Governance anD What 'Others' Do in a Post-Capitalist Future
- Lynda
- Feb 23
- 11 min read
by Nina Munteanu
Thing About Governance (2026) - 4
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"Things About Governance" is a thematic series of articles, sponsored by Reality Skimming Press. Pieces in the series run from Jan-June 2026. Query us about contributing for $25 CAD a post at https://facebook.com/relskim or by email at info@realityskimming.com
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I wrote my first novel when I was fifteen. Caged in World was a hundred-page speculative story about a world that had moved “inside” to escape the ravages of a post climate-change environment. The eco-novel was about a subway train driver and a data analyst caught in the trap of a huge lie. Several drafts—and many years later—the novel became the eco-medical thriller Angel of Chaos (published by Dragon Moon Press in what would become the second book of The Icaria Trilogy). Set in 2095, humanity struggles with Darwin’s Disease—a mysterious neurological environmental pandemic. Icaria 5 is one of many enclosed cities within the slowly recovering toxic wasteland of North America, and where the protagonist Julie Crane lives and works. Icaria is run by deep ecologists (see glossary) who call themselves Gaians, and consider themselves guardians of the planet. The Gaians’ secret is that they are keeping humanity “inside” not to protect humanity from a toxic wasteland but to protect the environment from a toxic humanity.
Science Fiction on Governance & ‘Othering’
I adore science fiction for its large scope. It is the fiction of powerful metaphor, the fiction of political and social allegory or satire. Science fiction makes social commentary about a world and civilization: how it has come to be, how it works—or doesn’t—and how it will evolve. These narratives are often about leadership; leadership of governing bodies, of societies and communities, and of individuals—from within or outside a hegemony.
Some of my favourite science fiction stories are dystopias that critically explore societal governance through an individual’s journey, often at odds with the hegemony: Winston Smith’s struggle with oppressive surveillance in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four; D-503’s dangerous break from conformity of the One State in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We; Offred’s attempt to gain agency within a patriarchal totalitarian theonomic state in The Handmaid’s Tale.
In discussing her science fiction novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood notes that nations “never build apparently radical forms of government on foundations that aren’t there already.” She further added that The Handmaid’s Tale is a response to those who say that the oppressive, totalitarian, and religious governments that have taken hold in other countries “can’t happen here.” Atwood says that the novel is a potential cover story for how someone might seize power in the United States. She argues: “I didn’t put in anything that we haven’t already done, we’re not already doing, we’re seriously trying to do, coupled with trends that are already in progress.”
The novels I mentioned exemplify how a writer dissects a particular ‘order’ through the viewpoint of a protagonist, who often initially represents the hegemony encountering the ‘other’ or is ‘othered’ themselves. The protagonist must then navigate with integrity within—or sometimes outside—that hegemony.
In 1969, when I was finishing my first draft of Caged in World, I’d already become a champion of the environment; I saw how it was ‘othered’ and mistreated by industry, corporations, governments, and individuals throughout the world and in Canada. I read scientific papers, news articles and books on revolution. I became a student of climate change long before the term entered the zeitgeist. I explored other dialectics, ideologies and beliefs—Marxism, socialism, pantheism, and Buddism. I discovered the writings of Goethe and his exploration of naturphilosopie. I studied industrial capitalism and its roots in neoliberalism and colonialism. I noted how the post-war expansion of capitalism shifted from Fordist mass production to flexible automation, technology and AI. I saw the rise of multinational corporations, income inequality, and the commodification of everything—from water to human beings (Foucault’s homo economicus).
A hegemony that follows the economic system of late capitalism inevitably commodifies and ‘others’ with ruthless purpose. Once something (or someone) is commodified, they are given a finite value and purpose outside their own existence. They become an object, a symbol to use and trade. They become a resource to manipulate, exchange, and dispose of with impunity. And through this surrender to utility, they become ‘othered.’ The trees of the forest. Water. The laborer. The illegal immigrant. Aaron Bady of The New Inquiry writes that, “Instead of giving Texans a health care system, for example, late capitalism gives them the illegal immigrant, to hate, to fear, and to dis-identify with.” Each has a role to play in the late capitalist narrative of digital abundance and physical scarcity.
Deep Ecology* & “Gaia’s Revolution”
My novel Gaia’s Revolution, the first of The Icaria Trilogy—releasing March 10, 2026, by Dragon Moon Press—explores a collapsing capitalist society in Canada through ravages of climate change, water shortages, plague, and a failing technology. The story is told through the lives of ambitious twin brothers Eric and Damien Vogel, and the woman who plays them like chess pieces in her gambit to rule the world. The blurb for the book reads: “A fanatical deep-ecologist, Monica Schlange, harnesses two orphans in her bid to reshape humanity and its place in the natural world.”
The novel starts on December 13th, 2022, in Berlin, the day several members of the climate activist group Letzte Generation that includes Damien, are raided by police who seize their computers and phones. The twin brothers later meet in Treffpunkt, near the university campus, and argue ideology and revolution. Eric promotes adapting to climate change by somehow overthrowing the bourgeois plutocrats:
“You and I know that humanity won’t stop climate change,” Eric says. “Too many tipping points are already upon us … Change is inevitable. But, if we can direct how humanity adapts to our changing environment, we can still win…” Eric argues that humanity’s adaptation to climate change would invariably proceed with a small ruling class carving out a comfortable life itself—protected in their enclaves—amid a wider world of terrible deprivation. He argues the need to de-thrown the materialist ultra-rich elite, the self-serving oligarchs, to ensure a meritocracy of responsible citizens who can take humanity through the changes to come.
Damien wonders how his brother intends to achieve this. Will he suggest violent revolution to establish a dictatorship? How else would the rich give up their riches? Damien reviews other reformist movements that only resulted in terrible violence and one bad ruler simply supplanting another. He thinks of the fascist Reichsbürgers in his country who would happily replace their current conservative government and reinstate one of surveillance, repression, and incarceration that would threaten to slide into the final solution of genocide of an unwanted ‘surplus’. A society of disposable bodies, a biopolitical world of exterminism. Violent revolution—armed insurrection—is not the answer, he decides.
Eric calls out Damien’s reformist liberalism and accuses him of being an eco-capitalist in disguise. Espousing revolution over reform, Eric pulls out the worn copy of Walden Two from his jacket pocket, slaps it on the table and pushes it toward Damien. “That’s the answer, Dame.”
Walden Two is B.F. Skinner’s manifesto for achieving a modern ‘utopia’ through behaviour modification. Eric espouses a version of Walden Two to save humanity from destroying itself and the planet—but not before the world’s population must be drastically reduced (by some catastrophic means which he fails to explain). Eric intends to start his Walden Two in Canada:
“Because it’s a huge nation with a lot of space and few people,” he argues. “Did you know that Canada holds on average only 4 people per square kilometer? Germany stuffs 240 people in the same area. And China, which is virtually the same size as Canada, holds 153 people per square kilometer.” He picks up Walden Two and waves it at Damien. “Canada is a perfect place to start these. And, with global warming, we could settle in the boreal.”
A decade later, after he emigrates to Canada, Eric contemplates how the current Technocratic (see glossary) government came to govern Canadians. Several key events conspired to create a perfect storm for a new party to seize power. A combination of catastrophic climate disasters with extensive job loss and the Liberal government’s unpopular choice to accept millions of climate refuges tipped the population and they voted for change. The Technocratic wave of common sense solutions, most of it based on sound science, swelled and eventually engulfed the NDP and the Greens, who soon became redundant. Now Canada was ripe for Eric’s radical revolution…
“Reform and revolution are shibboleths that distinguish liberals from radicals,” explains Bady. “While liberals want to reform capitalism, without fundamentally transforming it, radicals want to tear it up from the roots (the root word of “radical” is root!) and replace capitalism with something that isn’t capitalism.”
But what would we replace it with?
In the early 1900s, socialist theorist Rosa Luxemburg popularized a slogan: “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.”
Life in a Post-Capitalist Future
In his book Four Futures: Life After Capitalism , sociologist Peter Frase considers effects of climate change and automation in possible outcomes of a post-Trump election America. Frase envisions four scenarios based on abundance and scarcity and whether a society operates by equality [and inclusion] (e.g., communism under abundance / socialism under scarcity) or hierarchy [and exclusion] (rentism under abundance / exterminism under scarcity).
Evoking SF author William Gibson’s famous statement—the future is already here; it’s just unevenly distributed—versions of all four of these systems are or have been either already in existence or are currently developing in the world. For instance, an early example of rentism began during medieval times under early English capitalism when gentry enclosed land in what has been misidentified as “the Tragedy of the Commons:” the tragedy wasn’t in the commons, but in the loss of them as land reverted from being a common right of peasant farmers to private property under the restricting control of large landowners. It was the beginning of the concept of ownership and exclusion.
Socialism vs. Exterminism under Scarcity
Given the currently growing scarcity of resources—lack of sufficient clean freshwater and rampant habitat destruction—the following scenarios are more likely to prevail: Socialism (if a society operates by equality) or Exterminism (if a society operates by hierarchy).
SOCIALISM: With scarce resources, Socialism (aka Pacific Edge by Kim Stanley Robinson) may arise within an egalitarian society if driven by altruistic notions of self-limitation. Ecologists describe such a self-limiting system as K-selected (see my discussion of K-selection and r-selection in my book Water Is…). A K-selected population operates at or near the carrying capacity of the environment and favours individuals that successfully and respectfully compete for resources and produce few young.
Potential Candidate: Norway is a good example of an egalitarian society driven by notions of self-limitation and decommodification of labor. It is run by a parliamentary constitutional monarchy and social-democracy with a robust, state-supported welfare model, a strong democracy with high taxes but also high trust in public institutions and low levels of corruption. Rooted in values of fairness, trust and shared responsibility and inclusion, Norway is considered one of the most egalitarian societies in the world, characterized by low income disparity, high gender equality, and a strong universal welfare system. This welfare capitalist state has decommodified labour to some extent by embracing a strong welfare system.
EXTERMINISM: According to Frase, Exterminism (aka Elysium or The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi) may arise under a hierarchical model of elitist wealth inequality, driven by greed and exacerbated by great uncertainty in the environment and resource scarcity. In this scenario, in which resources are both limited and uncertain, those few with access to them would guard or hide them away, possibly living in enclave societies with social control. Such a hegemony would ensure the distribution of scarcity and abundance in favour of its elite oligarchs by ‘othering’ and repressing its labour/worker population; this may even evolve to disposal of ‘surplus’ populations, no longer needed by an elite taken care of by technology.
“The real question,” writes Frase, “is not whether human civilization can survive ecological crises [such as climate change and habitat destruction] but whether all of us can survive it together, in some reasonably egalitarian way.” Within the late capitalist model the hierarchy of capitalist/owner and labourer/worker is based on mutual dependence; however, as automation, various technologies and AI supplant human labor needs, the mutuality crumbles. In his Exterminism scenario of hierarchy and scarcity, Frase proposes that: “When mass labor has been rendered superfluous, a final solution lurks…” Given the increased militarization of police, paranoia of elite rich (and governments), surveillance and government profiling, and increased incarcerations and detentions, more systematic forms of elimination are not an absurd conjecture.
Potential Candidate: The United States is a good example of a hierarchical class-stratified society driven by unsustainable resource exploitation and commodification of labor. It is a two-party federal system governed by a market-driven economy and a capitalist class system of major wealth and power inequality. The U.S. is considered one of the most unequal high-income economies in the world. Despite its egalitarian ideal, the country’s authority often pursues acts of exclusion, with citizens experiencing high income disparity, high poverty, poor healthcare and significant racial disparities in the justice system; it is no surprise that this is often accompanied by lack of institutional trust.
In the conclusion of his book Four Futures, Peter Frase cautions that none of the scenarios he forwarded are possible in their “pure form; history is simply too messy for that.” The scenarios are not “meant to represent something that could be implemented overnight, in a complete transformation of current social relations.” Frase encourages us to concern ourselves with the path leading toward these utopias and dystopias, rather than the precise nature of the final destination. “Especially, because the path that leads to utopia is not necessarily itself utopian.”
Frase concludes that at the very least, we won’t return to the past of late capitalism; something new is coming our way, he insists and pithily remarks that in some ways all four futures he describes are already here—just unevenly distributed…
Nina Munteanu
Glossary
Deep Ecology: An environmental philosophy and social movement advocating that all living beings have intrinsic value, independent of their utility to human needs. Coined by Arne Naess in 1972, it promotes a holistic, ecocentric worldview—often termed "ecosophy"—that demands radical, structural changes to human society to prioritize nature's flourishing.
Technocracy: A form of government in which the decision-maker(s) are selected based on their expertise in a given area; any portion of a bureaucracy run by technologists. Technocracies control society or industry through an elite of technical experts. The term was initially used to signify the application of the scientific method to solving social problems.
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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist, novelist and award-winning short story author of eco-fiction, science fiction and fantasy. Nina teaches writing at UofT and writes for various magazines, including essays on science and futurism. Her short work has appeared in Neo-Opsis Science Fiction Magazine, Chiaroscuro, subTerrain, Apex Magazine, Metastellar, and several anthologies. She currently has 10 novels published and several non-fiction books on writing and science. Her book “Water Is…” (Pixl Press)—a scientific study and personal journey as limnologist, mother, and teacher—was Margaret Atwood’s pick in 2016 in the New York Times ‘The Year in Reading.’ Nina’s award-winning eco-novel, "A Diary in the Age of Water" by Inanna Publications, is about four generations of women and their relationship to water in a rapidly changing world. Her eco-novel “Gaia’s Revolution” is currently in production with Dragon Moon Press.
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References
Angus, Ian. 1012. “The Spectre of 21st Century Barbarism.” Climate & Capitalism, August 20, 2012.
Atwood, Margaret. 2004. "The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake 'In Context'". PMLA. 119 (3): 513–517.
Atwood, Margaret. 2018. "Margaret Atwood on How She Came to Write The Handmaid's Tale". Literary Hub. April 25, 2018.
Bady, Aaron. 2014. “A Snowpiercer Thinkpiece, Not to Be Taken Too Seriously, But for Very Serious Reasons.” The New Inquiry, July 29, 2014.
Esping-Anderson, Gøsta. 1990. “The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism.” Cambridge, UK.
Foucault, Michel. 2010. “The Birth of Biopolitics (Naissance de la biopolitique): Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979.” Picador. 368pp.
Frase, Peter. 2016. “Four Futures: Life After Capitalism.” Verso Press, London. 150pp.
Gibson, William. 1999. “The Science of Science Fiction.” Talk of the Nation, Washington, D.C.: National Public Radio, November 30, 1999.
Luxemburg, Rosa. 1915. “The Junius Pamphlet: The Crisis in the German Democracy”, Marxist.org.
Neuman, Sally. 2006. "'Just a Backlash': Margaret Atwood, Feminism, and The Handmaid's Tale". University of Toronto Quarterly. 75 (3): 857–868.
Skinner, B.F. 1948. “Walden Two” The Macmillan Company, New York. 301pp.
Streeck, Wolfgang. 2014. “How Will Capitalism End?” New Left Review 2 (87): 47p.
Thompson, E.P. 1980. “Notes on Exterminism: the Last Stage of Civilization, Exterminism, and the Cold War.” New Left Review 1(121).
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