Reflections on futurology ; or, the perils of 'presentist' punditry

Two months ago, a dear friend asked me to write about my predictions concerning possible futures for the Republican Party. The result was my blogpost entitled, 'Some hesitant prognostications concerning the Republican Party.' I dipped my toe very gingerly into the perilous waters of futurology, with a vivid awareness of the metaphorical sharks lurking. I was careful to draw attention to something which is obvious to me, but which others are too squeamish to point out: that the Republican Party is well on the way to fascism. I sketched two possible futures for the Republicans, but avoided making firm predictions.

I am conscious of George Eliot's remark that prophecy is the most unnecessary of human failings. I tend to avoid practising it, not wishing to appear even more foolish than I already am. I have witnessed, over the years, other very distinguished, knowledgeable and experienced people making mistakes when they cotemplated the future. (It has to be observed that dystopian fictions such as Huxley's 'Brave New World', Orwell's '1984', Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein', and H. G. Wells' 'The Time Machine' were in many ways very prescient).

In the 1970s and early 1980s, serious people, such as the journalist Geoffrey Goodman and the trade unionist Clive Jenkins, were predicting the advent of a 'leisure society', which IT would, as a matter of course, bring about. Such forecasts would raise only a hollow laugh these days. However, it is important to note the crucial element of wish fulfillment in these prophecies. Ever since Karl Marx, the Left has wanted an end to dangerous, wasteful, alienating, enervating toil. This was a case of confusing desire with patient attention to empirically observed reality.

Another such case of confirmation bias occurred when commentators rushed to forecast the political consequences of the global financial crisis of 2008. Very respected and perceptive commentators such as the economics journalist Paul Mason and Martin Jacques, the former editor of 'Marxism Today', predicted the imminent collapse of neoliberalism, and an exciting opportunity for the Left. However, neoliberalism has survived, if only by metamorphosing into a strange hybrid beast, through a shotgun marriage with populist nationalism. (This brings us to another problem. So often the Left talks about change, often arguing with itself, while the Right goes ahead with enacting change, in an act of necessary self-preservation, while denying that any such change is taking place, to paraphrase Guiseppe di Lampedusa's famous formulation). This is not to accuse these pundits of stupidity, or even self-deception: it is merely that they committed the very common human error of confusing their desires with the course of actual events, which therefore they had difficulty in interpreting.

For some reason, historians are often asked to give their opinions concerning possible outcomes of such-and-such in the future. As a student of history, I have enormous respect for historians, but they are not seers, sages, or prophets, and should not be regarded as such. Recently, on BBC Radio 4's 'The World at One', the historian Peter Hennessey was invited to give his views on the possible political and social consequences of the pandemic. I have great respect for his scholarship and his ability to communicate it ; however, his predictions a appeared to be a wish-list of things which he would like to come to pass. Of course, we can all hope that the pandemic will promote a greater sense of community, or will force us to confront problems whose 'solution' has been endlessly postponed. Subconsciously, we hope that such a catastrophic period will eventuate in a productive 'meaning', which will be revealed to us in the fullness of time, even if there will be no 'happy ending'. However, the pandemic has demonstrated at least as many instances of extreme individualism as it has of communitarianism, and any attempt to predict the future has to take account of these contradictory phenomena. For the purposes of planning many dimensions of our society, it is necessary to pretend that aspects of the future are knowable ; but we need to impose strict limits on this all too seductive human propensity.