Solidarity and Time: A Review

This was written by Meg Sherman, a Twitter friend who’s reviewed my short story Never Again (linked below)

https://rainershea.com/f/never-again-a-dystopian-short-story

Like all great Marxist thinkers, Rainer Shea has the rare gift of being able to perfectly distil ideas in words, a translator between the realm of pure thought and worldly things. His dystopian short story “Never Again” is a free-wheeling embrace of trans-civilisational histories that portrays the inherent fallibility of humanity. The story’s distinction between the adverse agendas of different species warring for hegemony mirrors the contemporary world’s distinction between civilisations, vying either for unilateral dominance – the US – and peaceful multilateral coexistence – in the solidarity of the BRICs. The story’s unifying theme, climate change to the extent it is an existential threat, is deftly used to demonstrate how the possession of vast wealth creates clevages within species that render the working classes and the rich alien to one another, the possessors of vast wealth insulating themselves while letting the workers die.

The story plays with the presence of inevitable sabotage of imperial projects, the imperial project that comes to fruition being an expression of techno-fascism that relies on a corporate stranglehold on digital dissent. This reflects the essential fact of the coming revolution, that it consists of the opposing forces of techno-fascism, like Google, and an aggregate of citizens using technology to create glitches in the matrix, like Julian Assange. The spirit of free will is evergreen, tyranny deciduous, breaking down seasonally.

By far the most impressive part of the story is the way the ruling classes create a solution for climate change which involves blocking out the sun. If, platonically, the sun is viewed as a symbol of the truth, Shea’s invocation of its demise is an allegory for the relegation of fact and evidence in the rule of tyranny. Russell Brand said that tyranny is the removal of nuance and the powerful people in the society Shea invokes make public involvement in politics pivot around centrally administered information that makes false binary distinctions between good and bad, devoid of nuance.

Marx’s legacy is sustained by the poets of his philosophy. The world is a bright clean canvas ready for the ink of our imaginations. I implore you to read Shea with an open mind and embrace the magic of revolution.