Progress is a matter of political struggle, following no pre-plotted trajectory or natural tendency

Various modernities are possible, and new visions of the future are essential for the left. Such images are a necessary supplement to any transformative political project. They give a direction to political struggles and generate a set of criteria to adjudicate which struggles to support, which movements to resist, what to invent, and so on. In the absence of images of progress, there can only be reactivity, defensive battles, local resisitance and a bunker mentality – what we have characterised as folk politics. Visions of the future are therefore indispensable for elaborating a movement against capitalism. Contra the earlier thinkers of modernity, there is no necesssity to progress, nor a single pathway from which to adjudicate the extent of development. Instead, progress must be understood as hyperstitional: as a kind of fiction, but one that aims to transform itself into a truth. Hyperstitions operate by catalysing dispersed sentiment into a historical force that brings the future into existence. They have the temporal form of 'will have been'. Such hyperstitions of progress form orienting narratives with which to navigate forward, rather than being an established or necessary property of the world. Progress is a matter of political struggle, following no pre-plotted trajectory or natural tendency, and with no guarantee of success. If the supplanting of capitalism is impossible from the standpoint of one or even many defensive stances, it is because any form of prospective politics must set out to construct the new. Pathways of progress must be cut and paved, not merely travelled along in some pre-ordained fashion; they are a matter of political achievement rather than divine or earthly providence.

Nick Srnicek & Alex Williams, Inventing the Future (Verso, 2016) pp. 74-75

Ah, to depart!

Ah, to depart! By whatever means and to whatever place!
To set out across the waves, across unknown perils, across the sea!
To go Far, to go Wide, toward Abstract Distance,
Indefinitely, through deep and mysterious nights,
Carried like dust by the winds, by the gales!
To go, go, go once and for all!
All of my blood lusts for wings!
All of my body lurches forward!
I rush through my imagination in torrents!
I trample myself underfoot, I growl, I hurtle!
My yearnings bust into foam
And my flesh is a wave crashing into cliffs!

Alvaro de Campos, 'Maritime Ode', in Fernando Pessoa, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe (Penguin Books, 2006) p. 174