He said, ‘What’s the time? Leave Now for dogs and apes! Man has Forever’.

– Robert Browning, A Grammarian’s Funeral

The achievements of the Soviet and American space programmes provided just an inkling of what would be possible. But the space programmes of the great powers were really a by-product of the arms race during the Cold War. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the question of space travel no longer occupies the centre stage, although there is still the possibility of building a space station that will orbit the earth, making travel to the moon a lot easier. In the future world socialist commonwealth, space travel will cease to be the stuff of science fiction, and become a fact of life, as common as air travel is now. The exploration of the solar system, and later other galaxies, will provide the same kind of challenge and stimulus to humankind as that which came to Europe from the discovery of America.

The possibility of long distance space travel beyond the confines of our own solar system will not forever remain in the realms of science fiction. Let us not forget that only a hundred years ago, the idea of flying faster than the speed of sound seemed beyond the bounds of credibility, let alone travelling to the moon. The history of the human race in general, and that of the last 40 years in particular, shows that there is no problem so great that men and women cannot solve it, given time.

In about four billion years from now, our sun will begin to swell in size, as its helium core slowly shrinks. The planets near the sun will be subjected to unimaginable temperatures. Life on earth will become impossible, as the oceans boil away, and the atmosphere is destroyed. Yet the end of life in one small corner of the universe is not the end of the story. Even as our star dies, other stars will be born. Among the billions of galaxies in the visible universe, there are a vast quantity of suns and planets like our own where the conditions for life exist. Beyond doubt, many of these will be inhabited by advanced forms of life, including thinking beings like ourselves. Very few scientists now doubt this proposition, and fewer still since the complicated molecules needed to create living organisms have been found even in space itself.

At the end of The Dialectics of Nature, Engels expresses a vibrant optimism about the future of life:

It is an eternal cycle in which matter moves, a cycle that certainly only completes its orbit in periods of time for which our terrestrial year is no adequate measure, a cycle in which the time of highest development, the time of organic life and still more that of the life of beings conscious of nature and of themselves, is just as narrowly restricted as the space in which life and self-consciousness come into operation; a cycle in which every finite mode of existence of matter, whether it be sun or nebular vapour, single animal or genus of animals chemical combination or dissociation, is equally transient, and wherein nothing is eternal but eternally changing, eternally moving matter and the laws according to which it moves and changes.

But however often, and however relentlessly, this cycle is completed in time and space; however many millions of suns and earths may arise and pass away, however long it may last before, in one solar system and only on one planet, the conditions for organic life develop; however innumerable the organic beings, too, that have to arise and to pass away before animals with a brain capable of thought are developed from their midst, and for a short span of time find conditions suitable for life, only to be exterminated later without mercy – we have the certainty that matter remains eternally the same in all its transformations, that none of its attributes can ever be lost, and therefore, also, that with the same iron necessity that it will exterminate on the earth its highest creation, the thinking mind, it must somewhere else and at another time again produce it.[52]

Now, however, we are entitled to go further than this. The staggering advances of science over the hundred years since Engels died mean that the death of the sun will not necessarily mean the death of the human race. The development of powerful spacecraft, capable of travelling at speeds which at present seem impossible, could prepare the ground for the ultimate adventure, involving emigration to other parts of the solar system, and, eventually, other galaxies. Even at one per cent of the speed of light – a clearly attainable goal – it would be possible to reach inhabitable planets in the course of a few hundred years.

If this seems a long time, we should remember that it took early humans millions of years to colonise the world, setting out from Africa. Moreover, the journey would probably take place in stages, establishing colonies and staging posts along the way, like the early Polynesian settlers who colonised the Pacific, island by island, over several centuries. The technological problems will be immense, but we will have at least three billion years to resolve them. If we consider that Homo sapiens has only been in existence for about 100,000 years, that civilisation has only existed for about 5,000 years of that, and that the pace of technological advance has tended to increase ever more rapidly, there is no reason whatever to draw pessimistic conclusions about the future of humanity – on one condition: that class rule, that atrocious relic of barbarism, is replaced by a system of co-operation and planning, which will unite all the resources of the globe in one common cause.

Engels described socialism as humanity’s leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom. For the first time, it will be possible for the majority of humankind to escape from the humiliating struggle for existence, and raise their sights to a higher level. The elimination of disease, illiteracy and homelessness in themselves important aims, will only be the starting point. By combining all the resources of the planet that are now being shamelessly squandered humankind can literally reach out to the stars.

Last, but not least, humans will at last become masters of themselves, their lives and their destinies, even their genetic make-up. The relations between men and women will be relations between free human beings, not slaves. Aristotle pointed out that man begins to philosophise when the needs of life are provided. That mighty thinker understood that the development of culture was closely linked to the material conditions of life. In a truly remarkable passage, he shows how men and women begin to philosophise, to dedicate themselves to the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, only when they are freed from the need to struggle for the necessities of existence:

This is shown by the actual course of events; for philosophy arose only when the necessities and the physical and mental comforts of life had been provided for. Clearly, therefore, Wisdom is desired for no advantage extrinsic to itself; for just as we call a man free who exists for himself and not in the interests of another, so philosophy alone of the sciences is free since it alone is pursued for its own sake.[53]

For the whole history of civilisation to the present day, culture has been a monopoly of a small minority. In a genuinely democratic socialist society, it would be possible to ensure a general reduction in the working day, and increased living standards for everyone on the basis of a tremendous upswing of production. Freed from the pressures of necessity, men and women can devote their lives to a full and all-round development of their personality, intellect and physique. Art, literature, music, science and philosophy will occupy a similar position as party politics at present.

On the basis of a rational democratically run planned economy, the colossal potential of science and technique could be placed at the disposal of humankind. In the last 100 years, improved diet and medical care have doubled the life expectancy in many industrialised countries. Further improvements in lifestyle could prolong active life still further. To live a fully active life for a hundred years would be commonplace. The proper use of genetic engineering could even permit scientists to counteract the ageing process and prolong life far beyond what was regarded as “man’s natural span”. Trotsky explains that the possibilities for the future of humankind will be as limitless as the universe itself.

The blind elements have settled most heavily in economic relations, but man is driving them out from there also, by means of the Socialist organisation of economic life. This makes it possible to reconstruct fundamentally the traditional family life. Finally, the nature of man himself is hidden in the deepest and darkest corner of the unconscious, of the elemental, of the sub-soil. Is it not self-evident that the greatest efforts of investigative thought and of creative initiative will be in that direction? The human race will not have ceased to crawl on all fours before God, kings and capital, in order later to submit humbly before the dark laws of heredity and a blind sexual selection! Emancipated man will want to attain a greater equilibrium in the work of his organs and a more proportional developing and wearing out of his tissues, in order to reduce the fear of death to a rational reaction of the organism towards danger. There can be no doubt that man’s extreme anatomical and physiological disharmony, that is, the extreme disproportion in the growth and wearing out of organs and tissues, give the life instinct the form of a pinched, morbid and hysterical fear of death, which darkens reason and which feeds the stupid and humiliating fantasies about life after death.

Man will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman.

It is difficult to predict the extent of self-government which the man of the future may reach or the heights to which he may carry his technique. Social construction and psychophysical self-education will become two aspects of one and the same process. All the arts – literature, drama, painting, music and architecture will lend this process beautiful form. More correctly, the shell in which the cultural construction and self-education of Communist man will be enclosed, will develop all the vital elements of contemporary art to the highest point. Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser and subtler; his body will become more harmonised, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above the ridge new peaks will rise.[54]

  1. Engels, F.Dialectics of Nature, p. 54.

  2. Aristotle, op. cit., p. 55.

  3. Trotsky, L. Literature and Revolution, pp. 255-6.