four futures (peter frase)

Four futures is a brief work of political futurology which offers four potential visions of the future: communist/ socialist/ rentist/ exterminist. The latter is the most terrifying and most akin to the current situation. Frase argues that as automated work replaces human work, the need for a low-skilled ‘working class’ population diminishes. They then become a burden, meaning that the cleanest solution for those who possess wealth/ power is to remove them from the social fabric. In a sense this was the Cummings/ Johnson line at the start of the current crisis. This is the books most dystopian vision. At another extreme, Frase suggests that the introduction of universal income could lead to a more egalitarian society where poverty is eliminated. Intriguingly, this is another idea which is receiving far more attention in the wake of the pandemic. The book is readable, thought-provoking, peppered with astute references from science fiction and other futurologists. Nevertheless, at its conclusion, it’s clear that no-one really has the faintest idea how the world is going to pan out as we head towards the middle of the century; something that the 99.9% of the world who hadn’t anticipated the startling arrival of a pandemic for Christmas are now more than aware of. 

ps. I wrote the above words about three weeks ago. The argument that in certain cultures (notably UK&USA) the pandemic was viewed with a certain amount of sanguine disinterest at the start, and there was an inherently fascist notion underpinning that attitude, feels even more convincing today than it did three weeks ago. In the USA figures of authority in the bio-poliitcal establishment have openly come out and stated that those who are not of economic value are disposable. If it was not apparent that Covid-19 is something that has caught the governments of these countries completely by surprise, one might have been forgiven for believing in a conspiracy theory that tallies with Frame’s exterminist vision. The pandemic urges our societies to recalibrate notions of social value. Perhaps the more effective south-east Asian response is connected to a sense that the old still retain ‘value’, even if that value cannot be measured in bland economic terms.