Imaginative Proposals, Part Zero: a Call for Writers
I have a small but dedicated fanbase of people on twitter:
Many do not actually agree with me, per se. Instead, they seem fascinated with weirdness-for-the-sake-of-weirdness — my draw for them is not so much that they necessarily agree with all of what I have to say, but that what I have to say is novel.
Novelty is sorely needed, and I — anarchist but accelerationist, pro-market but anti-capitalist, iconclastic, divorced of most subcultural ties but appreciative of them regardless, always controversial but rarely edgy — provide it. A friend recently described me as a writerhobo, in analogy with the term murderhobo, from tabletop role-playing games. For those unfamiliar, wikitionary defines it as:
A player character who wanders the gameworld, unattached to any community, indiscriminately killing and looting
I am a writer, surfing the wave of political radicalization, unattached to any community, indiscriminately writing and thinking.
This is why I am in some sense socially empowered to do what I am about to do: lay out a series of totally contradictory political programs simply for the sake of stimulating your political imaginations.
This is sorely needed right now. Most people are simply not that imaginative. Of course, the state goes to great lengths to make it so.
The impression, even amongst radicals, seems to be that there are basically only two possible (modern) societies: American-style capitalism, or Soviet-style socialism. Of course, mild variations are allowed — less or more government intervention, mostly. But everything is seen as basically being one of those two things.
Even the anarcho-communists — who, are, unfortunately, the largest group that I tend to find myself in general coalition with — seem to have the impression that they can run what is essentially a Soviet-style planned economy, but without any of the internal structures (an expert planning bureaucracy, police and soldiers to enforce the plans and the state’s property claims, and so on) that made that possible.
As someone who considers himself to be on the Left, and who believes that the Left is the politics of the imagination, this is very upsetting to me. This belief, I should mention, will likely persist beyond all evidence to the contrary:
I will always believe that the Left is the politics of the imagination — and if the actually existing Left ceases to imagine, then it is not the true Left, but a mere imposter grown up like a cuckoo in the nest that something greater should occupy. That this seems to have happened does not deter me:
As such, I am going to be writing a series of proposals for alternative political and economic institutions. They will be worked out, they will incorporate actual incentives, and they will be — above all else —weird. I am inviting anyone who wants to to join me in this.
Together, we can imagine a real future, distinct from the past. Not only is there an alternative, but many alternatives.
These are the other entries in the imaginative proposals series, with more to be edited in later:
Additionally, you can consider this to be an entry in the series, retroactively:
