Economic Nonfiction and Fiction
By Annavajhula J C Bose, PhD
Former (Economics) Professor, SRCC
Consider War and Climate, and their nonfiction and fiction.
Human insecurity due to militarization—endless low- and high intensity warfare, simmering conflicts, civil strife and brutal policing–is integral to capitalist realism. There is militarized accumulation under capitalism (Robinson, 2022).
Robinson’s nonfiction refers to a situation in which a global war economy relies on the state to organize war-making, social control and repression to sustain capital accumulation in the face of chronic stagnation and saturation of global markets. These state-organized practices are outsourced to transnational corporate capital, involving the fusion of private accumulation with state militarization in order to sustain the process of capital accumulation. Cycles of destruction and reconstruction provide ongoing outlets for over-accumulated capital; that is, these cycles open up new profit-making opportunities for transnational capitalists seeking ongoing opportunities to profitably reinvest the enormous amounts of cash they have accumulated. There is a convergence in this process of global capitalism‘s political need for social control and repression in the face of mounting popular discontent worldwide and its economic need to perpetuate accumulation in the face of stagnation. Wars provide critical economic stimulus. They have historically pulled the capitalist system out of accumulation crises while they serve to deflect attention from political tensions and problems of legitimacy.
Speculative fiction, such as Le Guin (2002), written in the backdrop of the Vietnam War, continues to resonate today in the backdrop of Robinson’s nonfiction. It needs to be read again and again to cling to the quest for a gender equal, racially equal, economically fair and self-governing world sans naked imperialism and colonialism. Nonviolent social-anarchist civil disobedience should not be given up despite the fact that it is not easy to live in this world: “The shift from denial of injustice to recognition of injustice can‘t be unmade. What your eyes have seen, they have seen… From now on, if you don‘t resist, you collude. But there is a middle ground between defence and attack, a ground of flexible resistance, a space opened for change. It is not an easy place to find or live in.”
Potter (2021) informs us that Ursula Le Guin excelled in scientific fiction and fantasy (speculative fiction) oeuvre, not as mere escapism, but as a literature of revolt or social criticism by creating a more holistic understanding of characters and worlds based on anthropology, history, mythology, psychology, sociology, political science, philosophy, Jungian thought, Taoism, anarchy, and utopia. She stood for the causes of marginalized underdogs, feminism, environmental consciousness, and anti-war, pro-equality and pro-humanity concerns, and never lost hope―for a better world, one where people got along and took care of one another.
Ursula Le Guin, in a nutshell, was anti-capitalist, and stood for non-exploitation and peace, not war. All that she had written on intergalactic imperialism and colonialism is relevant in the current context of military industrial complex, inducing geopolitical violence and societal malaise. She was a gem par excellence in thinking about the future of humanity on Earth.
The climate crisis growing worse, is integral to capitalist realism. Barkdull and Harris (2024) are right in saying in their nonfiction that the climate crisis is imposed on the world by ecologically heedless practices of capitalism: ―Efforts to mitigate climate change have failed to stem the growing production of greenhouse gas pollution that has created and exacerbated it. This failure is largely attributable to capitalism, including its current neoliberal form, and its continued addiction to fossil fuels. Consequently, there have been growing calls to ramp up efforts to help communities and countries, especially the world‘s poorest, adapt to the inevitably worsening impacts of climate change. It is unlikely that adaptation policies premised on capitalism will be any more effective than capitalist-oriented mitigation policies.
They are also right in saying that “Instead, what is required is ―transformational change‖ premised on alternative socio-economic assumptions that put environmental sustainability, social justice and economic equity before material growth and profit-seeking. Mainstream analyses of transformation rarely move beyond recommendations for changing prevailing ideas regarding nature, coupled with upscaling renewable energy, while slow-rolling the transition away from fossil fuels. This leaves untouched the prevailing institutions of national and global societies that are blocking a rapid path to sustainability and an effective response to climate change.”
What we need is democratic eco-socialism, according to them, which has never existed before, and not just raising awareness of adaptation. It “offers a transformative alternative with much greater potential to enable fair and effective adaptation to the future impacts of climate change. It repudiates the growth paradigm that is an integral component of global capitalism and that all too often has been accepted by people who call themselves socialists or Marxists. In addition to environmental sustainability, it involves, among other things, ―an economy oriented to meeting basic social needs, namely, adequate food, clothing, shelter, education, health, and dignified work; a high degree of social equality; [and] representative and participatory democracy”.
In the absence of democratic ecosocialism, the worst things will surely materialize as depicted in the 1000-page terrifying novel (fiction) by Markley (2023). It is a work said to be of climate fiction or ‘climate assessment drama‘ even as it is a mixture of climate change impact on society, human psychology, political economy, and social realism. Reading it is equivalent to watching a terrible movie such as Hurricane Heist (Roberts, 2023).
It gets every issue in the complex subject of climate crisis on the table, covering climate policy, far-right reactionary backlash, technology, politics, and society to come to the following conclusions: “everybody is kind of fucking up all the time…activists, scientists and politicians none of them really know what they are doing…everything falls apart everyone dying…”.
Markley, thus, has projected a deadly dystopian future out of the current pathetic state of affairs. Hope we are not sucked into this terrifying future.
Homework: Examine how war and climate are interrelated.
References
Barkdull, John and Harris, Paul G. (2024). Adapting to Climate Change: From Capitalism to Democratic Ecosocialism. Capitalism, Nature Socialism. 35 (3).
Le Guin, Ursula K. (2002). The Dispossessed. Gollancz.
Markley, Stephen (2023). The Deluge. Simon & Schuster.
Potter, Bailey (2021). The Influence of Ursula K. Le Guin. PDXScholar. Portland State University.
Roberts, David (2023). On Writing an Ambitious and Terrifyingly Realistic Novel about Climate Change. Volts. January 20. https://www.volts.wtf/p/on-writing an-ambitious-and-terrifyingly
Robinson, William I. (2022). Global Capitalism Has Become Dependent on War-Making to Sustain Itself. Truthout. April 24.
