this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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Maybe it's because I'm a person who regularly builds things from gardens to furniture to electronics to software, but I always thought of solar punk societies as worker-centered (farmers, mechanics, bakers, machinists, carpenters, etc.). I looked at solar punk as a tool to broaden the imagination of people who can't currently imagine a world structured in a way other than what it currently is; to show them a different kind of society that is sustainable.
Solarpunk itself isn't a problem, really. The issue is that it, as an aesthetic-focused movement, easily falls into utopianism. Ie, thinking of a perfect society, and trying to directly create it. This is counterposed to scientific socialism, analyzing the trends and trajectories of existing systems to figure out how to best steer development towards a better future. Utopianism is an utter failure, historically, while scientific socialism has resulted in many lasting socialist societies with great achievements for the working class.
Solarpunk cannot stand on its own. It can be a great supplement to solid leftist theory and practice, but without that it becomes daydreaming and utopianism. Imagining a better world does little to implement it, and without that theoretical backing, it can actually be taken advantage of by reactionary movements like ecofascism, just like cottagecore got taken over by tradwife fetishism.
Exactly, the recognition of the central role of labour in society has to be part of any genuinely socialist aesthetic. Solar-punk sells a vision of a comfortable society while ignoring the labour that underpins it, how things are created is left entirely up to your imagination. Thus, solar-punk aesthetic becomes equally compatible with people enjoying the fruits of their own labour or a society built on slavery.
I definitely think it can be combined with socialist realism, and serve as good art for a coherent socialist party to use as agitprop. Clearly the ideas resonate, and fascists will just use it freely if we don't.
I agree that it can act as a complimentary vision to socialist realism, and the critique is of what's missing rather than anything being inherently wrong with it.
That's all fine. That's not the argument being made in this post, though. The post is about solar punk itself being fascistic.
I don't have to agree 100% with the post to comment on an adjacent interpretation. I think, for example, companies using it for selling products like dairy that go directly against green ecology is a great example of just how easy it is to manipulate.
yeah, you don't have to do anything, really. While I agree with you that it is a tool that can be co-opted, you replied to me, and I was specifically responding to the argument that solar punk is inherently fascistic.
Hope and imagining a better future is a crucial element of working towards such goals. Hope, like memory, is a mental capacity that can be trained. Reading solar punk novels can be part of motivation, even agitation. Calling it fascistic because it isn't enough is like calling walls anti-housing because a wall is worthless without a roof. Well, it is a start.
When the aesthetic takes the place of the movement, it turns from useful tool into an obstacle to overcome. That's why there needs to be a strong theoretical background using it as agitprop, and not just existing as something to be freely twisted to suit anyone's narrative.
If it can be twisted to suit anyone's narrative, why demonize it instead of using it for our narrative? Why focus on how it can be used instead of using it for good? Why alienate people who enjoy it instead of trying to win them over? I'm not even sure if you defend the post because you do not really seem to agree but neither do you explicitly disagree.
I'm not demonizing it. I partially agree with the post, but my opinion is as I stated it, solarpunk is devoid of a strong ideological backing and needs one to be a truly useful tool, otherwise its use is highly dependent on whoever is wielding it. Same issue that cottagecore ran into. It isn't inherently bad, nor is it actually a good thing as it stands.
This was the analysis I needed to understand. Much appreciated.
No problem!