Let us Imagine a Future Worth Hoping For

Stephenson's Snow Crash presents us with a human-race headed in the wrong direction. That is to say, the world is on the verge of - though one could argue that it has already experienced - societal collapse. What remains in the land that once was America is laissez-faire on crack cocaine. The federal government has relinquished most of its power to competing organizations: mercenary armies compete for national defense contracts; the CIA and Library of Congress have merged into the for-profit CIC; the Mafia controls several giant and powerful international corporations; burbclaves are among the few remaining safe places to live, with private security forces to keep law and order; local governments owned by entrepreneurs (Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong) control much of the land, and highway companies compete with each other for drivers' business. Stephenson points out the irrelevance and wastefulness of the federal government with the inclusion of a detailed description of its toilet paper policy. After all, "This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem?"

So is this the future that we are headed towards? I certainly hope not. This laissez-faire-gone-haywire future is one that we have already encountered in Octavia Butler's Parable, and even somewhat in Nova and Neuromancer. Is this just because people don't have a clear ideological alternative to entertain in their minds about the future of society (and sci-fi authors write about futures that we can relate to and imagine with some ease)? In Jameson's article, he points out that most people do not have a grasp on what a Marxist society would look like - what a society that has overcome and risen above the principles of the market would resemble. Obviously, this has to do with the lack of examples in the world of Marxist-based states.

"I have said before that the so-called crisis in Marxism is not a crisis in Marxist science, which has never been richer, but rather a crisis in Marxist ideology. If ideology - to give it a somewhat different definition - is a vision of the future that grips the masses, we have to admit that... no Marxist or Socialist party or movement anywhere has the slightest conception of what socialism or communism as a social system ought to be and can be expected to look like" (355).

So all we know is capitalism and free-market, for that is the only example of functioning society the world can provide us with. Does the fact that we do not understand any other way for society to function mean that we are indeed doomed to the fate that Stephenson suggests in Snow Crash? How do we avoid these mistakes? How can we build a society that we can enjoy imagining?