Star Trek or the Matrix? Universal Humanism versus Technofascism

If we can’t stay the way we are now, do we prefer socialism or barbarism? In the 1920s, Rosa Luxembourg proclaimed that the future will either be a humanistic socialism or an authoritarian dystopia and barbarism. Perhaps she was not too far off. But that said, imagining a good society, a better society, has long historical roots that can be traced to antiquity that, for arguments sake, might begin with. Americans may perceive social class in terms of race and gender, but the influence of class, social relations based on the material underpinnings, remains primary. Economic factors shape business, commerce, access to educational and/career’ opportunities, and people’s livelihoods whether people think about it or not. Ongoing crisis in neoliberal capitalism, its governance, and culture has created strongly polarized politics in the United States and elsewhere.