…eliminating capitalism the gain would be very modest, because technological progress would continue… Capitalism has… replaced other systems because under present-day conditions capitalism is economically and technologically more efficient. …as long as we live in a technological world we will never get rid of capitalism unless and until it is superseded by some system that is economically and technologically more efficient. -Ted Kaczynski, Anti-Tech Revolution
Might socialism be more efficient? The recent techno-utopian “fully-automated luxury-communism” proposals converge with ecofascist fantasies of a cohesive world, efficient and sterilized of “dangerous” diversities — that is, beliefs and ideologies destabilizing or disruptive to the advance of the techno-industrial system (e.g., adherence to old-timey customs, unwillingness to sublimate innate ability for violence and instead pursue every grievance through the state, intolerance of competing religions, or loyalties with ethnic groups rather than regarding as equally your people any who adopt the markers of an encompassing national identity). That free, unmanaged Nature be prioritized is an irreconcilable divergence from the needs of the techno-industrial system — and this priority would include keeping human nature free from unnatural technological boundaries, forsaking the exchange of servile obedience for the provision of living requirements; in Nature, life’s necessities are provided via exerted efforts and resilience in the face of failures. Deprived of this by technological mass-society, we have been rapidly conformed away from modes of living which evolution has naturally, over the lifetime of our species, shaped and adapted us. But if your aim is to get humans conformed to being totally cooperative and peaceable (and homogenized), technology offers excellent results and is pursuing its full potential. “For the good of humanity,” of course. For the children, rest assured. DNA-editing and chemicals can surely bring increased conformity and passivity in future generations. Socialist revolution, therefore, won’t save us from looming threats of total technological captivity.
Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly like to do homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology. -Martin Heidegger, 1954
Even if the prisons and schools run on solar-panel and windmill electricity, those means are themselves built on unsustainable production, not to mention the negative consequences of any lone set of values (not merely capitalist values) being instilled upon a massive, vast population; diversity in thought and action is essential, selected-for through evolution. If the power system exists to widely push your values, it could as easily be used toward disagreeable ends, the present Presidency and Brexit vote — and the use by both of Cambridge Analytica’s psychological data for manipulations — and this Internet being obvious, simple examples. Even with a socialist utopia employing carbon-offset hospitals to increase techno-medicare for all, and presuming doctors who make personal connections with their few patients (never ‘practicing’ through Skype), this would only treat but not address the causes of all the physical and psychological problems seen among people disconnected from Nature and being conformed to techno-industrial society’s conditions.
The pupil’s imagination is ‘schooled’ to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. -Ivan Illich
So-called ‘green’ energy technologies are no solution to stopping ecocide, only a perpetuation of pursuing economic growth (via conversion of wild Nature). It will further entrench human dependency upon disruptive modern technologies which result from complex (and thus fragile) hierarchical supply chains of globally scattered and limited natural materials necessary to maintain (or increase) the highly-coupled, perilously unstable parts of the techno-industrial system which — although totally beyond any ability to predict and steer over a long term — try to manage our society and the remaining natural world (that is, whatever tamed shadow of wild Nature is allowed to exist beyond the leash of technological uses).
Under the pretext of saving labor, the ultimate end of this technics is to displace life, or rather, to transfer the attributes of life to the machine and the mechanical collective, allowing only so much of the organism to remain as may be controlled and manipulated. -Lewis Mumford
It’s not even certain that state control of a renewables-only grid would provide enough electrical power to run the standard industries of civilization, which is the reason power plants operate (not for home-heating/cooking). There’s no signs that socialism will forego industrial production; China and Venezuela (and Cuba, and North Korea) are mightily pursuing techno-industrial progress and economic growth; these socialist setups (against Nature) are not disavowed but defended, confirming that communists/socialists actually aim to beat capitalists in creating “economic prosperity,” i.e., to provide frivolous material garbage to further our separation from Nature and thus deepen our attachment to the technological system.
