Does Energy Have Politics? – Reading Langdon Winner in 2026

Some proponents of energy from renewable resources now believe they have at last discovered a set of intrinsically democratic, egalitarian, communitarian technologies. In my best estimation, however, the social consequences of building renewable energy systems will surely depend on the specific configurations of both hardware and the social institutions created to bring that energy to us. (Winner 1980, 135)

Do Artifacts Have Politics? asks Langdon Winner in a seminal 1980 essay that has since become one of the foundational documents of modern Science and Technology Studies (STS). Winner’s article sketches the outlines of a theory of technological politics that avoids both the Scylla of social determinism – the notion that technology only matters as the expression of the social and economic system in which it is embedded – and the Charybdis of technological determinism – the view that technology “develops as the sole result of an internal dynamic, and then, unmediated by any other influence, molds society to fit its patterns” (Winner 1980, 122). Instead, Winner suggests distinguishing between two kinds of technological artefacts. Most technologies, such as transport infrastructure or agricultural machinery, are political only in their specific design or arrangement. Some technologies, on the other hand, are what Winner calls “inherently political”. An example is the atomic bomb, whose physical properties demand it to be controlled by a centralised chain of command, prescribing an inherently authoritarian politics (Winner 1980, 131). Winner further differentiates between cases of strong political determinism, referring to technologies such as the atomic bomb and nuclear power which create clear political constraints, and those of a weaker determinism. The latter refers to technologies which are “strongly compatible with, but do[…] not strictly require, social and political relationships of a particular stripe” (Winner 1980, 130). Winner’s key example for this category of artefacts is solar energy, which in the aftermath of the 1973 global energy crisis came to be conceived as a viable alternative to fossil fuels. He points out that “many advocates of solar energy now hold that technologies of that variety are more compatible with a democratic, egalitarian society than energy systems based on coal, oil, and nuclear power; at the same time they do not maintain that anything about solar energy requires democracy” (Winner 1980, 130). Winner cautions against such an overly optimistic view, arguing that the social outcomes will “surely depend on the specific configurations of both hardware and the social institutions created to bring that energy to us” (Winner 1980, 135). His remarks are striking in their anticipation of some of the most crucial debates in the twenty-first-century political theory concerning the politics of energy, debates that gain renewed significance in the context of escalating ecological crises and at the onset of a new Cold War.

A central reference in this debate is Timothy Mitchell’s 2011 Carbon Democracy (Mitchell 2011). Mitchell argues that modern mass democracy is a direct product of the nineteenth-century rise of coal power and the resulting fossil-fueled economic order. Workers across Europe and North America learned to understand their strategic position in the energy system as a means to advancing democratic and egalitarian claims. As Mitchell argues, the great general strikes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries across Europe and North America usually brought together alliances of workers in the coal, railway, docking, and shipping sectors. The near-total dependence of the early industrialised economies on coal meant that workers in these professions were able to paralyse their national economies and extract far-ranging political concessions from their respective national ruling classes. These included (male) suffrage, the legal recognition of unions and the formalisation of labour relations, the right to strike, the recognition of mass-based labour parties, the eight-hour workday and other labour protections, and the institutionalisation of unemployment and health insurance.

In the twentieth century, these developments were complicated by another important shift in the global energy system: the rise of oil. While in 1900, oil had made up as little as 1.49% of global primary energy consumption, its share gradually rose throughout the century to reach 42% by 1974 (Ritchie and Rosado 2020). The rise of oil coincided with that of the United States, which eclipsed the United Kingdom as the world’s leading power. As Mitchell notes, the US systematically engineered post-war Europe’s oil dependency via programs such as the Marshall Plan, which entailed hefty investment in the construction of oil refineries, the installation of oil-fired industrial boilers, road construction, and the automobile industry. Such measures, Mitchell concludes, were targeted precisely at weakening the structural power of the working class. The United Kingdom is a case in point. In 1972 and 1974, massive strikes by the British National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) still caused massive disruptions to the country’s economy, leading to the fall of the Conservative government led by Edward Heath (Gibbs 2022). When the Tories returned to power under Margaret Thatcher in 1979, the  British ruling class had learnt its lesson. Thanks to sufficient nuclear and oil capacity as well as increased coal stocks, Margaret Thatcher’s government was able to defeat the national coal miner’s strike 1984 and pave the way for the massive cuts to the British welfare state. Across the globe, the rise of oil paved the way for the neoliberal revolution and the restructuring of the global economy.  

One highly productive engagement with Mitchell’s framework is Victor Seow’s 2022 Carbon Technocracy. With a focus on East Asia, Seow’s work underlines that Mitchell’s arguments must indeed be read as an instance weak determinism. In fact, none of the East Asian developmental states, among them China, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, developed carbon democracies of the type described by Mitchell – despite the fact that all of these economies followed a coal-heavy development path. In Seow’s study, the city of Fushun functions both as a case study and a metaphor. Located in the Northern Chinese province of Liaoning, Fushun was one of the centres of Chinese industrialisation in the 20th century and became also known as China’s coal capital (煤都 meidu) for the sheer size of its coal output. Initially developed by the Japanese colonial administration, and later controlled by both Nationalists and Communists, Fushun becomes an archetype of what Seow calls carbon technocracy:

"For all their differences as political regimes, the imperial Japanese, Chinese Nationalist, and Chinese Communist states that controlled Fushun at varying times shared a decidedly technocratic vision in relation to carbon resources. This vision involved marshalling science and technology toward the exploitation of fossil fuels for statist ends. It was further characterised by an embrace of coal- fired development, a focus on heavy industrial expansion, a fixation on national autarky, an interest in labour-saving mechanisation, a privileging of cheap energy, and a pegging of economic growth to increases in coal production and consumption." (Seow 2023, 4)

China’s ascent as a renewable superpower with its soaring solar, EV, and battery sectors raises new questions about the politics of energy: Is it possible for carbon technocracies to become post-carbon technocracies? In carbon democracies, does carbon ultimately trump democracy? Just as Winner foresaw in 1980, it shouldn’t be assumed that a shift to renewable energy automatically leads to more democratic ways of organising society. Drawing on Winner’s work, Sujatha Raman has argued that the production and distribution of renewable energy technologies are indeed becoming increasingly fossilised as the political economy of rare earths and other industrial inputs mirrors that of fossil fuels in important aspects (Raman 2013).

China’s rise as a technocratic electrostate is often contrasted with the trajectory of the United States, which remains by far the world’s largest producer (as well as a major consumer) of fossil fuels (Tooze 2026). Given the obvious tension between both models, a mounting body of work is concerned with the politics of energy from a distinctly geopolitical perspective, as in discourses about a new ecological cold war (Gilman 2026), green cold war (Alami 2025), or about fossil imperialism (Jurema and König 2024). In recent months, the United States has launched illegal attacks against Venezuela and Iran, which in both cases appear to be motivated to a great extent by concerns related to the politics of energy. As a result of the war on Iran, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed at the time of writing, causing significant global shortages in fossil gas, oil, sulfur and helium (crucial for inputs for microchip production), fertiliser, and other important raw materials. As Isabella Weber and Gregor Semieniuk write, the drastic impact of the blockade on the global economy illustrates that fossil fuels remain “by far the most systemically significant inputs in (as yet) predominantly fossil fuel-powered capitalism” (Weber and Semieniuk 2026). According to French Philosopher Pierre Charbonnier, the Iran war may well be “the largest fossil capital annihilation event in history”, with unpredictable consequences for the global political economy (Charbonnier 2026). As the most drastic effects of the war are likely to be experienced with some delay, the months to come will likely see further debate surrounding the politics of energy. Winner’s technological politics remains an indispensable reference for understanding the madness that surrounds us.

Bibliography

1. Alami, Ilias. 2025. “A Green Cold War.” The BREAK—DOWN, May 7. https://www.break-down.org/a-green-cold-war/.
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12. Winner, Langdon. 1980. “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” Daedalus 109 (1): 121–36.