Paper short abstract:

Indigenous worlds, Christendom, communism - all alternatives to the neoliberal present in the contemporary West seem to recede into the past. Imagined alternatives are a precious resource. This paper explores emergent imagined alternatives amongst economic activists in Vancouver, Canada.

Paper long abstract:

The apparent decline of indigenous worlds, Christendom and communism have left a number of people nonplussed as to alternatives to the neoliberal present in the contemporary West. The fall of the Berlin wall in particular, the many faults of the Soviet empire notwithstanding, brought with it an air of resignation amongst some economic activists. The faltering moral imagination involved in this post-Soviet gloom seems particularly well captured in one of my interlocutor's suggestions that we should move: "from each according to their means to each according to their...how does it go again?" What alternatives lurk on the horizon for those wishing to develop an alternative economic future?

Far from being 'fraught with ought' this paper highlights how the people I have spent time with are struggling to conjure the kinds of imaginaries from which a moral discourse can be developed. Drawing on ethnographic research amongst economic activists in Vancouver, Canada, this paper highlights how people draw lamentingly on past alternatives that no longer seem viable: of a pristine landscape prior to resource extraction; of a collectivist economics prior to agriculture; of a communist utopia that seemed possible prior to the fall of the Berlin wall. These "past perfect" attitudes seem to leave people always fighting against a neoliberal tide, or else relinquishing altogether, rather than developing new visions. I close by highlighting inklings of an alternative amongst a minority of my interlocutors.