Pluribus: American Society Confronts the Idea of Communism

The series Pluribus sparked intense interest from its very first episode. A group of people eagerly awaits the release of new episodes. The series begins in an observatory located in the middle of a desert, the exact location of which we do not know. A group of young scientists—naturally “geeks”—first notices that a single person has recorded a repetitive sequence of four signals coming from satellite receivers pointed at space, which repeat every 78 seconds. They then set out to figure out what it is. The young scientist who first spotted the signal realizes, based on the fact that the sequence is a quartet, that it is a DNA sequence; there are two strands on each chromosome, and each of these two strands consists of two strands, making a total of four strands.

The fact that this attempt to approach the unknown through science appears right at the beginning of the sequence actually points to the most fundamental dimension that shapes the society in which we live, then our conception of the world, and finally what it means to be human: science. This passionate quest, to which truth itself has opened up, now progresses freely into realms where there is neither religion nor any other form of thought. Even extraterrestrials, ultimately, address scientists through science; there is no other kind of message. Since the very beginnings of modernity—that is, since Descartes—the visions of the world, society, and humanity that have emerged have been unable to develop a way of thinking that is not, in one way or another, dominated by the idea of science; whether they are opposed to it or in favor of it makes no difference. It is, of course, inconceivable that the cultural and artistic output of the United States—the “most advanced” nation in the world—would not reflect this idea, but the Pluribus series might well point to something that goes beyond it. Once the DNA sequence has been decoded and synthesized in the lab, the next step is to introduce it into living organisms, starting with lab animals. At first, there seems to be no change, but things accelerate after a test subject bites a human. That person “infects” another, who in turn infects yet another, and the virus spreads logarithmically, with people rapidly becoming carriers of the virus. To our knowledge, very few people—only 12 individuals—remain completely unaffected by the virus; they possess natural immunity to it. And from that point on—that is, once virtually everyone in the world has been infected—we begin to observe certain characteristics in these “new humans.” The “new humans” act collectively. Each person puts the collective and the community before themselves. They do no harm to nature or animals; they neither kill nor eat animals, nor do they pick fruit before it falls from the tree. They treat the 12 uninfected individuals with great care and inflict no violence upon them. They oppose the waste of global resources; for example, they turn off the city lights at night. They sleep collectively, in gymnasiums and similar places. Doesn’t all of this resemble a kind of communist society? The resemblance doesn’t stop there; it also evokes the utopian and egalitarian ideas of communism that emerged before the concept of communism was put into practice. The other aspect presented as a contrast in the series is that this community of “new humans” has become a single “One.” It is not presented as a series of 1+1+1+1…, but rather as a whole existing within a single “One,” moving as a single body, a single consciousness. This, of course, brings to the fore the usual American individualist and liberal critique: “What is the meaning of life if our individual freedoms are taken away?” Paradoxically, however, the country currently best positioned to create a communist society is the United States. Production has reached such a level that it is sufficiently advanced to allow all residents of the United States to live without private property. In reality, they do not need to further develop production. Through a dialectical irony of history, it is precisely at this stage that different social visions emerge in films or series; even if it is critical, does this series not also play with the idea of the possibility of an egalitarian and free society? Most likely, the “new humans” infected by the virus represent China: it makes sense to think this is the case through the lens of collective production, a planned economy, the disappearance of individuality, and so on. But the real question is this: must concepts such as collective production, planning, reducing production to counter the world’s material ruin, or the idea of community as a remedy for loneliness and depression, necessarily be totalitarian and oppressive? Does the idea of equality combined with freedom—or a different vision of society—always lead to the worst-case scenario? The search for alternatives beyond the environment of poverty and oppression created by a bureaucratic monster that looms over people like a nightmare will naturally continue to emerge.

Why would the idea of “ONE” in Pluribus, the idea of “us,” be worse than an individualistic, consumerist, and capitalist world based on constant progress—not to mention the nightmarish totalitarian connotations? Ultimately, the idea of different worlds is also inscribed as a potential within the existing world. This is, of course, not some kind of artificial world devoid of contradictions, where all problems are solved and all promises kept; rather, we must speak of a perspective that embraces these very contradictions. Just as capitalism exerts its influence by manipulating the subject through their desires, instilling in them the idea that satisfaction is possible, politics, in an alternative form, can also function by appealing to desire. It could, for example, demonstrate that satisfaction exists—and indeed exists at every moment—and that its realization is not merely a promise. Pluribus does not need to start with DNA from 600 light-years away; in fact, Pluribus exists today, right now. We simply don’t see it because we don’t know how to see it. Who knows, maybe there really are aliens; maybe they’ve endured countless terrible experiences, seen their worlds destroyed and waged nuclear wars, and then sent a message into space to warn us not to do the same.