I can’t see myself in Who Are We Now’s vision of England

English identity is the political Rubik’s Cube of our time, we keep twisting it around but it never seems to fit. There is a radical side to the English, from the Levellers to Peterloo. Englishness is also the divide that defined Brexit, with the people who define themselves as English - instead of British - more likely to vote Leave.

One writer who has spent years untangling this mess is Jason Cowley, editor of the New Statesman and a veteran political commentator. His book, Who Are We Now? Stories of Modern England, is a deep reflection on the soul of this green and pleasant land. Given that Cowley is a thoughtful writer on the (nominal) left, I was curious to see what he had to say. Would he capture an England I recognised, or just reinforce the idea that I, and people who share my politics, are outsiders in our country?

Driving in both ideological lanes

Cowley is at his best when diagnosing problems, and he doesn’t limit himself to one ideological lane. From a left-wing perspective, he describes stagnant wages and graduates with no future. From the right, he discusses gripes about broken immigration promises and the detachment of liberal elites. He also explores the grey areas that neither camp likes to acknowledge, such as the failures of previous, more laissez-faire, migration systems that left vulnerable people at the mercy of gangs. This is explored through a lengthy discussion of the tragic story of the Morecambe Bay cockle pickers.

The book is structured as a series of portraits, each chapter focusing on a place that embodies a particular issue: immigration in Morecambe Bay, soldiers in Wootton Bassett, Islam in Finsbury Park, economic decline in Oldham. These snapshots paint an England that is, above all, small “c” conservative.

Problems, yes, but what are the solutions?

Cowley is explicit that he’s not here to provide solutions, only to describe the landscape of the places he visits, but that, in itself, feels like a cop-out. Yes, Oldham has no clear future under the current neoliberal economic model, but what do we do about it?

The industries that sustained these towns are gone. Amazon warehouses aren’t filling the gap they left. The book gestures at the idea that modern high-tech industries should take their place, but how do we make this happen? Who pays for the inevitable cost of this? Do we use subsidies? Or taxation? These are the questions politicians, and by extension, political writers, should be grappling with, but aren’t.

Concerns about immigration

Crowley frequently mentions how concerned the English are about immigration, but what is the answer to these concerns? Drastically reduce the number of people coming in? Okay, but what about public services, caring for our increasing number of old people and other areas of the economy that rely on migrant labour?

Cowley highlights the contradiction that people want both less immigration and better public services, but he doesn’t press on which they’d actually choose if forced to decide. People want the national identity cake and their public services eating it (that metaphor got out of hand) because politicians aren’t honest with voters about the choices they face.

Also, Cowley talks a lot about English people’s concerns about how migration that has already occurred is changing the fabric of communities in places like Oldham. Is the solution to this deportations? Surely not.

The national sport

The only liberal vision he offers is the so-called “progressive patriotism” embodied by Gareth Southgate’s England team and James Graham’s play about them, Dear England. This is a vision of inclusivity that merges national pride with social justice. It’s the England team proudly singing the national anthem at matches - something Southgate insisted on - but also talking openly about men’s mental health and food poverty in the poor communities that many players come from.

However, even this positive, non-jingoistic vision of patriotism has proven divisive. Plenty of people hated the England team taking the knee before matches. Marcus Rashford campaigned for free school meals and got pilloried for it by the very people Cowley’s book seeks to understand. These people want the St George’s flag and singing the national anthem bit, but not the help the poor or talking about racism side of progressive patriotism. In essence they want patriotism but not the progressive side of it.

Capital P political

This is where things get capital “p” political. Keir Starmer’s Labour has shown its willingness to sing the national anthem to win the votes of the sort of people who were put off by Jeremy Corbyn, but to what end? Benefit cuts and increased defence spending? Rishi Sunak would have done that.

If English patriotism is necessary for Labour to win over Brexit supporting swing voters (and a lot of centre and centre-right Remainers), what does that look like? Starmer is already draping himself in the flag, yet Reform is surging in the polls. Will Labour ever be patriotic enough?

The problem with the soft left

Starmer’s Labour shows the problem with the soft left’s desire to be as patriotic as possible to win the votes of the people who Cowley talks to in his book. They’re very keen for Labour to be patriotic and to put the Union Flag on their membership cards, but they will vote for a pro-Russian authoritarian like Nigel Farage if Labour does anything that even smells of helping the poor or people who aren’t white.

Starmer’s Labour’s best hope is that the rising tide of growth will lift all boats (it won’t because of inequality), but Labour cannot bring growth to places like Oldham without answering the questions I outlined above. If we want biotech, AI and aerospace engineering firms to locate in Oldham (a distinctly centrist solution to our economic and social problems) then how will the costs of making this happen be met? Borrowing, taxes or cuts elsewhere? Starmer’s Labour doesn’t know, as all options send swing voters running headlong into the hands of Farage.

Cowley’s book doesn’t offer any insights into how politicians should approach any of the above, besides the fact that voters are concerned about immigration, cultural change and want politicians to be patriotic. Politicians of all stripes have been supplying this in spades, but this hasn’t led to a boom in progressive patriotism, just Labour shaking their heads saying that nothing can be done while support surges for the worst kind of patriots.

Absent culture

One glaring omission from Cowley’s vision of England? Culture. Music, art, literature are all absent. Which is odd, because that’s where progressive England lives. The book gives us football as the national unifier, but where is the England of Stormzy fans, of Sally Rooney readers, of the people who queue for Glastonbury tickets, of the people who find Nish Kumar funny?

The England of the indie gig scene, of underground clubs, of radical theatre? That’s England, too, but this book doesn’t mention it. I think it’s impossible to discuss English character without addressing the music that we are known for world wide.

Where is progressive Britain?

Patriotism and immigration dominate the discourse, while the progressive Britain I know is almost absent. There’s a chasm between the left-leaning Britain of my friends - all graduates, renters and city-dwellers - and the disillusioned Britain Cowley describes. In places like Oldham, economic stagnation breeds resentment, and immigration is seen not as an abstract policy issue but as a daily reality that some feel has left them displaced in their own communities.

This is contrasted with the chapter set in Finsbury Park, focused on the Muslim community in a piece of North London not too far from where I live. This does show multicultural Britain and points out how British Muslims come under attack from far-right racists who see them as un-British. I’m glad that one chapter focused on people in a city and not on older people who love the military and football, and are angry about immigration. However, as I’m not a Muslim, I couldn’t see myself in this chapter any more than I could see myself in one describing the white people of Oldham or Wootton Bassett.

Alienated from England

I felt deeply alienated by Cowley’s book. I kept asking myself: where am *I* in this book? Where are the people who don’t fit neatly into these narratives? I feel deeply English. This is who I am. I have a Scottish first name and joint Irish nationality, but I was born and raised in England and I’m steeped in its character. However, in this book, I don’t recognise my home.

It leaves me wondering: am I not properly English? I don’t have another country, but as a lefty, pro-multiculturalism graduate who likes craft beer, I don’t seem to feature in this portrait of England. The book suggests that England is fundamentally small “c” conservative, that the people in its struggling towns and suburbs dislike immigration and want their patriotism respected. Okay. Fine, but what about those of us who aren't moved by flag waving patriotism? Where is our England?

Fundamentally conservative

Ultimately, Who Are We Now? presents an England that is fundamentally conservative, with political demands that neither Labour nor centrist liberals like Cowley have clear answers to. I refuse to believe that the England I live in, the diverse, progressive and creative England, is some fringe anomaly.

If Cowley’s portrait is accurate, then the left needs to do more than just understand these communities, it needs to offer them something better than reactionary nostalgia, because describing a problem is one thing. Solving it? That’s the real challenge.

Why We Get the Wrong Politicians by Isabel Hardman makes a strong case for why people don’t go into politics

In the complex and bizarre world of British politics, it's often hard to work out why certain individuals rise to power while others remain on the backbenches. Isabel Hardman's book, Why We Get the Wrong Politicians delves into this perplexing phenomenon with a keen eye and a wealth of insider knowledge. As someone deeply entrenched in the political landscape, Hardman offers a unique perspective on why some people get political influence and others don’t. 

Feeling cynical, I expected Hardman to advocate for the influx of businesspeople into politics, touting their expertise and efficiency over insider politicians. However, her arguments are far more nuanced than a simple call for corporate leadership. Instead, she presents a compelling and more complex account of what is wrong with contemporary politics.

The cost of running for office

One of the key issues Hardman addresses is the prohibitive cost of entering politics. From campaign expenses to lost income during candidacy, the financial burden can dissuade many qualified individuals from pursuing a career in public service. While political parties could certainly do more to alleviate this strain, the financial hurdles remain a significant barrier to entry.

Moreover, the entrenched culture of Westminster further alienates potential candidates. The prevalence of bullying and violence directed at politicians creates a bear pit that discourages participation from ordinary citizens. As a result, a narrow demographic dominates the political landscape, perpetuating a cycle of homogeneity that fails to reflect the diversity of society at large.

Scrutinising legislation

Hardman’s most compelling argument, however, centres on the inadequacy of MPs in fulfilling their primary role: scrutinising legislation. Despite being tasked with shaping laws that govern the nation, politicians often lack the time and resources to thoroughly review proposed measures. This deficiency undermines the democratic process and erodes public trust in politics.

An attack on the status of politicians

What Hardman doesn’t mention is that people have been turned against politicians by those who want power to be invested elsewhere, i.e. in the private sector. Big business and its powerful media allies have undertaken a campaign to convince us that politicians are ineffective and should not be trusted with power.

This is the argument, often advanced by those on the right and centre, for having more businesspeople in politics or moving power and decision making out of politics towards business. This has been the dominant narrative in politics since 1979 and it discourages the right people from entering politics, while ensuring that politicians are held in a low esteem.

We need the right politicians

Hardman's books shows that the allure of politics pales in comparison to other fields, particularly that of technology and business. As ambitious individuals flock to industries perceived as more cutting-edge, the talent pool available for political leadership diminishes.

Why We Get the Wrong Politicians offers a thought-provoking examination of the systemic issues plaguing British politics. Hardman's astute observations and well-reasoned arguments make a compelling case for reforming the political landscape to foster greater inclusivity and accountability.

While the challenges ahead are daunting, the book serves as a rallying cry for those committed to revitalising democracy and ensuring that the right individuals rise to power for the benefit of society.

Gamechanger by L. X. Beckett is part of a movement that says radical change is possible

Solarpunk is creating waves in the sci-fi world. It’s a new(ish) subgenre that hopes to inspire people to make the radical change needed to save the world by showing the better futures that said change can bring. So far, the subgenre has produced short story collections, visual arts and even a yogurt advert, but until recently I hadn’t found much longer form fiction. Imagine my delight when I discovered L. X. Beckett's Gamechanger, my first solarpunk novel. 

For those who need an introduction to solarpunk, this BBC news story quotes Michelle Tulumello, a solarpunk art teacher in New York state, who describes it as: "Really the only solution to the existential corner of climate disaster we have backed ourselves into as a species."

Solarpunk is partly a subgenre of science fiction and partly an art movement in its own right. It is dedicated to showing that a better future is not only possible, but is desirable and achievable. It has emerged as a rebellion against our contemporary obsession with dystopian stories, from The Hunger Games to Black Mirror. 

More utopian futures

The solar in the name is self-explanatory. Punk refers to cyberpunk, a sci-fi subgenre where stories are set in dystopian worlds where tech has robbed us of our humanity, as well as other “punk” subgenres of sci-fi such as steampunk, dieselpunk, clockpunk (no really) and others.

Like the Culture novels of Iain M. Banks, solarpunk stories are not set in paradises even if they are set in utopian (or at least more utopian than the present) societies. There can still be grimness, murder, betrayal, death, injustice - in other words plot conventions that make for entertaining stories - but the societies these stories are set in is overall better than what we have now. 

This is very much the case for Gamechanger, which is set in a future where humanity is working to rebuild the natural environment after the damage done by past generations. Citizens are connected to a virtual credits scoring system based on how much they do to make the world more sustainable and socially just. The plot of the novel follows Rubi Whiting, who works representing people with low social credit, as she takes on the difficult case of Luciano Pox who speaks out against public efforts to repair the environment.

Cyberpunk without the doom and gloom 

The novel shows a world where social attitudes have changed. Society is not consumed by the need to produce more wealth and growth through the consumption of natural resources. Work is being done to rebuild the environment. The current cohort of young people Rubi is a part of are described as the “Bounceback Generation”.

This novel is quintessential solarpunk. It’s set in a more socially just and sustainable world, where even though life has its challenges people are working hard to make the world a better place. What makes Gamechanger an interesting read was that despite being a solarpunk novel, it’s also very cyberpunk. It’s cyberpunk without the doom and gloom.

 Gamechanger is set in a high-tech world. The novel features fully 3D immersive virtual environments, augmented reality and self-aware AI assistants. Part of the plot takes place in virtual worlds where Rubi is the star of immersive simulated RPGs. The novel doesn’t have the oppressive governments, all powerful corporations and environmental destruction that are typical of cyberpunk novels, but does contain other core elements of the subgenre. It takes cyberpunk as a jumping off point for a solarpunk story. 

Optimism about the future

Politically this book says that we can be optimistic about the future and our environment. Not in a naive, it will all work out, way but in an inspiring, we can band together for a better world, way.

This is in strong contrast to cyberpunk, whose stories are usually set in a world where irreversible environmental damage has been done. The opening crawl of Blade Runner 2049 mentions the complete collapse of the environment, for example. The grim warnings of cyberpunk stories have done little to motivate us to change and avert the disasters they foretell. 

Gamechanger shows us that through collective action we can make a positive difference for everyone. Hopefully this optimism will inspire the change we need to live in a more sustainable and socially just world, like the one shown in Gamechanger.

Against cynical inaction 

This novel, and solarpunk more widely, are part of a political and artistic movement that says that positive change is possible. It’s a long way from solarpunk, but Vicky Spratt's recent non-fiction study of the housing crisis, Tenants, ends with a determined plea to make the world better for everyone in the face of cynicism. We won’t know what’s possible until we try, she writes.

Across politics and culture people are saying that positive change can lead to a bright future. There’s no need to be cynical, in fact it’s damaging our chances of building a better world, so let’s be optimistic. Not blindly optimistic, but realistic about how we can make a better world. This movement says that the radical change needed for a more sustainable and socially just world will be hard, but it both can be done and will lead to a better future than the one brought by cynical inaction.

We need less of the doom and gloom that encourages inaction and more of this optimism, such as in novels like Gamechanger. Gamechanger is honest about the size of the problems we face, but it does offer hope. Hope to inspire us to make the world a better place. Hope that leads to action.

With that, I’m off to weed a communal flowerbed to make this world a little nicer for everyone.

Goldilocks shows the trends in our society that are leading us towards a misogynistic future

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is scarier than George Orwell’s 1984, not that you would want to live in either. The scary thing about Brave New World is how people are subtly influenced to give up their freedoms and submit to the control of society. Whereas in 1984 the strong arm of the state - the Leviathan in Thomas Hobbes’s language - uses its superior strength to take away our freedom. Being forced to do something is one thing, whereas being gently prodded to do it is a different level of manipulation.

By a similar measure, I would not like to live in Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale - even less if I were a woman - but there is something more alarming about Laura Lam’s novel Goldilocks because it’s not set in a religious theocracy, but it is set in a world where social pressures have nudged women into being second class citizens.

The novel is set in the near future and follows the exploits of five women who steal a spaceship and attempt to fly to the planet Cavendish, in a different solar system, where they will found a new human settlement. Cavendish sits in the Goldilocks zone around its star. Not too close/too hot but not too far away/cold, hence the title of the novel. The story of his daring plan is gripping, but what I found most interesting about the novel is the women’s reasons for stealing a spaceship and flying to another planet.

 Threatened by feminism

 Through flashbacks, dialogue and exposition the novel fills in the political situation on Earth. As the climate catastrophe worsens, the government seeks to turn back the clock on the rights of women. A political movement has arisen that aims to return to a mythical 1950s, where men worked and women stayed home to look after children and be dutiful wives and mothers.

 This isn’t done by force - this isn’t the Gilead of the handmaid’s tale - but through a subtle pattern of changing social norms, financial incentives and nudges. The point is to undo the work of generations of feminists in creating equality between men and women.

Writers such as Laurie Penny have pointed out that many men feel threatened by women’s equality. Now that women have access to universities, professions, cultural institutions and positions of power that were once reserved for men only, many men are feeling lost and without a delimited role for them in society.

The impact of conservative policy

Conservative politicians and pundits are keen to exploit this, telling these men that feminism is to blame for their lack of purpose and that things would be better if we went back to a time when men were the head of a household. These politicians offer a key role for lost men in the regressive social world they seek to build.

This regressive social conservatism overlooks the fact that many families cannot afford to survive in this neoliberal economy without two full-time breadwinners. It also overlooks the fact that conservative economic policy has made the lives of these lost men worse.

Neoliberal economics, pushed by the right and centre, has created a harsh world without a safety net. One where we are constantly told to compete harder, optimise ourselves and attain more, unless we fall through the cracks in society. It's exhausting and scary and many people across the political spectrum would like something else.

A simple solution

Despite conservative economic policy being responsible for creating the harsh world that these men feel lost in, social conservatives are here to tell these lost men that it’s the fault of feminism that life is a struggle for them, and that they would be better off if women went back into the homes and the world of careers was left to men.

By blaming feminism and changes to the roles available to women over the last half-century, conservatives offer a simple distraction from the problems of the world they have created.

Environmental stress

Penny has also written that some men want the world to collapse so that traditional gender norms can reassert themselves. Environmental stress is also exacerbated by conservative policy and conservative reluctance to tackle the problems of the ailing environment.

The environmentally precarious world of Goldilocks shows how socially conservative men can use the fear that environmental collapse causes to reassert traditional gender roles.

This is the political situation in our world that has birthed a movement that seeks to undo the progress of feminism. Goldilocks shows where this could end up: a world where men have power over women. So much so that some women plan to escape and start over.

Weaponised anti-feminism

There are obvious parallels between the fictional president in Goldilocks and Donald Trump. Both were elected president in a wave of political nostalgia and both are unabashed misogynists. There are other examples from our world, including South Korea’s new president, Yoon Suk-yeol, who “weaponises anti-feminism” and has used this to win this year’s presidential election.

Katie Stallard wrote in an article for the News Statesman: “With housing costs soaring – apartment prices in Seoul have almost doubled in the past five years – and youth unemployment reaching 9 per cent in 2021, Draudt [a postdoctoral fellow at George Washington University’s Institute for Korean Studies interviewed by Stallard] said the anti-feminist movement was fuelled by economic grievances and complaints that efforts to improve gender equality were unfairly disadvantaging men.”

Again, we see that neoliberal economic policy espoused by conservatives has created hardship for many men, and conservatives are using feminism as a scapegoat for this anger to achieve political success. The policies that flow from this take us one step closer to the world of Goldilocks.

More subtle than Bible-thumping

Goldilocks shows that politicians who want to take away women’s rights don’t need to thump the Bible and demand that we return to a God decreed submission of Eve to Adam. They don’t need secret police to roll back women’s rights, a-la The Handmaid’s Tale.

There are trends in society that conservative politicians are exploiting to restrict the equality that women have had for such a short period of time historically. Trends that are often created by conservative politicians.

We have seen the overturn of Roe vs Wade in America and now many states enacting anti-abortion laws. Online we are seeing cyber misogynists gathering men who feel lost and alienated in the dog-eat-dog hyper-neoliberal 21st century to their siren call of nostalgia and how things were better in the past when women knew their place.

 Saving the world for everyone

Whenever this occurs, we must all remember that it’s conservative politicians who made this harsh world. A better life can be achieved for all genders by turning away from conservatives, not being sucked in by their weaponised nostalgia.

We don’t need to escape to a new world and start over, as the women of Goldilocks feel is their only option. We can fight to save this world for the benefit of everyone.

Much of Neuromancer was eerily accurate about the future. Now how do we change it?

Neuromancer is a novel that has had a deep effect on our culture. Not only is it a classic science fiction novel, and a foundational text of the cyberpunk subgenre, it coined much of the internet lingo - including the phrases cyberspace, the matrix (as a virtual 3D computer environment) decking and ICE (Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics).

Frequently imitated, never bettered, Neuromancer is the story of hacker and drug addict Henry Case, who along with a rag-tag bunch of allies pulls off a high stakes hack in a dystopian future. The novel set the template for the cyberpunk genre, explores some interesting political and philosophical questions, has a counterculture feel to it, and is a gripping page turner.

Neuromancer was written by William Gibson and published (ironically) in 1984. The novel reflects contemporary fears about growing inequality, the dystopian effect of free market capitalism on society - as corporations become ever richer and more powerful - and how technology was changing the world and how we interact with it.

Prescient fears

People in the 70s and 80s (when Gibson did his most iconic writing, laying the foundation for cyberpunk) were right to be concerned about these issues. On all the above fronts, the situation has gotten worse in the intervening years. Corporations, especially big tech firms, are more powerful than ever, inequality is higher than ever, and smart phones with social media apps on them have got us all addicted to micro hits of dopamine from our subjective shadow world of lies and conspiracy theories tailored to exploit the weakness in our personalities by the companies that have all the data on how we think. Fun times.

Technology is hurtling ever faster towards a dystopian future as the world’s authoritarians (from Vladimir Putin to Donald Trump) use the power of big tech to undermine democracy and turn us against each other. AI and automation threaten the few remaining non-tech based jobs. Now companies like Meta want us to live in their cyberverse by offering utopian promises, but already someone has been raped in the Metaverse.

The message of Neuromancer is that resistance to all this is possible. A small group of anarchists with the right equipment can hack even the biggest corporations or most sophisticated AIs. Their power is not unassailable. However, the warnings of Neuromancer haven’t been heard. Resistance to the dystopian march of big tech has been muted, from hackers and the government.

 Dystopian futures

 We’re sliding into a grim cyberpunk world, due to the expanding power of the surveillance state, surveillance capitalism tracking our every move to try and sell our attention to advertisers and corporations like Apple, Meta (owners of Facebook) and Alphabet (owners of Google) becoming more powerful than governments.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has unchallenged authority over a network of more than two billion people. All the while our governments are becoming more authoritarian and the environment declines. It’s like we are living through a particularly unimaginative rip off of Neuromancer.

Whilst this is happening the momentum has gone out of cyberpunk as a genre. It’s not producing new ideas or new texts. The most high-profile cyberpunk release of recent years was the game Cyberpunk 2077, which is based on an older role-playing game and served only to reheat the high tech/low life tropes of the subgenre and offered nothing new for the 21st century.

From hopepunk to solarpunk

In a dystopian age we have had enough of dystopian literature, which is why optimistic literature has come to the foreground. The most interesting science fiction stories of the last few years have been in new subgenres that show that a more optimistic future is possible.

Becky Chambers and other hopepunk novels show how humans and aliens can live together; eco-sci-fi, like Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy, show how natural ecosystems can grow and thrive in the future; and solarpunk writers, such as L.X. Beckett’s The Bounceback novels, are painting a portrait of more socially just and sustainable futures. (Full disclosure. I am involved in a solarpunk writing project and our first short story is out right now).

These are stories set in a better future with the aim of inspiring people to undertake the radical change we need to make tomorrow brighter, greener and more equal than today. Dark warnings of dystopian futures hasn’t helped us avoid them, so maybe offering inspiration around more positive futures will work better as a way of changing the world.

Sell the Sizzle

The thinking behind this is sound. Fear doesn’t motivate us to change unless it’s fear of a specific danger. Shouting “get out of the way of that train” does make people move to avoid a train hurtling towards them, because it’s clear what must be done. When the danger isn’t so specific, it’s harder for people to change.

This applies to all aspects of life, from individuals eating healthier to averting a climate disaster. People don’t respond well to fearful warnings about what will go wrong if they don’t act. All this does is produce a sense of fatalism.

This was revealed in Ed Gillespie’s report for Futerra called Sell the Sizzle. The report outlines how selling to people how much better a sustainable future will be, rather than selling how bad a non-sustainable future will be, is more likely to encourage people to act. This is true for the climate, but it also works for all the other grim warnings of cyberpunk, from technology robbing us of our humanity to unchecked corporate power. Showing how things could be better in the future works better than showing how things could be worse.

Collective action for a better future

A vision of a better tomorrow gives us something to aim for and it inspires positive change. There isn’t much of a better tomorrow to be found in Neuromancer. However, what is encouraging about the novel is that it shows that a small group of individuals can hold out against the oppressive world and keep fighting to make things better.

There’s no collective action in Neuromancer, which is what is needed to stop authoritarian governments, climate disasters and corporate power grabs, but it does show the human spirit to keep fighting. That spirit of resistance is alive today in solarpunk and other aligned subgenres. Solarpunk does show how collective action can make the world a better place.

To avoid the world of Neuromancer we need solarpunk, not cyberpunk literature. If we want to inspired people to change the world for the better. We need to show them a better world. That’s where the exciting writing of today is happening.

Infomocracy makes the case for local governments in a globalised world

Of the many futures I have read about in science fiction novels, there are few like that of Infomocracy by Malka Older. A striking difference in her future world is that the governments of nations states, like that of the UK in our world, do not exist anymore. The world is divided into Sentinels consisting of 100,000 voters each, which elect their own government.

Large cities like London or Tokyo have many Sentinels in them; whereas in rural Australia a Sentinel can cover thousands of square miles. This is a fascinating vision of the future where all decisions are taken by hyper local government (Sentinels cover a smaller population than London boroughs).

The book left me thinking: could this be the solution to some of the problems in our world? Also, how did this world end up structured in such a way? How might we get to such a place?

The end point of devolution

Sentinels are more than local government. In the UK, local government is unpopular because it is bureaucratic, level taxes (always unpopular), is opaque, and part of a system of local governments across the country that’s needlessly complex. As a public affairs teacher told me once: “Local government is too complicated for people to understand. Every so often the government tries to make it simpler, but they only make it more complicated.” 

Sentinels are not just local governments: they are governments that are local, not off in a remote capital city. As such they could be seen as the endpoint of devolution. In the UK, since the 90s, there has been a transfer of power from central government to regional assemblies, local police commissioners and metro-mayors. Whole areas of policy, such as health, education, transport planning, etc., have been transferred to the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies.

This has happened during a period of increased activity from separatist movements, from Scotland to Catalonia. All over the world, people would rather be ruled by a small, closer to home government than a more distant one ruling over them and many more people. Making power local is seen as being more representative of local needs, as well as being more responsive to the will of the people.

How Britain falls apart

People are demanding decisions be taken at a more local level - and in the UK the government has been happy to oblige them - as people feel that larger national or central governments are not able to tackle many of the problems they face. 

From environmental conservation, to providing jobs or public services, to tackling inequality or the cost-of-living crisis, many have lost faith in their government’s ability to tackle these problems and are turning to a more local solution. In some cases, the central government is blamed for creating these problems.

This is best documented by Tom McTague in an article for The Atlantic entitled How Britain Falls Apart. McTague travels around the UK and discovers a people who have lost faith in the idea of Britain as a nation. He writes:

“One of the problems in Britain is that the loss of faith in the country is now so pervasive that it is hard to know whether it can be rebuilt. The union is not only being questioned by Welsh, Irish, and Scottish nationalists, but also, now, by the once-unionist middle classes in England for whom Brexit has broken a bit of the faith they had in Britain. Some simply no longer believe it’s worth saving.”

Lack of legitimacy 

McTague sees that the disillusion with Britain as a nation is most strong in Scotland, where there has been the most devolution. He described the situation in Scotland thus:

“Visiting Scotland today is to very obviously visit a land from which the British state has all but withdrawn. The national industries and national institutions that once existed have gone. By the time we arrived in Glasgow, we’d passed an abandoned British nuclear-research facility and an abandoned British military base. The only signs of the British state were the partially privatized post office, the pound, and the monarchy.” 

In a world where people have stopped believing in the legitimacy of central government and are desiring - and in Scotland are getting - something not only more local but considered more legitimate, is a system of local Sentinels linked into a global confederation not only a better system but one that is bound to arise?

Franchised governments

As well as our world becoming more local, it’s also becoming more global. Better transportation connections and the spread of the Internet has meant that it’s easier to connect with people on the other side of the world, who share your interests and values, than with your neighbours, who in an increasingly atomised society do not. This can be the case regardless of geographical, cultural or language differences.

This globalised society is reflected in Infomocracy through franchised governments that stand for election in many Sentinels. Thus, the most popular governments (or more often they are types of governments as opposed to political parties) control many Sentinels all over the world.

A government like Liberty can be elected in Sentinels in Birmingham, Mumbai, Buenos Aires and Dubai, because the people in those Sentinels have the values of Liberty despite their different culture, language and location.

Sentinels and communes

Many Sentinels are run by a government that only stands in that Sentinel and is hyper local to that particular Sentinel. However, some governments control many thousands of Sentinels around the world. Elections to run all Sentinels are held every ten years and the government who wins the most Sentinels holds the Super Majority, which comes with additional powers.

The governments that we meet in Infomocracy conform to broad political philosophies that exist in our world. They are better understood as ways of running a government rather than a party or regime. Heritage, who hold the Super Majority at the beginning of the novel, are nativist and socially conservative. Liberty, who hold the second most Sentinels, have a libertarian political philosophy; they value the free market and offering a high degree of personal freedom. Policy First is a technocratic government.

The different governments have their own laws, rights and due processes, which makes them fundamentally different to political parties. In that regard, each government franchise is like a country in its own right, but they are also movements of political philosophy. The closest analogy in political philosophy is the communes described in Robert Nozick’s book Anarchy, The State and Utopia, where people are free to join or not join communes that have particular values whilst their basic rights are protected by the minimal state.

The Tyranny of the Majority

Our future could be one where the twin forces of globalisation and localisation mean the nation-state is no longer the ideal unit for a government and smaller, more local Sentinels replace it. Sentinels that can be networked together with other like-minded Sentinels to form global political movements.

It’s worth asking what type of franchised government could win a Super Majority in his system? To answer this, it’s worth referring to 19th Century French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville’s and his book Democracy in America. Tocqueville travelled around America, “the laboratory of democracy”, and studied what democracy was like in practice before it came to Europe.

One of his key ideas is the Tyranny of the Majority. Tocqueville saw a lot of energy on the surface of American democracy, but he thought that it was stable underneath because of the shared values of Americans and their shared belief in America. However, if people are too similar then democracy can lead to a Tyranny of the Majority.

Ancient fear

The Tyranny of the Majority was a smothering conformity that can arise from everyone thinking the same way and having shared values. It tut-tuts at difference, eccentrics and anyone who doesn’t fit in. This might not seem dangerous, but it can turn violent when the majority decide democratically to oppress people who are different.

The Tyranny of the Majority is the fear, common in ancient democracies, that the stupid, uncultured, poor many would use democracy to rule over the intelligent, cultured, wealthy few. There are classist assumptions to this, but the conforming nature of majority rule is a real problem. We need only look at British politics to see how dissenting, unpopular opinions are crowded out by a the small “c” conservative majority.

My worry would be that any franchise government that would appeal to enough people worldwide to win a Super Majority would have to conform to the Tyranny of the Majority and would look harshly on people who were different or eccentric. As a lifelong sore-thumb, I find this terrifying.

Faith in democracy 

Between the rise of globalisation and the declining belief in the legitimacy of national governments to solve our problems, a world with hyper local governments that are franchised all over the world doesn’t seem as far-fetched as you would think at first. Maybe Infomocracy shows us a world where more people would have faith in their governments.

As problems with democracy, such as The Tyranny of the Majority, show this change in of itself is unlikely to fix all the world’s problems. It will also certainly create new problems of its own. 

I still believe that there is a positive case for government to be more local and legitimate. Infomocracy shows how this could work and how it might restore some faith in democracy.

What The Master of Djinn can teach us about Gandhi and the end of colonialism

The Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark is set in Cairo in the Edwardian period, but this isn’t Edwardian Cairo from our world. In this world, Egypt is not a colony of the British Empire, but instead a global political power and the centre of the world’s most powerful trade network. 

In the novel, Egypt’s embraced the magical power of the djinn and steampunk technology to throw off the shackles of colonialism and lead a new global political order where the former colonies, from West Africa to India, now lead over their former European colonisers.

This book sets out a different path through history that we didn’t take. It’s not just a version of our history featuring amazing creatures, such as djinn with all sorts of mind-bending and frightening powers, clockwork angels and other fantastic beings. It’s also a world where many countries weren’t subject to colonisation. It’s a world where the geo-politics of the 20th century took an entirely different course.

Egypt free from colonialism

In this world, Egypt and other British colonies, such as India and places in Africa, embraced the arrival in this plane of magical beings that bore a resemblance to creatures from their indigenous culture, from djinn to goblins. At the same time, Western European powers didn’t embrace this new power as it contradicted their Enlightenment worldview. Now, Indians have taken back control of India from the British, the Empire is collapsing, and Egypt is expanding its power to fill the vacuum. This is a different world.

A crucial difference, in this book, is that Egypt doesn’t attempt to create colonies itself now that it’s the dominant player on the world stage. Egypt becomes politically influential and wealthy through its dominance of trade, but it doesn’t seek to rule people outside its borders.

Egypt has built a modern state like the template laid out in America and Western Europe during the 19th century. This consists of things we take for granted as parts of a modern state, such as police forces, elected representatives working in legislators, liberal democracy and an army that doesn't enforce civilian laws. In the book, Egypt appears like British society in the Edwardian period, as that was the model for a wealthy, dominant power at the time. The people of Egypt, in this book, threw off Britain to build a state like the British.

From Gandhi to Hobbes

This isn’t too different to what happened to India in our world in the late 1940s. An Indian independence movement threw off British control and proceeded to build an independent Indian state that looked and behaved very similar to the British state. This is quite different to what one of the leaders of the Indian independence movement, Mahatma Gandhi, wanted.

In his book, Hind Swaraj, Gandhi described an independent state of India that would be very different from western European states. The best and most accurate description of the modern state still comes from Thomas Hobbes, who in 1651 described a state where people are voluntarily led by a Sovereign who can use the power of the state to protect citizens from the violence of people in their natural state.

This is different from older ideas of the state where the leader is appointed by God, or rules purely through direct power and fear. Hobbes's vision has been added to or expanded on over the years, but it remains the foundation to how we understand the modern state. (For more information on Hobbes’s ideas you can read my article that digs into his philosophy in more detail.)

What Gandhi wanted and what he got

Gandhi wanted an independent India to have a different state to those in Europe and North America, the type that Hobbes had described. A state based on direct relationships between individuals and not one with representation or a powerful Sovereign pulling citizens into line using the power of the state. What Gandhi imagined was a state that was different to anything that had existed before and was certainly one Hobbes would have recognised.

What India got was more of the same. The independent Indian state that was built resembles and functions like a Hobbesian state, not like what Gandhi described in Hind Swaraj. India could have had something different, so could the Egypt shown in The Master of Djinn, but the model of the Hobbesian state remains inescapable.

The fall of colonialism in our world

What was created by magical forces in The Master of Djinn, came about in our world through political action. The British Empire did collapse. Both India and Egypt got their independence and they built their own Hobbesian states. The USA’s rise to a position of global dominance partly led to the collapse of the British Empire. A change in the global political consensus that made colonialism less popular, and the rise of independence movements were also crucial factors.

The slow collapse of British power in the Middle East and how Britain's influence was undermined first by rivalry with France and then later by competition with the USA, is detailed in James Barr’s histories of the period: A Line in the Sand and Lords of the Desert. If you want to learn about how colonialism ended in the Middle East and how Egypt got its independence in our world, then I would recommend reading these books.

Imagining ourselves free

The Master of Djinn shows a society where colonialism was thrown off in the 19th century and describes a very different 20th century where Egypt leads the world. However in the book, Egypt still has a Hobbesian state as European powers had then and still do now. The writer has imagined a very different Egypt, but this crucial foundation that came from European politics remains.

The failure to think differently about what form the state could take is true across fictional independent countries and real independent countries. We can imagine ourselves free from colonialism, via either magic or political action, but not free of the Hobbesian state as Gandhi imagined we could be.

The Player of Games shows the lie behind the Hobbesian state

The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks could be my favourite novel, if I had to choose one. The book is about Jernau Morat Gurgeh, a brilliant player of games in the post-scarcity, anarchist, communist utopian civilization called the Culture, which appears in many of Banks’s sci-fi novels. On many levels, the Culture is an ideal civilization, as they have no poverty, war, disease, want, inequality or hierarchy. No-one has to work or do anything they don’t want to do. It’s an interesting place to set a novel.  

Many of the novels Banks set in the Culture take place at the points where the Culture meets other civilizations. Banks said that this wasn’t because there’s no drama in a utopian society, but because he was drawn to these stories when writing. Like in Star Trek, these other civilizations that the Culture interacts with embody the problems in our society. Banks explores these problems through how characters from the Culture interact with less utopian outsiders.

In the Player of Games, Gurgeh takes on the ultimate game playing challenge and travels to the Empire of Azad, a civilisation whose social hierarchy is based on how well you can play the incredibly complicated game of Azad (which the empire is named after). Despite some obvious differences to our world (not only is Azad controlled by a game, but their society has three genders and three corresponding biological sexes) Azad represents our less than utopian society with our social and political problems. Albeit, in a slightly exaggerated way.

It doesn’t have to be like this

Azad has poverty, inequality, political repression, an authoritarian government, a strictly religious society, a militaristic culture and represses people who don’t belong to the dominant Apex gender. Through Gurgeh’s travels through Azad we see the problems of squalor, want, state violence and racism through the eyes of someone who has never encountered these concepts before and thus feels their pain more acutely. “It doesn’t have to be like this,” the novel repeatedly says.

The Azad Empire’s oppression of non-Apexes is especially unsettling. By placing all the elements of domination our society associates with the male gender into the Apex gender, Banks explores how patriarchy restricts men as well as women through the need to follow the strict social roles of gender.

In Azad, men are seen as aggressive and physically strong, fit only for the army or demanding physical labour, and women are seen as nurturing and physically attractive, fit only for looking after children or being fancy baubles for Apexes to acquire. In Azad, both men and women struggle against these stereotypes and are unable to get the recognition that automatically comes to Apexes.

Banks and Marx

Azad is a darker form of our society, where our social and political problems are intensified to make them more apparent. We can read the book and console ourselves that we are not as bad as the Azad Empire. In the West, our societies are not as authoritarian and hierarchical as the Azad Empire. We don’t have an emperor with absolute power or secret police that monitors closely what we do. We have liberal democracy, checks and balances, and representation to prevent repression.

Banks was a left-wing or socialist writer in his time. The Culture, although utopian but not perfect, is an example of an ideal anarchist, post-capitalist society. In many of Banks’s books, authoritarian religious leaders (The Algebraist) or billionaire capitalists (Surface Detail) or a patriarchal society (Matter) are the antagonists. Azad is part of Banks’s left-wing critique of society, partly because it has exaggerated forms of our own social and political problems (such as the way patriarchy works in Azad, identified above), but it also supports this critique in another, subtler, way.

Banks’s politics was influenced by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. One of Marx and Engels’s arguments was that the modern, liberal (small “L” liberal like John Locke, not big “L” liberal like Joe Biden) state was a lie that needed to be exposed. They claimed that checks and balances, and representation, are lies to distract us from the entrenched power of the ruling class.

The big lie

This is similar to what Mahatma Gandhi thought. He believed that the modern liberal state was also a lie, and that behind representation, and checks and balances, was brutal repression for anyone who challenged the authority of the state. Gandhi saw this in India at the hands of the British Empire, which claimed to be an enlightened modern state, but used this as a mask for a brutal rule by force. Gandhi believed that through non-violent action you invite your oppressors into revealing the lie behind the modern state, which inspired much of his political action.

In The Player of Games, Banks also attempts to argue that the modern liberal state is a lie. The lie is that we tell ourselves we are completely different from the Azad, because we have a modern liberal state, when we are not. When we look at a policeman murdering Sarah Everard, or inequality, or homelessness, or the killing of black people by police we see how we are like the Azad and our liberal society, with representation and checks and balances, does nothing to stop this.

This is a Marxist argument, that the liberal state is a lie and the true nature of the state is to protect the power and wealth of the ruling class. Banks makes this argument as we become aware we are more like the Azad then we are like the Culture.

Gandhi and the Culture

It also has something in common with the argument Gandhi was making. He wanted an independent India to have a state that wasn’t like the British Hobbesian state, which is still a state based on dominance and control, and a state that was more personal, more direct, more individual.

The Culture doesn’t have a Hobbesian state, it’s an anarchist society where everyone relates to each other individually. There is no representation. This is much more like what Gandhi advocated. By contrast the Azad Empire is a classic Hobbesian state, with power invested in the sovereign and strict punishment for those who step out of line.

The Player of Game’s most powerful argument doesn’t come from the (sometimes very disturbing) brutality of the Azad Empire, but from the gentle suggestion that we are lying when we tell ourselves that we are different from them. We can convince ourselves that representation, checks and balances and our liberal state make us better than the Azad, but when you look at our society you see we’re much more like them than the Culture.

Free by Lea Ypi shows that it's worth fighting for a better society

This is my second article on the book Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, by Lea Ypi, a memoir about what it was like to grow up in Communist Albania and then have your teenage years during the sudden changes that came over the country when it liberalised in the early 90s. It’s quite a rollercoaster, taking in the best and worst of life under extreme communism and capitalism.

When you start reading the book, it comes across as a depressing book about a depressing country during a depressing period in its history. Communist Albania was very authoritarian. It was the last Stalinist country in the world. The state controlled all the media, people informed on their neighbours and Ypi had friends or family members sent to jail for political actions.

When communism ended in Albania, the society went through an abrupt transition that wasn’t entirely positive. Extreme communism became extreme capitalism where it was normal for people to be drug dealers or sex traffickers. Eventually the country collapsed into civil war.

Transition to utopia

What both the extreme versions of socialism and liberalism that Albania experienced have in common is that they all offered a vision of a better society that will come after a period of sacrifice. The communist leaders of Albania promised that they were working towards a communist utopia, which would be realised after a period of socialism. The utopia never came about, but that didn’t stop Western liberals from offering essentially the same idea, i.e. that a liberal utopia would come about after a period of economic transition.

Communist utopia could only be realised by a period of heavy state control, isolation from the outside world and a strict rationing of goods and services. Liberal utopia - Ypi refers to the post-communist period as “liberalism” and not capitalism, although it involved moving Albania to a capitalist economic system and a small “L” liberal political system - could only be brought about after a transition over seen by the World Bank and the IMF, with massive privatisation and deregulation.

During transition, all after-school programs were shut, Ypi’s father had to make people redundant at the port where he worked and the power supply became intermittent. Needless to say, Albania has not become a liberal utopia 20 years after this transition began.

“Piling up of errors”

In an interview with the podcast Talking Politics, Ypi said that “it’s hard to have faith in anything” after seeing the failures of both socialism and liberalism in Albania. The book has ample evidence that every idea to improve society, no matter how good it looks on paper, is always implemented badly and the ordinary people lose out.

You could come away from reading Free and think of it as a nihilistic story about how all our grand plans are doomed to failure. However, there is optimism in the book. Ypi emphasises the power of “freedom as moral agency”, in other words that humans are inherently moral and we use the freedom that we have (regardless of how much freedom that is) to strive to make the world better.

Albania is not the only country to go through utopian socialist or liberal experiments and many (if not all) have been failures. This leads to a cynical reading of history as the “piling up of errors”, as Ypi said. However, we don’t have to be cynical. We can do as Ypi advocates in the book, and in her Talking Politics podcast episode, and learn from the errors of history to build something better in the future.

Tyranny against civil war

For those of us on the left, Free shows how attempts to improve the world in a socialist direction can go wrong and lead to tyranny. However, the book is not a glowing endorsement of capital “L” liberalism of the type pushed in the 90s, aka the End of History. Free shows how liberalism can go wrong and lead to civil war.

This contrast reminds me of the writing of 17th century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who weighed the dangers of tyranny against civil war. Hobbes lived through both the tyranny of King Charles II and Oliver Cromwell, and the horror of the English Civil War. He had a unique perspective on the dangers of both too little and too much freedom. Controversially, Hobbes ultimately came down on the side of tyranny. 

Hobbes's ideas are the foundation of the modern small “L” liberal state. That’s liberal as in John Locke, not Joe Biden. Although the state has become much more liberal - both small “L” and big “L” - since then, the basic assumption that authority trumps freedom is still the basis of the state in what we disingenuously call “The Free World”. This Hobbesian acceptance that a dirty compromise with naked state authority is the best we can do is the basis of so much liberal cynicism, which says we cannot do better than what we have.

Liberal cynicism

This liberal cynicism leads to a Western liberal cynical reading of Free. This liberal reading says that all economic and political systems are bad, but western liberalism is the least bad. I.e. that the extreme freedom of Ypi’s teens is preferable to the extreme state control of her childhood. Let me be clear that I am not endorsing extreme state control, it sounds bloody awful. But I am arguing against the liberal idea that the flawed liberalism that took over Albania in the 90s is the best we can do.

This liberal idea says that Western liberalism gives individual freedom, which is what is best for everyone; even if there are problems that come with this freedom, such as people becoming drug dealers or sex traffickers, or school programmes closing, or people losing their livelihoods, or the electricity stopping.

There is a closely related liberal argument to this, which is to say that communism is the worst of all bad systems. This argument goes that if you try to divert from Western liberalism – or neoliberal economics - in any way, you will end up like communist Albania.

The End of History

This argument for Western liberal superiority is connected to the one that Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson made in their seminal book on economic and political development: Why Nations Fail. Their argument is that small “L” liberal institutions make the best and only effective form of government.

David Runciman explained their argument succinctly in a different Talking Politics episode by borrowing the famous phrase Leo Tolstoy wrote in Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Runciman argues that all prosperous nations are successful in their own way and are not the same.

A substantial amount of liberal political thought is dedicated to the idea that there is only one way to do things, any deviation from this will lead to ruin and that the whole world is inevitably moving towards this state (the End of History referenced in the subtitle of Ypi’s book). This argument holds that even when liberalism is flawed and hurts people, it is still better than all the other flawed systems of government. You can read Free as part of this argument, but that’s not how Ypi wants it to be read.

Asking the question

You can read Free and use it as an inspiration to make the world a better place. This is the takeaway that Ypi wants you to get from reading the book. We can all strive to make better institutions and improve society. We shouldn’t be cynical and let the mistakes of the past deter us. That’s the lesson from Free. You can read this book in a nihilistic way, that everything that is built fails in the end, or read it in an optimistic way, that it’s worth trying.

A good place to start with making society better is by asking the question, what's wrong with society? This is where we are at now on the left in the West. We have identified the problems caused by capitalism and our political system, from systematic racism to the looming environmental disaster. Many of these are caused by liberalism - again both big and small “L” - which isn’t an argument for state tyranny, it’s a part of asking what’s wrong with society.

Ypi said that we need better answers to the questions that our world poses. These answers should be informed by the mistakes of the past and the failures of socialism in places like Albania. State tyranny is not the answer. We need better answers. The first step to getting better answers is to ask the question. To ask the question we shouldn’t assume that liberalism has all the answers and we should not be depressed by the idea that everything we do will fail. We can’t use this as an excuse to never try.

Free by Lea Ypi shows what Albania was like under communism

Communist Albania was different from every other communist country. This was partly because Communist Albania saw itself as different. Its leaders believed - and told their people - that they kept the true light of communism going, when everywhere else had turned against it. They held on to this up until the end of the one-party state in Albania in December 1990.

Free by Lea Ypi is a book about what it’s like to grow up in such a country. The book is a detailed and nuanced look at what everyday life was like in Communist Albania. Ypi was a child and a teenager in the world’s last Stalinist country. Cut off from the outside world, she and other Albanians learned about what was happening outside through government propaganda (when they weren’t secretly watching Italian television).

It’s hard for us to imagine a perception of the world that is so massively shaped by government propaganda. Schools taught political education to children and had “moral education” tutors. The ideology of the state was parroted to children in kids’ political magazines. TV and other media were controlled by the government.

“Getting your degree”

To survive in such an authoritarian state, Ypi’s parents developed codes for discussing politics. They referred to Enver Hoxha, the dictator of Albania, as “uncle” for example. Whenever Ypi’s parents talked about someone “going away to university” they meant they had been sent to a labour camp. “Getting your degree” meant being released, whereas “dropping out” referred to people who committed suicide. 

How easy or difficult a degree was, referred to how easy or hard someone’s time in prison was. When someone “became a teacher” that meant they became an informer, to get a reduced sentence. Different degree subjects related to different charges, for example, “studying politics” meant they were in prison for being a political dissident and “studying economics” meant they had been speculating or hoarding gold.

This level of fear of the government seems alien to us, but was sensible under Hoxha's brutal rule. Like under Mao Zedong in China, Albania had had a Cultural Revolution where intellectuals were sent into the fields to work and farmers were sent into the cities. Hoxha's rule was strict and brutal, dissent was published harshly and people informed on their neighbours to the authorities.

Splits and bunkers

Hoxha was one of history’s more eccentric communist dictators. He was a Stalinist, but Albania was isolated from the other communist countries after it broke ties with Russia following Nikita Khrushchev’s programme of de-Stalinization. Albania later split with China after Mao’s death and was expelled from the Warsaw Pact in 1962. Albania was completely isolated and Hoxha built a cult of personality around himself and his delusions.

Hoxha stockpiled weapons and was paranoid about his country being invaded. He built 15 bunkers per square kilometres, which is 75,000 in total, across Albania so that civilians could defend the country in the event of an invasion. You can see a surviving bunker in this video.

This level of authoritarian control didn’t survive into the 1990s. Following the fall of the Berlin wall, Communism in Albania held its first multi-party election in March 1991. Ypi describes this as the arrival of “liberalism”, not capitalism, in Albania. Although it was the liberalisation of both the country’s economic and political systems.

From extreme socialism to extreme liberalism

From an extreme form of socialism, Albania swung to an extreme form of liberalism where everything was permitted. Ypi has said that Albania experienced: “Both socialism and liberalism in its extremes.”

This brought huge changes to her life. After-school programmes provided by the state ended. Her father had to fire people from the port where he worked because of IMF and World Bank structural reforms. The electricity became intermittent after the state stopped supplying it.

Being a gangster, a drug dealer or a sex trafficker were considered normal jobs. Liberalism meant complete freedom, and many people were trafficked out of Albania to work in brothels in other countries. People lost all their savings in pyramid schemes. Hoxha and his Party of Labour of Albania’s rule had held the country together. Once removed, it descended into civil war.

Flawed systems

Free shows lots of terrible things about Communism in Albania, but also the flaws in how capitalism, or “liberalism” as she called it, was introduced. With a lot of nuance, the book charts what is good and bad about both systems. It shows the promises that both made and broke.

Ypi is now an academic at the London School of Economics and she still teaches Karl Marx even though she lived in a repressive Marxist country under the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”. Despite this, she still thinks Marx has something to offer the inquiring minds of today.

Marxist history, even in Albania, shows how people have struggled, and failed, to build better societies. These struggles are informative, and their failures shouldn’t deter us from trying to make a better world.

Not a misery memoir

When she moved to Italy to study, Ypi was told by socialists what she lived under wasn’t real Marxism or real socialism. Western socialists, including myself, have many criticisms of communism in Albania, how authoritarian it was, how many people it killed, but it was still a form of socialism. It was still inspired by the struggle to build a better society.

Free shows the potential flaws in any socialist system, but - as well as showing the flaws in any capitalist system - it shows how people lived under both. It’s not a misery memoir. It shows, with considerable nuance, how people lived under one of the strangest and harshest regimes of all time and were still able to find meaning and happiness to their lives.

We shouldn’t let the many failures of Albanian Communism from deterring us from struggling for socialism and to make this world a better place. After all, Lea Ypi grew up in Communist Albania and she still believes that Marx and his writing has something to teach those of us who want to build a better world.

Our Child of Two Worlds

“All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Leo Tolstoy wrote those words in Anna Karenina, but Stephen Cox’s new book, Our Child of Two Worlds, offers a counterpoint to this truism. The Myers family at the core of the novel is a happy family, but they are unlike any other family. 

This is because the Myers’s adopted son, Cory, is an alien. In the first novel in this series, protagonist Molly Myers secretly adopts Cory after the spaceship his family is on crashes near her small town in New York State, USA, in the 1960s. In the first novel Molly, her husband Gene and a few local allies protect Cory from the government and mobsters who would take him away.

Every family has its struggles, and the Myers are no different. Cox’s previous novel, Our Child of the Stars, showed how a family came together despite their struggles. Cory completes the Myers family. The Myers are not a usual small-town American family, but together they do create a nurturing, caring, loving, mutually reinforcing environment.

The optimism of the 1960s

In this new novel challenges arise to the Myers’s happiness. The Myers family is unhappy in a way that is unfortunately alike many ordinary families, as this second book shows how a family can fall apart. Cory’s non-human family looks likely to return, to take Cory away from Molly and Gene. Also, Molly’s sister Selena seeks shelter with the Myers after she experiences domestic abuse at the hands of her husband. The Myers may be an unusual family, but their troubles are sadly all too normal.

The first book captured the optimism of the 1960s. Rising living standards, new consumer goods and technological advancement - epitomised by the space race - made people optimistic about the possibilities of tomorrow. This is summed up by Gene - who is a bit of a hippy and writes songs in the style of Phil Ochs or Pete Seeger - saying that in the future we will live on the moon in a UN run city of all nations that has no violence or weapons.

This book touches on the darker side of the 60s. The war In Vietnam is a constant background presence, as is the civil strife that gripped the streets of America in the 60s when black people demanded their civil rights and were met with harsh state and private resistance. The fact that the optimism of the space race was not available to everyone is best summed up by Gil Scott-Heron’s song Whitey on the Moon.

It’s easy to be cynical

Cory and his people provide an inspirational alternative to flawed humanity. The purples - as they are called - don’t have war or racism or poverty or destroy their natural environment. Their looming return asks the question: does humanity need some outside force to change us? Can we fix our problems ourselves?

It’s easy to look at the failures of 60s optimism and be cynical. We didn’t end up living on the moon and more people in the “give peace a chance” generation voted for Richard Nixon than left-wind Democrat George McGovern in the 1972 presidential election. They have also bequived to their children a worse natural environment and countries (at least in the West) more divided than at any point in their recent history. Even in the 60s peace, love and man on the moon stood in stark contrast to Charles Manson’s killing spree or the increasingly apparent problems of cocaine and heroin use.

Yes, it’s easy to be cynical - that’s partly why many people are cynical - but there is always cause for hope. Tolstoy had strong moral beliefs and was influenced by Jesus’s instruction to Turn the Other Cheek. This led him to be a pacifist. We can be inspired by Tolstoy to seek more love and less hatred in the world. To achieve this, we need stories that connect us with other people. In this storytelling process, science fiction is a critical genre as it encourages us to think starkly about what we have in common with people who are different to us.

 Love and accept people

The Myers find love for Cory despite them not being from the same planet and their mutual love overcomes the obstacles thrown at them. Cory tells us to be accepting of other people despite our differences, it's not Cory, the outsider, the different person, who wants to hate people who are different. Cory doesn’t understand this. He teaches us to love and accept each other.

I’m a sucker for some 60s optimism. I’m with you Gene. I want to live in a city on the moon where everyone is welcome. Despite the darker side of the 60s and the failed dreams, I still believe that we can make the world a better place. So too does Cory. There’s no need to be cynical.

Cory is very different to us, but he also embodies what’s best about humanity. He encourages humanity to rise above the dark side of our nature. This book has a powerful message about love. One we need now more than ever.

How Hobbes shaped our world and the world of Terra Ignota

In my previous blog post, I explored how Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota novels show a future shaped by Enlightenment thinker Voltaire, however, there is another figure who casts a long shadow over the world of Terra Ignota. A more controversial figure and someone whose ideas had an even bigger influence on the world we live in. This figure is Thomas Hobbes. 

Hobbes (or his ghost/one of the phantoms that haunts protagonist Mycroft Canner’s mind) is a character in the novels and his ideas (such as the state being a Leviathan) are directly explored in the novels. The third novel in the series, The Will To Battle, has a title that is paraphrased from Hobbes’s writing, specifically his quote: “For war, consisteth not in Battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the Will to content by Battle is sufficiently known.”

Hobbes’s influence on the world of Terra Ignota is significant. The seven hives of Terra Ignota are described as being like Leviathans, which references the metaphor that Hobbes used in his seminal work - Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil (they went in for subtitles in the 17th century in a big way) - that described the modern nation-state.

Hives and sovereigns

This overt reference is not the only way that the hives bear similarities to the Leviathans of Hobbes’s writing. Palmer uses poetic language to describe the hives of her novels as great powerful beasts that are also automata made of people coming together to create a larger figure. This reflects the feverish prose used by Hobbes himself.

Six of the seven hives are also led by one individual, which corresponds to Hobbes’s idea of a sovereign who has the power to decide on what peace is for his or her subjects and use the power of the Leviathan to enforce this. For Hobbes, the sovereign could be one person or a group (he was writing during the English Civil War and needed to hedge his bets) but he said it works better as one person.

Some of the sovereign characters are literal monarchs, such as the King of Spain, a recurring character in the novels, or Cornel MASON, who wields supreme authority over his hive, The Masonic Empire. There are sovereigns who have been elected, such as Cousin Chair Bryar Kosala or Humanist president Ganymede Jean-Louis de la Trémoïlle. There are also characters whose influence is subtle and their power secret but still can decide on the fate of billions of people, like the mysterious J. E. D. D. Mason, who can also be considered sovereigns.

What makes a good government?

By having main characters who are sovereigns and setting the story in the homes or offices of the most powerful people in the world, Terra Ignota directly explores how power is used and what makes good government. This is the topic that Hobbes wrote about. The seven hives of Terra Ignota each have very different governments, which work in different ways, and the novels show their strengths and weaknesses, as well as how they suit the character of each hive.

For example, the Masons can channel huge amounts of effort into the war that breaks out because it is the will of their emperor, whereas the Mitsubishi splinter into subfactions. The Cousins work in their communities to create hospitals and replace weapons with tiring guns, whilst the Humanist’s flexible constitution allows them to marshal around their leader.

This relates back to Voltaire who believed in enlightened government and was a critic of the corrupt governments of his day. Voltaire believed that the British constitutional monarchy was better than France’s absolute monarchy. These different types of government are shown in Terra Ignota. The Masonic Empire has an absolute monarch and the European Hive has a constitutional monarchy. The Humanist government changes in composition with each election and the Utopians have no leader.

Checks on the power of the sovereign

This range of constitutional setups is in contrast to what Hobbes thought, i.e. that the sovereign had absolute and complete authority over his, her or its subjects. Hobbes would have thought that a Masonic Emperor is better than a constitutional European monarch or a President/Chair constrained by a constitution. This is one of Hobbes’s more controversial ideas and has led to him being called an apologist for authoritarianism.

Hobbes believed the sovereign could decide on what was peace for their subjects and then use the power of the Leviathan to pull anyone who steps out of line with this definition, back into alignment. Hobbes said that our collective agreement to do this as society ended nature’s state of endless war of all against all. As he lived through the bloodshed of the English Civil War, it’s easy to see why he preferred strong order to chaos.

Many scholars who came after Hobbes have critiqued his view of the nation-state, arguing that we need checks and balances to prevent sovereigns from abusing their power. The hives of Terra Ignota show the different ways that the power of the sovereign can be checked, from the Humanists’ flexible constitution to the Utopian’s lack of a sovereign. Even the absolute power of the Masonic Emperor is constrained by the fact that people are free to leave his hive.

Hobbes shaped our world and the future

Hobbes was the first to describe the modern state, where we were not ruled over by God-appointed kings but by sovereigns who were invested with power to protect the wellbeing of their subjects. Our views of the state have evolved since then and the hives of Terra Ignota show the different views that have emerged since the 17th century.

Hobbes’s ideas have shaped our world, but they have also shaped the future world of Terra Ignota. The states of the future maybe hives, and not geographical nations, but they are still the Leviathans that Hobbes described. Despite this, they are also shaped by critiques of Hobbes by thinkers who came afterward.

Voltaire’s Candide and what it shows about Terra Ignota

What is the best of all possible worlds? Would we know we’re in the best of all possible worlds if we were in it? Looking around at the world, with a war in Ukraine, authoritarian strongmen on the march everywhere and a likely environmental disaster in our near future, it’s hard to argue that we are in the best of all possible worlds, but that’s exactly what German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz argued. Remember him; we’ll come back to him. 

We might or not be in the best of all possible worlds, but what would the best of all possible futures be like? Star Wars? Well, that would certainly be fun? Brave New World? Only if you’re an Alpha. Dune? Definitely not.

I would argue that one of the best of all possible futures would be the one depicted in Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota novels. This series of four books is set in a future that is very different to ours. It’s certainly not perfect, but it’s a less dangerous and divided world than ours.

Ambiguous Utopia

The novels have been described as an “ambiguous utopia” i.e. not a utopia like Iain M. Banks Culture novels - where no one has to work and there are no laws, this society would not work without technology such as Strong AI or FTL that might not be possible - or a dystopia like George Orwell’s 1984 - where humanity suffers under the oppression of a totalitarian government.

In an ambiguous utopia, some things are better and some are worse. In many ways the world of Terra Ignota is much better than our world. In the 25th century that the novels are set in, humanity doesn’t have war, poverty or conflict between nation states. However, there is still corruption, inequality, powerful fallible people who make decisions about the lives of others and deep-seated human conflict hasn’t been eliminated.

A world without suffering

The people who live in the Universal Free Alliance that runs the world are certainly proud of their society’s accomplishments, from protecting nature to colonies on Mars, but do they think they live in the best of all possible worlds?

At several points during the novels, the argument is made that despite the material comfort and peace of the Universal Free Alliance there is a huge problem with their society. Without suffering, which has been all but eliminated, the pressure necessary to drive technological development and the fulfilment of human potential has been removed. Why reach for the stars when home is so nice?

One character, a genius writer, inventor and celebrated thinker called Apollo Mojave, asks the young narrator, Mycroft Canner, if they would destroy this world to save a better one? This implies this world is not the best of all possible worlds.

War might be better than peace

Apollo argues that the world is too comfortable, which will prevent humanity from wanting to live in uncomfortable bases on Mars so that we can reach the next step in our outward journey from caves to the stars. In the novels, this debate is the conflict between the Gordian hive and the Utopian hive known as the Trunk War. The best of all possible worlds would reduce human suffering, but at the same time, the best of all possible worlds wouldn’t coddle humanity and would allow people to reach their full potential.

Maybe this more comfortable, safe and secure home isn’t the best of all possible worlds if it stifles invention and humanity’s quest for knowledge. Apollo’s question implies that if this world is not the best of all possible worlds and a better one is possible, it might be necessary to destroy this world to make this better one?

This leads to Apollo, and the members of the Mardi bash, planning to drive the world into a war to make this world less comfortable, and thus making sure that the urge for humanity to expand outwards is preserved. This is their view of what the best of all possible worlds would be.

Conflicts old and new

Across the timeline of the four novels, partly due to the Mardi bash’s plan and due to factors outside their understanding, the world falls into a bloody war that kills millions. Their better political system, with so much freedom and opportunity, doesn’t prevent conflicts arising across old long-buried divisions - such as conflict between nation-states, which they thought they had resigned to the past - and new divisions- such as conflicts between hives of the Universal Free Alliance or over the set-set issue.

A hopeful future

Despite the war, the bloodshed and the hatred, after reading Terra Ignota I was left with the impression that this is a much better world than ours. The message of Terra Ignota is that there is hope for the future. It’s fundamentally anti-dystopian, if it is not explicitly utopian. The books show that in the future humanity can overcome hatred, nationalism, the destruction of the environment and war to build a better world.

The novels also tell a story about how we see history, partly inspired by the Enlightenment view that history was a natural state of progress towards a better and more rational society. The Universal Free Alliance is influenced heavily by Enlightenment ideas. The founders of this best of all possible futures looked not to their immediate past (the violent 20th and 21st centuries) but to the “enlightened” 18th century as a model to build their rational governments of the future.

The individual who has had the biggest influence on the Universal Free Alliance is Voltaire, because of his advocacy of freedom of speech and freedom of religion, his support of civil liberties, his anti-slavery views and his pluralism. Voltaire wrote many things in his life, letters, essays, pamphlets, satires, plays and a novel called Candide, which has similar philosophical debates to the Terra Ignota novels.

Voltaire’s Candide

Voltaire wrote Candide as an argument against Leibniz’s philosophical optimism - remember him? - which addressed the issue of where does evil come from if the universe is overseen by an all-good creator, i.e. God, in the Christian sense, with a capital “G”. Leibniz’s argument that we are in the best of all possible worlds is the means to answer the “problem of evil”, a.k.a. the question of why there is evil in a world created by God, who is perfect.

In the novel, the eponymous protagonist, a young man named Candide, has a series of adventures that teach him lessons about the world. The character of his teacher, Dr Pangloss, expresses Leibniz’s philosophical optimism and tells Candide that he lives in the best of all possible worlds.

Lots of bad things happen to Pangloss - including him getting syphilis, his friends dying and his nose falling off - and Voltaire uses this to argue that there is a lot to love about life, but we’re not in the best of all possible worlds. This links to the view that Terra Ignota is an ambiguous utopia, i.e. it is not the best of all possible worlds but one that has a lot going for it.

An optimistic vision of the future

Even the much better world of the Universal Free Alliance is not the best of all possible worlds that Leibniz thinks we live in. It has less war, suffering, death and hatred than our world, but it’s not the best of all possible worlds.

Even I, an ardent atheist, think that banning the discussion of religion is an unfair restriction of individual freedom, and in the Universal Free Alliance discussion of religion is banned by their highest law. The hatred that some people in Terra Ignota, such as Lorelei “Cookie” Cook, express about set-sets is a naked prejudice that is socially acceptable, which to me means this can’t be the best of all possible worlds.

Don’t just tend your garden

Candide ends with the hero returning to his home to work in his garden and not think about the difficult philosophical questions that the novel raises. Voltaire seems to say that we would be happier if we just tended our own gardens and didn’t worry about the big questions of the world, or struggle to make the world a better place. I disagree with this outlook. It’s a way to shrug off everyone’s responsibility to work to make this a better world.

Terra Ignota may not be the best of all possible worlds, but it is certainly a better world than this one and provides us with an optimistic vision of the future where many problems of today have been addressed. I find this encouraging and it tells me that we don’t have to be satisfied with the inadequacies of today’s world. Terra Ignota inspires us to do more than till our own gardens as, Candide does, but to struggle to make this a better world.

Voltaire image taken from Wikipedia and is in the public domain.

How Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota novels adapt Homer’s poetry to a sci-fi setting

A good novel works on several levels. For example, James Joyce’s seminal modernist novel Ulysses chronicles life in contemporary Dublin, retells events from Homer’s Odyssey and experiments with many literary styles. Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota novels work in a similar way. They are a series of sci-fi novels whose meaning and subtexts exist on many different levels. 

The novels are (deep breath for this one, it will be a while before the full stop) simultaneously an exciting tale about the world of the 25th century descending into war, an exploration of how political philosophy might evolve in the future that comments on how we see our history, an exploration of ideas around spirituality and the divine in science fiction, a commentary on European Enlightenment philosophy, a pastiche of 18th century French literature and an adaptation of Homer’s writing into a science fiction setting. Got all that? Good. There will be a test later.

Like Joyce’s work, Palmer’s novels, especially the fourth novel in the series, Perhaps the Stars, are a retelling of the events of The Iliad. This is made explicit in the text and affects the plot, as characters attempt to anticipate what will happen next based on Homer’s writing.

Homer in sci-fi

Palmer is not the first sci-fi writer to adapt Homer’s work to a sci-fi setting. Dan Simmons did so in his novel Ilium, in which god-like post-humans restage the events of the Iliad for their own amusement; until the participants of their toy box rebel against them. Like Simmons’ novel, Terra Ignota recreates specific scenes from The Iliad and The Odyssey with her characters taking on the roles of the heroes in Homer’s epic poems.

The most obvious connection is the protagonist of the Terra Ignota novels, Mycroft Canner, who takes on the role of Odysseus (or Ulysses in Latin translations). Odysseus is not the greatest warrior in the Iliad, he is not a legendary slayer of all who stand before him like Achilles, but he is crafty and underhanded. Odysseus does whatever it takes to survive. He is smart and good at talking his way out of his problems.

The characteristics of Odysseus

Odysseus’s most famous act in The Iliad is creating the Trojan Horse so that the Greeks can sneak their way into Troy. With our modern sensibilities, this ploy seems so laughably transparent that it should be doomed to fail. However, Ancient Greek culture was a surface culture, i.e. focused on how things appeared. From the perfection of the human form in their sculpture to their beauty of their temples, meaning was read at a surface level.

At no point in Homer’s writing do characters think differently to how they act or hide secret motivations. There are no Hamlets or Othellos, with rich inner lives or subversive actions. In a culture where everything is on the surface, the idea that a gift could hide a trap is a paradigm-shifting innovation so massive that it required a crafty thinker like Odysseus to come up with it.

Mycroft and Odysseus

The above is an apt description of protagonist Mycroft Canner who is sly, intelligent, crafty, very good at talking his way out of the problems he gets himself into, does whatever it takes to survive and can grapple with world-shattering ideas (Mycroft encounters several massive challenges to his understanding of the world throughout the novels).

In The Odyssey, Odysseus is favoured by Athena - goddess of wisdom, handicraft, and warfare - which helps him evade death on his adventures. Mycroft is favoured by many of the great leaders of Terra Ignota such as the Masonic Emperor Cornel MASON and his enigmatic adopted son J. E. D. D. Mason, who possesses unearthly qualities. He is also a guardian of the child Bridger. Bridger can, through possible divine intervention, bring toys to life. Mycroft is never far from the divine, or powers beyond human understanding, in Terra Ignota, like Odysseus is in The Odyssey.

We keep coming back to Homer

As ancient Greece was a surface culture, these ideas of a character representing a different character in subtext or allegory would not be understood. It is a way that a modern writer can convey meaning in literature and art that is a much more recent invention. When a writer creates meaning in this way, Homer’s writing is a rich source to draw on.

This is because The Iliad is a well-known or classic text. It has endured for so long because it makes timeless statements about war, the human quest for glory and how this leads to ruin. Its narrative form is pleasing to the reader.

The foundation of Western European literature

The Iliad is also the foundation of Western European literature and his been retold over and over. From The Aeneid, to Joyce’s version, to a film adaptation in 2004 starring Brad Pitt, to Palmer’s novels, we cannot escape Homer’s epic story.

By using Homer’s work as a subtext or inspiration, a writer is linking their work with the story of European cultural history. This connects to one of the themes that Palmer explores: the cultural history of Europe, specifically the Enlightenment politics and philosophy of Voltaire, Thomas Hobbes and the Marquis de Sade.

Looking back at people looking back

Palmer’s novels are set in a world where thinkers venerate these 18th century figures, and overlook the barbarism of the 20th and 21st centuries, when creating a narrative of their political philosophy. This is a commentary on how those same Enlightenment figures overlooked the barbarism (as they saw it) of the Middle Ages and looked back to the ancient world as the basis of their political philosophy.

Homer, being the key literary figure of the ancient world, had a big influence on how Enlightenment thinkers saw the past civilizations they idealised. A future society that venerates the 18th century, which in turn venerated the ancient world, all look to Homer as the foundation of their culture.

Stories about war and peace

The Iliad is a story about war, and the glory that can be achieved through heroic deeds. Glory that can outlast time, as the deeds of Achilles, Hector and Odysseus have done (if they ever existed). The war in The Iliad is especially violent. It claims the lives of thousands of people and almost all the characters in the poem are either killed in the war or by a course of actions set in motion by the war. The Terra Ignota novels are also a story about war, the glory and the cost of such a conflict.

The Odyssey is a story about peace. It is Homer exploring what comes after the war is over. It’s a story about how we learn to stop fighting, even after killing many people. This is how Palmer’s epic series of novels ends with the world learning how to put war away and how to live with what has happened, so that they can create a better future peace. Ultimately, Palmer’s characters arrive at the same place as Homer’s characters: at home and at peace.

Homer image taken from Wikipedia and is in the public domain.

Dune is for and against revolution

Politics and religion can be a dangerous combination, especially in the hands of a charismatic leader. Whenever these things align my advice would be: run, and run fast. 

To see how dangerous these three things can be we need look no further than Frank Herbert’s blockbuster sci-fi novel, Dune, or the likely events of Denis Villeneuve’s forthcoming blockbuster film Dune: Part Two.

Dune explores the potent combination of religion, politics and a charismatic leader, and how these can be abused, through the actions of its protagonist Paul “Muad'Dib” Atreides. Dune has been criticised for being a white saviour story - where an outsider arrives to free a group of oppressed people of a different race from their bondage - however, the use of the white saviour narrative is how the novel makes its point about religion, politics and charismatic leaders.

The white saviour narrative

Paul is a deconstruction of the white saviour narrative, a common trope found in sci-fi stories from Avatar to Elysium. Yes, Paul is a character of European ancestry (the Atreides claim they are descended from the ancient King Agamemnon) who rises to become the leader of a group of people with an Arabic/Islamic culture (the novel explicitly states that the Fremen are descended from those who went on the Hajj before Earth was lost in the war against the machines). So, on the surface Paul appears to embrace this trope.

Paul is also a classic Chosen One, gifted with prescience and trained in combat. His enemies are Saturday Morning Cartoon villains: utterly evil, sadistic and ruthless. He seeks revenge against these Harkonnens who killed his father and destroyed his family. In many ways, Paul is an exemplar hero like many others found in sci-fi stories, but Dune subtly deconstructs this idea.

Paul starts a war that leads to the death of billions and unleashes untold carnage across the galaxy. He seizes the vital resource that all of civilisation is dependent on and threatens to destroy it. His sister turns his memory into an authoritarian cult to preserve his family’s hold on power. Paul also exploits the Fremen’s religion and politics, such as using the Lisan al Gaib, a legend planted by the Bene Gesserit to help their members, to build his fanatical following and to accomplish his political goals.

Charismatic leaders

All this tells the reader that Paul is not “a good guy” or a purer-than-pure hero whose actions are always for the best (like Captain America). Paul is a flawed human and his flaws mean that when he achieves power he does terrible things with it. The political message of Dune is not to trust charismatic leaders, especially those that combine religion and politics.

History is full of the lessons of what can go wrong when you blindly follow charismatic leaders. From Maximilien Robespierre to Adolf Hitler, or Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple and Ayatollah Khomeini, there are many examples of leaders with strong followings and political or religious visions of the future that end in mass death.

With this interpretation of the novel, it would be easy to see Dune as an anti-revolutionary, or conservative or even reactionary text. One of the messages is to be wary of leaders promising revolution, but Dune also contains a criticism of the modern state similar to the criticism that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels made in the 19th century. Like Marx, Engels and other revolutionary writers, Dune strips off the mask of the state to look at what is going on underneath.

Marx and Engels

Marx and Engels argued, the modern state is a kind of lie. It claims to offer representation to people and to protect their liberties, but in reality this is a cover for the state’s true role as the enforcer of bourgeoisie rule and the control of the proletariat. As the modern state is a lie, it must be destroyed in a revolution to set the people free. This is what Paul does.

The war that Paul unleashes is an attempt to destroy the state that killed his father. His war is an attempt to affect a complete revolution, to change the political order for good by destroying all his opponents. In a later novel his son, Leto II, goes even further with this project to transform the state into his own tool.

The proletariat and the Fremen

Marx and Engels believed that the workers, or proletariat, were the people who could bring about this revolution to destroy the modern state, because they were the least deceived by the lie that the state existed to protect their freedom, rather than take it away. Thus, they could throw off this lie, destroy the state and overthrow the entire corrupt system.

In Dune Paul sees that the Fremen are the least deceived about the nature of the state in the Dune universe. They experience the brutality of the occupation of Dune and see the state for what it really is. Like the workers in Marx’s day, they are in the best position to revolt against the oppression of the state and overthrow it.

Paul uses the Fremen to create his revolution and to destroy the state in the same way that Marx and Engels believed that the workers would destroy the capitalist state. In Dune, the state that Paul destroys exists to protect the powerful houses of the Landsraad and the Imperial House, secure their wealth and oppress those who stand against them. This is also how Marx and Engels saw the state.

Revolutionary inspiration and warnings

The novel Dune has long been a seminal text in counter-cultural or radical political circles. From its environmental message and its exploration of ecology, to its deep spiritual and philosophical themes, there is a lot in Dune that the radical left have been inspired by over the years. The fact that Dune’s political message contains a warning about charismatic leaders and how revolutions can go wrong is not a sign that it is a conservative text. It’s a novel about the complexities of revolution and how a revolution can take on a life of its own.

Those of us on the left would do well to heed the warnings of charismatic leaders lest we get swept up in the rhetoric of a leader who, like Paul, promises a better world but only delivers violence and oppression. Vladimir Lenin began by saying his revolution would lead to the state withering away, but instead he presided over a clamp down on dissent and paved the way for Joseph Stalin’s regime of terror.

The novel contains warnings about revolution, but also many criticisms of the politics of when it was written that still apply today. It’s an eye opening novel about how we can change the world (or the universe) but it also contains warnings about how this can go wrong.

Space stations, spaceships, Benjamin Constant and two types of liberty

In CJ Cherryh’s novel Downbelow Station the characters live on a space station orbiting the world Pell, that itself circles a sun far distant from Earth. In Becky Chamber’s novel The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet, the characters live on a ship that travels from place to place building wormholes to make intergalactic travel easier. 

There are many differences between these two novels. Chamber’s novel has more aliens and types of aliens than Cherryh’s does. It’s also set on a ship that visits many places rather than a station that orbits one world.

Philosophically and politically, I see another crucial difference between these two novels in how the characters experience liberty. Liberty is not the theme of either of these novels, but the characters’ of both books are free, to a degree, to pursue their lives as they want to live them and this degree is where a lot of the drama in both novels comes from. The thing is, the characters of these books are free in different ways.

From outer space to the French Revolution

To understand the different types of liberty a society might have, we need to travel from the future into the past to look at the work of Swiss-French writer, activist and political theorist Benjamin Constant.

Constant lived during interesting times. He lived in France and in his life he saw the French Revolution, The Terror, the Rise of Napoleon, the rise of the First French Empire, Napoleon's armies rolling across Europe, Napoleon's eventual defeat, the Bourbon Restoration and he lived just long enough to experience the July Revolution.

These were the awkward teenage years of modern democracy, where it was figuring out what it wanted to be and had frequent outbursts of volatility. Revolutions, tyrants, utopian hopes and blood baths were a feature of Constant’s life. During this time Constant wrote and lectured on the big political topics of his time: democracy and liberty.

Ancient liberty and modern liberty

Today, Constant is best remembered for delivering a speech that was turned into an essay called The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns, as well as writing a Romantic novel with the unfortunate title of Adolphe. In this lecture he outlined two different types of liberty, which are the types enjoyed by the people of Downbelow and the Wayfarer. Brace yourself, the comparisons will be coming thick and fast from this point.

Ancient liberty and Downbelow Station

The first type of liberty that Constant described is Ancient Liberty. Constant contrasted ancient liberty, which existed mainly in Ancient Greece, with how liberty was thought of in France in 1819 when he gave the lecture, a few years after the final defeat of Napoleon.

Constant described Ancient Liberty as collective, something a group of people (living in a city or kingdom) enjoyed. If your state was free then you were free. If your state was not free, usually because it lost a war, then you were not free. This connects to the Ancient Greek idea of the Argo, or public square, where discussion was held and your freedom was expressed.

Although there are many societies in science fiction and fantasy inspired by Ancient Greece, this idea reminded me of Cherryh’s Downbelow Station, orbiting around Pell or “Downbelow” as the characters refer to it.

Military rule

The citizens of the Downbelow Station enjoy freedoms similar to the ones we enjoy (I am assuming that you are reading this in a liberal democracy). They have freedom of expression, freedom of religion, they can start a business and are free to congregate as they please. The station is run more like a corporation than state and is dominated by one family: the Konstantins, but for the purposes of this analogy it functions like a free state.

In the novel, the station suddenly finds itself on the frontline of an interplanetary conflict  between the Company, who built the station, and a breakaway group of humans called The Union. The station is then occupied, first by the Company’s military forces then the Union’s.

Lack of ancient liberty

What happened under military rule is similar to Constant’s idea of when ancient liberty is taken away. It is a collective lack of freedom that the station experiences, the identity of the station was that they were free and it is replaced by repression under the military.

This is the essence of what Constant thought was different about ancient liberty. The collective, city or state, being free or not free. The citizens express their freedom publicly when the station is not under military rule. When the military invades from outside of the Pell system and takes over, the people of Downbelow Station are not free anymore.

Modern liberty and the Long Way To A Small Angry Planet

Constant said that liberty in the modern world was different from what it meant in ancient times and what I have described on Downbelow Station. Rather than liberty being something we experience as a collective, it has become something that we experience as individuals. Liberty for moderns is the freedom to choose, to be different, to do things that other people don’t approve of. Modern liberty means the freedom of religion or political beliefs. These are things we can do in private.

A sci-fi novel that explores this form of liberty is Becky Chamber’s novel The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet. It’s also space based, but it follows a group of humans and other species who all live and work on a ship called the Wayfarer.

The Wayfarer flies around the galaxy building tunnels through space to improve intergalactic transportation connections. The crew are a diverse bunch of different humans and aliens, from different worlds and of different species. Different chapters of the novel focus on different characters, exploring their individual personalities and dramatising their conflicts with other characters.

Modern liberty in a spaceship

The crew of the Wayfarer are all different, even different species, but there is tolerance of their differences. They all live together, privately living their lives according to how they want to live, based on their biology, culture or religion. They have the freedom to be themselves, but it is individual and not collective.

Constant’s idea of Modern Liberty is so inclusive that it applies to a group of humans and aliens living in a ship together. We have Modern Liberty (again I’m assuming you live in a liberal democracy and that you aren’t reading this from Myanmar) and it’s not difficult for us moderns to imagine the same idea applied to aliens. Ancient Liberty is harder for us to intuitively understand.

From liberty to tyranny

One of the key points that Constant made is that you cannot force one type of liberty onto the other civilization. He believed that the French Revolution failed because it tried to create Ancient Liberty in a modern society. Modern societies are much bigger and more diverse than they were in the ancient world. The only way to make Ancient Liberty work in a modern society is to make everyone the same, which is a fast route to tyranny.

Stamping out Modern Liberty and replacing it with Ancient Liberty is where Constant thought the French Revolution failed. You can see this pattern of failure in revolutions that promise utopia and end in tyranny; the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia is the ur- example of this. If you try to make everyone the same, to create Ancient Liberty, you get tyranny and ultimately bloodshed.

The collective life of the people on the Downbelow Station, where everyone is human and part of the same culture (leaving aside the Hisas, a stone age civilization that is native to Downbelow) would not work imposed on the people of the Wayfarer. They’re too different from each other. They need their private freedoms to live their lives.

Keeping an eye on those in power

Constant believed that you needed both Ancient and Modern Liberty for a healthy society. You need Modern Liberty because we are all different and want to live different, individual lives. Modern Liberty protects us from tyrants, from Maximilien Robespierre to Joseph Stalin. However Constant said we also need Ancient Liberty, because we need to protect ourselves from subtle tyrants.

Constant was wary of us disappearing into our private lives and losing the civic engagement of ancient societies. If we all live our separate, private lives then we cannot keep an eye on our leaders or governments, which means we won’t know that they’re subtly transforming into tyrants before it’s too late. We need Ancient Liberty with its public civic engagement to keep a check on those with power.

Critic of Leviathan

Constant was a critic of Thomas Hobbes’s ideas about the state, which he outlined in Levitahan (and I discussed here.) He thought that Ancient Liberty would prevent the Sovereign from becoming an unaccountable tyrant. On the Wayfarer the captain’s benevolent authority is never challenged, but in a larger society, we need to keep a check on those who wield the awesome power of a modern state, aka a Levithan.

These novels show that there are different ways for societies to exist in fiction or in our world, and different ideas of liberty for different societies. What we need in our world is the best of both, to safeguard our freedoms and our right to live our own individual lives.

Thank you to David Runciman for his lecture on Benjamin Constant in his podcast Talking Politics: A History of Ideas, which inspired me to write this post and which I drew heavily on for my understanding of Constant’s ideas.

What links Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota novels and Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, The State and Utopia?

The Terra Ignota novels by Ada Palmer are among my favourite books because they unite my interests in science fiction and political philosophy. The world of the 25th century that Palmer depicts in her books is informed by the philosophy of many different thinkers - most notably great names of the 18th century such as Voltaire and the Marquis de Sade. 

Recently, I was indulging my love of political philosophy by listening to an episode of the second series of David Runciman’s podcast, Talking Politics: History of Ideas, about the 20th century Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick. As Runciman outlined Nozick’s ideas, something in my mind clicked and I was transported to the world of Terra Ignota.

20th century thinking in the 25th century

I’m not sure if Nozick is one of the thinkers that Palmer drew on for the books. One of the interesting things about the novels is that there is almost no reference to the 20th century in them. The world of the 25th century looks on the 20th century as those in the 18th century looked on the Medieval period: barbaric and violent. The people in Palmer’s novels idealise the more civilised (in their view) 18th century, in the same way that those in the 18th century idealised the ancient world.

One way that the books signal the insignificance of the 20th century to the lives of the people of the 25th century, is that a key figure in the history of Terra Ignota is Adolf Riktor Brill. The name subtly says to the reader, in the 25th century the most famous Adolf in history is not the one you’re thinking of, because enough time has passed that the associations of the 20th century are not what people immediately reach for. What has power for us has receded into history. Hitler is as well-known as Edward I.

All this is to say that the connection between Nozick writing and Palmer’s novels may be deliberate, or maybe an inference that I have drawn. I think it’s worth exploring as reading Terra Ignota helped me understand Nozick’s ideas, and vice versa.

Anarchy, The State and Utopia

Robert Nozick was an American philosopher who taught at Harvard University and wrote many famous philosophical books in the 1970s and 80s. Probably his most famous books is Anarchy, The State and Utopia, which was written as a response to his Harvard colleague John Rawls's 1971 book A Theory of Justice. Anarchy, The State and Utopia is a response to Rawls’s ideas of how to arrive at the ideal state and offers an alternative to Rawls Theories. (Rawls’s A Theory of Justice is a book I intend to blog about in the future.)

When laying out his ideal state, Nozick begins with the idea that all humans have natural rights that cannot be violated. He draws on the work of John Locke to outline what these natural rights are, most notably that no one should harm another person or their property, even for the good of society. Locke also said that if you mixed your labour with something then you own the product of that Labour. If you own the product then it’s a violation of your natural rights for anyone to take it.

Nozick says that there is no justification for breaking someone’s natural rights. You cannot take the property of another person without their permission or harm them. From this, he argues that there is no justification for a modern state that taxes people (i.e. takes their property) and uses violence to enforce this. This is where the anarchism in the book’s title comes in: the state cannot be justified because it breaks our natural rights.

Minimal states

Nozick said that protection co-ops are justified. Many individuals cannot protect themselves from the aggression or greed of others, so to stop their natural rights being violated they could exchange their labour for protection from others. Protection co-ops would evolve over time, developing methods of settling disputes between members, getting stronger and thus being better at protecting their clients. As the protection co-ops evolved they would eventually become what Nozick referred to as “minimal states”.

Minimal states offer protection against your natural rights being violated and nothing else. Nozick thought that minimal states are the only type of state that can be justified. Any state that does more than this, for example a state that redistributes people’s wealth in the name of equality or fairness, is violating people’s natural rights.

Nozick's statement that the only justifiable state is a minimal state that does not redistribute has made his book a favourite amongst libertarians and anarcho-capitalists. I’ll come back to what I think of minimal states and a world where the state only guarantees the protection of your natural rights. For now, I want to dwell on how much Nozick’s ideas reminded me of Palmer’s Terra Ignota books.

The minimal state of the Universal Free Alliance

One of the distinguishing features of Palmer’s future is that humanity now lives in hives, not nations. Hives have some things in common with states, in that they have citizens, leaders, languages and all sorts of complicated rules, some of which are customs and some of which are laws. Hives differ by ideology or outlook on life. The Mitsubishi hive is a corporation, the Cousins are a family, the Utopians are dedicated to the future. Unlike states or nations, membership in hives is voluntary. You can choose the hive you like, or have none at all, and you can leave when you like.

The seven hives in the books exist together, along with the three types of hiveless people, in a larger structure called the Universal Free Alliance. The Universal Free Alliance is a minimal state, similar to what Nozick described. The Universal Free Alliance has Seven Universal Laws that all citizens, regardless of their hive, must obey. Even the Blacklaw Hiveless, who have renounced all laws and associations, must live under the Seven Universal Laws of the Universal Free Alliance. The Universal Free Alliance makes sure that no one has their rights provided by the Seven Universal Laws violated.

The rights given under the Seven Universal Laws are not the same as those of Nozick’s minimal state and the Universal Free Alliance has a legal code, institutions and powers that go beyond what Nozick argues says is a justifiable minimal state to protect natural rights. However, the Universal Free Alliance conforms to the same idea that all people have basic rights that must be protected against those who would violate them by a state. Beyond that you are free to do as you like.

Communes and hives

So, what does Nozick or the Universal Free Alliance think you should do with your freedom now that your natural rights are protected? Join communes or hives. If you want. In Anarchy, The State and Utopia, Nozick said that communes would arise within the minimal state and that people would be free to join. These could offer citizens more than what the minimal state does.

A commune might levy taxes on its members to build roads or schools or because they think an equal distribution of wealth is fairer. A commune might follow an ideology like social democracy or communism. Crucially, membership in a commune is voluntary, you can leave at any point you want, which prevents them abusing their members.

This system is very similar to the hives of the Universal Free Alliance. Everyone who lives in the Universal Free Alliance must obey the Seven Universal Laws, but they are free to join hives according to what they believe is right. You can become Mitsubishi if you believe in corporatism or you can be a Cousin, or a Mason or an Utopian, if you identify with the philosophy behind these hives. You are also free to leave a hive whenever you want.

The freedom to not live under capitalism

Nozick’s book is often held up as an Anarchist Capitalist manifesto, or a call for society where the state only protects property rights and doesn’t intervene in markets or tax its citizens. I am in favour of a state that does much more than Nozick’s minimal state. A state that redistributes wealth to account for the unfairness in society. A state that prevents the accumulation of wealth and power by individuals to the point where they can influence society as a whole. A state that taxes its citizens to collectively pay for schools and hospitals.

You might think that I would strongly oppose Nozick’s ideas, but I can see the appeal of them for one simple reason. In Nozick’s world, you can opt out of capitalism by joining a non-capitalist commune. Everyone is given that freedom.

Many people, usually wealthy Westerners, have told me, at length, about how great capitalism is. How it’s fair. How it creates wealth and the material comforts we all enjoy. I usually respond to this with a list of the problems of capitalism. How it’s unfair. How it wastes resources. How it’s destroying the natural environment. One of the key problems with capitalism is that we don’t have a choice about whether we want to live under capitalism or not (unless you want to defect to North Korea). Nozick’s system gives us the choice.

Choosing to live under capitalism

Nozick’s minimal state gives us the freedom to be capitalists or communists if we want. No one is forced to live under an ideology they don’t agree with. If you don’t like the low wages and insecurity of capitalism then you move to a commune run according to social democracy, or communism or libertarian socialism. If these systems fail then people move to other communes, rather than being trapped by an authoritarian government that has complete control over their life.

How would capitalism or neoliberalism work if the poorest paid workers could choose to live under communism or social democracy? Would it be stable? Would capitalism find people to work on assembly lines for pennies a day or look after sick old people for a handful of dollars, whilst a few billionaires hoard a huge chunk of society’s wealth, if the poor had a choice about which system they lived under?

This choice would make capitalism fair. Maybe people would choose to be poor in a capitalist commune for the chance, theoretically, to become one of the wealthy few. However, with the freedoms offered by the minimal state, people wouldn’t be forced to live under capitalism’s exploitative economic system. Maybe they would trade the freedom of capitalism for the security of socialism. It would be interesting to find out.

Freedom of choice

This choice of how you want to live your life is one of the defining features of Palmer’s novels. They’re set in a world where you can choose your state, your family or choose to have none of the above. Freedom from coercion is something we can all believe in. The state that Nozick describes offers any amount of freedom or any amount of security that anyone would want. This choice is what links Palmer’s world and Nozick’s writing, and makes both different to our world.

What can The Tethered Mage teach us about the writing of Mary Wollstonecraft?

Melissa Caruso’s novel The Tethered Mage is set in a world that resembles the past of our world, but is different in several crucial ways. One of the most striking things about the world of the novel is not that it contains characters who can create fire, or lightning, or magical weapons - although these are present - but that it’s set in a version of the past where men and women were equal. 

In the world of The Tethered Mage, there is no distinction between the roles that society has created for men and women. Women still wear corsets and live in nuclear families with men, but there is no gendering of roles in government, the military, science or the arts. The novel features women generals, politicians, scientists and leaders. There is more gender equality in the novel than in 21st century Britain and it’s set in a society that has yet to invent the steam engine or universal suffrage.

It’s difficult to be precise about what historic period The Tethered Mage evokes for its fantasy world. It bears many similarities to Europe of the 18th Century. There are cannons and muskets, scientists investigate the properties of nature using something close to the scientific method and power is held by hereditary rulers, but held in check by a civil society as represented by a body of wealthy landowners and merchants.

Falcons and Falconers

Despite this being a vision of the 18th Century with equality between the genders, there are other hierarchies present. The wealthy hold power over the poor and those born to privilege have power over those born to humble circumstances. This seems familiar to our understanding of the 18th Century, but the world of the novel has another crucial divide not present in our world, a divide between those who can wield magic and those who can't.

The magic system of the novel has an interesting twist. Mages - those who can control fire, or the weather, or create rare elixirs, or weave the flesh of humans or animals - are controlled via a magical item known as a jess. A jess binds the mage to a non-magical guardian who controls when they can use their powers. In this relationship the magical party is called a Falcon and the non-magical party is called a Falconer (presumably because they remove the cap and release the Falcon’s power).

Like all other divisions in society, this divide is wrapped up in power. To understand this division between the Falcon and Falconer, we can look at a thinker from our world’s 18th Century.

Mary Wollstonecraft and The Enlightenment

Mary Wollstonecraft was an 18th century British writer, feminist and radical thinker. She led a radical life by the standard of any age. She went to France shortly after the French Revolution, at great personal risk to herself, to witness the birth of liberty but ended up witnessing The Terror first hand. She wrote many books, including A Vindication of the Rights of Women, in which she critiques the roles that 18th Century society had given women.

Wollstonecraft believed the relations between men and women were a symptom of a wider problem, that one half of society controlled the faculty of reason and the other half had the domain of feeling. Wollstonecraft was writing during the Enlightenment when reason was considered the highest virtue.

Most of the Enlightenment's most prominent figures were men and believed that reason was the domain of men, and the feelings and emotions were the domain of women. Jean-Jacques Rousseau highlighted this division in his book Emile, which Wollstonecraft was a fierce critic of.

The domain of reason

Wollstonecraft linked this relationship to that of a tyrant and his court. One person has all the power and the others have to use what they are left with to protect themselves. This unequal relationship corrupts everyone involved in it. Wollstonecraft described life in the 18th Century, where men had power over women (and in The Enlightenment power meant the domain of reason) and women used what was left to them (the domain of feeling) to defend themselves from the power of men.

In the world of The Tethered Mage, reason is not considered gendered as it was in our 18th Century, as in this society reason has not been claimed by one gender. However, reason is the domain of the non-magical Falconers, who hold power over the magical, whereas feeling is the domain of the Falcons, who take what is left to them and use it to protect themselves from the power of the Falcons.

Zaira is a Falcon who can control fire. At several points in the novel, she is told that her fire can easily get out of hand and destroy entire cities. In the opening chapter, she is bonded to Amalia, daughter of a powerful noble and the novel’s protagonist. Amalia now has control over when Zaira can use her fire. Zaira believes that this control of her life is unfair. Amalia and other Falconers try to convince Zaira why being tethered is in everyone’s best interest, including her own.

Wollstonecraft and Hobbes

What’s interesting about these scenes, is that Amalia uses reason to appeal to Zaira: it’s in the best interest of everyone that we isolate the magical and send them to a place known as The Mews, where they live in what could be considered comfortable for a life in the 18th Century. Whereas Zaira uses emotion in her counter argument: this is an unfair restriction on her life. Amalia has all the power and uses reason. The domain of emotion is all that’s left to Zaira.

This argument relates back to the previous article in this series, which discussed Thomas Hobbes’s idea of The Sovereign. Wollstonecraft argued the division between the domain of reason and the domain of emotion corrupts Sovereigns, just as it corrupts relations between men and women, as Sovereigns still have human relationships.

Hobbes’s idea of The Sovereign limited the spread of politics to as few aspects of life as possible. In Hobbes’s time, during the English Civil War and the 30 Years War, political disagreements were a matter of routine and horrific violence, so limiting politics made sense. By giving The Sovereign say over some aspects of life, it leaves us free to enjoy every other aspect of it.

Sovereigns and Falcons

Wollstonecraft was critical of this idea. She believed that you cannot keep politics out of every aspect of life. If you are a woman living under the dominion of a man or a child living under the dominion of parents, then the aspects of your life that are and aren't political are not up to you. The limiting power of The Sovereign only affects some people.

We saw how this worked in Days of Hate by Aleš Kot, Danijel Žeželj and Jordie Bellaire. When a Sovereign in a future American riven by civil war politicises race, immigration status and sexual orientation this touches every aspect of the characters’ lives and thus their life becomes entirely political. In the American civil war of Days of Hate, this is as deadly as it was during the English Civil war.

Wollstonecraft’s argument about women in the 18th Century applies to Falcons in The Tethered Mage. A Falcon cannot choose the aspects of their life they have control over. They are forced to live in The Mews and serve their military masters. Falcons have more freedom than slaves, but so did women in the 18th Century. Both lack the right to make decisions about their lives.

Wollstonecraft and revolution

Part of Amalia’s argument is that this is the way things have always been done in her country. The Falcons are tethered, but they’re kept well and then serve the country when it’s needed - including Zaira unleashing her fire against their enemies. This debate over tradition mirrors arguments about tradition that Wollstonecraft had in her time.

Wollstonecraft was critical of the writing of Edmund Burke, who was a philosopher, author and MP, as well as having the dubious honour of being the founder of modern Conservatism. Burke wrote against The French Revolution and for a society based on sentiment and tradition. He claimed he wanted people to be free to follow their hearts.

Wollstonecraft attacked this idea for being unjust. She argued that it was unjust because it left many people without control of their lives and subject to the whims of others. Wollstonecraft thought that we needed a revolution against this. When the French Revolution occurred, she supported it and headed over to France to see a new society be built around the values of liberty and rationality. This was an incredibly brave thing to do and she soon found herself caught up in the violence and bloodshed that followed the revolution, known as The Terror. Wollstonecraft was more than someone who wrote about revolution, she lived her principles. 

Falcons and education

Wollstonecraft wrote against the society based on tradition and sentiment that Burke defended. She wanted to change society into something that was better for women and for children, the people who were subjected to the power of others. This mirrors the argument that Zaira has with Amalia, when Zaira argues that she as a Falcon shouldn’t be subjected to power of the Falconers and Amalia defends the tradition of her society.

Wollstonecraft had many ideas about how to improve society to aid the relations between men and women (or those with the power over reason and those with the power over feeling). She believed the solution lay in better education. Wollstonecraft was an educator herself and set up a school in Stoke Newington (now a part of London). This controversial statue “for” Mary Wollstonecraft stands near where her school was.

The Falcons in The Tethered Mage are certainly educated - one of them is a scientist - however we don’t know if their education extends to aspects not related to being a Falcon. This is akin to how women in Wollstonecraft’s time where only taught needle work and dancing, all that they needed to find a husband - i.e. their role in society.

Perhaps more education, for both Falcons and Falconers would change the society of The Tethered Mage, just as Wollstonecraft thought that reforming education of girls and boys would change our society, by helping everyone escape from the traditions that Burke defended and Wollstonecraft believed were so damaging. Maybe it would one day lead to a world where Falcons don’t need to be controlled by jesses, as Falconers can appeal to their reason.

Wollstonecraft exposed the problem with fundamentally unequal relationships in society. Any society where one group holds power over another group, or where one group claims the power of reason and the other is left only with the fiery tempers of emotion. We can see this dynamic in our history and in novels that show a world with equality between the genders, which still have big divides in society. 

I want to say thank you to David Runciman for his lecture on Mary Wollstonecraft in the podcast Talking: Politics History of Ideas, which describes her life, philosophy and writing that I drew on heavily for this article.

Tupac, Days of Hate, Thomas Hobbes and the power of The Sovereign

You might think that the 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes and the rapper Tupac Shakur have very little in common, but there are some striking similarities. They both had a gift for using language and the medium of their time to illuminate the conflicts that defined the societies they lived in. They also explored similar topics, albeit centuries apart. 

Tupac’s music helped me understand a crucial concept in Hobbes’s writing. In 2002 Tupac posthumously released a song called Never Be Peace in which he says: “And I know there never be peace/That's why I keep my pistol when I walk the streets/Cause there can never be peace.” When I first heard this song, stoned out of my mind in an Amsterdam coffee shop, I thought “peace” is an odd word to use. Peace, the absence of war, is something that exists between nations. Tupac was describing a conflict between individuals in the lawless American slums where he lived. 

What Tupac meant by peace is living in a place that is harmonious, a place where you don’t have to fear that the next person you meet is likely to shoot you, a place where you can pursue activities other than those focused on your personal survival. Tupac didn’t live in such a society, which is why he had to carry his pistol with him.

What is peace?

This idea of peace has little to do with conflicts between nations. During Tupac’s life no nation was realistically threatening to land troops on American shores. Hobbes also referred to peace in his writing. He wasn’t thinking of the American slums that Tupac wrote about, but he would have understood that absence of peace meant living under the constant threat of violence from other people.

The peace that Tupac says will never be possible is crucial to understanding Hobbes’s writing. Its absence is what Hobbes describes as humanity's natural state; what he called the “ceaseless war of all against all”. I don’t know if Tupac read Hobbes - he was certainly smarter than his public image would have us believe - but if he did, Tupac would have understood Hobbes’s description of the state of nature as a war of all against all. It’s what he describes in his music.

Hobbes said that life in the state of nature was “nasty, brutish, and short”. A life that is nasty, brutish and short is what Tupac describes in Never Be Peace. The end of the song mentions various violent acts that Tupac has witnessed, including children being thrown off buildings.

Life in a sci-fi dystopia

When Hobbes wrote that the state of nature was: “nasty, brutish, and short,” as well as describing the life that Tupac wrote about, he could have been describing life in almost all sci-fi dystopias. Life in Oceania in 1984, or life outside the capital in The Hunger Games, or life in The Road, or life in Mad Max may not be described as living in a state of nature (some of these societies have advanced technology), but they do show a brutalised existence, closer to the constant violence that Tupac rapped about.

These novels and films are filled with characters who are mistreated, brutalised or killed by people who have power over them. Winston Smith in 1984 is subjected to his worst nightmare in Room 101. In Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil, Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) is tortured to death by Jack Linkt (Michael Palin). In Mad Max every second is a constant fight against bandits looking to murder or enslave anyone weaker than them.

Cheese-Rolling and civil war

Hobbes would have recognised something in these violent societies. He lived through the English Civil War and the 30 Years War, two incredibly violent conflicts where families, communities and countries were divided by seemingly irreconcilable disagreements over religion and government.

This very bloody period in European history informed Hobbes’s writing. David Runciman, Cambridge University politics professor, said that Hobbes thought of people as constantly in motion through life trying to stay alive in a dangerous world. Runciman has greatly studied Hobbes and much of my understanding of Hobbes comes from this accessible podcast lecture Runciman recorded.

Runciman employees the metaphor of the Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake to explain how Hobbes saw human life: a chaotic scramble down a steep slope, with people bumping into each other, falling down, scrambling to get back up, colliding again. We are all trying to get what we want, but due to the chaos that is life other people get in our way. This led Hobbes to the conclusion that life would be better if we collided less.

Defining peace

Hobbes said that we should seek peace, by which he meant limiting the number of collisions. I don’t know if Tupac would have thought of life as a race down a steep slope after a wheel of cheese, but he probably would have agreed that life would be better if we collided less. Maybe then he wouldn't need his pistol and we could be closer to the peace that Tupac thought was impossible for people like him.

To create peace we need an agreed definition of what peace is and someone or something that enforces this definition. This enforcement is necessary, according to Hobbes, so that we don’t resort to the violent state of nature. Your definition of peace is likely to be different to mine, so we’ll need some means of deciding on a collective vision of peace before it is enforced.

To achieve this Hobbes said that we all hand over our ability to decide on a definition of peace to one entity (a group or a person) that has the power to decide on what peace is and then to force everyone to conform to that definition. This person is the Sovereign. The Sovereign decides on what peace is, and then and forces us all to accept it. If we disagree with the Sovereign’s definition, then they use their power over everyone else to make them pull us into line.

Days of Hate

Hobbes would have also understood the nasty, brutish and short lives of the protagonists of Aleš Kot, Danijel Žeželj and Jordie Bellaire’s graphic novel Days of Hate. The novel follows characters fighting a guerrilla war against a tyrannical President in a future America riven by civil war. Violence, brutality and early deaths are common occurrences in this dark and unforgiving world.

In Days of Hate, America has become so divided between its blue and red tribes that violence is the only solution. The fight in the novel, shown through bombings and assassinations, is violent and destructive. It tears families apart and ruins lives. Hobbes would have understood this. He lived through the English Civil War and the 30 Years War.

Much of the novel takes place during the interrogation of Huian Xing who has been arrested for her role in the underground resistance. In Days of Hate the Sovereign, an unnamed tyrannical right-wing president beloved by white supremacists, has decided on what peace for this society is and Xing has rejected this. She is attempting to break away from this state, whose definition of peace is something she cannot live with. Agent Peter Freeman, the interrogator, is trying to pull her back into line.

Days of Hate is not an easy read because the process of being pulled back into line by society is painful, violent and cruel. It hurts not only the person attempting to break with the Sovereign's definition of peace, but their friends and family as well. The state has no regard for the people being pulled into line or the people around them. It simply enforces the Sovereign’s definition of peace.

Limiting the spread of politics

The state is like the Leviathan, the metaphor that Hobbes uses, a Biblical sea monster, reaching out with tentacles to roughly grab anyone who is diverting from the Sovereign's definition of peace. Hobbes thought the state, or the Leviathan, functioned better if the Sovereign was one person, although he said it could be a Parliament or a group of people. Hobbes was writing during the English Civil War and, to a degree, he was hedging his bets on whether the Sovereign could be a king or a parliament.

Hobbes believed we, everyone who is not the Sovereign, didn’t have a choice in who or what the Sovereign was. If the Sovereign can create their definition of peace then they have absolute power and no obligation to us, their subjects. Days of Hate show how dangerous a proposition this is when the Sovereign is a tyrannical white supremacist.

This system for organising the state seems far from ideal and there are many criticisms of it. The point, for Hobbes, was to limit the spread of politics. The Sovereign makes the decision about anything they want, but they cannot make a decision about everything. This means that for The Sovereign’s subjects, they are free to live most aspects of their lives as they wish. They have the Sovereign making sure that peace isn’t violated, but beyond that they are free, as politics has been safely limited to the domain of the Sovereign.

The appeal of Hobbes’s Sovereign

Writing during the English Civil War and the 30 Years War, I can see how this would be appealing. This was a time when conflict over religion and government had consumed all aspects of life and ultimately led to bloody fighting. Hobbes wanted to limit the spread of politics, as anything that politics touched in his life became a violent contest.

We might think this sounds appealing. I’m sure that many people think that politics has spread too far and touches too many aspects of our lives. Even the brands we buy are seen as indicative of our politics. Would it be good if the Sovereign made the difficult decisions over some aspects of our lives and the rest was free of politics? 

Days of Hate shows the problem with this. The Sovereign in the novel has not limited the spread of politics to all aspects of some subject’s lives, crucially the subjects who don’t support him. The Sovereign has chosen to extend politics (or their decision-making power) to aspects of people’s identity that the Sovereign and his supporters find objectionable. Thus, politics is not limited for these people.

The definition of peace and identity

If you are (to use some examples of things that have been politicised in Days of Hate) from an immigrant family, Asian, or a member of the LGBTQ+ community, as Xing is in the novel, this touches every aspect of your life. So, when the Sovereign decides to make these things political, politics (and violent conflict) spread through her entire life. You cannot be LGBTQ+ or Asian or any number of other identities without it being political. Not in the USA of Days of Hate - or in the USA of our world.

The Sovereign is limiting the spread of politics for some people, but for others it’s making every aspect of their lives political. When the Sovereign decides to use his or its power against you and members of your community then it’s not a matter of whether you accept their definition of peace or not. You cannot accept their definition of peace when this peace excludes you.

The limiting power of the Sovereign has only ever been for some people and not all people. This is what Days of Hate shows. In this novel many characters cannot accept the definition of peace because it subjects them to violent repression because of their identity. Days of Hate is a work of fiction, but it’s core lesson - that the Sovereign’s power to limit the spread of politics and create a form of peace is only desirable for people who are like the Sovereign - is an important lesson for our world.

The Trouble With Peace and shows the decline of Hobbesian Sovereigns

Last year I posted an article about Joe Abercrombie’s epic fantasy novel The Trouble With Peace and how it dramatized the conflicts that made our world. The book is out in paperback tomorrow and I would highly recommend reading it.

The novel is set in a kingdom that is on the cusp of an industrial revolution. The power of Kings and nobles is being challenged by both a rising class of merchants and industrialists and an emerging industrial working class, who are unhappy about the conditions they live in.

You can hear a brief clip from the audiobook read by Steven Pacey below:

Last year I wrote about @LordGrimdark’s novel #TheTroubleWithPeace from @Gollancz & how it dramatises the conflicts that made our modern world. It's a great epic fantasy novel and it's out in paperback tomorrow. Here's a clip of the audiobook read by Steven Pacey pic.twitter.com/zDFwWYDGGB

— Alastair J R Ball (@AlastairJRBall) May 12, 2021

This extract focuses on King Orso, newly crowned king of The Union, who has the unenviable task of leading his country through this time of transition and upheaval. Listening to this clip of the audiobook made me think about this section from my previous article, in which I explored how The Trouble of Peace highlights the arguments made by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson’s in their seminal work on economic development Why Nations Fail.

The Union and English history

In the United Kingdom (where I am writing from) the origins of the inclusive institutions that led to the industrial revolution can be traced to the political changes brought about by the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution of the 17th century. In Abercrombie’s novel, The Union is at a similar turning point.

Like England at the time of the Glorious Revolution, The Union is a monarchy but power ultimately rests with a group of people and is not solely invested in an absolute monarch. The Union is governed by the Closed Council, a group of senior noblemen around the king who hold offices of state. This transition from absolute monarchy to group rule is the beginning of the process of creating inclusive institutions.

Acemoglu and Robinson identify two aspects of a society that is needed for inclusive institutions. They are “centralised government” and “pluralism”. Both of these began in England at the beginning of the Early Modern period, when King Henry VII disarmed the rebellious nobleman and created a bureaucracy around the king.

This centralised power allowed for a government to be created. It also created pluralism because with the loss of their arms the barons lost their military power and thus they had to attain power and influence through non-military means. This led to them pushing for more powers for parliament.

Hobbesian Sovereigns

Recently I have been reading about Thomas Hobbes and how he thought of The Sovereign. King Orso is not a Hobbesian Sovereign has he doesn’t have the total power to make decision about his subjects as Hobbesian Sovereigns do. He has to balance the demands of the members of his Closed Council and those of the newly rising powers in The Union.

What I hadn’t appreciated about The Trouble With Peace when I first read it was that it’s not only about the economic changes that Acemoglu and Robinson identify in Why Nations Fail, but it’s also about the political changes that occurred that moved us away from a Hobbesian conception of the Sovereign to something more like the small-l liberal democracy we have today.

King Orso has to bear in mind some (but not all of his subject’s wishes) when he makes decisions for the Union. This is a step on the path towards a nation where The Sovereign is a body not an absolute ruler and is responsive (to a degree) to the wishes of all its subjects.

More on Hobbes soon

I will have more thoughts on Hobbes in a new blog post coming shortly. For now, I will say that if you’re interested in economic and political history and enjoy reading fantasy novels then I can recommend The Trouble With Peace. There’s a lot to dig into with this book.