Fully Automated Luxury Communism

Fully Automated Luxury Communism PDF Author: Aaron Bastani
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1786632640
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
The first decade of the twenty-first century marked the demise of the current world order. Despite widespread acknowledgement of these disruptive crises, the proposed response from the mainstream remains the same. Against the confines of this increasingly limited politics, a new paradigm has emerged. Fully Automated Luxury Communism claims that new technologies will liberate us from work, providing the opportunity to build a society beyond both capitalism and scarcity. Automation, rather than undermining an economy built on full employment, is instead the path to a world of liberty, luxury and happiness. For everyone. In his first book, radical political commentator Aaron Bastani conjures a new politics: a vision of a world of unimaginable hope, highlighting how we move to energy abundance, feed a world of nine billion, overcome work, transcend the limits of biology and build meaningful freedom for everyone. Rather than a final destination, such a society heralds the beginning of history. Fully Automated Luxury Communism promises a radically new left future for everyone.

Fully Automated Luxury Communism

Fully Automated Luxury Communism PDF Author: Aaron Bastani
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1786632640
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Get Book

Book Description
The first decade of the twenty-first century marked the demise of the current world order. Despite widespread acknowledgement of these disruptive crises, the proposed response from the mainstream remains the same. Against the confines of this increasingly limited politics, a new paradigm has emerged. Fully Automated Luxury Communism claims that new technologies will liberate us from work, providing the opportunity to build a society beyond both capitalism and scarcity. Automation, rather than undermining an economy built on full employment, is instead the path to a world of liberty, luxury and happiness. For everyone. In his first book, radical political commentator Aaron Bastani conjures a new politics: a vision of a world of unimaginable hope, highlighting how we move to energy abundance, feed a world of nine billion, overcome work, transcend the limits of biology and build meaningful freedom for everyone. Rather than a final destination, such a society heralds the beginning of history. Fully Automated Luxury Communism promises a radically new left future for everyone.

Fully Automated Luxury Communism

Fully Automated Luxury Communism PDF Author: Aaron Bastani
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1786632624
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
A different kind of politics for a new kind of society--beyond work, scarcity and capitalism In the twenty-first century, new technologies should liberate us from work. Automation, rather than undermining an economy built on full employment, is instead the path to a world of liberty, luxury and happiness—for everyone. Technological advance will reduce the value of commodities—food, healthcare and housing—towards zero. Improvements in renewable energies will make fossil fuels a thing of the past. Asteroids will be mined for essential minerals. Genetic editing and synthetic biology will prolong life, virtually eliminate disease and provide meat without animals. New horizons beckon. In Fully Automated Luxury Communism, Aaron Bastani conjures a vision of extraordinary hope, showing how we move to energy abundance, feed a world of 9 billion, overcome work, transcend the limits of biology, and establish meaningful freedom for everyone. Rather than a final destination, such a society merely heralds the real beginning of history.

The People's Republic of Walmart

The People's Republic of Walmart PDF Author: Leigh Phillips
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 178663516X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Are multi-national corporations like Walmart and Amazon laying the groundwork for international socialism? For the left and the right, major multinational companies are held up as the ultimate expressions of free-market capitalism. Their remarkable success appears to vindicate the old idea that modern society is too complex to be subjected to a plan. And yet, as Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski argue, much of the economy of the West is centrally planned at present. Not only is planning on vast scales possible, we already have it and it works. The real question is whether planning can be democratic. Can it be transformed to work for us? An engaging, polemical romp through economic theory, computational complexity, and the history of planning, The People’s Republic of Walmart revives the conversation about how society can extend democratic decision-making to all economic matters. With the advances in information technology in recent decades and the emergence of globe-straddling collective enterprises, democratic planning in the interest of all humanity is more important and closer to attainment than ever before.

Four Futures

Four Futures PDF Author: Peter Frase
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1781688141
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
An exploration of the utopias and dystopias that could develop from present society Peter Frase argues that increasing automation and a growing scarcity of resources, thanks to climate change, will bring it all tumbling down. In Four Futures, Frase imagines how this post-capitalist world might look, deploying the tools of both social science and speculative fiction to explore what communism, rentism and extermininsm might actually entail. Could the current rise of the real-life robocops usher in a world that resembles Ender's Game? And sure, communism will bring an end to material scarcities and inequalities of wealth—but there's no guarantee that social hierarchies, governed by an economy of "likes," wouldn't rise to take their place. A whirlwind tour through science fiction, social theory and the new technologies are already shaping our lives, Four Futures is a balance sheet of the socialisms we may reach if a resurgent Left is successful, and the barbarisms we may be consigned to if those movements fail.

The Socialist Manifesto

The Socialist Manifesto PDF Author: Bhaskar Sunkara
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1786636921
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
The success of Jeremy Corbyn's left-led Labour Party and Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign revived a political idea many had thought dead. But what, exactly, is socialism? And what would a socialist system look like today? In The Socialist Manifesto, Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of Jacobin magazine, argues that socialism offers the means to achieve economic equality, and also to fight other forms of oppression, including racism and sexism. The ultimate goal is not Soviet-style planning, but to win rights to healthcare, education, and housing and to create new democratic institutions in workplaces and communities. The book both explores socialism's history and presents a realistic vision for its future. A primer on socialism for the 21st century, this is a book for anyone seeking an end to the vast inequities of our age.

Fully Automated Luxury Communism

Fully Automated Luxury Communism PDF Author: Aaron Bastani
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1786632632
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
A different kind of politics for a new kind of society--beyond work, scarcity and capitalism In the twenty-first century, new technologies should liberate us from work. Automation, rather than undermining an economy built on full employment, is instead the path to a world of liberty, luxury and happiness—for everyone. Technological advance will reduce the value of commodities—food, healthcare and housing—towards zero. Improvements in renewable energies will make fossil fuels a thing of the past. Asteroids will be mined for essential minerals. Genetic editing and synthetic biology will prolong life, virtually eliminate disease and provide meat without animals. New horizons beckon. In Fully Automated Luxury Communism, Aaron Bastani conjures a vision of extraordinary hope, showing how we move to energy abundance, feed a world of 9 billion, overcome work, transcend the limits of biology, and establish meaningful freedom for everyone. Rather than a final destination, such a society merely heralds the real beginning of history.

Radical Technologies

Radical Technologies PDF Author: Adam Greenfield
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1784780472
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
A field manual to the technologies that are transforming our lives Everywhere we turn, a startling new device promises to transfigure our lives. But at what cost? In this urgent and revelatory excavation of our Information Age, leading technology thinker Adam Greenfield forces us to reconsider our relationship with the networked objects, services and spaces that define us. It is time to re-evaluate the Silicon Valley consensus determining the future. We already depend on the smartphone to navigate every aspect of our existence. We’re told that innovations—from augmented-reality interfaces and virtual assistants to autonomous delivery drones and self-driving cars—will make life easier, more convenient and more productive. 3D printing promises unprecedented control over the form and distribution of matter, while the blockchain stands to revolutionize everything from the recording and exchange of value to the way we organize the mundane realities of the day to day. And, all the while, fiendishly complex algorithms are operating quietly in the background, reshaping the economy, transforming the fundamental terms of our politics and even redefining what it means to be human. Having successfully colonized everyday life, these radical technologies are now conditioning the choices available to us in the years to come. How do they work? What challenges do they present to us, as individuals and societies? Who benefits from their adoption? In answering these questions, Greenfield’s timely guide clarifies the scale and nature of the crisis we now confront —and offers ways to reclaim our stake in the future.

Walkaway

Walkaway PDF Author: Cory Doctorow
Publisher: Tor Books
ISBN: 076539278X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Kirkus' Best Fiction of 2017 From New York Times bestselling author Cory Doctorow, an epic tale of revolution, love, post-scarcity, and the end of death. "Walkaway is now the best contemporary example I know of, its utopia glimpsed after fascinatingly-extrapolated revolutionary struggle." —William Gibson Hubert Vernon Rudolph Clayton Irving Wilson Alva Anton Jeff Harley Timothy Curtis Cleveland Cecil Ollie Edmund Eli Wiley Marvin Ellis Espinoza—known to his friends as Hubert, Etc—was too old to be at that Communist party. But after watching the breakdown of modern society, he really has no where left to be—except amongst the dregs of disaffected youth who party all night and heap scorn on the sheep they see on the morning commute. After falling in with Natalie, an ultra-rich heiress trying to escape the clutches of her repressive father, the two decide to give up fully on formal society—and walk away. After all, now that anyone can design and print the basic necessities of life—food, clothing, shelter—from a computer, there seems to be little reason to toil within the system. It’s still a dangerous world out there, the empty lands wrecked by climate change, dead cities hollowed out by industrial flight, shadows hiding predators animal and human alike. Still, when the initial pioneer walkaways flourish, more people join them. Then the walkaways discover the one thing the ultra-rich have never been able to buy: how to beat death. Now it’s war – a war that will turn the world upside down. Fascinating, moving, and darkly humorous, Walkaway is a multi-generation SF thriller about the wrenching changes of the next hundred years...and the very human people who will live their consequences. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Breaking Things at Work

Breaking Things at Work PDF Author: Gavin Mueller
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1786636751
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
In the Nineteenth-century, English textile workers responded to the introduction of new technologies on the factory floor by smashing them to bits. For years the Luddites roamed the English countryside, practicing drills and manoeuvres that they would later deploy on unsuspecting machines. The movement has been derided by scholars as a backwards-looking and ultimately ineffectual effort to stem the march of history; for Gavin Mueller, the movement gets at the heart of the antagonistic relationship between all workers, including us today, and the so-called progressive gains secured by new technologies. The luddites weren't primitive and they are still a force, however unconsciously, in the workplaces of the twenty-first century world. Breaking Things at Work is an innovative rethinking of labour and machines, leaping from textile mills to algorithms, from existentially threatened knife cutters of rural Germany to surveillance-evading truckers driving across the continental United States. Mueller argues that the future stability and empowerment of working-class movements will depend on subverting these technologies and preventing their spread wherever possible. The task is intimidating, but the seeds of this resistance are already present in the neo-Luddite efforts of hackers, pirates, and dark web users who are challenging surveillance and control, often through older systems of communication technology.

Thinking Beyond Neoliberalism

Thinking Beyond Neoliberalism PDF Author: Neal Harris
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030826694
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
This book brings together leading academics and activists to address the possibilities for qualitative social change beyond neoliberalism, providing introductory essays on alternative societies, transition, and resistance. Bringing together discussions on universal basic income, actually existing communism, parecon, circular economies, workers co-operatives, ‘fully automated luxury communism,' trade unionism, and party politics, the volume provides one of the first scholarly interventions to systematically evaluate possibilities for transition and resistance across theoretical, political, and disciplinary traditions.