Essay:Socialism and the vacuum: an opportunity

We need interstellar space communism!

Introduction

When Marx penned his fateful works, he, along with all the people at that time, knew little-to-nothing of what could become of the great void above us: space. To everybody who came before us, space was the ultimate oddity, something that was of the most arcane sort, and where only the most potent of things -deities- could possibly understand fully or even venture into. To even those most sapient scholars and thinkers, those whom were metaphorically bright  enough to create gadgetry as wondrous and novel as telescopes in an epoch otherwise filled with royal despots and superstitious clergy, were still, ultimately, unable to fully ascertain the means of entering the realm of space, which they so laboriously observed from their terrestrial rock. To wisemen such as Galileo or Copernicus, even the most visible of planets and natural satellites - Mars, Jupiter, Luna, Venus - all persisted, to them, as being something otherworldly, distant beyond reason, and therefore, forever unreachable. This feeling continued even till a century ago.

This epoch of malaise and ignorance towards reason, science, and astronomy has concluded. As the rockets of war, used as a means of extermination by the dark forces of nazism, were turned to rockets of the most early and primitive extra-atmospheric travel and exploration, humanity, us, began to make the first metaphorical steps out of our rocky prison, Terra. The rockets and steel to forge the nascent spacecraft, in this metaphor, were, and are, our key to freedom; a freedom that is of the most expansive and omnipresent breed, towards a realm infinite in size and scope, one where the very idea of night and day, air and ground, up and down, all of it transcended. This realm is, my comrades, space. Space, a realm truly incomprehensible in its area, where the number of worlds and stars, some of which are just like ours, is similarly unthinkable.

We communists, people who seek freedom and the liberation of humanity, must look towards  space, and the exploration and perhaps colonization of new worlds, as part of our struggle for a better society and world. Thus is my thesis.  

Earth is but a rock

History is marked by an ever-present and even militant increase in what is known, and what -is- unknown. Be it technology, land that humans inhabit or are aware of, or social/economic complexity, history has shown itself to be the pushing of what is considered “advanced” and “primitive” towards a more complex state. This is how we often perceive history as well. For example, when looking at the time frame from around 1350-1490 CE, we will often view the usage of firearms as something of great achievement in the technological growth for the people at that time, whereas in, for example, 1790 CE, firearms are often viewed as being a purely “standard” part of warfare, and we may view groups that did not use firearms by around 1790 CE as being “backwards”. To give a more cartographic example, we commonly view Julius Caesar’s crossing to the British isles during antiquity as being a great feat of ancient exploration, yet over a thousand years later, everybody in Eurasia was expected to know about the British isles, and the “newest” thing was the Americas. Therefore, it can be believed that the peoples to follow us centuries later will view NOT having a multi-planetary, perhaps even a multi-stellar civilization, as being “backwards”.

We are seemingly moving into an age of previously unthinkable technological and societal advancement. It can be said that we are “growing out” of Earth. If we are to survive as a civilization, and persist in inventing new technologies, residing on solely Earth will seldom be adequate in the context of the far-future survival. Any number of events could result in human extinction or at least a capitulation of technological civilization. Furthermore, it may prove to be only a matter of time until this planet’s resources, particularly in things such as rare earth metals, are depleted to the degree to which modern civilization will become impossible, lest totally efficient recycling technologies see usage in the near future. While there ought to be a regulation to growth, as reckless expansion, as that which occurs under capitalism, is primarily something that will destroy everything around, we must nonetheless achieve the dreams of the thousands of generations to come before us, and expand our civilization beyond this atmosphere, just not in a way that is wanton and careless.

Humanity, with socialism, can be a force for good

The reports from the capitalist news are not correct, pollution does not come with humanity, but with capitalism specifically. With a rationally planned economy, one without the depraved excuses of the capitalist class, the hubris of capitalism need not be felt on other worlds, should colonization happen to occur.

We must bring the red flags to the red planet!

If one were to look at near-by planets such as Venus or Mars, they are clearly not in a deposition that would be suitable for habitation by complex organisms or otherwise. However, this is not truly a deposition, but rather, a situation. Many, likely billions, of years ago, Mars, and even Venus were once worlds habitable for life, likely where vast regions of water resided. Unfortunately, with many factors, perhaps the most potent being the slow-yet-steady increase of solar radiation and luminosity, Venus was turned into a sulfuric hell, where the surface pressure would be crushing, and Mars striped of the vast majority of its atmosphere and other things that could protect against solar radiation, reducing its once great bodies of water to meekly cloud formations, underground ice, and polar reaments.

If we, humans, do not take action, Mars will be reduced of its remaining atmosphere, Venus will persist in being a volcanic inferno, and Earth shall remain but a fragile, dim, beacon of life, the only planet in parsecs that will carry surface water. Will can change this. If we terraform Mars, and perhaps Venus, in the course of merely a few centuries, these worlds could be turned back into blue dots, from icey or fiery deserts they once were. We do not have to persist in being polluters.

A final end to resource scarcity

With Earth but a rock, we must ultimately look elsewhere for the continued survival of advanced civilization. Look no further than asteroids. While in the present, the cost of such endeavors as asteroid mining may be unbearable, the resources it could provide will be unthinkable. Certain asteroids contain many trillions worth of resources in them, and others contain, for example, enough rare earth metals to where if they were introduced into a capitalist market, then the price of the rare earth metal would become, as they say, as cheap as dirt. If we could merely get one of these resource rich asteroids, we could fulfill the demand of that resource for thousands of years at the least. This could easily accelerate the introduction of post-scarcity, and therefore the transition from socialism to communism.

The threat of dystopia, under space-based capitalism

Let us attempt to think about the consequences in our modern capitalist society should big-bourgeois men like Elon Musk create a monopoly on the exploitation of natural resources in deep space. Insert things such as automation and the furthering of late-stage capitalism, all the social and economic stratification that comes with it, and we, the proletarians, could be faced with a socio-political order which controls all the media, has access to infinite resources, has automated law enforcers, and we could lose our last chance at liberating the workers from the chains of capital.

We must insure that space and otherworldly objects are not seized by the capitalists fer their greedy and murderous actions, space should, must, be the common ground for all of humanity, and for the betterment and sustainability of all.

Conclusion

Space, if used correctly and with great care, can create a civilization full with nothing but eudaimonia itself. It may seem impractical, if not silly now, but some day, the benefits space could provide will be truly beyond understanding, for only a society without scarcity -and therefore communism- could come from it.

“A planet is the cradle of mind, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.”  -Konstantin Tsiolkovsky