In the Space of Capitalism, No One Can Hear the Proletariat
September 12 2024
Within the first twenty minutes of “Alien: Romulus”, I couldn’t help but remember Slavoj Zizek’s joke about Ewen McGregor when he said that he used to do working-class roles before “became a Jedi”. After the release of the newest “Alien” installment, many have been saying that it represents, “a return”, among other things, to the working class politics in the 1979’s “Alien” and 1986 “Aliens”. I disagree in the sense that the H.R.Giger-inspired Dieselpunk and Tarpunk (alien tar) futurism of the franchise did not provide enough representation of the proletariat for “Romulus” to return to. Rather, the new film is an unprecedented novelty in its working-class politics.
“Romulus”, as a matter of fact, goes out of its way to bust the myth that Ellen Ripley and her small crew were ever working class. In “Alien”, Ripley and her colleagues are no less than the administrators of the Nostromo, they are the button pushers of this major operation of industrial capitalism. The first film was an indictment of a universal free market space, where corporations like Wayland-Yutani own, or think they own, the universe. On the other hand, “Aliens” showed us the Kautskian reality of this capitalist space, as the Colonial Marines were added as a new “disposable” class in a way that demonstrated the nature of Empire, and the relationship between interplanetary capitalism and government; between those who own the means of production, and those who own the “legitimized” means of destruction. (Interestingly, Romulus returns to Karl Kautsky’s anti-colonialism in “Aliens” after James Cameron has already abandoned that for the more metaphysical and pretentious anti-colonialism of the “Avatar” movies).
Hence, the first two films of the franchise provide commentary about both the Ayn Randian ideology on the Right (embraced by the Intellectual Dark Web) and the Posadist ideology on the Left. Neither creative and visionary capitalists would be able to comprehend and contain the horrors of space for the betterment of humanity nor that intelligent life and technology in space itself would provide socialists a chance to overcome capitalism into a new era of universal socialism. The narcissism of the android “David” in the “Prometheus” prequels, reveals how the ideologies of progress helmed both by right-wing libertarians and left-wing liberals can become a terrifying obsession with little regard to actual existing humans. One can easily discern that the androids in the franchise represent a certain type of singularity between the professional-managerial class and AI, which serves the ruling class and / or its own agenda.
The anti-capitalism of “Alien: Romulus” truly shines as an interquel in the series, as it tells the story of a group of young adult futureless workers who go on a dangerous mission to steal cryogenic technology from an abandoned space station, so they can travel in deep space to a better, more just world. It is amazing how the film treats an issue that we have always taken for granted in the universe of the franchise as an impossible luxury (the equivalent of Spice in Dune), even as a representation of the right to have a future. We forgot that because we imagined cryogenic hibernation as something that even a medium-ranking officer like Ellen Ripley could enjoy. In “Alien Covenant”, the professional-managerial crew of the Covenant ship even treats cryogenic sleep as a burden, not a blessing. Before Romulus, the “Alien” film series always made us forget that cryogenics, prolonged living, and even the concept of the future are only for the rich.
Secondly, “Romulus” comments on the subject of singularity between artificial intelligence and the managerial class so elegantly by introducing the android Andy, the synthetic brother of the orphan main character Rain. Andy starts as a surplus, disposed, and abandoned conscious entity living among the underclass, and ends up as a cold calculating ruthless, and efficient officer when he gets “promoted” by gaining a software reboot and a higher security clearance within the Romulus space station. The transformation of Andy, especially when he automatically starts using the jargon of an expert, resembles the real-life retreat from politics after climbing the ladder from the lumpen class or the working class up towards the managerial class.
Thirdly, “Romulus” exposes the position of the working class and its doomed fate within that universe with great care. It is worth noting that unlike “Prometheus”, “Romulus” keeps the ruling class in the background, while it puts the working class and its interaction with the managerial class at the forefront. In the film, working colonies are underpopulated. The working class is overworked, overextended, and fragmented light years away, working conditions are impossible and workers are dying literally as much as figuratively in what have become as forced labor camps. This shortage in labor represents a crisis for the Wayland-Yutani corporation, similar to the real-world hypothesis of population collapse, a crisis that is making the managers of state capitalism obsessed with the reproduction of the workforce for future generations. The only thing that can match the universal ambition for growth by Wayland-Yutani is the “perfect organism”; the genetic evolution of humanity and its working force, in order to be able to expand the capitalist space infinitely without overcoming capitalism itself. At the end of the film, we see the result of this endless capitalist expansion lightyears away from socialism; it’s the cosmic horror version of barbarism. The result of this reproduction is not a superhuman workforce nor is it the transcendent child from “2001: A Space Odyssey”. It’s rather the fast-growing birth child of a horrifying experiment that can only destroy its own creators.
In the present real world, capitalism is only confined here on Earth, there is even a Cold War-era international treaty with a “socialist” view on the Moon as a heritage to all humanity. Elon Musk is planning to expand capitalism beyond that, but even before that happens, and even here at home, one can easily consider forcibly prolonged capitalism as the first and foremost form of collective cosmic horror.
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