So why is the possibility of utopia being ignored by anarchists at best and dismissed as delusional at worst? At least part of the reason may lie in a general feeling of hopelessness anarchists get upon being faced with what seem like insurmountable problems: an ever-expanding capitalist state system, a frying planet, and now a widespread turn towards cultural reaction in much of the global north and south.
However, other political traditions seem to have wasted no time coming up with their own trajectories towards a better future, despite grappling with the same obstacles. Marketarians (the ones who call themselves “libertarian” but aren’t) devote a great deal of effort to proselytising their vision of a fully-privatized world run by tech billionaires. Liberals and neoliberals like Steven Pinker expound a vision called “ecomodernism” which combines green capitalism with a love for technocratic centralism which puts the professional classes in charge. More decentralism-oriented progressives like Jeremy Rifkin a “collaborative commons” based on a coming “internet of things” which will eventually reduce scarcity to the point of near-nonexistence. Even a handful of Marxists have jumped on, with “ecosocialism” and “fully-automated luxury communism” being Marxian reinventions of the very things social anarchists like Peter Kropotkin and Murray Bookchin once advocated.
From ‘Social Anarchist Futures’ by Connor Owens
