PROLETKULT 13: eXpropriate SpaceX w/ Beka Valentine, Nick Chavez

The Antifada

Sean KB and AP Andy

Music, Arts

4.2 • 970 Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2024

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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The Antifada sideproject about the paranormal, the parapolitical, science fiction, and science futurism returns to check in on the New Space Age! While the left typically perceives Elon Musk as an all-talk grifter, our guest Beka Valentine argues his Starship program will make many off-earth industries, like drug manufacturing and solar harvesting, inevitable through dramatically lowering the cost of launching to low-Earth orbit. Could his and Bezos's fantasies of colonies on the moon, Mars, or in asteroid belts be far behind?

If so, what happened to the late-2010s enthusiasm for "Fully Automated Luxury Space Communism"? Is the left now anti-space, and is that position leaving the future entirely in the hands of capitalists and imperialist states? In her new essay for Strange Matters, Valentine argues we should begin strategizing for this new era so we don't get stranded from Elysium.

Guest co-host Nick Chavez gives the engineer's perspective, and describes his critique of ME Obrien and Eman Abdelhadi's vision of expropriating a SpaceX-like factory in their speculative novel Everything for Everyone.

Beka Valentine's essay in Strange Matters: https://strangematters.coop/political-economy-of-near-future-space-industries/

Inside Musk's Starfactory: https://wccftech.com/spacex-is-using-robots-to-make-starship-rockets-in-texas-shows-footage/

Nick Chavez's review of Everything for Everyone: https://designformanufracture.com/2023/01/25/review-everything-for-everyone-an-oral-history-of-the-new-york-commune-2052-2072-by-m-e-obrien-and-eman-abdelhadi/

Don't Let Them Leave! zine: https://ia903003.us.archive.org/20/items/dontletthemleave/Dont-Let-Them-Leave-zine-unimposed%20.pdf

Past episodes of Proletkult: https://www.patreon.com/collection/87627 Song - Giorgio Moroder - Racer

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Proletcult, the Antifada Side Project about the paranormal, the parapolitical, science fiction, and science futurism.
0:18.3	About eight years ago, a popular meme on the left, inspired by Aaron Bustani of
0:23.2	Novara Media, was fully automated luxury space communism. Its memes depicted neocosmonauts
0:31.4	planting red flags on soon-to-be-established lunar communes. But eight years later, that meme is now decisively cringe, with most of the leftist optimism
0:42.4	about the new space age crashed and burned like one of Elon Musk's starship test flights.
0:48.8	But that's not to say that the neoliberal space age of Musk and Bezos is not blasting off.
0:55.5	Joining us today is Becca Valentine, the SF-based co-founder of the queer and narcofeminist
1:01.1	hacker space Curious Labs, and the author of a new essay in Strange Matters called
1:05.7	Capitalism Storms the Heavens, in which she writes,
1:09.3	We Socialists Can Prepare for the reality of the space,
1:12.2	or we can plug our ears and pretend like it'll never happen
1:15.6	and be completely unprepared for it when it does.
1:19.5	Also joining us is longtime friend of the show, Nick Chavez,
1:23.5	a writer on the subjects of engineering and communism
1:26.5	for Brooklyn Rail, End Notes, and his
1:28.4	design for ManuFracture blog. Thanks for joining us, Becca and Nick. Let me start off by asking
1:34.7	both of you what your interest is in space technology and what hopes or fears you have about this
1:41.9	not too distant future of the new space age and its industries.
1:46.2	Let's start with Becca.
1:47.9	I've been interested in space stuff for a very long time.
1:50.6	I think I have like a sort of general nerds interest in space, right?
1:54.9	Space is cool.
	...

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