on anarchist themes in Pluribus

This post takes for granted that one is familiar with the first season of the Apple TV+ show Pluribus—I don’t make any effort to explain the premise of the show or to avoid any spoilers about it.

As I concede just about every time I write something related to anarchism, I don’t claim to be a serious student of this political philosophy, and I don’t know if I’m ready to declare my allegiance to it. Yet, there are two basic beliefs of anarchism that I find attractive and that keep me coming back to anarchist writing (both fictional and philosophical):

1. anarchism believes in the possibility of a better world than the one we live in
2. anarchism is very skeptical of any concentration of power—it insists that that better world must be collectively decided on rather than imposed on us

Ever since finishing the excellent tv show Pluribus back in December, I’ve been thinking about how both of those themes are implicitly present in the show. I doubt that this was intentional, and yet the show does an excellent job of not only representing those two themes but also of playing with the tension between them.

On one hand, the most attractive thing about the global hive mind in the show is that it has the “better world than the one we live in” more or less figured out. Granted, there are some horrifying undercurrents to that better world, but one could imagine a slightly different, less horrifying take on this hive mind—one that was less doctrinaire about not eating meat or picking fruit but that was still capable of achieving a kind of responsible, “everybody lives” degrowth (in full disclosure, that link is a Doctor Who reference, not a philosophical argument) that sounds pretty appealing from an anarchist point of view.

And yet! Even if the Pluribus hive mind were less horrifying in terms of what it was willing to sacrifice and what lines it’s willing to cross in terms of its food supply, the show would still do an excellent job of interrogating whether that better world was truly something that individual members of the hive mind had consented to or something that had been imposed upon them. In Kōhei Saitō’s book calling for degrowth, he is as frank about the dangers of “climate Maoism” as he is insistent that something needs to be done to respond to the climate crisis. Even if we were to set aside the most horrific elements of the Pluribus hive mind, I’m not convinced that the better world that they’ve achieved justifies the lack of autonomy and agency that it cost (I am somewhat surprised to find myself acknowledging that “Superman: Red Son” also plays with these themes, though I don’t think it does so as well as Pluribus does).

I appreciate that both of these themes are present in anarchism, even as their combination puts us in a bit of a pickle! Even that pickle, though, has an attractiveness on its own. Part of what draws me to anarchism is its insistence on the necessity of a better world, but perhaps the bigger part is the belief that we can achieve it without needing to resort to a hive mind of dubious consent (or even worse methods) for doing so. That last part is very hopeful, and that’s something I really need these days.

• Pluribus
• anarchism
• degrowth
• climate crisis
• Superman: Red Son
• hope