Let’s say you work in a candy factory cleaning the chocolate vats, and the job is dull, but you’re like, It’s necessary so the kids can be safe.
Except then you read an article about how your boss’s boss basically puts cocaine in the chocolate bars that makes kids go insane with lust and craving for more of their product.
—
So you quit and get a loan to go to school and work for an NGO that builds solar drinking wells, and yeah it’s dull and mostly filing forms—no use for a brain, or that degree—but it’s for a just cause.
Except then you read an article that says your group is throttling local attempts at self-rule and is also a shell company for billionaires laundering their wealth.
—
So you buckle down and learn to unclog drains and go from home to home fixing pipes. The pay is good and so is the work. You own your own tiny shop for a while.
Except you read an article that says the plumbers’ unions are racist through and through, and yeah, it’s completely true—your friends are always complaining about how the Mexicans do shoddy work and undercut rates; they’re obsessed with this rumor of a big startup, flush with VC dough, that’ll teleplumb toilets using workers from India on mobile phones. But you’re like, That’s not the fault of Indians or Mexicans; Capitalism is our real foe!
—
So, because you went to college, you believe in a global working class, and you organize your peers in a universal strike.
And, huzzah, utopia arrives!
Now there are no corporations or profit-driven destructive ways. All candy is small batch artisanal. Housing is a human right. Land is repossessed and local cooperatives unite to turn empty lots into apartment blocks using government know-how and might.
Except you realize the cooperatives aren’t doing such a good job—their pipes don’t fit tight, and the co-ops are slow and have no incentive to hurry up, because there’s no competition—so you’re like, Okay, let’s tweak the system.
The co-op that you run has gotten great ratings, so you tell some of the failed co-ops, Hey, let me take over your work.
Except their leaders refuse—and the only way you can get their cooperation is to promise that they’ll have the biggest and nicest apartments in the new buildings.
—
So you buy some of the half-completed apartments, finish them in double-time, and because your apartments are move-in ready from the start—they’re more than mere promises—people compete for spots in your new buildings. Private property is sort of illegal, but only in a very soft way (nobody wanted to bust into peoples’ houses to repossess grandma’s wedding jewelry), which is why you are now offered gold in return for a lease. Refusing these bribes, you ask the government to allocate the leases.
Except you realize the government officials will happily accept the gold; they simply transfer it to accounts offshore.
—
So instead, you say, If you move in, you need to contribute labor and resources to our co-op. The gold still goes to foreign shores, but now it’s used to buy resources, and your organization (let’s not call it a “company”) grows and houses lots of people.
Except now your co-op controls lots of buildings, and there is a thriving market in re-selling leases. The people to whom you gave the big apartments are subletting them in exchange for favors or leases to other land or government scrip or nice jobs for their kids.
—
So now you’re very powerful. You control a lot of land and a lot of housing, but you don’t use your power at all. You keep your head down and focus on giving people houses. As an example for others, you live modestly, in a small apartment in one of the early buildings, but of course you have a private car and a private driver, and people give you awards and say nice things about you, and you have fancy meals and are generally honored and feted for all the good work you’ve done for others.
Except others want all the social status you’ve accrued. They dig up the deals you made with those early developers, and they say, This person betrayed the ideals of the revolution! They say you and other greedy leaders like you are the reason the revolution failed (by now everyone is starting to think that it was a failure).
—
So you get relieved of your job and of the non-companies you control. You’re encouraged to flee into exile, but you don’t, so the government puts you under house arrest instead.
Now your former co-op is reorganized as a corporation. The system of in-kind investment, where people give you resources in order to move in, is formalized: the company offers stocks and other debt in order to raise capital. It’s so huge now though that it mostly just lobbies for government money, which it gets, in huge quantities.
—
While under house arrest, you start reading up on history and philosophy and you realize that at this point, the government can descend into crony capitalism; reprivatize and open the way for free-market competition; or embrace a theory of continual revolution, wherein the nation undergoes some sort of upheaval every generation in order to prevent an entrenchment of power by a hereditary ruling caste.
Personally, you’re in favor of the latter option, and you write articles and essays advocating for it. You become a hero to the young, who protest outside your house, and it looks like any day the government will be forced to free you.
Except instead you have a heart attack and die.
—
The government forbids any funeral gatherings, but some of your former revolutionary comrades (all ousted now and living in exile in Switzerland) get together for a little party, where they debate your legacy. They all agree that in your personal life you were “embittered, jaded, cynical, and hard to love.” But when it comes to what you did for others, they’re less certain.
All think you could have or should have handled your power differently, and almost everybody classifies you as a failure. The consensus is that you betrayed the revolution by amassing too much power, and you were too focused on “getting things done” and not enough on the egalitarian spirit of the times. The next generation, they say, will need “to swing a wider scythe,” to stop proto-capitalists like you before they arise.
The conversation gets pretty depressing and rather dark—people start to feel the world would’ve been better off without you around.
Except then one of your earliest partners—a manager from the factory where you used to scrub the candy vats until they had a shine—stands up to say, “Okay, they were an idiot. But you know what? They built some homes, unclogged some drains, and kept some kids alive.”
Naomi Kanakia is the author of three YA novels (HarperTeen and Little, Brown), literary short stories (West Branch, Gulf Coast), science fiction stories (Analog, Asimov’s, F&SF), poetry (Cherry Tree, Vallum), essays (The Chronicle Review and Los Angeles Review of Books) and a self-published cynical guide to the publishing industry. She lives in SF with her wife and daughter.