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A review by meanstoakenz
Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future by Paul Mason
hopeful
informative
slow-paced
1.5
The funniest moment in Postcapitalism occurs near the end, when Mason suggests reigning in offshore financial institutions who refuse to comply with new regulations by “tracking down and suppressing” them. Whether one supports the treating of offshore tax shelters “like financial Al Qaida”, it’s hilarious because of the sheer amount of time to which Mason dedicates to separating himself from past socialist projects, taking multiple opportunities to decry Lenin & Stalin.
Ultimately, Postcapitalism suffers from three primary flaws. The first is Mason’s economic analysis resting almost entirely on his attempt to use K-waves as a predictive model without ever putting forth a persuasive argument that they aren’t just descriptive. The second is the sheer number of pages dedicated to oversimplified histories of various economic theorists & socialist projects (and his definition of feudalism borders on flat-out incorrect). Third, and finally, Mason’s description of the Postcapitalist project (which, despite his protestations, is just repackaged market socialism, complete with transition to communism, with elements of the very techno-stalinistic supercomputer-based central planning he decries) is more of a plan of a plan of a plan than anything.
While Mason does a good job in breaking down the way new technologies - primarily software - erode the capitalist system*, and his description of a postcapitalist world is compelling, there’s a missing step in how the “networked individual” would go about creating such world from a material standpoint. When one’s plans involve such lofty goals such as the fundamental upheaval of governments actively thwarting the neoliberal order they’re all but designed to uphold, and in a timetable of under 50 years, some theory beyond “the internet” is going to be required. On top of this, “the networked individual” seems more like a new form of organizing the working class proletariat rather than a new class which constitutes their replacements.
The book’s optimism is also tempered by my recent reading of Technofeudalism by Yanis Varoufakis, which has a more pessimistic take on how capitalism has evolved to subsume information technology into “fiefdoms,” where rents rule.
*Had the 20 or so pages describing Marx’s perfect machine and its applicability to software been published as a standalone essay, it would have been 4+ stars
Ultimately, Postcapitalism suffers from three primary flaws. The first is Mason’s economic analysis resting almost entirely on his attempt to use K-waves as a predictive model without ever putting forth a persuasive argument that they aren’t just descriptive. The second is the sheer number of pages dedicated to oversimplified histories of various economic theorists & socialist projects (and his definition of feudalism borders on flat-out incorrect). Third, and finally, Mason’s description of the Postcapitalist project (which, despite his protestations, is just repackaged market socialism, complete with transition to communism, with elements of the very techno-stalinistic supercomputer-based central planning he decries) is more of a plan of a plan of a plan than anything.
While Mason does a good job in breaking down the way new technologies - primarily software - erode the capitalist system*, and his description of a postcapitalist world is compelling, there’s a missing step in how the “networked individual” would go about creating such world from a material standpoint. When one’s plans involve such lofty goals such as the fundamental upheaval of governments actively thwarting the neoliberal order they’re all but designed to uphold, and in a timetable of under 50 years, some theory beyond “the internet” is going to be required. On top of this, “the networked individual” seems more like a new form of organizing the working class proletariat rather than a new class which constitutes their replacements.
The book’s optimism is also tempered by my recent reading of Technofeudalism by Yanis Varoufakis, which has a more pessimistic take on how capitalism has evolved to subsume information technology into “fiefdoms,” where rents rule.
*Had the 20 or so pages describing Marx’s perfect machine and its applicability to software been published as a standalone essay, it would have been 4+ stars