The Future Left | Submission Guidelines
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Invitations & Pitches
Pitches are welcome but please keep in mind that we will primarily be inviting people to compose pieces based on their work’s fit with our overall mission. Most of our essays and interviews will be 750–1500 words, focused upon alternatives and strategy. You are welcome to submit an already-completed piece to us, but if you want to make a pitch prior to putting it together, send us 3–4 sentences describing your idea, assurance that you have not submitted it elsewhere, and your timeframe for completion. We are only interested in original pieces for The Future Left, though they may be republished in other venues after appearing on our site exclusively for two weeks. Send your submission to: info@thefutureleft.com
Survey Responses
In our Facebook newsfeed, we will be running an ongoing series throughout 2019 in which we ask people to answer the question “what are three structural changes or policy changes that you think should be priorities for the left in the 2020s, the 21st century, and the remainder of the second millennium, respectively, and why these three, specifically?” Send us 3–6 sentences answering these questions via Facebook messenger or email and we will regularly select our favorites to repost daily in the newsfeed.
Publishing focus
Short essays, interviews, and other types of writing introducing and defending ideas for future ways to organize society on a large scale in the long-term, as well as policy ideas and alternatives for transforming still-existing structures in the shorter-term and medium-term. Overall, our focus is primarily on alternatives and strategy, emphasizing a more critical, academically-informed spin on futures journalism or solutions journalism. By “the future” we mean the next decade, the next century, or the remainder of the second millennium, with an angle either informed by history and the present, or breaking with history and the present entirely. We mean “the left” in the most fluid and open sense, recognizing that this term has had, presently has, and in the future will have, multiple possible referents. In the most general terms, what we mean by “the left” is that political alignment that prioritizes a future-orientation rather than a present-orientation, the horizon rather than the immediate, and change rather than stasis (greater freedom rather than lesser freedom and greater equality rather than lesser equality).
Structure & Content
Think of your essay, interview, or another type of writing as a kind of materially-grounded, academically-informed “mini-manifesto” (though not actually in manifesto form), a unique proposal for the future coupled with a strategy for how to arrive at its adoption and implementation. We invite you to frame your alternative in relation to existing problems where relevant (future problems may of course, be much greater than existing ones) but do not make problems more central than strategies or solutions. Also, you may reference empirical researchers and theorists, historians and futurists, amongst other types of intellectuals, but keep the language as clear and accessible as possible. Focus on summary rather than quotation and hyperlink to pieces from thinkers you summarize rather than directly invoking them in the text, as much as possible. Finally, keep in mind that, given that we are largely focused upon longer-term alternatives and strategies, it would be ideal if your contribution was of the type capable of retaining an “evergreen” quality, such that it could be useful not only now, but also in a decade or two, even if grounded in a thematic that is presently more topical than it might be later.
Futures/Solutions Journalism Examples
- “Time to Take Einstein’s Notion of One World Government Seriously” (Financial Times)
- “Beyond Prisons” (Future Left Podcast)
- “Fully Automated Luxury Communism” (The Guardian)
- “Who Gets to Go to Space?” (How We Get to Next)
- “Public Montessori Schools” (Ideas We Should Steal)
- “One Year Off, Every Seven Years” (Jacobin Magazine)
- “Want to Dismantle Capitalism? Abolish the Family” (The Nation)
- “Gerken-Yoshino Discussion on Liberty and Equality” (Slate)
- “The Public Banking Revolution Is Upon Us” (Yes!)
- “Progressives Are Pushing Economic Democracy. Democrats Need to Listen” (Yes!)
Critical Futures Studies
- Arizona State University School for the Future of Innovation in Society
- Corvin University of Budapest Futures Studies
- Foresight International
- Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies
- Tamkang University Graduate Institute of Future Studies
- East-West University Center for Postnormal Policy & Futures Studies
- Metafuture
- Ontario College of Art & Design Digital Futures
- San Diego City College Future Studies
- The New Centre for Research & Practice
- University of Technology Sydney Institute for Sustainable Futures
- University of the Witwatersrand Emancipatory Futures Studies in the Anthropocene
- World Futurological Congress
