Not bad, but eventually overreaching. Feels a bit rushed. The main problem is that it totally and utterly fails to explain the lynchpin on which his argument rests. You can't just say "Wikipedia" and be done with it...

Interesting combination of current analysis, history of Marxism, and future blueprints. With an abundance of such books out there, it doesn't stand out despite being probably the best known. Mason is clear although the logic of the book is not always apparent. His reading is a pleasure to listen to BUT what was the production company thinking? All the mistakes and recaps have been left in the audio!

A superb use of Marxist analysis to break down the contradictions and problems with modern capitalism after the crash. Mason is weaker on solutions, sounding more utopian than someone with a concrete plan for change.

It is however refreshing to read a work on how we address the problems of today which is neither right leaning TINA nor old statist leftism. It should be required reading for the Labour Party leadership candidates at the very least.

Postcapitalism is a fresh take on communism, splicing old-school Marxist analysis with the sort of breathless prognostication you see in those books entrepreneurs read about how The Internet Is Changing Everything. The Marxist element of it pops up enough times to make you suspect you are being sold something - rather the way an evangelical friend will try and crowbar Jesus into everything (reader, I have been that evangelical friend, so I know what I'm in about). Obscure passages from Grundrisse are trotted out and given a lick of paint to make them look like prophecies of some modern phenomenon, just as happens with Nostradamus or the Book of Revelations.
And yet, somehow it's not as risible as you might think. He avoids some obvious oversimplifications and actually stirs up a pretty interesting brew of thoughts and ideas that are seldom seen together in the wild. So I'm not sorry I read it.

Capitalism is emerging from possibly its greatest challenge. The collapse of the banking system and a recession which threatened a depression seem to have scarily dented its armour. So when Channel 4’s economics editor pops up, fresh from dodging tear gas in Syntagma Square, with a book telling us we are on the dawn of a post capitalist age the first thought that springs to mind is that Mason has ‘done a Fukuyama’ and badly misread history.


Mason’s thesis is that advances in technology will increasingly render capitalist economic arrangements inadequate and that a more corporative equal world will emerge.


Mason asserts that technological advancement challenges liberal capitalism in three ways. First, technology has allowed people to act in ways which cannot be explained by classical economic theories, which typically see humans as selfish utility maximisers. The most evident example of this (and the one that Mason uses) is Wikipedia, where thousands of volunteers donate their time and expertise to write and maintain the worlds largest digital encyclopaedia. Mason notes that Wikipedia is worth about $2.8bn, yet its founders refuse to marketise it.


The second way in which technology subverts capitalism is its ability to undermine the price setting function of the market. If the price of a good is determined by supply and demand a good which has an inexhaustible supply must have a price which is zero. This is the case with information, books pop songs, movies and anything which can be electronically copied for free. That of which there is an infinite supply is not traditionally the subject of economics. Economics is the study of the allocation of scarce resources; there is no market for air, for example. Technology is increasingly taking things beyond the realm of economics.


Finally, increased automation is decreasing the amount of time that is required for work. This is not a new idea. As Mason notes it can be found in Marx and was the preoccupation of every luddite. What it means is that young people today are increasingly faced with the prospect of insecure jobs in lower paying service sectors.


If technology has rotted the foundations of capitalism it is the rise of the network which will topple it. Networks of citizens are better able to take over the running of their communities. To live in a society in which work is radically reduced the networked individual should be given a basic wage by the state and released to undertake worthwhile, improving acts.


This sounds great. Unfortunately I’m not sure that it is post capitalist. There would still need to be a capitalist element to the economy. Wikipedia is great, but when I looked up postcapitalism on it today I did so using the computer which had been designed, made, tested and delivered by a capitalistic system. Networks need hardware. What Mason seems to be talking about is the retreat of work from our lives. But this is hardly knew. In the early factories workers worked 13 hours a day, six days a week, now most of us do less than half that.


Nor is it clear why the rise of the internet should have this effect. I can almost believe this book being published 120 years ago about the electric telegraph, or slightly later about the telephone or the introduction of mass education. These changes were as fundamental as the internet and the external shocks around then (the First World War, the 1918 flu pandemic, the Wall Street Crash) seem just as traumatic as those which transferred feudalism into capitalism and a great deal more threatening than the global warming and energy depletion which trouble us now.


Keynes famously said that abundance would that “for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem – how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.” Perhaps now we know how man would spend his leisure time: He wrote Wikipedia, and then he went back to work. It’s a lot more optimistic than it could have been, but it's not postcapitalism.

Enjoyed it and appreciated learning a lot about economic history and the issues with capitalism and neoliberalism. For that it's definitely worth reading. I think the popular line of it being really engaging and easy to read is a bit exaggerated - there's a great deal of dry economics discussion sandwiched between the more vital-feeling opening and closing chapters.

I had already been familiar with Paul Mason from watching some of his interviews in support of basic income. This book gives a good overview about the history behind neoliberalism and the historical context of labour economics (Marx et al.). I had wanted a bit more insight into how we get to a postcapitalistic society, but he mostly proposed ideas of Lenin contemporaries and/or related it to the transition between feudalism and capitalism (hint: one theory of the increase in valuation of labour was due to plague-induced labour shortage). There were some pretty optimistic "next steps" at the end of the book, which I have a hard time see happening in the near future. But as a technologist [ie. works in automating your jobs], it is nice to see someone actually thinking about the impacts of the changing valuation of labour and outlining some policies to see us through them.

I loved reading this book. It gives a very nice, structured look postcapitalism and economic theory that isn't isolated from humanity. The way Mason approaches the subject is very approachable an easily understandable. Masons's writing is inspiring, thought-provoking, and humerous at times. Definitely recommend this book to everyone, regardless of your personal favourite economic theory.