Mallworld, Incorporated (eBook)

Preface

Utopian visions have been in short supply for decades, and the world sorely misses them. Many leftists, supposing that twentieth-century totalitarianism grew from utopian thinking gone wrong, retreated into social critique and eschewed forethinking vision. Moreover, America’s traditional pragmatism makes it theory averse and shortsighted, thus fortifying capitalism by restricting our mental horizons of what’s possible. It is true that we can’t wipe the slate clean and begin society anew. But political progress requires inspiring visions of a more dignified world, because without vision the public remains politically disengaged and demotivated—or worse, motivated by fear.

Thus, political theorists have a responsibility not only to critique current systems, but to offer well-thought-out conceptions of potential futures. The creation of a better world requires unleashing our collective imagination and action. To quote John Dewey:

“Wisdom is a moral term, and like every moral term refers not to the constitution of things already in existence, not even if that constitution be magnified into eternity and absoluteness. As a moral term it refers to a choice about something to be done, a preference for living this sort of life rather than that. It refers not to accomplished reality but to a desired future which our desires, when translated into articulate conviction, may help bring into existence.”1

Mallworld, Inc.: Bound Forward is thus a book of two parts. The first completes the story so far, of a people enduring a totalizing commercial oligarchy who confront the fact that their society is a dystopia, despite its high-tech bread and circuses, and who amass the political will to end it. The second part, a lengthy epilogue in three chapters, concludes the trilogy by describing the utopian society they erect. After critique, there comes proclamation. After a no comes a yes.

The utopia at the end of Mallworld, Inc. is, of course, based on the political and ethical principles explored throughout the series. I call it an interconnective republic. Its citizens repudiate the capitalist, instrumentalist worldview that people and nature are merely tools and resources, and instead embrace an interconnective worldview that fully comprehends our circles of social, material, and ecological bonds. It is an outlook that is not only possible but is already emerging in world culture today. An interconnective society is governed by an ethos that I have called coexaltation, the cultivation and cherishing of healthy social and natural interconnections. Since we find ourselves thrown into a world of physical and social interrelations, it makes sense to make those interrelations good and healthy. Coexaltation thus calls on us to revere and elevate (exalt) both our shared humanity and the natural environment from which it arises; and since we are linked in relations, it recognizes that we must exalt them not in isolation, but together (co-). As noted in Book II, interconnection is an idea already present in many wisdom traditions, but perhaps I have usefully formulated an associated ethical norm, given it a name, and used it to imagine a new and better world that can help inspire political action.

The epilogue, moreover, goes beyond first principles to specify what a society based on coexaltation could look like in practice. The strength of political theory as an architectonic field of knowledge is its ability to analyze phenomena at multiple levels, from the abstract to the practical, and then recommend methods, structures, institutions, and policies for social improvement. Beginning with interconnection and coexaltation as its meta-politics, the interconnective republic conjoins several political philosophies in order to create conditions for human flourishing, dignity, and meaning: along with classical republicanism, deliberative democracy, and parts of liberalism it respects the freedom of interconnected individuals, while meeting people’s material needs through ecosocialism and their social needs through communitarianism.

Coexaltation gives us a standard: it endorses those ideologies that enhance interconnection and rejects those given over to alienation or social atomization. Thus, the interconnective republic starts from republicanism because that ancient school of thought takes seriously the ideas of the public good and civic virtue, of setting aside self-interest to attend to social connections. It is conceived of as a representative and deliberative democracy that gives voice to all the interconnected parts and protects them with civil rights. Deliberation provides a solvent for modern communications technology and its propaganda and advertising machines, enabling the deep examination of signs, concepts, values, and identities. With socialism, democracy and civic virtue extend from the political realm to the economic, and with environmentalism, care for the common good extends to nature, since a healthy environment is required for any society to subsist. With freedom a cherished value, so too is diversity in culture and identity, since diversity is the inevitable result of freedom. Finally, communitarianism not only furnishes a school of civics for the interconnective polity, but close, supportive relations within healthy communities offer a cure for modern alienation, nihilism, and empty consumerism.

The epilogue proposes some specific institutions and even policies, although many details remain indeterminate because a democratic vision should and must leave much to the decision of a people themselves. Therefore I have tried to limit my description to the political, economic, and social framework in which democratic decision-making takes place, and I consequently believe that interconnective republicanism is a political rather than a comprehensive doctrine.2 An interconnective, coexaltive worldview is not comprehensive, but involves only palpably social and political concepts: societies and polities are plainly interconnected structures; and an assumption that people want their social relations to be healthy, however they define that, seems like common sense and does not impose a singular, comprehensive way of life on anyone.

This utopia is not a flight of fancy but is meant to be practical and attainable. I didn’t imagine a paradise in some far-flung future completely unrelated to the world today, nor one dependent on as-yet unrealized technology. I took care to write a utopia in which the institutions, policies, and measures have been tried and tested somewhere in real life or are close enough to existing practices to be workable, such as workers’ cooperatives, intentional communities, public media, and deliberative democracy. Thus, my utopia does not envision starting the world from scratch as a project or remaking human beings as if they were clay to be molded—in rejecting an instrumentalist worldview, we must abjure such approaches and confine ourselves to proposing practical transformations for our readers’ consideration. Furthermore, I see this vision as a next step in historical development, which itself might someday be replaced by even more evolved social structures. For example, I do think that anarcho-syndicalism or some other version of anarchism is within the realm of human potential, although only after long habituation to social norms that would allow the state to wither away. Consequently, my next-step utopia retains a state. However, I do mean it when I say the model presented here, or something much like it, is the kind of world humans today ought to try to build—an interconnective republic would be a healthy, vibrant, free, equal, communal way of life that I think many would find appealing.

Unlike other utopias, the Mallworld, Inc. trilogy not only shows a brighter future, it describes a path to get there. The “transition problem” that has bedeviled socialism is not easily solved, and despite my best efforts I found no magic solution. There will be no automatic mechanism of history, no spontaneous evolution, no vanguard-directed revolution leading to a classless society. Nothing will relieve us of the hard work of politics. It seems to me that the only way to overcome the entrenched, vested interests that keep us stuck in neoliberal capitalism is to build a truly labor-based, democratic political party that engages in principled political education and action, combined with civil society activity and street protests that culminate in massive democratic demonstrations and a general strike. The aim must be to democratically take political power and then pass and implement new laws in order to create a more just society. A new world will have to be chosen, proclaimed, and worked for consciously and democratically by the people.

Such a political transformation can be a largely peaceful process, although one can never rule out that some clashes will occur—but they will mostly be initiated by the forces of reaction that traditionally use violence against the forces of democracy. Despite the difficulties, we should not be afraid of political change. Indeed, stubborn conservative resistance to change is the main cause of turbulence in our time. Social unrest is not a result of political change, but of a lack of the change that any society must embrace lest pent-up demands for justice explode. We must keep in mind just how inspiring an attitude of progressive experimentation can be: motivation, initiative, purpose, happiness, and joy result when we have a positive vision of a better way of life and...