We have held up both utopia and dystopia as symbols of alterity, to express this, often keeping them at not such a great distance from each other. The Communist Manifesto, for example, is utopian or dystopian depending on how you understand the dialectic of things such as abolition of private property. In a world ruled by the maxim ‘There is No Alternative,’ the first attraction of dystopia is it shows there quite obviously is….
Read MoreImage incorporates an original artwork by Tish and Adam Turl, Born Again Labor Tract 51: No Words are Good Enough for the Martyrs (2026)
Beyond the Reformist Imaginary
The twin determinist-fatalisms of Social Democracy and Stalinism, and consequently the crisis and collapse of these two trends and the mass parties they led, have relegated discourse over the shape of the future to the halls of economic abstraction — to a grand numbers game a dedicated cadre of critics and political economists conduct in perpetuity. The wider movement, meanwhile, either cheerleads all perceived sites of resistance to the main imperialist power, or limits the political horizon to immediate economic and democratic demands, with socialism relegated to a gesture of intent.
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