Book Report - Half-Earth Socialism
I found this book in a youtube video ages back, I heard that it made 2 big claims: that we should relinquish half the earth back to nature and secondly that we should use algorithms to plan and run civilisation. I thought the first idea was interesting and the second idea was completely unhinged.
The first idea came back to me over time as I found myself thinking about property more. Property has meant that the majority of land in England has to have purpose and this lead to a country where most animals arn't able to exist unless they're useful to humans or small enough to weave between our systems. With a view like this I felt it would be interesting to read through the idea of returning half the earth to nature as a solution, see how viable it was and what the arguments for and against it are.
Overview
Half-Earth is, in my mind, mostly about utopias. It's intro points out that The Left has a strong tradition of utopian fiction and that this was a big provider of hopeful vision of the future for us. It states that this has died out and is something that should really be revived.
The book starts out talking about neoliberalism, discussing its origins and how it beat the left. It specifically talks about some of the lefts flawed views and this is actually crazy interesting to me. The authors points out that early socialists saw the world through a view they called "prometheanism", a view centered on fully "humanising" the world, turning the entire world into a tool or resource for humanity to plunder. Many saw the final aim of a socialist society to be the completion of this process. Early Neoliberalism pointed out the hubris in this belief, stating that it pictures a world network of factories and resources, all controlled in unison. It then points out that humans can't hope to have enough information or processing power to control an economy of all the worlds resources like this and that this is basically just utopian fantasy. Instead, they claim, we should trust the market to naturally control this flow, like some sort of memetic, society sized lifeform. Through this point, the authors claim, neoliberalism was able to argue itself forward and spread.
The book then moves on to talking about the damage neoliberalism has done to nature and how an ideology of infinite growth and progress cannot exist whilst maintaining nature. Its claims that humanity need nature to exist and therefore neoliberalism has to claim it can control nature to still provide humanity with what it needs. It gives examples where neoliberal ideology has tried to control, simulate or reproduce nature and has failed. Then it makes a really interesting point. It claims that nature is infinitely complex and uncontrollable in the same way the neoliberal market is, and for humanity to thrive we have to control one of the two. Neoliberalism innately is against market control, so has to try to control nature, and this is where its downfall is. From this, it claims the lefts direction should be towards controlling the market instead, but with an "epistemological humility", this way we live in tandem with nature and vaguely point it in a direction that benefits us.
Epistemological humility, epistemology is the philosophical study of knowledge, the idea of what knowledge is and where it comes from. To have epistemological humility is to know you cannot know everything and to work with that knowledge.
The book then spends its second chapter talking about technologies that neoliberals claim will allow them to control nature or just generally technologies we could see used in our future. It critiques some of these and keeps others, trying to decide what tech we can and cannot use whilst caring for the environment. Specifically, it discusses permaculture and solar/wind power and critiques carbon capture, SRM and nuclear power. Its critique of nuclear power is weirdly convincing.
SRM stands for Solar Radiation Management, its the deeply unhinged idea of filling the atmosphere with reflective particles to stop global warming rather than cutting co2 emissions. This is something some scientists are genuinely trying to argue for. It's science fiction with 0 research, a critique of it can be read here
During all of these chapters it hints at the kind of world it wants. This generally seems to be a world implementing some pretty radical ideas including global veganism, a centrally controlled global network of resources and factories and obviously giving half of the earth back to nature. These seem pretty intense but it gives a good go at arguing them, with mixed success. For veganism, it points out that not only does the majority of pollution and land usage come from the meat industry but also that the majority of historic pandemics come from our interactions with animals too, something I didn't know and thought was wild. For half-earth, it mostly points out the logistics of CO2 absorption and enabling animal preservation and biodiversity. For the factories and global network, it dedicates the whole next chapter...
In the books 3rd and penultimate chapter, the authors talk about what a global network of resources and factories could look like. I found this pretty dubious, mostly because there was 0 maths or explanation and it was mostly just vibes based. But I guess the idea is to encourage utopian thinking.
It describes a system where autonomy is given to small local communities, owning and running factories, land, housing and the rest. These communities are then represented under larger bodies that have a connection to a global central planning group it called "gosplant" (a pun on gosplan, the ussr's economic planning body). It states gosplant would use algorithms to map out a simplified version of the worlds resources and labour power. Notably, this is not done using money. The book argues money isn't a great tool for this stuff, having a single currency as an abstraction of literally everything in the world doesn't work, instead we should have different systems for different interrelated resources. Gosplants systems would instead map out things like "community 1 say they can produce y amount of wood, community 2 can produce this amount of steel, community 3 have listed a new need of z amount of electricity". It would then use simulations of this simple system to create sets of 5 year plans which would be laid out before the communities and democratically voted for.
This system would also need semi-real-time data of these resources. It points to weather predictions as an example of a similar technology existing in the real world, creating top-level predictions for the entire earth but keeping these predictions course and letting local weather stations report the actual values which are then used to tweak the top-level model.
One neat point it makes about the resource simulations that produce world plans is that they must be kept simple and we must ensure they are understood as flawed tools and nothing else. It states that people should be able to access and run these simulations themselves and part of basic education should be an understanding of how they work. That this has two benefits: Firstly, if people can understand how their role in a factory or farm is part of a bigger system, they'll value that role a lot more. Secondly, a simple and accessible system is very democratic. Anyone can access and run their own simulations and possibly suggest them to gosplant.
After this, the books final chapter is a short utopian fictional story set in a small community in this world. This story is a homage to The News From Nowhere, a story written by William Morris, who I understand to be a famous Anarcho Socialist. Both stories center on "William Guest", a socialist from the time the books were written, who wakes up in the authors utopia. He explores it for a day, talking to people, critiquing and asking questions of it, then at the end of the day goes back to bed knowing he'll wake up back in his original time.
The half-earth story sends Guest to 2047, he wakes up in the communal dorms of a permaculture farm and ends up talking to members of the farm about where he is. They discuss the local structure and the global structure that allows it to work along with conversations around their general culture and daily life. The head of the farm then takes him to a factory where he talks to some workers there, discussing what drives them to do factory work, mostly being holiday or bonuses such as nicer housing arrangements. He then goes back to the farm and works for the rest of the day, before he sleeps and the story, and the book, ends.
Bits I find interesting
Utopias
The books opinion on utopias has really stuck in my head. There's definitely a truth to the fact that nowadays people really struggle to imagine what a promising future society would look like. I've read a book called "Capitalist Realism" before that claims this is a core part of how our current society functions. We can only be happy with a sub-par system if it destroys any other idea of how a system could be. It summarised this as "Its easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism".
I want to say there's a point to be made about the fact that Cyberpunk is our main form of futurist fiction at the moment, I don't really know what that point is though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Solarpunk gives me a lot of hope as a form of possible utopian ideology. Its a shame it originally is just drawn from an aesthetic but there's a lot of people actively politicising it and theres a few different attempts at solarpunk manifestos, all of which have a lot to say.
The idea that the left used to revel in utopianism is really eye opening and makes a lot of sense to me, why fight for change if you have no clue what kind of change you want, or what future you want to live in. The left has definitely lost this now, we tend to fall into abstract ethics and have no real idea of what kind of world we want. More layperson accessible conversation and art about what the world could be is something we should really be working on.
Neoliberalism and old socialist views
The points the book as to make on neoliberalism were all new to me. One wild thing the book claims is that neoliberalism was semi-designed. It references the Mont Pelerin Society, an economic think-tank who still exist today and who's original purpose was essentially to rebrand the economic right to help them regain favour. Their original mission statement says that freedom and human dignity are "under constant menace from the development of current tendencies of policy" and that "the position of the individual and the voluntary group are progressively undermined by extensions of arbitrary power".
This was kind of interesting to me. I also found the idea of socialism starting out with a prometheanist view really shocking, its so completely opposite to how most of the left think nowadays. I know there was a big redirecting towards green politics in the 80s but I don't think I realised what leftist politics could look like without that element to it?
Control over nature
One issue I do have with the book, is it kind of says "a flaw in the lefts early views in the 1800s is that they felt they could fully direct all of natures resources and systems" and then later it basically suggests a world where we do that again but this time with computers. I think this is kind of silly. However, I think maybe I'm misunderstanding this a bit. I think their point is less to control nature, and more to control resources. We let nature exist and run its natural balances, but we also log and measure everything we harvest and work on, and control our actions. The idea is that nature is uncontrollable but our economy isn't.
Planning is a core function of a civilised society and that innately requires us to control these things somewhat, so I think I agree with this. I'm hesitant to start involving computers or to take it as far as the book implies we should but it's also fair to say that if we're controlling these things, its crazy to not use computers somewhat, data control is literally the one thing they're good at.
Despite this though, I still just get dystopian visions of technocratic societies held to the whims of algorithms or bureaucratic kafka-esque governments of permanent inaction. But I think this is maybe me carrying these thoughts to extreme extents and like, usage of these things to the same level as we have today (or maybe even a decent bit less) could work if we just redirect what its applied to and how. Just because we use computers to help plan stuff, doesn't mean we have to live in a cyberpunk nightmare realm.
Also, somewhat a tangent but the book at one point tells a really interesting story about an experimental landscape called biosphere 2. This was an experiment run by extremely rich hippie business men in the 1990s to try and create a fully closed ecosystem. Essentially to reproduce earth in a closed space that could be moved to mars or a space colony. This was attempted twice and both attempts cost $200 million each. The book has a really nice line where it says "if it cost $200 million to keep 8 people alive, what is the value of the actual earth?". I thought this was cute and kind of really wholesome. We have something really special and we should be treasuring it.
Pandemics and veganism - This is crazy if you read anything read this.
Early on in Half-Earth Socialisms first chapter it mentions a really odd fact that I'd never heard before. It claimed that most pandemics and wide-scales diseases come from our interactions with animals and that this has always been this case since humanity first started domesticating cattle. Its best put across with some quotes.
It is now widely accepted that prior to the rise of animal husbandry, humans suffered no disease apart from the occasional parasite or unlucky infection, suggesting that the pathogens that now plague humanity ultimately come from other animals. [75]
In the context of the 300,000 years that human beings have existed, zoonoses only emerged relatively recently following early animal domestication 10,000 years ago. Measles likely evolved from rinderpest (a bovine disease) 7,000 years ago; influenza began infecting humans 4,500 years ago after waterfowl were domesticated; leprosy came from water buffalo; and variants of the common cold can be traced to horses. [...] smallpox probably originated 4,000 years ago when a gerbil virus jumped to the newly domesticated camel and then to humans.
This really stuck with me for a few days and I spent a solid while thinking about. Its a really good argument towards global veganism, or at least towards preserving forestry (it later points to a number of diseases that came from disrupting habitats). In fact, its such a good argument for this that
After the 2003 SARS epidemic, The American Journal of Public Health published an opinion piece demanding a change in how 'humans treat animals - most basically, ceasing to eat them or, at the very least, radically limiting the quantity of them that are eaten' as a basic measure of disease prevention.[81] The American Public Health Association has long called for a moratorium on factory farms.[82] Wildlife conservation is now seen as an essential component of public health because nature preserves act as cordons sanitaires.[83]
In my mind, global veganism can't be forced on people, but this is evidence that at the very least we should be working towards eliminating factory farms from our economy and trying to subsidise alternatives or educate people on how much can be made without animal products.
The ego of neoliberalism
Kind of a smaller thing but thing this book talks about a lot is the ego required of neoliberalism. It points out that neoliberalism claims the economy is too complex to control but will work if we leave it to do its own thing. It then claims that this means neoliberalism instead tries to control nature a lot and gives multiple examples of this happening and then backfiring e.g. biosphere 2 failing or mono-crops and factory farms producing viruses/pandemics. This is an innately egotistical act and the book critiques it, saying we need "epistemological humility".
As a programmer and, currently, a worker in the tech-startup space, I 100% see this. I don't have much to say about it but so many tech start-ups assume technology can do anything and they can and should solve any problem they're faced with. Its bad and reading this really brought it back to the front of my mind.
I feel the need to link this meme here.
Running the world with algorithms
A big issue I had with this book to begin with (and somewhat still do) is its enthusiasm for using programs and algorithms to plan society. As a programmer I've heard stories and seen examples of this going wrong so many times. People treat computers like everything machines that never do wrong and this is just completely unrealistic. This holds especially true in systems with potential for bureaucracy where computers are regularly used to avoid responsibility or failure. My main worry with this book was that it was going to unknowingly suggest societal choices that lead to some kafka-esque technocracy.
Luckily I don't think it entirely did. The book never suggests automating government procedure or anything remotely similar. The entirety of its suggestions involve implementing machines that act as tools to help produce a variety of plans for society. The process around actually designing these plans, writing these up, putting them out to the world, discussing them and voting on them is done wholly by people. This I'm generally okay with I think.
The book actually has a lot of very interesting arguments to support its wishes. It gives examples where mathematicians have successfully created systems that map out a society's resources and organise or distribute them well. The best example in my mind is "Cybersyn", a system designed to manage Chile's government owned industry during Salvador Allende's socialist presidency. Cybersyn ran country wide and took measurements of the output of all industry, reported it back to a central headquarters where it was used for simulations during national planning. It would report shortages in resources or workers and allow the planners to communicaet and redistribute resources as needed. This system was so reliable that it even handled mass shortages and sudden massive shifts in context, something that was one of my main criticisms of the idea when I was first reading about it.
[Cybersyn] proved its mettle in October 1972 when the CIA organised a general strike of the bourgeoisie. Thousands of retailers, doctors, lawyers, engieers, factory owners and private bus operators joined in, but most dangerous of all were the owners of freight companies and their 40,000 truckers. Cybersyn allowed the government to survive this reactionary onslaught. The telex office [...] allowed key officials to communicate directly with workers (including the remaining 200 loyal truckers) and coordinate their activity. Industries could report shortages and the command centre could locate a truck, identify an unblocekd route, and deliver the necessary supplies. [...] As Medina puts it "the network offered a communications infrastructure to link the reolution from above, left by Alende, to the revolution from below, led by Chilean workers and members of grassroots organisations, and helped co-ordinate the activities of both in a time of crisis."
This is wild and really impressive. However, I'm hesitant to draw any opinions or conclusions from it. Whether this is a viable system is something for mathematiicans and government planners to decide, but it is really cool.
I wont labour on it but, as mentioned earlier, the book also points to weather simulations as examples of the same resiliant, computer driven, global plannin system. What the book has to say about this system and its functioning is really interesting. I think its very easy to forget how impressive our weather systems are. How big this global network of weather stations we have is and how impressive the computers working with their reports are.
Despite all of this however, I do have one larger complaint. I think its very telling of a lack of interactions with the tech space that this book never once talks about the dangers of automating democratic procedure or government procedure generally. Its not what the book is arguing for but what they describe could easily be misunderstood and they really should clarify and disavow,vin my mind.