Ian M Banks novels are about The Culture vs The Idirans. The Culture is a attractive western liberal utopia which seeks to assimilate everything by making everything optional and pleasure inducing, and The Idirans is a type of Hindu-Arabic-Han society which ascribes status regardless of choices, and there is suffering. There is a war between the the two, and 0.8 trillion people die.

We will never be The Culture, because of Peak Cheap energy, and peak cheap materials. Without an energy productivity miracle we will constantly be Idiran deep within our own wannabe Culture territory.

The West will try and fail to create the Culture just like the communists tried and failed to create the Communist Utopia.