Delafin

Fully Planned Queer Solarpunk Communism

I once went to yet another climate protest with a sign declaring my support for 'fully planned queer solarpunk communism' - but I got puzzled looks and questions from friends and bystanders. What did I mean by this? In this post I want to elaborate on what this idea, and solarpunk in particular, means to me.

Origins

Solarpunk formed firstly as an aesthetic countermovement in art and literature to cyberpunk and other related 'punk' genres (steampunk, dieselpunk,...), where the 'punk' stands for the life of the common people and their resistance from within. Cyberpunk for instance focuses on the low-lives in a dystopian near-future where giant (technology) corporations dominate all aspects of life, the planet and even beyond. So everything happens in the shadows (often literally) of these huge, towering megastructures, among the detritus of hypercapitalism. Its characters are the lost, discarded and downtrodden; the well-off are background characters at best; and the rich are the villains.

Cyberpunk originated in the early eighties with books like Neuromancer by William Gibson and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner movie, but four decades on, it starts to hit a little too close to home. Large corporate entities, economically larger than many nation states, are determining many facets our lives, are influencing politics openly or downright dictate the new rules. Fascist 'network-state' ideologies, vaguely reminiscent of the extraterritoriality described in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash or the Shadowrun TTRPG, is making inroads in the US. Technologies that are highly destructive and antisocial are being forced upon us, with the weight of billions of dollars thrown behind them to make them inevitable.1 The corporations took the genre as aspiration, not as a warning, in contravention of Gibson's intention.

A better world is possible

Solarpunk tries to do something similar, but on the positive side of the spectrum: imagining a better alternative for the common people. Yet it's not simply escapism at work here: it's not an imagining a world where we don't have those corporations, technology or the polycrisis bearing down on us, but one where we dealt with them. Solarpunk is pro-technology, but in a responsible, neo-luddite way.

By doing this, solarpunk is going beyond art, aesthetics and literature. It's more than a moodboard: it has political implications. It dares to think alternatives, which by itself is a radical act in our 'there is no alternative' neoliberal hellscape. It is an inspirational catalyst, while it doesn't discriminate itself against other inspirations: it looks for interesting ideas anywhere, oftentimes in the deprived, ignored but very much human corners of the world.

Solarpunk recognizes that technology can be great for bettering lives and easing work, but also that under capitalism, it will be used for more production, efficiency, extraction, repression and profit. In the solarpunk imagination, technology is decoupled from its capitalist profit motive. That way there is room to ask relevant questions beyond 'how to maximize our profit with this', like: what are the costs of this technology? How much of it do we need? Can we implement limits? Will it better our lives? Does it fit within our planetary sustainable boundaries?

And that last one, the sustainability, to me, is the central concept of solarpunk. It involves thinking about possible solutions to many issues, while also constantly checking how we can bring everything in line towards some form of equilibrium with the planet we live on. Rewilding parts of our planet to increase biodiversity (which in turns increases CO2 capture). Green urbanization to make cities more liveable while also attracting people towards higher density living (and profiting of the lowered cost of equally dense utilities). New modes of farming that is less intensive on the soil, freeing up much acreage by eliminating meat in our diets, and experimenting with urban agriculture to make cities more resilient. Build more around communities as default, instead of individual consumers: trains and other public transit instead of cars, more library-style services (lending tools people commonly use, but not daily), open education, communal housing projects, maybe even voluntary community service to help with the huge transition that will be needed to accomplish all of this. Using renewables for our energy use, and leverage the amazing efficiency of the bicycle! Favoring the local over the global wherever possible, adapting to every locale's specific needs and opportunities. Centering functionality over opulence. By making these choices it is possible to bring about a balance that both scales down the extractivist damage we're doing to our biosphere as well as increasing general welfare. A race to the top of human prosperity as the ultimate accomplishment.

As you can see, solarpunk is emphatically NOT green capitalism. It is questioning the fundamental underpinnings of capitalist economy and not using the market and the idea of so-called 'consumer choice' to hopefully get to some sort of equilibrium - while we know that's not how capitalism works. Capitalism strives for growth above all, while solarpunk would involve conscious scaling down of unnecessary production - in effect degrowth.

Fully planned? Queer? COMMUNISM?

Fully planned queer solarpunk communism is my personal variant of the 'fully automated luxury gay space communism' (FALGSC) meme,2 one that was popularized in a book by Aaron Bastani. This utopian view is one that is still shared by many communists today, the idea that once the economy is under common control, we will produce ourselves out of misery. Caviar, champagne and cars for everyone! While this may have been a worthwhile goal before the climate crisis came into view, such a productivist view is (unfortunately?) incompatible with our scientific understanding of ecology.

Thus my alternative, where solarpunk stands for sustainability, responsible technology use and human well-being, as I've discussed above.

'Fully planned' means taking control over the economy and consciously plan it within the confines of those sustainable limits. To contain the climate crisis (avoiding it is no longer possible) we'll have to live with constraints on production in the future.3 Since the needed downscaling of production would be economical suicide under a market system, a carefully planned winding down is necessary. This isn't exactly a call to return to Soviet-style planning, other forms of planning have been proposed that are more decentralized and democratic.

'Queer' is an expansion of the 'gay' statement of the meme, and a call to be radically open to all individuals. I think queerness is fundamentally about individual well-being, respecting everyone in their personhood and rights.

And the dreaded 'communism', to me, is the end-result. An economy no longer driven by capitalism, but one where the people have a say and are the ultimate beneficiaries of it, not just some resources to throw into the grinder. Maybe without the decadent ultra-luxury with private megayachts for everyone, but decent, fulfilling lives, beyond just 'bare life' that is now the reality for many at the bottom of our system. But maybe most importantly, communism also hints at a pathway to get there, the ingredient that is needed to transform an utopian ideal into something actionable and attainable.

Solarpunks of the world, unite! We have nothing to lose and the future to win!

Further reading

Non-fiction

Fiction

  1. And even then they fail, see the completely insane and dystopian idea of going to live - and work! - in the Metaverse; itself a name stolen from Stephenson's Snow Crash.↩

  2. see here↩

  3. At least some form of planning will be needed to combat the crisis, something that's also recognized by the scientists at the IPCC.↩

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