Fully Automated Luxury Communism

Author Aaron Bastani boldly uses the “C” word – communism – as part of his vision for an after capitalism future – Fully Automated Luxury Communism. My counsel has been to avoid the ism’s – socialism and communism – given the baggage and that they are “used futures.” But I like the boldness. And the modifier of “fully automated luxury” signals that we are getting something different. While I situated this vision with the Non-Workers’ Paradise, it could also fit within Tech-Led Abundance. In short, the route to the Non-Workers’ Paradise is enabled by Tech-Led Abundance.

He situates FALC in the third disruption, the information, age – the first being agriculture and the second the industrial revolution. Futurists will likely recognize the parallel with Toffler’s three waves. He suggests five crises are driving the end of capitalism:

• climate change and the consequences of global warming;
• resource scarcity particularly for energy, minerals and fresh water;
• societal ageing as life expectancy increases and birth rates concurrently fall;
• [inequality] a growing surplus of global poor who form an ever-larger ‘unnecessariat;’
• new machine age, progressively more physical and cognitive labor is performed by machines, rather than humans

Solid list! Perhaps most surprising, in his discussion of resource scarcity, was that he puts a lot of stock in space. He suggests asteroid mining could become the fastest growing industry in history. To illustrate, he cites the asteroid 16 Psyche, located in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. It measures over 200 kilometers in diameter and is composed of iron, nickel and rarer metals such as copper, gold, and platinum — its iron content alone could be worth $10,000 quadrillion. Put directly, “the limits of the earth won’t matter anymore – because we’ll mine the sky instead.”

His discussion of how resources could move from scarcity to abundance is intriguing. He suggest this emerging situation of post -scarcity underpins what will be referred to as “extreme supply,” which I found to be a useful concept. He is a big believer in renewable energy: “What we know for certain is that, in principle, solar is more than capable of meeting the world’s expanding energy needs.” He adds that “PV costs keep coming down … it is unparalleled in the history of energy use to have a source keep getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper year on year not by single-digit, but by double-digit gains.” He believes a massive commitment could lead to a complete global transition to renewables sometime in the 2040s, which of course would help deal with climate change.

The key addition to the communism idea is that “the foundations are cohering for a society beyond both scarcity and work.” Even though he acknowledges that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” His argument is that the five crises are nonetheless pushing toward the end of capitalism. He also emphasizes the importance of the social and political aspects:

• He cites one of my favorite quotes by Arthur C. Clarke: “the goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play.” FALC denotes “a society in which work is eliminated, scarcity replaced by abundance and where labor and leisure blend into one another.”
• A challenge of capitalism is that increased productivity doesn’t lead to more free time but simply the production of more goods and services. Rather he sees that our labor becomes a route to self-development rather than a means of survival.
• Another challenge of capitalism is that rather than creating a bounty for it, exclusion and the creation of artificial scarcity prevail. He notes that “what stands in the way isn’t the inevitable scarcity of nature, but the artificial scarcity of market rationing and ensuring that everything, at all costs, is produced for profit.

He also notes that “arguably the most pressing crisis of all is an absence of collective imagination.” This is indeed the motivation of my interest in the subject – developing vision(s) of alternatives.

As noted above with resources, he believes technology can be a key enabler of the shift to FALC, for instance:

• He is a believer that advances in genetics are going to [finally] move medicine from treatment to prevention. He notes that “handheld genome sequencers will allow for diagnostics that replace rooms’ worth of equipment.” He suggests that “the biggest breakthrough in biotechnology will be gene therapies.” And, of course, CRISPR, which reduces the costs of gene editing by 99 per cent while cutting experiment times from months to weeks.
• He is a big believer in the impact of moving away from meat consumption: “Put bluntly it is the meat and dairy consumption typical to diets of the Global North which have us living beyond our ecological means.”

A central principle of the solution is the recognition that “food is ultimately information, and as we know, any information can be reprogrammed…ultimately it will mean a world where producing meat, leather, milk, and eggs no longer requires animals. It reminded me of a notion we used in our 1995 book that we wrote about 2025: Every business is an information business that incidentally makes whatever the physical product is.

The tendency to extreme supply means everything will become permanently cheaper. But “in the absence of an appropriate politics this will only lead to novel forms of profiteering.” He emphatically notes that technology is not enough. A populist politics is necessary. One that blends culture and government with ideas of personal and social renewal. “A green politics of ecology without a red politics of shared wealth will fail to command popular support.” He believes the interest in politics is there, but rather they cannot afford to care in the face of so many competing demands. And it’s not guns in the streets. FALC must engage in mainstream, electoral politics. What he calls “prototype politics” emphasizes action and decision over called for “rhetorical” global cooperation, which typically results in no action. Just do it!

The political solution involves the re-localization of economies through progressive procurement and municipal protectionism; socializing finance and creating a network of local and regional banks and, finally, the introduction of a set of universal basic services (UBS ) in key sectors of housing, transport, education, healthcare, and information.

 Perhaps the most interesting argument is that rather than calling doing less of what we are currently doing, he says the appeal should be to move to a smarter future of more – via full automation. For example, rather than appealing primarily to reducing fossil fuels, advocate for more use of renewables. In other words make the argument positive instead of negative.

In sum, FALC advocates a break with neoliberalism, a shift towards worker-owned production, a state-financed transition to renewable energy and universal services — aided by tech progress (my words) — placed beyond commodity exchange and profit.

A great addition to the pool of ideas for what might be after capitalism! – Andy Hines