A cost of living: Dialectics of the Necrocene and securing the means of resistance

Abstract

This article introduces a new dialectical framework of the Necrocene, which presents a binary choice between two possible futures, immediate catastrophe or imminent utopias. The first future, immediate catastrophe, is post-capitalist and post-human underpinned by an adherence to business-as-usual capitalism. The second proposition imminent utopia is imagined as a post-capitalist and post-growth future defined by economics that are eco-socially balanced. Therefore, while the political status quo is predominantly concerned with scrambling to save capitalism and peddling the myth of green growth these dialectics quickly direct us to a profoundly different path. A path defined by a particular eco-socialist perspective on the need to transcend capitalism and its ecocidal growth imperative as a revolutionary necessity. Although this position is not in itself novel to radical socialist and ecological politics, the article finds that an intellectual preoccupation with distant utopias significantly outweighs the practical strategic considerations relating to the messy and uncertain but essential work of anti-capitalist struggle in the here and now. To this end, it argues for imminent utopias to be enacted through a revolutionary praxis of prefiguration, embracing the uncertainty of the current historical moment, as an opportunity to actively forge post-capitalist relations that prioritizes economies of care, eco-social balance and collective flourishing.