The Politics of Transhumanism

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The Politics of Transhumanism
Version 2.0 (March 2002)
James J. Hughes, Ph.D.
Originally Presented at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the
Society for Social Studies of Science
Cambridge, MA
November 1-4, 2001
For more information please contact:
James Hughes Ph.D.
Public Policy Studies, Trinity College,
71 Vernon St., Hartford CT, 06106, 860-297-2376,
[email protected], www.changesurfer.com
Abstract
Transhumanism is an emergent philosophical movement which says that
humans can and should become more than human through technological
enhancements. Contemporary transhumanism has grown out of white, male,
affluent, American Internet culture, and its political perspective has
generally been a militant version of the libertarianism typical of that culture.
Nonetheless transhumanists are becoming more diverse, with some building
a broad liberal democratic philosophic foundation in the World
Transhumanist Association. A variety of left futurist trends and projects are
discussed as a proto-“democratic transhumanism.” The essay also discusses
the reaction of transhumanists to a small group of neo-Nazis who have
attempted to attach themselves to the transhumanist movement. For the
transhumanist movement to grow and become a serious challenge to their
opposites, the bio-Luddites, they will need to distance themselves from their
elitist anarcho-capitalist roots and clarify commitments to liberal democratic
institutions, values and public policies. By embracing political engagement
and the use of government to address equity, safety and efficacy concerns
about transhuman technologies, transhumanists are in a better position to
attract a larger, broader audience.

Introduction
When it comes to political memes, transhumanism
in its purest form doesn't have any fixed niche.
Instead each host or group of hosts link it to their
previous political views. (Sandberg, 1994)
Since the advent of the Enlightenment, the idea that the human condition can
be improved through reason, science and technology has been mated with all
varieties of political ideology. Partisans of scientific human betterment have
generally been opponents of, and opposed by, the forces of religion, and
therefore have generally tilted towards cosmopolitan, cultural liberalism. But
there have been secular cosmopolitans, committed to human progress
through science, who were classical liberals or “libertarians,” as well as
liberal democrats, social democrats and communists. There have also been
technocratic fascists, attracted to racialism by eugenics, and to nationalism
by the appeal of the unified, modernizing nation-state.
With the emergence of cyberculture, the technoutopian meme-plex has
found a natural medium, and has been furiously mutating and crossbreeding
with political ideologies. One of its recent manifestations has adopted the
label “transhumanism,” and within this sparsely populated but broad
ideological tent many proto-ideological hybrids are stirring. Much
transhumanist proto-politics is distinctly the product of elitist, male,
American libertarianism, limiting its ability to respond to concerns behind
the growing Luddite movement, such as with the equity and safety of
innovations. Committed only to individual liberty, libertarian transhumanists
have little interest in building solidarity between “posthumans” and
“normals,” or in crafting techno-utopian projects which can inspire broad
social movements.
In this paper I will briefly discuss the political flavors of transhumanism
that have developed in the last dozen years, including extropian
libertarianism, the liberal democratic World Transhumanist Association,

“neo-Nazi transhumanism,” and radical democratic transhumanism. In my
closing remarks I will suggest ways that a broader democratic
transhumanism may take shape that would have a better chance of attracting
a mass following and securing a political space for the kinds of human selfimprovement that the transhumanists envision.

Libertarian Transhumanism: Max More and the Extropy Institute
This is really what is unique about the Extropian
movement: the fusion of radical technological
optimism with libertarian political philosophy…
one might call it libertarian transhumanism.
(Goertzel, 2000)
In the 1980s, a young British graduate student, Max O’Connor, became
interested in futurist ideas and life extension technologies while studying
philosophy and political economy at Oxford. In the mid-1980s he became
one of the pioneers of cryonics in England. After finishing at Oxford in
1988, having been impressed with the United States’ dynamism and
openness to future-oriented ideas, O’Connor began his doctoral studies in
philosophy at the University of Southern California. At USC he began
mixing with the local futurist subculture, and soon teamed up with another
graduate student, T.O. Morrow, to found the technoutopian journal Extropy.
O’Connor and Morrow adopted the term “extropy,” the opposite of
“entropy,” as the core symbol of their philosophy and goals: life extension,
the expansion of human powers and control over nature, expansion into
space, and the emergence of intelligent, organic, spontaneous
order. O’Connor also adopted the new name Max More as a sign of his
commitment to “what my goal is: always to improve, never to be static. I
was going to get better at everything, become smarter, fitter, and healthier. It
would be a constant reminder to keep moving forward" (Regis, 1994).
In early issues of Extropy magazine More began to publish successive
versions and expositions of his “Extropian Principles.” In the early 1990s
the Principles resolved down to five:

1. BOUNDLESS EXPANSION: Seeking
more intelligence, wisdom, and
effectiveness, an unlimited lifespan, and the
removal of political, cultural, biological, and
psychological limits to self-actualization and
self-realization. Perpetually overcoming
constraints on our progress and possibilities.
Expanding into the universe and advancing
without end.
2. SELF-TRANSFORMATION: Affirming
continual psychological, intellectual, and
physical self-improvement, through reason
and critical thinking, personal responsibility,
and experimentation. Seeking biological and
neurological augmentation.
3. DYNAMIC OPTIMISM: Positive
expectations fueling dynamic action.
Adopting a rational, action-based optimism,
shunning both blind faith and stagnant
pessimism.
4. INTELLIGENT
TECHNOLOGY: Applying science and
technology creatively to transcend "natural"
limits imposed by our biological heritage,
culture, and environment.
5. SPONTANEOUS ORDER: Supporting
decentralized, voluntaristic social
coordination processes. Fostering tolerance,
diversity, foresight, personal responsibility
and individual liberty.

In 1991 the extropians founded an email list, taking advantage of the
dramatic expansion of Internet culture. The Extropian email list, and its
associated regional and topical email lists, have attracted thousands of
subscribers and have carried an extremely high volume of posts for the last
decade. Most people who consider themselves extropians have never met
other extropians, and participate only in this virtual community. There are
however small groups of extropians who meet together socially in
California, Washington D.C. and Boston.
In the first issue of Extropy in 1988 More and Morrow included libertarian
politics as one of the topics the magazine would promote. In 1991 Extropy
focused on the principle of emergent order, publishing an essay by T.O.
Morrow on David Friedman’s anarcho-capitalist concept of "Privately
Produced Law", and an article from Max More on "Order Without
Orderers". In these essays Morrow and More made clear the journal’s
commitment to radical libertarianism, an ideological orientation shared by
most of the young, well-educated, American men attracted to the extropian
list. The extropian milieu saw the state, and any form of egalitarianism, as a
potential threat to their personal self-transformation. More’s fifth principle
“Spontaneous Order” distilled their Hayek and Ayn Rand-derived belief that
an anarchistic market creates free and dynamic order, while the state and its
life-stealing authoritarianism is entropic.
In 1992 More and Morrow founded the Extropy Institute, which held its first
conference in 1994. At Extro 1 in Sunnyvale California, the keynote
speaker was the controversial computer scientist Hans Moravec, speaking on
the how humans would be inevitably superceded by robots. Eric Drexler, a
cryonics promoter and the founder of the field of nanotechnology, also
addressed the conference. Also in attendance was journalist Ed Regis
(1994) whose subsequent article on the Extropians in Wired magazine
greatly increasing the group’s visibility. The second Extro conference was
held in 1995, Extro 3 was held in 1997, Extro 4 in 1999, and Extro 5 in
2001. Each conference has attracted more prominent scientists, science
fiction authors and futurist luminaries.
In the wake of all this attention, the extropians also began to attract
withering criticism from progressive culture critics. In 1996 Wired
contributor Paulina Borsook debated More in an on-line forum in the Wired

website, taking him to task for selfishness, elitism and escapism. She
subsequently published the book Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp through the
Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech (2001). Mark Dery excoriated the
extropians and a dozen related techno-culture trends in his 1997 Escape
Velocity, coining the dismissive phrase “body-loathing” for those, like the
extropians, who want to escape from their “meat puppet” (body).
The extropian list often was filled with vituperative attacks on divergent
points of view, and those who had been alienated by the extropians but were
nonetheless sympathetic with transhumanist views began to amount a
sizable group. Although More’s wife, Natasha Vita-More, is given prominent
acknowledgement of her transhumanist arts and culture projects, there are
few women involved in the extropian subculture, and there have been
women who left the list citing the dominant adolescent, hyper-masculine
style of argumentation. In a February/March 2002 poll more than 80% of
extropians were male, and more than 50% were under 30 years old
(ExiCommunity Polls, 2002). In 1999 and 2000 the European fellowtravelers of the extropians began to organize and meet, and the World
Transhumanist Association was organized with founding documents
distinctly less libertarian than the Extropian Principles. In the latter 1990s,
as transhumanism broadened its social base, a growing number of nonlibertarian voices began to make themselves heard on the extro email lists.
Responding to these various trends and presumably his own philosophical
maturation, More revamped his principles in 2000 from Version 2.6 to
Version 3.0, and from five principles into seven: 1. Perpetual Progress, 2.
Self-Transformation, 3. Practical Optimism, 4. Intelligent Technology, 5.
Open Society, 6. Self-Direction, and 7. Rational Thinking. In Version 3.0,
More adapts the previous, anarcho-capitalist “Spontaneous Order” into the
much more moderately libertarian:
5. Open Society Supporting social orders that
foster freedom of speech, freedom of action, and
experimentation. Opposing authoritarian social
control and favoring the rule of law and
decentralization of power. Preferring bargaining
over battling, and exchange over compulsion.
Openness to improvement rather than a static

utopia.
6. Self-Direction — Seeking independent thinking,
individual freedom, personal responsibility, selfdirection, self-esteem, and respect for others
In a more extensive commentary on his 3.0 principles More explicitly
departs from the elitist, Randian position of enlightened selfishness, and
argues for both a consistent rule of law and for civic responsibility.
“..for individuals and societies to flourish, liberty
must come with personal responsibility. The
demand for freedom without responsibility is an
adolescent’s demand for license.” (More, 2000).
He also argues that extropianism is not “libertarian” and can be compatible
with a number of different types of liberal “open societies,” although not in
theocracies or authoritarian or totalitarian systems. (More, 2000).
However, as a casual review of the traffic on the extropian lists confirms, the
majority of extropians remain staunch libertarians. In a survey of extropian
list participants conducted in February and March
of 2002, 56% of the respondents identified as "libertarian" or "anarchist/selfgovernance," with another 15% committed to (generally minarchist)
alternative political visions (ExiCommunity Polls, 2002).[1][1] In the
recommended “economics and society”reading list that More attaches to the
3.0 version of the principles, the political economy readings still strongly
suggest an anarcho-capitalist orientation:
Ronald H. Coase The Firm, the Market, and the Law
David Friedman The Machinery of Freedom (2nd Ed.)
Kevin Kelly Out of Control
Friedrich Hayek The Constitution of Liberty
Karl Popper The Open Society and Its Enemies
Julian Simon The Ultimate Resource (2nd ed.)
Julian Simon & Herman Kahn (eds) The Resourceful Earth
(More, 2000)

As the Julian Simon readings suggest, most extropians also remain explicitly
and adamantly opposed to the environmental movement, advancing the
arguments of Julian Simon and others that the eco-system is not really
threatened, and if it is, the only solution is more and better technology[2][2].
There are occasional discussions on the extropian list about the potential
downsides or catastrophic consequences of emerging technologies, but these
are generally waved off as being either easily remediable or acceptable risks
given the tremendous rewards.
This form of argumentation is more understandable in the context of the
millennial apocalyptic expectations which most transhumanists have
adopted, referred to as “the Singularity.” The extropians’ Singularity is a
coming rupture in social life, brought about by some confluence of genetic,
cybernetic and nano technologies. The concept of the Singularity was first
proposed by science fiction author Vernor Vinge in a 1993 essay, referring
specifically to the apocalyptic consequences of the emergence of self-willed
artificial intelligence, projected to occur with the next couple of decades. In
a February-March 2002 poll of extropians, the average year in which
respondents expected “the next major breakthrough or shakeup that will
radically reshape the future of humanity” was 2017. Only 21% said there
would be “no such event, just equal acceleration across all areas.” The
majority of extropians who expected a Singularity expected it to emerge
from computing or artificial intelligence, a medical breakthrough or an
advance in nanotechnology (ExiCommunity Polls, 2002).
Among millenarian movements, belief in the Singularity is uniquely
grounded in rational, scientific argument about measurable exponential
trends. For instance, “singularitarians” such as Ray Kurzweil
(Kurzweilai.net) map the exponential growth of computing power (“Moore’s
Law”) and memory against the computing capacity of the human brain to
argue for the immanence of machine minds. However, the popularity of the
idea of the Singularity also stems from the transcultural appeal of visions of
apocalypse and redemption. The Singularity is a vision of techno-Rapture
for secular, alienated, relatively powerless, techno-enthusiasts (Bozeman,
1997).[3][3] The appeal of the Singularity for libertarians such as the
extropians is that, like the Second Coming, it does not require any specific
collective action. The Singularity is literally a deus ex machina. Ayn Rand
envisioned society sinking into chaos once the techno-elite withdrew into

their Valhalla. But the Singularity will elevate the techno-savvy elite while
most likely wiping out everybody else.
For instance, responding to a challenge from Mark Dery about the socioeconomic implications of robotic ascension, Extropian Board member Hans
Moravec responded ““the socioeconomic implications are … largely
irrelevant. It doesn’t matter what people do, because they’re going to be left
behind like the second stage of a rocket. Unhappy lives, horrible deaths, and
failed projects have been part of the history of life on Earth ever since there
was life; what really matters in the long run is what’s left over” (Moravec
quoted by Goertzel, 2000). Working individually to stay on the cutting edge
of technology, transforming oneself into a post-human, is the extropian’s
best insurance of surviving and prospering through the Singularity.
Future Political Role for Extropians
In the last couple of years the neo-Luddite movement has grown in
coordination and political visibility, from movements against gene-mod
food, cloning and stem cells, to President Bush’s appointment of staunch
bio-conservative ethicist Leon Kass as his chief bioethics advisor and chair
of the President’s Council on Bioethics (PCB). Kass in turn appointed fellow
bio-Luddites to the PCB, such as Francis Fukuyama, author of the recent
anti-genetic engineering manifesto Our Posthuman Future: Consequences
of the Biotechnology Revolution (2002).
Despite faith in the inevitability of the millennium, the neo-Luddites have
sufficiently alarmed the extropians that in 2001 Natasha Vita-More
announced the creation of the Progress Action Coalition ("Pro-Act"), an
extropian political action committee. The group’s announced intention is to
build a coalition of groups to defend high technology against the Luddites.
Speaking at the event, artist and "cultural catalyst"
Natasha Vita-More, Pro-Act Director, said the
fledgling organization aims to build a coalition of
groups that will take on a broad range of neoLuddites opposed to new technologies such as
genetic engineering, nanotechnology and artificial

intelligence, ranging from Bill Joy to Greenpeace,
Jeremy Rifkin's Foundation for Economic Trends,
the Green party, and the current protestors at the
BIO2001 conference in San Diego. (Angelica,
2001)
The group is still being established, but the set of scientific and cultural
members, supporters and fellow-travelers that the extropians have collected
could be leveraged for considerable political effect. Engaging in actual
political campaigns to defeat anti-cloning or anti-stem cells bills would
inevitably force the extropians to grapple with partisan politics and the ways
in which the state actively supports science, further attenuating their
anarchist purity. Conversely, the group’s stigma as an elitist, kooky cult
centered on the thinking of one man may make it difficult to attract
mainstream biotech or computer firms as backers and supporters of their
political project.

Liberal Democratic Transhumanism:
World Transhumanist Association
History of the Term Transhumanism
According to an account by Max More’s wife, Natasha Vita-More, the term
“transhuman” was first used in 1966 by the Iranian-American futurist F.M.
Esfandiary while he was teaching at the New School for Social Research.
The term subsequently appeared in Abraham Maslow’s 1968 Toward a
Psychology of Being and in Robert Ettinger’s 1972 Man into
Superman. Like Maslow and Ettinger, F.M. Esfandiary (who changed his
name to FM-2030) used the term in his writings in the 1970s to refer to
people who were adopting the technologies, lifestyles and cultural
worldviews that were transitional to post-humanity. In his 1989 book “Are
You Transhuman?” FM-2030 says
(Transhumans) are the earliest manifestations of

new evolutionary beings. They are like those
earliest hominids who many millions of years ago
came down from the trees and began to look
around. Transhumans are not necessarily
committed to accelerating the evolution to higher
life forms. Many of them are not even aware of
their bridging role in evolution.”
(FM-2030, 1989)
In the early 1980s, FM-2030 befriended More’s future wife, Natasha VitaMore (Nancie Clark), and later became a friend and supporter of More and
the Californian extropians. In the lexicon adopted by the extropians,
transhumanism involves a self-conscious ideological leaning, not merely
having been an early adopter of posthuman tech. For instance, More defined
transhumanism in a 1990 essay:
Transhumanism is a class of philosophies that
seek to guide us towards a posthuman condition.
Transhumanism shares many elements of
humanism, including a respect for reason and
science, a commitment to progress, and a valuing
of human (or transhuman) existence in this life
rather than in some supernatural "afterlife".
Transhumanism differs from humanism in
recognizing and anticipating the radical alterations
in the nature and possibilities of our lives resulting
from various sciences and technologies such as
neuroscience and neuropharmacology, life
extension, nanotechnology, artificial
ultraintelligence, and space habitation, combined
with a rational philosophy and value system.
(More, 1990)
More has also more succinctly defined transhumanism as
Philosophies of life that seek the continuation and
acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life
beyond its currently human form and human

limitations by means of science and technology,
guided by life-promoting principles and values.
(More, quoted by Sandberg, 2001)
The Founding of the World Transhumanist Association
From the beginning of Extropy journal, and in the burgeoning lexicon of the
extropians, Max More and the other extropians made clear that extropianism
was but one of the possible forms of transhumanist ideology. For instance,
in 1994 Anders Sandberg, the founder of the Swedish transhumanist group
Aleph, noted that transhumanist ideas could be mated with many political
ideologies, and that the hybrid of extropian libertarian transhumanism was
just one, particularly robust, form that transhumanism could take:
Extropianism, which is a combination of
transhumanist memes and libertarianism, seems to
be one of the more dynamic and well-integrated
systems. This has been successful, mainly because
the meme has been able to organize its hosts much
better than other transhumanistic memecomplexes. This has led to a certain bias among
transhumanists linked to the Net towards the
extropian version of the meme since it is the most
widely spread and active. (Sandberg, 1994)
By the late 1990s it had begun to become clear that the European fellowtravelers of the Extropy Institute were much less enthralled by anarchocapitalist orthodoxy than the Americans. One European transhumanist,
reviewing a conference of European transhumanists, noted: “The official
program started with Remi Sussan…a bleeding heart humanist socialist and
a nice person. I am glad that we have that diversity among the European
Transhumanists. It makes for much more refined discussions than is often
seen on the Extropy mailing list.” (Rasmussen, 1999)”
In 1997 the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom organized the World
Transhumanist Association (WTA) as an autonomous and more broadly

based grouping that would share the techno-liberatory concerns of the
Extropians, but allow for more political and ideological diversity than
tolerated by the Extropians. Bostrom is an academic philosopher, and the
WTA project attracted several of the academics in the extropian milieu to
establish a journal, The Journal of Transhumanism, and work toward the
recognition of transhumanism as an academic discipline.
In 1998, Bostrom and several dozen far flung American and European
collaborators began work on the two founding documents of the WTA, the
Transhumanist Declaration and a Transhumanist Frequently Asked
Questions or FAQ. The leading extropians, including More, contributed to
the documents, but the documents were most heavily influenced by the
politically open-minded Swedes Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg, the
feminist Kathryn Aegis, and the British utilitarian thinker David Pearce. The
first drafts of the documents were published in 1999.
The Transhumanist Declaration
(1) Humanity will be radically changed by technology in the future.
We foresee the feasibility of redesigning the human condition,
including such parameters as the inevitability of ageing, limitations on
human and artificial intellects, unchosen psychology, suffering, and
our confinement to the planet earth.
(2) Systematic research should be put into understanding these
coming developments and their long-term consequences.
(3) Transhumanists think that by being generally open and embracing
of new technology we have a better chance of turning it to our
advantage than if we try to ban or prohibit it.
(4) Transhumanists advocate the moral right for those who so wish to
use technology to extend their mental and physical capacities and to
improve their control over their own lives. We seek personal growth
beyond our current biological limitations.
(5) In planning for the future, it is mandatory to take into account the
prospect of dramatic technological progress. It would be tragic if the
potential benefits failed to materialize because of ill-motivated
technophobia and unnecessary prohibitions. On the other hand, it

would also be tragic if intelligent life went extinct because of some
disaster or war involving advanced technologies.
(6) We need to create forums where people can rationally debate what
needs to be done, and a social order where responsible decisions can
be implemented.
(7) Transhumanism advocates the well-being of all sentience (whether
in artificial intellects, humans, non-human animals, or possible
extraterrestrial species) and encompasses many principles of modern
secular humanism. Transhumanism does not support any particular
party, politician or political platform.
The Declaration is notable in its departure from the Extropian Principles in
several significant points. In point (5) the Declaration specifically notes the
possibility of catastrophic consequences of new technology, and in the
attached FAQ the authors discuss the responsibility of transhumanists to
anticipate and craft public policy to prevent these catastrophic outcomes.
The anarcho-capitalist Extropians, on the other hand, generally dismiss any
talk of catastrophic possibilities, and only believe in market-based solutions
to any such threats that may exist. Point (6) explicitly addresses the need “to
create forums where people can rationally debate what needs to be done, and
a social order where responsible decisions can be implemented.” Here,
unlike the elitist and hitherto anti-political Extropians, the WTA founders
take seriously the need to engage society, and support responsive
democracies and democratic technology policies.
In point (7) the WTA founders explicitly commit to a utilitarian ethic,
presumably influenced by the utilitarian David Pierce, as opposed to the
radically individualist ethics of the Extropians. Finally, in the last line of the
Declaration, the authors make clear that the WTA is not committed to a
particular political ideology.
Politically, the extropians oppose authoritarian
social control and favor the rule of law and
decentralization of power. Transhumanism as such
does not advocate any particular political
viewpoint, although it does have political

consequences. Transhumanists themselves hold a
wide range of political opinions (there are liberals,
social democrats, libertarians, green party
members etc.), and some transhumanists have
elected to remain apolitical. (Bostrom et al., 1999)

The Politics of the WTA FAQ
The WTA FAQ asks the question “Won’t new technologies only benefit the
rich and powerful? What happens to the rest?” Instead of suggesting that
some form of social subsidy might facilitate access to the poor, the FAQ falls
back on a trickle-down theory of technological innovation, noting that the
lives of the relatively poor today are enriched by technologies previously
only available to the wealthy. However, the FAQ then makes the startling
acknowledgement:
One can speculate that some technologies may
cause social inequalities to widen. For example, if
some form of intelligence amplification becomes
available, it may at first be so expensive that only
the richest can afford it. The same could happen
when we learn how to genetically augment our
children. Wealthy people would become smarter
and make even more money...
Trying to ban technological innovations on these
grounds would be misguided. If a society judges
these inequalities to be unacceptable, it would be
wiser for that society to increase wealth
redistribution, for example by means of taxation
and the provision of free services (education
vouchers, IT access in public libraries, genetic
enhancements covered by social security etc.). For
economical and technological progress is not a
zero sum game. It's a positive sum game. It doesn't

solve the old political problem of what degree of
income redistribution is desirable, but it can make
the pie that is to be divided enormously much
greater.
(Bostrom et al., 1999)
Similarly when addressing whether transhumanism is simply a
distraction from the pressing problems of poverty and conflict in the
world today, the FAQ argues that transhumanists should work on both
these immediate problems and futurist concerns. In fact, the FAQ
argues, transhuman technologies can make the solution of poverty and
conflict easier, improving health care, amplifying intelligence, and
expanding communication and prosperity. Conversely, working for a
better world is both an essential transhumanist goal, given the
utilitarian ethic of Principle 7, and also is essential for establishing the
peaceful liberal democratic social orders in which transhuman
experimentation can take place.
Working towards a world order characterized by
peace, international cooperation and respect for
human rights would much improve the odds that
the dangerous applications of certain future
technologies will not be used irresponsibly or in
warfare. It would also free up resources currently
spent on military armaments, and possibly channel
them to improve the condition of the poor.
(Bostrom et al., 1999)
The FAQ also addresses the issue of overpopulation caused by life extension
technologies. Like the techno-libertarian Extropians, it argues that only a
combination of population control and the aggressive pursuit of advanced,
sustainable technologies, such as agricultural biotechnologies, cleaner
industrial processes, nanotechnology, and ultimately space colonization, can
address the Malthusian dilemma. However, it also notes that the best way to
control population growth is to empower women: “ As a matter of empirical
fact, giving people increased rational control over their lives (and especially
female education and equality) causes them to have fewer children.”

(Bostrom et al., 1999)
In response to a question about how post-humans will treat humans,
the FAQ notes “it could help if we continue to build stable democratic
traditions and constitutions, ideally expanding the rule of law to the
international plane as well as the national” (Bostrom et al.,
1999). Here the transhumanists are anticipating the need to build
political and cultural solidarity between humans and post-humans, to
minimize conflicts, and to have global police institutions that can
protect humans from post-humans and vice versa.
In short, the WTA documents establish a broad political tent, with an
explicit embrace of political engagement, the need to defend and
extend liberal democracy , and the inclusion of social democratic
policy alternatives as legitimate points of discussion.
The WTA in 2002
In November of 2001 the WTA began its next phase of
institutionalization[4][4]. It has elected a Board of Directors, with
Nick Bostrom as Chair, and incorporated in the State of Connecticut.
The Journal has been renamed the Journal of Evolution and
Technology and the WTA is launching a popular webzine,
Transhumanity. The WTA has fifteen hundred people signed up as
“basic members” and has several lists growing in activity. After a
tense initial reception from the extropians, the Extropy Institute has
formally affiliated with the WTA along with a dozen other
transhumanist groups in the U.S., Europe, South America and
Asia. Local groups are being organized in two dozen cities

Fascist Transhumanism
In 1909 the Italian writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published his
“Manifesto of Futurism” in the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro. In it he called
for a new aesthetic and approach to life.

We intend to exalt aggressive action, a feverish
insomnia, the racer’s stride, the mortal leap, the
punch and the slap…..
We want to hymn the man at the wheel, who hurls
the lance of his spirit across the Earth, along the
circle of its orbit…
We stand on the last promontory of the centuries!...
Why should we look back, when what we want is
to break down the mysterious doors of the
Impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We
already live in the absolute, because we have
created eternal, omnipresent speed.
Marinetti believed Italy and Europe in general had become stagnant, and he
called for a new art glorifying modern technology, energy, and violence.
Artists, writers, musicians, architects and many others flocked to the Futurist
banner in Italy and from across Europe, and began issuing their own
manifestoes. Many of the founding Futurists, including Marinetti, were
anarchists, although they went on to urge Italy’s entry into World War
One. When World War One ended the movement and its romantic calls for
heroic violence and war, Marinetti went on to befriend Mussolini, who had
mixed Marxist and anarchist politics with heroic nationalist romanticism and
Nietzschean ideas. Marinetti and many other Italian Futurists joined
Mussolini’s new fascist movement and the fascists in turn adopted Futurist
ideas and aesthetics.
Today, when a social movement emerges such as the Extropians, which
openly scorns liberal democracy, calls for an ubermenschlich elite to free
themselves from traditional morality, pursue boundless expansion and
optimism, and create a new humanity through genetic technology and the
merging of humans with machines, it is understandable that critics would
associate the movement with European fascism.
This problem has not escaped the attention of the extropians. For instance, in
1994 Sandberg wrote:

Many people associate ideas of superhumanity,
rationally changing our biological form and
speeding up the evolution of mankind, with
unfashionable or disliked memes like fascism…
partially because many transhumanist ideas had
counterparts (real or apparent) among the
fascists. (Sandberg, 1994)
Ominously for some, Max More has acknowledged and written about the
contribution of Nietzsche to extropian thought and included Nietzsche on the
extropian reading lists. Nonetheless, More has repeatedly rejected the idea
that extropian thought is compatible with fascism, pointing to the extropians’
individualist and libertarian values.
But for some futurist intellectuals the distance between anarcho-capitalism
and totalitarianism may not be very large, as the case of Marinetti and
numerous other sects demonstrate. The problem for transhumanism, as
opposed to extropianism, is even more difficult, since the core transhumanist
ideas can be mated with any secular ideology. Commenting on a speaker at
the 1999 meeting of European transhumanists, Max Rasmussen notes:
“(The speaker pointed out that) Transhumanism
can remind a lot of Nazism, and we should be very
aware about this. ‘We must not be tempted by the
dark side.’ We should be ready and have a mental
defense ready if fascist(s) were ever to try and
adapt Transhumanism, so we can keep them out. I
totally agree in this. We want to be posthumans not
übermensch.” (Rasmussen, 1999)
Occasional examples of transhumanists with fascist leanings appeared in the
1990s on the extropian lists and associated with the milieu. One example is
the transhumanist Lyle Burkhead, who wrote:
“the Third Reich is the only model we have of a Transhumanist state…
It's high time for transhumanists to face up to the fact that what we are
trying to do cannot be done in our present political
system. Democracy and transcendence are mutually exclusive

concepts. I am searching for a radical alternative, and that search led
me to consider Nazi Germany, which, for all its imperfections, at least
had some concept of human evolution and
transcendence.” (Burkhead, 1999)
Mr. Burkhead has apparently done nothing else to promote his Nazi
transhumanism however.
The Nazi challenge became a practical matter in 2000 when it was revealed
that a website, Xenith.com, that had joined a Transhuman webring was filled
with neo-Nazi propaganda, white nationalist essays and links, and racialist
eugenics. The Xenith.com site described itself as transhumanist and
included extensive art illustrating heroic transcendence and space
travel. The site called for a modern racialist eugenic project using genetic
engineering and selective breeding, quoted Adolph Hitler and George
Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party, and linked to
neo-Nazi groups, anti-Semitic sites and sites on the racial superiority of
whites. The other websites maintained by Xenith.com’s founder, “Marcus
Eugenicus,” likewise condemned democracy, egalitarianism, socialism and
“political correctness,” especially in regards the silencing of “racialist
science.”
In one of those other sites, Eugenicus promotes “Prometheism”
[http://www.prometheism.net/] which calls for using state coercion to
promote eugenic goals:
Principles and Goals
I. We are both a nation and a religion…a
homeland must be sought for by any means
available.
II. Our aim is to create a genetically enhanced race
that will eventually become a new, superior
species. In the short-term, this will be achieved via
eugenics and genetic engineering.
III. (We pursue eugenics because) the world is

caught in a dysgenic trend from which we want to
be freed. (Also) this is a way of maximizing our
viability -- the survival and probability of survival
of our genes. A more intelligent species will be
more fit to adapt to new environments and to face
new threats and obstacles.
IV. We must not concern ourselves with others
that are caught in the dysgenic cycle. We must only
be concerned with the success of other competing
eugenics' programs that will pose a threat to our
own new species, for speciation will not travel
along a single vector when humans compete using
the new technologies.
V. Any eugenics program has equal validity to
use the state's coercive power to improve human
genetic capital…
Eugenicus insists in the Prometheism manifesto that “Racial purity is not a
valid concept for a eugenicist. Since we are breeding and genetically
splicing our way into a new species, racial components are ever changing.”
However, he also makes clear that valued traits such as intelligence are
linked to race.
While most transhumanists are unconcerned with reproductive decisions,
assuming that genetic illnesses and human limitations will be remediable
through genetic therapy, chemicals or nanotechnology, Eugenicus explains
his emphasis on controlling reproductive decision-making on the grounds
that “Resources must not be wasted on curing disease when it is more cost
effective to merely eliminate the disease from the genetic capital of the
eugenic nation.”
Unlike any other transhumanist, Eugenicus calls for loyalty to the new
eugenically superior meta-race, and self-sacrifice in its service: “Allegiance
and patriotism to the group takes precedence before attachment to one's
religion or patriotism to the country where one just happens to reside. Going
to war for the state because of shared loyalties is dysgenic. Only patriotism

to the eugenic state requires your sacrifice and allegiance.” In fact,
Eugenicus argues that the two most important traits to genetically enhance in
children are intelligence and patriotism. The Prometheans, he says, will be
attacked and called to make sacrifice since “warfare, that ever present
component that drove group evolution to reach Homo Sapiens, will
continue.”
In response to the outing of the site and its contents (by me), the
Transhuman webring and its affiliated list were thrown into vigorous debate.
Some participants were clearly sympathetic to Eugenicus’ iconoclastic
attacks on political correctness, although most abhorred his Nazism. The list
was split on two questions: whether neo-Nazism could be “transhumanist,”
and whether the Nazi site should be excluded from the webring. Some
discussants argued that the humanist, cosmopolitan and liberal roots of
transhumanism were incompatible with racism and totalitarianism, while
transhumanism’s commitment to reason and science were incompatible with
the irrationality and pseudo-science of eugenics. The issue had actually
been anticipated and addressed in the World Transhumanist Association’s
FAQ:
“…transhumanism advocates the well-being of all
sentience, whether in artificial intellects, humans,
non-human animals or possible extraterrestrial
species. Racism, sexism, speciesism, belligerent
nationalism and religious intolerance are
unacceptable. In addition to the usual grounds for
finding such practices morally objectionable, there
is an additional specifically transhumanist
motivation for this. In order to prepare a time when
the human species may start branching out in
various directions, we need to start now to strongly
encourage the development of moral sentiments
that are broad enough encompass within the sphere
of moral concern sentiences that are different from
current selves. We can go beyond mere tolerance
to actively encouraging people who experiment
with nonstandard life-styles, because by facing up
to prejudices they ultimately expand the range of

choices available to others. And we may all delight
in the richness and diversity of life to which such
individuals disproportionately contribute simply by
being who they are.” (Bostrom, 2001)
The debate about whether the site should be removed also addressed the
public relations disaster that could result if Nazism was associated with
transhumanism. Free speech advocates argued however that all points of
view of self-described trashumanists should be allowed expression.
Finally, the owner of the webring decided that he would not remove the Nazi
site from the webring, but would instead disband the webring altogether.
This led to the creation of the Extrotech webring, which explicitly prohibits
racialist sites: “No sites concerning bigotry, racism, neo-Nazism, and the
like, will be allowed to join. This is not censorship, merely the ringmaster's
decision that sites of that nature are counter to the equality, improvement,
and understanding which this ring is intended to represent.” This webring
now includes seventeen sites.
Eugenicus attracted some of the members of the former Transhuman
webring to his new “True Enlightenment” webring for “pro Transhumanism
and anti PC” websites[5][5], such as the Dutch-based “Transtopia”
website. Predictably the True Enlightenment webring attacks egalitarianism,
argues for “race realism,” and provides links to neo-Nazi articles and
websites.
In March of 2002 the World Transhumanist Association voted to formally
denounce racialism in general, and the neo-Nazism of Eugenicus in
particular:
WTA STATEMENT ON RACIALISM
Any and all doctrines of racial or ethnic
supremacy/inferiority are incompatible with the
fundamental tolerance and humanist roots of
transhumanism. Organizations advocating such
doctrines or beliefs are not transhumanist, and are
unwelcome as affiliates of the WTA. (adopted
02/25/2002)

WTA STATEMENT ON NEO-NAZISM AND
UFO CULTS
Neo-Nazi eugenic views; the individual "Marcus
Eugenicus" and his associated group; UFO cults;
the Raelian group; shall be designated as 'not
transhumanist / unacceptable to the transhumanist
community'. (adopted 02/25/2002)
Radical Democratic Transhumanism
The Rise of Left Luddism
As yet, radical democratic transhumanism has not found a voice or
organizational presence, but is implicit in the writings of people in the
futurist, science fiction and cyberculture milieus. The fact that a left futurism
has been so slow to emerge is somewhat surprising, since technoutopianism,
atheism, and scientific rationalism have been associated with the democratic,
revolutionary and utopian left for most of the last two hundred years. Robert
Owens, Fourier and Saint-Simon in the early nineteenth century inspired
communalists with their visions of a future scientific and technological
evolution of humanity using reason as its religion. The Oneida community,
America’s longest-lived nineteenth century “communist” group, practiced
extensive eugenic engineering through arranged breeding. Bellamy’s
socialist utopia in Looking Backward, which inspired hundreds of socialist
clubs in the late nineteenth century U.S. and a national political party, was as
highly technological as Bellamy’s imagination and was to be brought about
as a painless corollary of industrial development.
Marx and Engels convinced millions that the advance of technology was
laying the groundwork not only for the creation of a new society, with
different property relations, but also of new human beings reconnected to
nature and themselves. The nineteenth and twentieth century Left, from
social democrats to Communists, have been focused on industrial
modernization, economic development and the promotion of science, reason
and the idea of progress. Transhumanists and the revolutionary left also

share the concept of a technologically-determined social revolution. Like the
Singularity, Marxian revolution is a sudden, global, discontinuous social
rupture, brought about by technological change, beyond which we cannot
predict the form that society will take, and about which it is pointless to
speculate.
Perhaps the most transhumanist of the early twentieth century socialists was
H.G. Wells. Wells referred repeatedly to the attractive and horrific
possibilities of post-human stages of evolution. He believed that new
technologies of war would bring civilization to the brink, but expected that
humanity would learn from the carnage and establish a world socialist
government. Wells believed that the path to utopia was through technocracy,
the rule of scientific experts, and as a consequence was at first quite
admiring of Lenin’s Soviet Communism, who famously said “Communism
is socialism plus electrification.”
Left techno-utopianism began to erode after World War Two. Left interest in
re-engineering the nature of Man were silenced by Nazi eugenics. The gas
chambers revealed that modern technology could be used by a modern state
for horrific uses, and the atomic bomb posed a permanent technological
threat to humanity’s existence. The ecological movement suggested that
industrial activity was threatening all life on the planet, while the antinuclear power movement inspired calls for renunciation of specific types of
technology altogether. The counter-culture attacked positivism, and lauded
pre-industrial ways of life. While the progressives and New Dealers had
built the welfare state to be a tool of reason and social justice, the New Left
and free-market libertarians attacked it as a stultifying tool of oppression,
contributing to the general decline in faith in democratic
governments. Intellectual trends such as deconstruction began to cast doubt
on the “master narratives” of political and scientific progress, while cultural
relativism eroded progressives’ faith that industrialized secular liberal
democracies were in fact superior to pre-industrial and Third World
societies. As the Left gave up on the idea of a sexy, high-tech vision of a
radically democratic future, libertarians became associated with
technological progress. Left techno-enthusiasm was supplanted by
pervasive Luddite suspicion about the products of the corporate consumerist
machine.

FM-2030’s Upwingers
Ironically, one of the first contemporary left futurists or radical democratic
transhumanists was FM-2030, the creator of the term “transhuman.” FM2030 spelled out his political philosophy in a series of books written in the
1970s and 1980s. Like the Greens, he argued that his politics were neither
left nor right-wing, but rather “upwing”: “The UpWing philosophy is a
visionary new thrust beyond Right and Left-wing, beyond conservative and
conventional radical.” (FM-2030, 1975).
However, he argued for transcending both capitalism and socialism by
automating work and expanding leisure. In place of authoritarianism and
representative democracy FM-2030 argued for direct electronic
democracy. In place of fractious nation-states FM-2030 argued for world
government and citizenship.
We want to help accelerate the thrust beyond
nations, ethnic groups, races to create a global
consciousness, global institutions, a global
language, global citizenship, global free flow of
people, global commitments. (FM-2030, 1975).
FM-2030 wrote only a couple of pages about upwing political philosophy
before his death in 2000 and those opinions seem to have been mostly
ignored by the extropians. However, radical democratic or left futurists can
certainly claim FM-2030 as one of their forebears.

Donna Haraway and Cyborgian Socialist-Feminists
Another sign of a left futurism emerged in the 1980s, under the rubric of
“cyborgology,” which emerged as a reaction to eco-feminism. According to
the eco-feminists, rationalistic, technological patriarchy is the common
source of the oppression of women and nature, while the struggle against

patriarchy and technology are deeply intertwined. The eco-feminists
embraced the man-woman/culture-nature duality allegedly imposed by
patriarchy, and embraced it.
In 1984 Donna Haraway wrote “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science,
Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s,” aimed as a critique of
ecofeminism, and it landed with the reverberating bang of a hand
grenade. Haraway argued that it was precisely in the eroding boundary
between human beings and machines, and between women and machines in
particular, that we can find liberation from the old patriarchal dualisms.
Haraway says she would rather be a cyborg than a goddess, and proposes
that the cyborg could be the liberatory mythos for women.
This essay, and Haraway’s subsequent writings, have inspired a new cultural
studies sub-discipline of “cyborgology,” made up of feminist culture and
science fiction critics, exploring cyborgs and the woman-machine interface
in various permutations (Gray 1995, 2001; Kirkup 1999; Haraway 1997;
Balsamo, 1996; Davis-Floyd, 1998). As yet there has been little crosspollination between the left-wing academic cyborgologists and the
transhumanists.
Post-Darwinian Leftists
One of the most challenging philosophers in the world is bioethicist Peter
Singer. In the 1970s Singer wrote the book credited with inspiring the
modern animal rights movement, Animal Liberation. Singer is a utilitarian,
and he argued that the suffering of animals, especially apes and other large
mammals, should be put on par with the suffering of children and retarded
adults. His subsequent writings on the permissibility of euthanizing certain
disabled newborns (Kuhse and Singer, 1985), however, inspired howls of
outrage, and accusations of fascism. Singer, however, is Jewish, with
relatives who died in the Holocaust. He considers himself a man of the Left,
and in 1995 published How Are We to Live?: Ethics in an Age of SelfInterest, which argued that people should give away all their wealth beyond
what’s required to live a simple life.
Singer’s most recent tract, however, A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution,

and Cooperation (2001), is an argument with the Left over the relevance of
sociobiological constraints on human nature and politics. Singer contends
that there is a biologically rooted tendency towards selfishness and hierarchy
which has defeated attempts at egalitarian social reform. If the Left program
of social reform is to succeed, Singer argues, we must employ the new
genetic and neurological sciences to identify and modify the aspects of
human nature that cause conflict and competition. Singer also embraces a
program of socially subsidized, but voluntary, genetic improvement, while
rejecting coercive reproductive policies and eugenic pseudo-science.

Pro-Automation Post-Work Utopians
Another strain of left techno-utopianism that could be incorporated into a
democratic transhumanist worldview is promotion of a society in which
most people do not have to work for a living because of automation and a
universal guaranteed income. For instance, Andre Gorz (1980,2000) has
been promoting a political program for twenty-five years that embraces
automation, and the expansion of the “social wage.” The movement for
universal basic income (Lerner, 1994) has been growing in Europe[6][6]and
the United States[7][7].
One transhumanist who is promoting the automation/guaranteed minimum
income vision is Australian science fiction writer Damien Broderick.
Broderick has participated in the extropian mailing list for most of its
existence, and in 1997 published The Spike, a non-fiction treatment of the
extropian ideas about the Singularity (Broderick, 2001). The Spike is for the
most part a review of the various technological advances and their
permutations. However, in the middle of his text he reveals a distinctly nonlibertarian worldview when he projects that automation and nanotechnology
will create widespread unemployment, which will in turn require the
provision of a universal guaranteed income.
A corporation that downsizes its work-force today,
in favor of robots, is surviving as a beneficiary of

the human investment of the past. Its current
productivity, after all, are the outcome of every erg
of accumulated human effort that went into
creating the economy and technological culture
that made those robots possible. So let's not look at
a guaranteed income as a `natural right', like the
supposed innate rights to freedom of speech and
liberty. Rather, it is an inheritance, something
owed to all the children of a society whose
ancestors for generations have together built, and
purchased through the work of their minds and
hands, the resource base sustaining today's
cornucopia.
(Broderick, 2001: 254)
Pro-Technology Greens and Bruce Sterling’s Viridian Movement
For reasons discussed above, Greens are generally anti-technology. But
another strain of democratic transhumanism can come from techno-utopian
environmentalists. This strain has always been in the background, nestled
among the “alternative technology” and “alternative energy” milieu. Walter
Truett Anderson[8][8] is an example of a political philosopher who embraces
the environmental cause, but challenges Green anti-technological dogmas.
In To Govern Evolution (1987) and Evolution Isn't What It Used to
Be (1997), Anderson proposes that the only way for humanity to avoid
catastrophe in the ecosphere or in our biomedical interventions is to take
democratic responsibility for managing nature. This is the ethical
complement of the movement for bioremediation[9][9], the use of
technology to fix ecological destruction.
But the most prominent contemporary example of techno-utopian
environmentalism comes from the unexpected source of science fiction. In
the 1980s a gritty new style of science fiction emerged out of the work of a
half dozen writers, which became know as “cyberpunk.” Cyberpunk
authors depicted a future in which people had become technologically
augmented and deeply enmeshed with computers, artificial intelligence and
virtual reality. For many cyberpunk authors, such as William Gibson in

hisNeuromancer series, transnational corporations had displaced the nationstate.
At the center of cyberpunk was an energetic Texan writer, editor and
polemicist, Bruce Sterling. One of Sterling’s early novels, Islands in the
Net (1988), proposed a worker-owned transnational corporation that
explored the radical democratic possibilities within the premise of eroding
nation-states. Sterling also used the term “transhumanism” in his ShaperMechanist stories (1985, 1989). These stories envisioned a solar system
several centuries in the future in which humanity has split into two
competing sub-species: Shapers, who use genetics to enhance human
abilities, and Mechanists, who have become cyborgs. “Transhumanism” in
Sterling’s Shaper-Mechanist politics is the ideology advanced by a
movement for peace and solidarity between the differentiating sub-species of
post-humans.
The cyberpunk movement diffused into the rest of science fiction by the
early 1990s, and Sterling returned to writing novels about the politics and
social consequences of climate change (1994), life extension (1996),
political campaigning and electronic nomadism in an eroded nation-state
(1998), and globalism (2000). In January of 2000 Sterling returned to his
polemicist roots and penned a 4300-word manifesto for a new “Viridian”
green political movement. Sterling accepts the urgency of climate change
and species depletion, but his principal complaint about contemporary Green
politics is that they are Luddite and dour. He calls for a sexy, high-tech,
design movement, to make attractive, practical ecological tools. Although
Sterling steadfastly refuses to argue for political activism or partisan
engagement, like FM-2030 he outlines a third way between capitalism and
socialism involving controls on transnational capital, redirecting of
militaries to peacekeeping, sustainable industries, increasing leisure time,
guaranteed social wage, education reform, expanded global public health,
and gender equity. The Viridian movement has attracted hundreds of people
to participate in its list, and to receive weekly missives from Sterling about
appropriate, but exciting, technologies.

Disabled Cyborgs

The most technologically dependent humans today are disabled people in the
wealthier industrialized countries. They have pioneered the use of
wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs, novel computing interfaces and portable
computing. Many people with disabilities are embracing the transgressive
image of the cyborgs, some with an explicit influence from Harawayan
cyborgology (Gosling, 2002). Paraplegic journalist John Hockenberry
recently summed up the disabled transhumanist perspective in Wired:
Humanity's specs are back on the drawing board,
thanks to some unlikely designers, and the disabled
have a serious advantage in this conversation.
They've been using technology in collaborative,
intimate ways for years - to move, to
communicate, to interact with the world. …People
with disabilities - who for much of human history
died or were left to die - are now, due to medical
technology, living full lives. As they do, the
definition of humanness has begun to widen.
(Hockenberry, 2001)
Probably the most prominent symbol of disabled transhumanist activism
these days is Christopher Reeves, the former Superman actor who became a
tireless campaigner for biomedical research after an horse-riding accident
left him quadriplegic. Reeves has been especially important as a leading
symbol of the fight to defend the use of clonal embryos in stem cell
research.
There is now also an explicitly transhumanist organization for people with
disabilities, the Ascender Alliance. Founded by Alan Pottinger, the founding
manifesto of the Ascenders advocate removing “political, cultural,
biological, and psychological limits to self-realization and augmentation.”
However, their core documents also articulate several positions that are
distinctive within transhumanist circles. The Ascenders are opposed to
“eugenics” and permanent germline modification of the human genome, and
concerned that future projects for human betterment and transcendence may
leave behind the disabled. Further, and uniquely among transhumanists, they
articulate a right to ascension for all:

Every human being has the right to ascension. So it
is the duty of the group to constantly keep in mind
the need to develop technology, equipment and
procedures to counter such ‘incurable’ conditions
and until such devices can be developed care for
those who wish to benefit.
(Ascender Doctrine v2: Pottinger, 2002)
Transhumanists with disabilities face a much greater challenge with the
growing bio-Luddite movement in disability rights circles. The assertion that
people with disabilities, such as the deaf, have a unique and equally valid
culture has led many disability rights activists to reject prenatal screening,
genetic engineering and technologies such cochlear implants. The debate
within the disability rights movement is sure to add much to democratic
transhumanist theory and practice.
Critics of Corporate Control of Transhuman Tech: Open Source and Socialist
While the libertarian extropians celebrate the biotech and computing
entrepreneurs and innovators, they occasionally have qualms about the
effects that monopolists such as Microsoft and overly aggressive
interpretations of intellectual property law may have on the pace of
innovation. But libertarian ideology makes it difficult to argue for state
intervention to break up monopolies, or to declare the genome and industrial
innovations as public property. Libertarians have been more supportive of
the voluntary, and partly market-driven, growth of the open source
movement, such as the operating system Linux. The goal of the open source
movement is challenge the monopolists from below, by building a
community around the constant refining of hopefully more robust and
cheaper information technologies.
David Berube is an example of a transhumanist who has worked out some of
the implications for transhumanism of corporate control in his essays on
“Nanosocialism” (Berube, 1996). Berube argues that socialist intervention
would be required to create a full-featured nanotechnology since capitalist
firms cannot be expected to develop a technology which would make

households independent of their goods, and the market altogether. Secondly,
the threat of malicious or accidental use of nanotechnology is so grave that
strong state intervention would be required to ensure safe and secure use.
Third, Berube repeats the post-work/guaranteed minimum wage argument.
He argues that nanotech would destroy the market economy as we know it,
along with the necessity to work.
Radical Speculative Fiction Writers
Not since the Nationalist movement that sprung up around Bellamy’s
socialist vision in Looking Backward has there been a social movement
so closely tied to speculative science fiction. The favorite authors of the
transhumanists are those who depict explicit post-human societies
and explore transhuman themes, such as Vernor Vinge, Greg Bear,
Greg Egan, Ken MacLeod, and Linda Nagata. But the utopian
genre is dead, and contemporary science fiction authors have a way
of making their worlds complex, filled with tensions extrapolated
from our own.
For instance, the work of Ken MacLeod is filled with political tensions
around transhuman themes. In the 1990s, Ken MacLeod, a Scotsman and
long-time friend of successful Scottish science-fiction author Iain Banks,
gave in to pressure from Banks to attempt to write a novel. The result was
the Star Fraction, in which a communist guerrilla mercenary negotiates the
collapse of a radically decentralized Britain, while the Trotskyist artificial
intelligence living in his computerized rifle plots global revolution.
MacLeod had spent decades involved in Trotskyist and Communist politics,
and then began to seriously engage with libertarian and transhumanist ideas
in the 1990s. His six critically acclaimed novels have been hailed for their
fascinating efforts to articulate “libertarias” and socialist utopias, and to deal
with the threats posed by elitist extropians if they were ever to succeed in
transcending their humanness. Although Macleod prefers to leave the
serious work of articulating an anti-Luddite, pro-technology, libertarian
socialism to those better qualified, his novels have become required reading
for transhumanists.

Biopunk
Another genre that intersects with transhumanist concerns, and which has an
generally radical and anti-corporate orientation, is biopunk
(Quinon, 1997). Biopunk is a spin-off of cyberpunk (Person,
2000). Instead of exploring the human interface with technology,
biopunks focus more on biotechnology and genetic enhancement of
humans and animals. The central writer in this genre is Paul
DiFilippo, author of the tongue-in-cheek 1994 “Ribofunk
Manifesto”. DiFilippo argued for writers to embrace the coming
biotechnological revolution as the central feature of future society.
One ribofunk slogan proposed by DiFilippo is “Anatomy is
destiny--but anatomy is malleable.”
Annalee Newitz (2002) detects an emergent biopunk ethos in the work of
artists and anti-corporate genetics researchers.
Biopunk shares with cyberpunk a spirit of social
critique in the sciences, and a commitment to
limiting corporate control of data… Biopunks can
therefore call on a venerable tradition of
philosophical thought when they raise objections
to how scientists are gathering and using genomic
data. Moreover, biopunks often protest misuses of
the human body and its reproductive functions,
which makes biopunk a considerably more
feminist and queer movement than straight-guy
cyberpunk ever was… (Biopunk is) all about
protesting both "bio-Luddites and apologists for
the biotech industry."
Newitz writes about the biopunk Coalition of Artists and Life Forms
(CALF), a loose network of artists who are excited about, even celebratory
about biotechnology, but critical of its capitalist exploitation and limitations.
Afrofuturism, Feminist and Queer Speculative Fiction

In the 1990s a number of cultural critics, notably the white progressive critic
of extropianism Mark Dery in his 1995 essay “Black to the Future,” began to
write about the features they saw as common in African-American science
fiction, music and art. Dery dubbed this phenomenon “Afrofuturism,”
launching a small movement (Thomas, 2000). The
website www.afrofuturism.net explains that the movement is composed of
African diaspora musicians, science fictions writers, film makers and artists
who work explores their common experience of “abduction, displacement
and alien-nation.” The afro-futurists posit that futurism an science fiction are
the best ways to explore the black experience.
By contrast the engagement of feminism with technoutopian thinking and
speculative fiction is quite venerable. Feminists have been writing
speculative futurism and fiction for a hundred years, and now have their own
journals, anthologies and awards. They have also been exploring the ways in
which reproductive technologies may be liberatory for women. Shulamith
Firestone proposed in her 1970 feminist classic The Dialectic of Sex The
Case for Feminist Revolution that women would only be finally freed from
patriarchy when artificial wombs were common place, freeing women from
their necessary role as incubators. Joanna Russ’s 1975 The Female
Man proposed lesbian separatist communities sustained by parthenogenesis
(Russs, 1975; Pountney, 2001), and more recent feminist authors, such as
biology professor Joan Slonczewski (1986), have envisioned all-female,
genetically modified post-human species more egalitarian and in touch with
nature. Although feminists today are generally Luddite and suspicious of
the new reproductive technologies, there are contemporary technoutopian
feminists, such as Dion Farquhar (1995, 1996), who see the liberatory
potentials in reproductive technology, and who could be recruited to
transhumanism.
As for queer futurism, there is also a thriving GLBT science fiction
subculture. The most active pro-cloning activist in the United States, Randy
Wicker, founder of the Clone Rights United Front [www.humancloning.org],
is also a veteran of the gay rights struggle. Wicker has written about why gay
activists should be interested in defending the broadest possible definition of
reproductive rights, including access to reproductive technologies (Sherer,
2001; Datalounge, 1997; Wicker, 2000). As for the transgender community,
what could be more transhuman than deciding to change one’s gender, or

even more radically, to choose a new biological gender altogether? FM2030 included androgyny as an aspect of transhumanity, and in a poll of
extropians conducted in February/March 2002 8% of respondents listed their
gender as “Other (neither, both, combination, changing, indeterminate,
variable, complicated, etc.).” But the transcending of biological sex-gender
is a little explored part of the transhumanist agenda.
The Political Future of Transhumanism
In April 2000 Wired magazine published an essay by Bill Joy, the chief
technologist and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, and inventor of the
computer language Java. Joy’s essay, titled “Why the Future Doesn’t Need
Us,” contemplated the potentially apocalyptic consequences of three
emerging technologies, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robots
imbued with artificial intelligence. The key and qualitatively different, threat
that Joy said arises from these technologies is that they all can potentially
self-replicate. While guns don’t breed other guns and go on killing sprees,
gene-tailored plagues, future robots and nanophages can theoretically do just
that. Because of this qualitatively different threat Joy insists that these
technologies and research on them be “relinquished,” or banned worldwide.
The essay was especially arresting to transhumanists for having been written
by a man with impeccable technologist credentials, adding to a growing
sense of urgency about the growing strength and visibility of the NeoLuddite movement (Bailey, 2001b). Also in 2000, a coalition of dozens of
organizations joined with the Turning Point foundation to sponsor a series of
full-page ads in national newspapers decrying species extinction, “genetic
engineering,” “industrial agriculture,” “economic globalization,” and
“technomania.” National and international efforts were launched to outlaw
cloning and to stop federal funding of stem cell research. Anarchist Luddites
involved in the anti-globalization movement were thrust into international
prominence with the anti-WTO riots in Seattle in 1999, while anti-biotech
activists lobbied the European Parliament and destroyed research facilities.
Speaking to the Extro 5 conference in 2001, extropian leader Greg Burch
argued:

…we are in a very real sense completely encircled
in the cultural, social and political realms.
Furthermore, the battle-lines are becoming
increasingly clear to the combatants. … open and
direct conflict is unavoidable on each of the three
fronts (religious, Green and socialist) opposed to
our program…On the political front, we do not
seek to force our plans on anyone, but ultimately,
our basic values of individual autonomy are
fundamentally incompatible with the kinds of
limitations desired by Guardians of both culturally
conservative and "progressive" tendencies,
whether they espouse some limited "liberal"
ideology or are more explicitly
collectivist. (Burch, 2001)
The transhumanist perspective is indeed under attack by much better
organized opponents, and the transhumanists are partly to blame. The
ideologically narrow, apolitical, sectarian ahistoricality of most
transhumanists is striking since their Luddite opponents, such as Jeremy
Rifkin, have forged shrewd tactical, ad hoc alliances with bedfellows as
strange as Greenpeace, feminists and the Christian Right. The Extropians’
Pro-PAC might nudge the group toward serious political engagement and
coalition-building, but there is no sign that the project is more than a press
release. The anarcho-capitalism of the extropian milieu makes it unlikely
that they will ever be able to be successful in this project. While Burch and
the extropians argue that they are fighting to save the natural goals of the
Enlightenment from its twisted and mutated bastard children, environmental
alarmism and socialist collectivism, in fact they are fighting to extol one
third of the Enlightenment value legacy, liberty, against the other two thirds,
equality and human solidarity, crippling their ability to defend all three in the
process. Insisting that reason can only be expressed in market relations and
not in rational civic debate and democratic self-governance leaves the
extropians as shrill, self-absorbed and alienated in the public square.
By contrast, there is a much broader ideological spectrum of thought
expressed in the World Transhumanist Association and to its left. For the
transhumanists to emerge as a broad ideological movement, capable of

inspiring activists and organizing a resistance to neo-Luddism, it must
embrace the full range of liberal democratic and social democratic
permutations. By making political equality and solidarity among the various
species of post-humanity a core value, transhumanists can reassure publics
scared by post-human possibilities. In the process of defining a positive,
democratic political program for transhumanism the movement must also
create boundaries which exclude the elitism and totalitarianism with which it
has been associated.
Setting aside libertarian blinkers, the only way to reassure skittish publics
about the consequences of new technology is publicly accountable state
regulation. Rather than uncritically defending every new corporatesponsored technology, while dismissing concerns about safety and equity
with Panglossian assurances that all will work itself out in the Singularity, a
democratic transhumanism could embrace the need for government action to
ensure that transhuman technologies are safe, effective and equitably
distributed. For instance, trade unions are less likely to oppose automation
in industry when they are assured that their workers will be retrained and
have a social safety net to fall back on. Citizen groups are less likely to
oppose the building of new industrial sites, power plants and waste dumps
when they are assured that government agencies are ensuring public
safety. Public acceptance of expensive new life extension technologies will
be far more likely if there is some provision that they will be subsidized and
equitably available. Democratic politics and public policy can address and
ameliorate public concerns, slowing innovation in the short term, but
facilitating it in the long term.
One model for a transhumanist social policy is proposed in Warren Wagar’s
(1989) A Short History of the Future, which projected a speculative global
history of the next two centuries based on H.G. Wells and Immanuel
Wallerstein’s world system theory. Although the future history was made
quickly obsolete by the collapse of the Soviet Union, Wagar’s thoughts on
policies towards genetics were far more programmatic and prescient.
Wagar’s future world socialist government weighed the costs and benefits of
allowing, subsidizing or banning various genetic enhancements and
therapies, with an eye toward balancing individual liberty, general welfare of
humanity, the equality of the enhanced and the non-enhanced. Access to
genetic enhancements were introduced at a pace so that the majority of

humanity could move forward together.
Since September 11, Americans have set aside their deep suspicion of
government and begun to celebrate public sector employees and the state
agencies which are the only feasible means to respond to terrorism. Rather
than defining the majority of the citizens in the liberal democracies as the
enemies of transhumanism, transhumanists could benefit from seeing their
common cause with liberal and social democratic citizenries against the
majority of the world which still lives under authoritarian rule. The
empirical evidence is that Western liberal and social democracies, with
mixed economies with public welfare systems, have the highest standard of
living, and the strongest traditions of citizen participation and publicly
accountable government, of any social form ever known. If transhumanists
are conscerned about the persecution of transhuman minorities, such as
disabled cyborgs or transsexuals, they should embrace the liberal and social
democracies in which these minorities have been accorded the most rights
and respect. Joining in the defense of Western liberal democracy against
authoritarian and fundamentalist threats, transhumanists can begin to
overcome their alienation from “normals.”
Another dimension of the strength of a more democratic transhumanism is
its ability to mobilize collective energies for collective projects that cannot
be accomplished by the market. For instance, the colonization of space is a
project that requires political support and state sponsorship. While many of
the technoutopians attracted to space colonization have been libertarians,
there are no viable models for space exploration relying solely on private
investment. The problem with building political support for space is that the
majority of citizens see the space program as a waste of money compared to
their own pressing needs. Only a movement which could force the wealthy
and corporations to accept the requisite taxes, while reassuring the majority
of people that their needs for social welfare have been assured - in other
words, a technoutopian social democratic movement – would be able to
organize deep support for space colonization.
For transhumanism to achieve its own goals it needs to distance itself from
its anarcho-capitalist roots and its authoritarian mutations, clarify its
commitments to liberal democratic institutions, values and public policies,
and work to reassure skittish publics and inspire them with Big Projects.

Building on the foundation laid by the World Transhumanist Association,
and the disparate elements of democratic technoutopianism flickering in
global intellectual landscape, the politics of the 21st century may yet see the
return of a positive, progressive vision of a sexy, high-tech future.
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[1] As for the rest, 5% were "US-style conservatives or moderates," 18%
were "US-style liberal to left," 15% were "Other" and 7% "Apolitical.")

[2] Ironically, Natasha Vita-More was actually elected to Los Angeles
public office on the Green Party ticket in 1992. However her platform was
“transhumanism” and she quit after one year of her two year term because
the Greens were “too far left and too neurotically geared toward
environmentalism.”(Vita-More, 1999).
[3] In the February/March 2002 survey of extropians 30% of respondents
made less the $10,000 a year and the
next 30% made between $10,000 and $50,000 a year. Only 24% made
$100,000 or more. Presumably many of those in the bottom third are
students. Even so, this means that the extropians have a disproportionate
number of wealthy members and a disproportionate number people of
modest means. In terms of age, 58% were 16-30 years old. Despite their
relatively young age, the majority of extropians had done some postgraduate education. (ExiCommunity Polls, 2002).

[4] After the presentation of the first draft of this essay at a conference in
October 2002, at which I met WTA chair Nick Bostrom and journal editor
Mark Walker, I became deeply involved in re-organizing the WTA. That
early version of this essay became a matter of contention when extropians
perceived my involvement to be an effort to make the WTA a vehicle for
left politics. Those concerns appear to have been more or less put to rest,
and I currently serve as Executive Director of the WTA.

[5] http://www.anzwers.org/free/chimaera/te.html

[6] http://www.econ.ucl.ac.be/etes/bien/bien.html

[7] http://www.progress.org/dividend/index.shtml

[8] http://www.pacificnews.org/contributors/anderson/

[9] http://biotech.about.com/cs/bioremediation1/

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