Haunted Futures: A review of ‘Monster Capital’ (Comma Press)

The new collection from Comma Press explores the horrors of techno-capitalism, and looks to Marxism to exorcise its ghosts

“A spectre is haunting Europe.”

These words open Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, indicating from the offset that Marxist analysis of capitalism would trade in the currency of the numinous, the ghostly, and the monstrous. The spectre Marx talked about was communism itself — although on the march through Europe in 1848, its aims and goals had never been fully articulated until the Manifesto. As Marx went on to proclaim, “It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.”

Contained within these opening paragraphs are two of the core concepts that Marxist analysis would follow — a willingness to entertain metaphors about the spectral nature of the ideologies that constrain or inspire us, and an injunction to publish and be damned. Manchester-based publisher Comma Press embraces both of these tropes in their new collection Monster Capital: Tales of Modern Unease, edited by Ra Page and David Sue.

Page’s introduction sets the scene, drawing out the “spectre” analogy alongside quotes that demonstrate the enduring power of horror imagery in left-wing thought. From the “enchantments” of consumerist culture, to theories of capital like Adam Smith’s “invisible hand of the market”, to Mark Fisher’s metaphor of “zombie capitalism,” there is ample material to draw upon. In Page’s reading, capitalism is infested with more ghosts than the UK’s most haunted house, Borley Rectory.

Page writes: “Capitalism, the Marxists argue, is a cult built on rituals, irrational belief systems, collective delusions, and ciphers that carry more ceremony than meaning.” If capitalism can bewitch us, or turn us into Fisher’s zombies, Page proposes that horror is the genre that can best articulate its unheimlich aspects: “... it is the exorcism of horror stories, not the prophecies of science fiction, that we clearly need.” As Page argues, Monster Capital is urgent and timely. In the hypercapitalist hellscape in which we find ourselves, writers and publishers who engage openly and courageously with the question of how we oppose its horrors play a vital role. They shape how we might imagine our way to a post-capitalist future — if only by showing us the nightmarish consequences of failing to do so. Comma has a long standing tradition of engagement with anti-capitalist ideas and writers — a rare and precious exception in our precarious publishing ecosystem.

To answer the call for anti-capitalist horror, Page and Sue bring together some intriguing storytellers and narrative approaches in Monster Capital. Its short story form lends itself to punchy, sharply observed deconstructions of capitalism and its excesses, but some of these tales leave the reader strangely high and dry when it comes to the question of what comes after, or what forces we might marshall in order to fight capital in the present. Like the Scooby Doo gang, the writers rip the mask off of consumerist culture, the rentier class, music streaming monopolies, and profit-seeking health and wellness companies, showing the true face of capitalist excess. This “gotcha” approach makes for powerful and punchy vignettes, but often abandons you at a cliff edge — quite literally, in the case of Adam Marek’s visceral and impressive “Replacement Cycle,” which contrasts selfie-obsessed tourists turning nature into #content with a shocking moment of violence that savagely indicts the planned obsolescence of new technologies. Sarah Scholfield’s “Breast Friend” attempts something similar, with a tale of a new mother exploited by a virtual reality breast milk enhancement app. Unlike Marek’s tale, the horror in Schofield’s story is supernatural as well as technological, but the blending of horror imagery, glitching avatars and postpartum depression cleverly leans towards the ambiguous.

The majority of the stories in the collection pull off the balance of critiquing capitalism while delivering memorable eldritch imagery, and the occasional jump scare. The grim body-horror of Sanjida Kay’s “Meat” plays on the fear of failure that artists endure under a competitive, market-driven art world, tying these themes to lab-grown animal proteins flavoured by torture, and an art installation filled with rotting meat. “The Dots” by Luan Goldie contains no supernatural elements — the horror is simply the aggressive in-group / out-group tone policing of social media pop music fandoms, and the all-encompassing trauma of cancellation.

Ian Carrington’s “Hit” leans heavily on the idea of a failed musician who loses his identity to a streaming service, attempting a satire of “poptimist” AI-created music, but falls slightly flat due to the anachronistic “rockist” tropes that define the unlikable main character. Kiare Ladner’s “AIngels” is beautifully written, but the pleasure comes from the way the author draws the rich and vivid inner life of her worldly-wise protagonist, rather than the somewhat lightly-sketched premise of capturing the “soul” of a human in an AI replica after their death. Both of these tales, and some of the more successful ones in the collection, slightly undercut Page’s argument in the introduction — that we need horror, and not science fiction, to help us understand capitalism’s predations. By drawing on technological rather than spectral tropes, these writers often arrive at science fiction by default. For an anthology that sets out to describe, and even counter the spectral nature of capitalist exploitation, these pages contain very few ghosts — and the monsters are nearly all human beings, or new technologies.

The stories that truly succeed in channeling what Fisher called the “weird and eerie” aspects of capitalism are Matthew Holness’ “Silent Partner” — in which a landlord drives up prices by spreading the false story of a suicide in the building he manages. This metaphor for capitalism’s merciless, inhuman lust for profit is here told through the actions of the slimy, unpleasant narrator. He is perhaps the best-drawn monster of the book, and the story’s dreamlike, Lynchian ending will resonate with fans of liminal horror. “The Wild Hunt” by Brontë Schultz pulls off something similar in its aching portrayal of a man who loses his job, his life and his sense of self to a daytime TV show, also culminating in a surreal, liminal dissolve into madness. The allegory here is less important than the vivid depiction of what it feels like to be ejected from capitalist society for those who are unable to work, and it hits with devastating power.

Monster Capital is packed with entertaining stories, each one delivering thrills and big ideas that echo the intellectual delights of big-screen “elevated horror” hits like Obsession and Backrooms, while weaving clever metaphors for capitalism’s darker aspects. That so many of them depend on a science fiction twist indicates that the genre of dystopian and post-apocalyptic science fiction, cyberpunk, and even space opera, may still be more potent vectors for this kind of anti-capitalist allegory. William Gibson’s domineering “zaibatsu” corporations in the Sprawl Trilogy, or Neal Stephenson’s depiction of corporate “burbclaves” in Snow Crash are still relevant and incisive metaphors, while the galaxy-spanning visions of post-capitalist corruption in Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels prove that even in attempting to move beyond capitalism, we should be careful what we wish for.

Thrills, scares and provocations abound in Monster Capital. It’s a fascinating and at times brilliant anthology, but perhaps misses the mark a little by pitting itself against the more muscular dystopian visions of science fiction. Arguably, it’s easier to slay a monster or exorcise a ghost than it is to avoid a dark future, or rein in the advance of malign new technologies. It would be interesting to see the gifted storytellers Comma Press selected for this collection let loose on full-bore science fiction, but that doesn’t undercut the value of this pulse-pounding collection of anti-capitalist horror tales.

• Monster Capital: Tales of Modern Unease is available now from Comma Press.

---

Top image uses a modified image asset from Josue Canales Tecuatl

---