The following essay has appeared in Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory.
The speculative imagination within, against and beyond Amazon: the Worker as Futurist project in an increasingly fascist context
Max Haiven
Abstract
Amazon, which might be said to emblematize the Silicon Valley ethos of mobilizing massive capital to ‘disrupt’ capitalist industries and everyday life, is today among the world’s largest employers, retailers and providers of cloud computing services. But the firm was in no small part built through science and speculative fiction, not only as a genre of entertainment it sells, but as a set of ideas, narratives, tropes and ideologies that have facilitated its internal and external relations. The firm promises to be a benevolent usher of a consumer utopia, but its success at the expense of its workers, many of whom toil in dystopian conditions. The Worker as Futurist project aimed to support rank-and-file Amazon workers to write and publish short, speculative fiction about ‘the world after Amazon’. This paper provides a brief account of that project, framed by the question of how workers can reclaim the power to imagine and shape the future from Silicon Valley and the form of capitalism it represents. It argues that collective creative and speculative writing practices can be an important part of building workers’ power in the twenty-first century. This is especially important as Amazon and other firms are rapidly aligning themselves with a form of twenty-first century fascistic politics.
Keywords
Amazon; capitalism; science and speculative fiction; creative writing; workers; struggles; Silicon Valley; writing; Amazon