Abstract
In The Baby Auction Taylor-Gooby articulates, through fiction, what he has long argued in his academic research. Not only is free market liberalism destructive – because of the social inequalities it creates – but it does not succeed even on its own terms. By concentrating wealth at the top, it gives the already-privileged more power to hang on to their privileges, undermining the very values (freedom, competition, social mobility, merit, entrepreneurial creativity) which the free market Right claim to support.
The book’s depiction of a society, Market World, a more extreme version of our own, appeals to two literary traditions. There is, firstly, social science fiction and in Taylor-Gooby’s novel you hear echoes of Wells. Indeed, it often has an early twentieth century feel to it. The characters use coins rather than anything electronic and one character carries a parasol ‘shaped like a giant yellow dahlia’. So rather than indulging in techno-futurism Taylor-Gooby keeps the narrative at the level of a stripped down, Wellsian parable: the self-proclaimed utopia which is really dystopic. Orwell also resonates in the novel, with Matt and Ed substituting for Winston Smith and Julia.
The other tradition is that of non-genre fiction which comments upon our hyper-marketised societies. The best of these are those that re-present capitalist reality through a warped mirror. Think of Brett Easton Ellis’s satire American Psycho, Martin Amis’ Money, Jonathan Coe’s What a Carve Up! and David Peace’s GB84. There is a warning here, in other words, about our continued direction of travel. That such warnings have become more politically widespread than they were, say, ten years ago does not make the underlying message any less vital.
For Taylor-Gooby’s target is not simply libertarian capitalism per se, but the kind of ethical and social monoculture which it engenders and upon which it depends. The One Law which constitutes the legal and cultural bedrock of Market World is clearly influenced by Thatcher’s claim that ‘there is no alternative’. The invisible hand is attached to a very visible arm of enforcement and compliance. So while, in recent years, we have seen many warnings issued about social inequalities and market globalisation – even by Donald Trump – the accompanying risk (seeking a simplistic solution to complex problems which allows the most powerful players to remain in charge) has if anything intensified. Without giving away spoilers, Market World is revealed to be the opposite of what it proclaims to be.
What The Baby Auction lacks is a steely protagonist capable of giving the devil the best tunes and really challenging many readers’ presumptions. Think of the way O’Brien uses Winston Smith’s own logic against him in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Another genre novel that invites us to contrast alternatives is Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, where a free market, unequal and authoritarian planet, Urras, is contrasted with its communistic, anarchistic moon, Anarres. Taylor-Gooby’s novel is ultimately populated by more obvious Goodies and Baddies. Nor is the history of Market World ever really filled in.
Indeed, by at least paying lip-service to freedom and equality, Market World would arguably be preferable to scenarios which track back to Kurt Vonnegut’s 1952 novel Player Piano and which have recently become fashionable again. These foresee a future in which the richest upgrade (and upload) themselves technologically and abandon even the pretence of affinity with the rest of humanity – who are eventually rendered obsolete. Similar, earlier warnings were issued by Wells, Zemyatin and Huxley.
The book also fails to deploy humour as part of its armoury. This is a shame. If you want an entertaining skewering of capitalist libertarians then, in addition to Coe and Amis in the list above, watch the antics of the Ferengi in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
I do not wish to make the novel sound heavy-handed. Ideas, in fact, frequently take second place to the plot (one perhaps filled with too many coincidences) and, as such, the book might rest on the ‘young adult’ shelves. This is certainly not to dismiss it. Indeed, The Baby Auction forms a useful counterpoint to recent hits, like Divergent and The Hunger Games, which arguably rely upon an ideology of heroic individualism. It is this self-image – one that Apple, Google, Facebook, etc. rely upon – that Taylor-Gooby attacks so effectively. For those of us incapable of hating Donald Sutherland (did Katniss Everdeen never see him in Space Cowboys?) that alone makes it a useful contribution to the genre.