The Ministry for the Future is a decent book exploring a relatively optimistic future where we as a species are able to adapt to climate change without significantly disrupting modern civilisation. It explores a scenario where the UN, in symbiosis with increasingly militant eco-terrorist, is able to enact policy that significantly curtails both state and capital in such a way that it can ensure a relatively smooth transition to a sustainable post-capitalist future.

As for the story, parts are well written and most of the characters are at least somewhat engaging. At the same time, it is clear that the characters are mere devices for the utopian speculations and subordinated to the “idea” of the book. The book thus remains trapped within its genre as a “novel of ideas” where more general literary qualities are secondary to the “point”: that an ecological non-capitalist modernity is possible.

While the lacklustre literary qualities lower my overall impressions with the book they could be forgiven if the point was more convincing. My main critique of the book is that it is both too utopian and to trapped within what I, with Mark Fishers overused term, would call “capitalist realism”. It’s limits as a utopia is that institutes such as the state and the value-form remain post capitalism, it is unable to portray a future where such heteronomous institutions can be completely overcome. Furthermore, it is utopian in the sense that anthropogenic climate change can be overcome smoothy through largely technocratic means, while at the same time catering to some form of increased democratisation.

While this review has been largely negative, I would still argue that the book is well worth the read. In my case not as inspiration, rather the opposite, as an exploration of the limits of modern civilisation and how it despite the authors intent still appears as a world that still limits human autonomy and a complete sublation, the magical word aufhebung comes to my mind, of the nature-culture divide.