 First edition | |
| Author | Aaron Bastani |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Published | 2019 |
| Publisher | Verso Books |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| ISBN | 978-1-78663-262-3 |
| OCLC | 1190904825 |
Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto is a book by Aaron Bastani first published by Verso Books in 2019. It argues that technology can be used to create a post-scarcity economy of widespread prosperity. [1]
The book argues that human history can be divided into three broad periods, each characterized by substantial changes in technology: prehistory to the dawn of agriculture; agriculture to the Industrial Revolution; and the present period, characterised by the explosive spread of information technology. [2]
Bastani suggests that the prosperity ushered in by technology is inconsistent with contemporary models of capitalism. While capitalism is organised around a logic of scarcity, the technologically-mediated prosperity he predicts is characterised by the absence of scarcity. [3]
British journalist Andy Beckett wrote that Bastani "bases his predictions on a broad-brush reading of history", commenting that "[s]ome readers will finish this book exhilarated and energised. Others will be unconvinced, or utterly baffled." [1]
Ville Kellokumpu argues that the work fails to account sufficiently for the impact of climate change and the dependence of contemporary industry on fossil fuels. [4]
Jason Barker agrees, commenting that ecological destruction appears to be the consistent result of past technological transitions and that, in this respect, it is likely that the future will resemble the past. [5]
Kim Stanley Robinson is an American science fiction writer best known for his Mars trilogy. Many of his novels and stories have ecological, cultural, and political themes and feature scientists as heroes. Robinson has won numerous awards, including the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel and the World Fantasy Award. The Atlantic has called Robinson's work "the gold standard of realistic, and highly literary, science-fiction writing." According to an article in The New Yorker, Robinson is "generally acknowledged as one of the greatest living science-fiction writers."
Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes the economic, political, and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems. Social ownership can take various forms, including public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee. As one of the main ideologies on the political spectrum, socialism is considered as the standard left-wing ideology in most countries. Types of socialism vary based on the role of markets and planning in resource allocation, and the structure of management in organizations.
Christian communism is a theological view that the teachings of Jesus compel Christians to support religious communism. Although there is no universal agreement on the exact dates when communistic ideas and practices in Christianity began, many Christian communists argue that evidence from the Bible suggests that the first Christians, including the Apostles in the New Testament, established their own small communist society in the years following Jesus' death and resurrection. Many advocates of Christian communism and other communists, including Karl Kautsky, argue that it was taught by Jesus and practised by the apostles themselves.
Post-scarcity is a theoretical economic situation in which most goods can be produced in great abundance with minimal human labor, so that they become available to all very cheaply or even freely.
Post-capitalism is in part a hypothetical state in which the economic systems of the world can no longer be described as forms of capitalism. Various individuals and political ideologies have speculated on what would define such a world. According to classical Marxist and social evolutionary theories, post-capitalist societies may come about as a result of spontaneous evolution as capitalism becomes obsolete. Others propose models to intentionally replace capitalism, most notably socialism, communism, anarchism, nationalism and degrowth.
Jason Barker is a British theorist of contemporary French philosophy, a novelist, film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is Honorable Professor at Kyung Hee University in the College of Foreign Language and Literature, where he teaches a masters course on Marxism and Literature with the British philosopher Ray Brassier. He was previously a visiting professor at the European Graduate School, having taught in the Faculty of Media and Communication alongside Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, Jacques Rancière, Avital Ronell, Slavoj Žižek, and others.
Technological unemployment is the loss of jobs caused by technological change. It is a key type of structural unemployment. Technological change typically includes the introduction of labour-saving "mechanical-muscle" machines or more efficient "mechanical-mind" processes (automation), and humans' role in these processes are minimized. Just as horses were gradually made obsolete as transport by the automobile and as labourer by the tractor, humans' jobs have also been affected throughout modern history. Historical examples include artisan weavers reduced to poverty after the introduction of mechanized looms. Thousands of man-years of work was performed in a matter of hours by the bombe codebreaking machine during World War II. A contemporary example of technological unemployment is the displacement of retail cashiers by self-service tills and cashierless stores.
According to the political theorist Alan Johnson, there has been a revival of serious interest in communism in the 21st century led by Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou.
In Marxist thought, a communist society or the communist system is the type of society and economic system postulated to emerge from technological advances in the productive forces, representing the ultimate goal of the political ideology of communism. A communist society is characterized by common ownership of the means of production with free access to the articles of consumption and is classless, stateless, and moneyless, implying the end of the exploitation of labour.
Accelerationism is a range of revolutionary and reactionary ideas in left-wing and right-wing ideologies that call for the drastic intensification of capitalist growth, technological change, infrastructure sabotage and other processes of social change to destabilize existing systems and create radical social transformations, otherwise referred to as "acceleration". It has been regarded as an ideological spectrum divided into mutually contradictory left-wing and right-wing variants, both of which support the indefinite intensification of capitalism and its structures as well as the conditions for a technological singularity, a hypothetical point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible.
The Dark Enlightenment, also called the neo-reactionary movement, is an anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian, and reactionary philosophical and political movement. The term "Dark Enlightenment" is a reaction to the Age of Enlightenment and an apologia for the popular conception of the Dark Ages.
The Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie, often simply the Grundrisse, is an unfinished manuscript by the German philosopher Karl Marx. The series of seven notebooks was rough-drafted by Marx, chiefly for purposes of self-clarification, during the winter of 1857–8. Left aside by Marx in 1858, it remained unpublished until 1939.
Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work is a 2015 monograph by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, published by Verso Books.
Fully automated luxury communism may refer to:
Industrial Society and Its Future, also known as the Unabomber Manifesto, is a 1995 anti-technology essay by Ted Kaczynski, the "Unabomber". The manifesto contends that the Industrial Revolution began a harmful process of natural destruction brought about by technology, while forcing humans to adapt to machinery, creating a sociopolitical order that suppresses human freedom and potential.
Novara Media is an independent, non-profit, left-wing media organisation based in the United Kingdom.
In futurology, political science, and science fiction, a post-work society is a society in which the nature of work has been radically transformed and traditional employment has become obsolete due to technological progress.
Anti anti-communism is opposition to anti-communism as applied in the Cold War. The term was first coined in 1984 by Clifford Geertz and was meant to show that it was possible to criticize anti-communism, particularly its excesses like McCarthism, without being a communist. For example, there were both liberal and conservative criticism of Cold War era anti-communism in countries like the United States.
The sociologyof quantification is the investigation of quantification as a sociological phenomenon in its own right.
Aaron John Bastani is a British-Iranian political commentator, journalist and author. He co-founded the left-wing media organisation Novara Media in 2011 and regularly hosts and contributes to its Novara Live live news show on YouTube. Bastani popularised the term "Fully Automated Luxury Communism", which describes a post-capitalist society in which automation greatly reduces the amount of labour humans need to do. He authored the book Fully Automated Luxury Communism on the subject in 2019. He ideologically identifies as a socialist.