I’m Jarrett Kaufman for HPPR.
This is the third of four reviews on Nicholas Lamar Soutter’s dystopian novel, The Water Thief.
The protagonist, Charlie Thatcher, exists in a world where corporations control all aspects of public and private life. Everything in this world is for sale. Nothing escapes commodification.
Charlie must purchase everything, air, water, elevator rides, and friends. Nothing falls outside of the profit-investment motive, even spouses consider compatibility, not by personality or values, but my how one improves the other’s net worth: be it income, social mobility, or power.
According to philosopher Guy Debord, commodification creates spectacle and spectacle is an instrument of unification. He says:
| The spectacle is a social relation among people, mediated by images. It presents itself as something enormously positive, indisputable and inaccessible. The attitude which it demands in principle is passively acceptable. It is the diplomatic representation of hierarchic society to itself, where all other expression is banned. |
In The Water Thief, spectacle emerges in the form of public executions, a corporate sanctioned event, where individuals deemed a threat to neoliberalism are hanged on TV. There’re execution parties, where people gather to eat popcorn and make bets on if the condemned will die instantly or strangle to death. Linus, Charlie’s colleague, says:
| The executions were the greatest gift the corporation could give its colleagues. They were an expression of God and of the state of nature. It was a thinning of the herd, casting off the excess weight from a racecar, and allowed us all to better reap the benefits of our firm. |
The Water Thief, published in 2012, is labeled science fiction. However, the novel’s world, as absurd and frightening, as it is, doesn’t seem but a stone’s throw away from the reality of our own world.
Consider this: In the novel, corporations own their workers. They are called “private citizens. In our words, over half of the US population works for a corporation. In the novel, judges and public officials are employees of corporations. In our world, corporations donate and funnel trillions of dollars into political campaigns to shape policy. In the novel, corporations’ control 100% of the world’s economy. In our world, just over 700 corporations’ control 80% of the world’s economy.
Now consider this: It isn’t the villainous Ackerman Corporation in The Water Thief that’s larger in terms of income than Austria, South Africa and Qatar. It’s Walmart. It isn’t Ackerman that effectively runs a larger economy than all of the developing world. It’s Apple. It isn’t Ackerman who controls all of the world’s food supplies. It’s just ten corporations, including Kellogg’s, Nestle, and General Mills.
The novel is not merely a critique of late-stage capitalism. It is an exploration of human nature. It asks readers to ponder what kind of world we should live in. Do we live in a world where generosity is perceived as the enemy to society, where we see this as a betrayal of our natural instinct? Are we merely a number, a line on a ledger sheet?
In the epigraph of The Water Thief, Soutter offers his readers a quote from the British economist and philosopher, John Maynard Keynes. It reads:
| Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone. |
What do you believe fellow readers? Are we brave enough to see though the spectacle?
I’m Jarrett Kaufman for HPPR.