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Yes, Let’s Talk About the Cookshops of the Future

Interview with
Aaron Benanav

Karl Marx’s anti-utopian line is often used to avoid discussion about what socialism would be like. But engaging in the nuts and bolts of how a postcapitalist economy might work is also necessary, to make it more than a distant dream.

Seymour Fogel, WPA mural from the Cohen Building (formerly housing the Social Security Board Building) in Washington, D.C., 1942. Fogel's murals were painted to express the meaning of Social Security. Shows an idealized American family and its healthy lifestyle, including a mother caring for an infant, a father reading the news, a daughter learning geometry, and a son playing tennis.

Karl Marx’s line against “writing recipes for the cookshops of the future” is often used to criticize utopian thinking. But even if we don’t write the recipes for the future yet, it’s worth laying out what principles the kitchen will be run on. (VCG Wilson / Corbis via Getty Images)

Ever since Karl Marx’s famous pronouncement against utopias, the Left has often been skeptical of what he called “writing recipes for the cookshops of the future.” However, the idea of a future socialist society does not start from a blank slate. For twentieth-century history offers many examples of attempts to transcend capitalism, which any present-day discussion must draw lessons from.

This is what economic historian and social theorist Aaron Benanav does in a recent series of essays. He draws on these past experiences as he sets out an ambitious plan for a “multidimensional economy” and how to get there.

Jonas Elvander is an editor at the Swedish left-wing magazine Flamman and a PhD researcher at the European University Institute, working on the history of planning. In an interview, he spoke with Benanav about the lessons of the Soviet five-year plans and how we can critically engage with the approaches advanced by Otto Neurath, John Maynard Keynes, and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).

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