Sci Fi As Critique and Vison: Socialism or Barbarism Updated

• In Event: 50660 - Section on Marxist Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 2: Marxist Theory

Abstract

Science fiction, especially those imaginaries of what a future society might look like, often provides freedom to offer both a critique of current capitalist society, and at the same time, imagine futures that may be utopian or dystopic, with clear political stance, but a stance not tied to specific present-day issues and events. For example, class struggle continues today, although it differs from the depiction in the first full length sci-fi movie, Metropolis (1927), in which a few extremely wealthy people live in luxury skyscrapers while the masses live in subterranean poverty to service the machines that maintain the power and privilege of the master class-did Lang anticipate the Turmp Musk world?. The classic Brave New World (1932) also depicts totalitarian domination, but drug-based happiness, Soma, erodes potential for critique and alternatives, and leaves everyone feeling happy and carefree, even as the system itself constrains all thought to maintaining conformity, and exploits the lower classes the most, who are genetically engineered for servitude. After World War II, a new vision arose in 1984 (published in 1948) as a dark, bleak, totalitarian society of total control mediated through surveillance, in which Big Brother was always watching, but we never know exactly when. The party uses terror and force to control the outer party and exploit the masses who think only about each day’s work. Today, neoliberal, digital capital AI and automation replaced Big Brother with complex algorithms that include a vast database on anyone and everyone, data collected from cell phones and computers, facial recognition, and perhaps constant neural scanning via Musk’s Neurolink implants, universalized, to maximize production, efficiency and potentially to locate and “cleanse” dissenters (socialists) who dislike the promise of mass consumerism and the ease of political acquiescence.

Authors

• Lauren Langman, Loyola University-Chicago

• George Lundskow, Grand Valley State University