this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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Socialism
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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.