Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part I Naked Singularities
- Part II How We Became Post-Posthuman: Postcyberpunk Bodies and the New Materiality
- Part III Economics 2.0
- 6 The Most Radical Break
- 7 Cracking the Code
- 8 Toward a Postsingular General Economy
- Part IV The Last Question
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - The Most Radical Break
from Part III - Economics 2.0
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part I Naked Singularities
- Part II How We Became Post-Posthuman: Postcyberpunk Bodies and the New Materiality
- Part III Economics 2.0
- 6 The Most Radical Break
- 7 Cracking the Code
- 8 Toward a Postsingular General Economy
- Part IV The Last Question
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The communist revolution is the most radical break with traditional property relations, so it is no wonder that in its process of development there occurs a most radical break with traditional ideas.
– Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist PartyThe communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries […] It will have a powerful impact on the other countries of the world, and will radically alter the course of development which they have followed up to now, while greatly stepping up its pace. It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly, have a universal range.
– Frederick Engels, ‘The Principles of Communism’A hard take-off singularity ripped up social systems and economies and ways of thought like an artillery barrage. Only the forearmed – the Extropian dissident underground, hard men like Burya Rubenstein – were prepared to press their own agenda upon the suddenly molten fabric of a society held too close to the blowtorch of progress.
– Charles Stross, Singularity SkyAs we have seen, the technological Singularity of Vernor Vinge, Ray Kurzweil, and Hans Moravec is characterized by certain conceptual and rhetorical hallmarks. It is epochal, effecting a decisive and irrevocable rupture with the past and initiating a radically new phase in the trajectory of history. It is global, transforming life at every level and in every sphere of human experience, sweeping aside political, social, and even bio-ontological boundaries. It is spectacularly and sublimely climactic, even cataclysmic, for those who live through it – though this moment of crisis and upheaval opens out onto conditions of equally sublime novelty and possibility thereafter. Perhaps more than anything, it is inexorable: latent in the techno-economic mechanics of our civilization, indeed already unfolding before our eyes, its imminent realization as predictable and certain as a mathematical proof.
It requires no great leap of imagination to see the parallels between these features of Singularitarian doctrine and the deterministic contours of Marxist historiography – not just in the latter's lyricization of the communist revolution as a moment of sweeping and dramatic historical change, but in the teleological reasoning whereby it is posited as logically and scientifically inevitable.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- SingularitiesTechnoculture, Transhumanism, and Science Fiction in the 21st Century, pp. 93 - 123Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2013