Where has the left’s technological audacity gone? | Leigh Phillips

The belief that technology will usher in a golden age for humanity is in vogue once more.

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the left would be crowing about how it produced technological progress far better than all this market fundamentalism.

The left should be proudly flaunting the record of governments around the world in responding to Covid .

Environmentalists and green NGOs should be celebrating research into genetically modified crops that if successful will reduce pesticide use, nitrogen pollution and land-use change.

But instead, anti-GMO campaign groups vandalized an Italian research trial of rice-blast-resistant arborio (risotto) rice this summer , while Greenpeace successfully convinced a Filipino court to overturn approval of commercial cultivation of Golden Rice .

We are caught between the capitalist techno-hucksterism of Musk and the Malthusian technophobia of Greenpeace .

In place of technophobia , the left’s traditional arguments around the “market alignment problem” still offer a better path toward enhancing human liberation.

The left should be talking once again about conscious design of the economy and which technologies we want to develop.