Review: “The Handover: How We Gave Control of Our Lives to Corporations, States and AIs” by David Runciman

“The Handover is, at bottom, a plea for liberal democratic states to discipline, if not disempower, the sociopaths and psychopaths who currently have control of the technologies and resources which are changing us and our environment and promise to change both ourselves and the planet we inhabit more radically still.”

Introduction: A Liberal Straussian

Homer Simpson loves donuts. He daydreams about them. He injects them into his veins. He screams in terror at the prospect of living in a world without them. When the opportunity arises, he even exchanges his soul for a donut with the devil. Similarly, David Runciman—Professor of Politics at the University of Cambridge, regular Guardian contributor, and host of Past Present Future, a popular bi-weekly history of ideas podcast—loves jelly beans. In chapter two of his extraordinary new book, published in 2023, The Handover: How We Gave Control of Our Lives to Corporations, States and AIs, the United Kingdom’s preeminent liberal public intellectual cannot, apparently, think of much else. A “friend of a friend knows the number of jellybeans!,” he tells us excitedly in a discussion, ostensibly, about the wisdom, or madness, of crowds. Jelly beans “are much bigger/smaller than they look!,” he goes on in the same animated fashion. “Brexit, and war, are not jellybeans in a jar,” he forlornly reminds us, invoking instances of group wisdom, when the public gets things right. “Mmm jellybeans in a jar.”

For around 90 pages or so, Runciman appears to be bewitched by the bean-shaped sugar candies, so driven to distraction indeed that he fails to define core concepts, such as robot and state. Sidetracked by thoughts of the soft candy shells, he offers simple, roughly hewn commentaries on the capacity of states and corporations to operate independently of the individuals of which they are comprised, ignoring, for example, civil disobedience and protest, active and passive. Preoccupied by memories of their thick gel interiors, Runciman advertises his innocence using the plural, first-person pronoun “We” when claiming that states and corporations were “made for our own convenience, to allow us to lead safer, healthier, happier lives.” Tormented, as Homer is, by thoughts of his favorite confectionery, here Runciman neglects to consider ideas of class domination and profit. Do not be fooled, however: David Runciman is not the Homer Simpson of political theory. Far from it.

When Homer sells his soul to the devil for a donut, the interaction is surveilled by his evil billionaire industrialist boss, Mr. Burns, who inquires: “who’s that goat-legged fellow? I like the cut of his jib.” While Homer is both credulous, imagining he can outsmart the Prince of Darkness, landing up eventually in Hell, where he is compelled to eat all the donuts in the world, and oblivious to the fact he is being watched, Runciman is extra-sensitive to the Satanic forces which seek to tempt us into sin and self-destruction, enslavement, perhaps. Unlike Homer, he is hyper-aware of the knavish actions of the egoists, narcissists, and megalomaniacs among us. A liberal Straussian, Runciman is a master—a genius indeed—of esoteric prose writing, delivering his somewhat terrifying thesis with stupendous skill and subtlety.