and Zile made the same cars for 50 years. The biggest secret of the USSR was that the 2% of privately owned farms produced roughly 80% of the nation's food. There were no innovations outside of military hardware. All art and literature was controlled by the state to convey the state's messages and all others were crushed.
@@GriffyGood actually the greatest human inventions WERE DONE UNDER STRESS
I gotta say, this video was as fascinating as it was frustrating for a variety of reasons. I agree with a fair bit of what you said, but given the focus on definitions, there's a lot of definition creep in your script. For one, every time you elaborated on, or used, the term 'socialism', you almost exclusively referred to tenets of communism instead - by pure definition, and by idealism. You also introduced 'authoritarianism' at strange junctures, assigning it to 'socialism' by default without elaborating on the fact that authoritarianism vs libertarianism exist on a completely separate axis to capitalism vs socialism vs feudalism vs communism etc, which makes the casual ascribing of authoritarianism to socialism completely arbitrary. This is one area that would have benefitted from a wee bit of extra research, although I fully recognise and symapthise with the preference to lean into existing understandings rather than bolt down hard on politics. But given the article and the video are about politics...I'd have really enjoyed that extra background being made clear, as a lot of people (especially American audiences) seem to see politics as a binary and this script gets dangerously close to taking a three-dimensional nightmare and compressing it into a series of binaries.
Still, you did a better job than the original article, which if nothing else proves exactly why the majority of speculative fiction isn't creating an entirely new political system, but rather speculating on the current or past lives we live as humans at a conceptual level. Most authors aren't political scientists, they are imaginative speculators with a creative bone to pick. I'm a sci-fi author myself. And I don't feel like I am nearly educated enough or prepared enough for the responsibility of making a deep, sweeping commentary on any political landscape aside from the one I personally experience.
Also echoing the question: no mention of Star Trek? This is probably one of the most obvious and steadfast examples of a sci-fi world that has explicitly stepped outside of our current political structures. They are a post-scarcity society, and this changes the need for exchange of labour, land and capital. Granted, most of what we see is the military...they don't touch on civilian life an awful lot. But it's there, and other comments have juicy quotes.
It would be really, really cool for a collaboration between a few professionals and a rockstar author to output a truly speculative piece of fiction that upsets the apple cart. Personally I'd love to throw spaghetti at a wall with an astrophysicist and see what sticks...attempting to understand string theory and relativity and the permutations of spacetime seems somehow easier than taking on political science, and probably far less likely to get you shot to pieces in reviews for making statements that someone has inevitably misread.
Presuming we're talking about humans and people who flew away from earth. (that's who we are and that's why its the most common story)
The only way you wouldn't have the same political and economic systems as us is if the living beings didn't need resources to survive and were purely spiritual or physic.
If we share the same material needs that we do as humans on earth ATM, every political system is about how to share and distribute the resources. How can it be anything else? Either a type of government controls and distributes the resources or private entities do. It can be democratic or not. It can be equalitarian or not. But its always about the resources we get in order to survive, and how and who decides what to do with them.
And anarchies and unorganized societies probably wouldn't be developed enough to have galactical impact. Even the survival of the people it would depend on how fruitful the planet they lived on was. If there was no resources to meet basic needs, or climate was to aggressive to live without the help of development, they would just die, not build space societies.