Fully Automated Luxury Communism

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2757-fully-automated-luxury-communism

by doener • 7 years ago

41 24 7 years ago

versobooks.com

llamataboot• 7 years ago

I believe we call it "Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism", comrade.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/06/fully-automat...

B1FF_PSUVM• 7 years ago

Well, Iain M. Banks' SF - the 'Culture' with orbitals and AIs as adult supervision, sort of - had at least three of the adjectives checked, and seemed past concern about the fourth ...

kebman• 7 years ago

He who controls the robots controls the world.

sewercake3• 7 years ago

Haven't read the book, but here are two (notably harsh) reviews:

https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/17006_fully-automat...

- Bastani claims scarcity is the central question in economic thought. This is a neo-classical formulation, and is not in line with the central questions of political economy that Marx's writings (who Bastani obviously references liberally) grapple with. This leads to some theoretical and historical errors

- Bastani does not have a strong grasp on the labour theory of value, or at least doesn't subscribe to it in Marx's formulation. Bastani believes you can have profit without human labour input, where, under the labour theory of value, the exchange of labour is _the_ source of all profit.

- treats the move from late-capitalism to communist utopia as inevitable, and doesn't really grapple with strategic concerns, building class-consciousness, etcetera

https://theecologist.org/2019/may/29/climate-communism-and-a...

- The project is part of a long line of Marxist 'technologically deterministic' theories and proposals. Basically that capitalism will lead to its own demise through the internal contradictions that define it.

- the reviewer is skeptical of technological solutions to climate change, and Bastani's work relies on this heavily

I like the line at the bottom of the second review that describes this book as 'soft science fiction'. Something to shift the Overton window, but not something that provides much actionable insight.

crdoconnor2• 7 years ago

Bastani believes you can have profit without human labour input

e.g. by selling mineral rights or valuable beachfront land.

Svip• 7 years ago

But where does the money for whom that is purchasing those things come from? Eventually, all profit can be traced to human labour input.

claudiawerner2• 7 years ago

Marx begins to deal with this in his theories of rent; a more accurate criticism of Bastiani would be that he believes one can have profit without surplus. It is obvious, and was so when Marx was writing, that not all profit is due to exploitation of labour.

bogle• 7 years ago

Here's a more enjoyable review from The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/29/fully-automate...

By enjoyable I mean less po-faced.

stdbrouw• 7 years ago

These seem like rather insular concerns. "He takes some stuff from Marx but he's not quite Marxist enough, ergo he's wrong."

sewercake3• 7 years ago

While there might be some puritanism in there, I think the implication is these theoretical errors lead to erroneous conclusions. I.e: Bastani is using certain conclusions from Marx, while changing certain premises, and not doing the work to then argue the conclusions still hold. I didn't read the piece closey enough (and my Marx isn't strong enough) to really go in-depth there though.

Applejinx• 7 years ago

But the exchange of labor has nothing to do with profit, since financialization. There have been many smart people for decades now, making this be so. It's very important today to come up with profit scenarios that don't depend on labor in any way.

sewercake3• 7 years ago

'nothing to do with profit' is a pretty strong claim. I think Marxists (and others) would argue that the two are stochastically linked. Decreases in the value of a good (the amount of labour-time used to generate it) roughly tracks with a decrease in the price (and thus amount of profit that the producer gets for each item) over longer time frames. I think that's what the author was implicitly referring to but I may be wrong!

As for financialization and profit: I think contemporary labour-value theorists, and even Marx, talk about fincancialization as 'fictitious capital'. The 'value' of financial instruments comes from the claim on future labour-time, and is thus generally parasitic for a well-functioning economy. Cedric Durad is a recent example of this. I'm stepping into territory I know very little about though, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt / generously.

throwaway77384• 7 years ago

this is just an ad?

vortico2• 7 years ago

feed a world of 9 billion

How does the book suggest to maintain this population in a way that isn't immoral? Does this book's plan work with 90 billion people?

simongray• 7 years ago

If current population growth estimates are to be believed, the world population is projected to peak at around 12 billion people. The fertility rates in large parts of the world (North America, Europe, East Asia) are already below replacement level and others around the world are falling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow...

vortico2• 7 years ago

Yes, that is because the growth estimates assume that we live in a world where scarcity problems are not solved.

StringEpsilon• 7 years ago

Is there a moral alternative to a 9, 10 or 12 billion population?

Actively reducing the population of the planet is tricky, if you don't want to wait for it to flatten / fall off naturally.

And stuff like Chinas one child policy is both hard to enforce and takes time to take effect. So you might still peak over your target population.

It's also questionable if such a policy is moral in itself.

matthewmacleod• 7 years ago

It’s a reasonably interesting topic and an important one to discuss - but I’d caution that Aaron Bastani is generally a bit of a controversial left- wing provocateur figure with a knack for mis-predicting events, and his book mostly has middling reviews.

None of that is to say you shouldn’t read it and consider it in the context of the future of automation, but expect a somewhat over-earnest political manifesto rather than a critical analysis.

unicornporn• 7 years ago

Here's a tiny bit of luxury communism. Full book:

http://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=74D760E6B634982B0C0E4DAD...

piterdevries• 7 years ago

lim bookPrice(x) -> 0. Mind blown.

theguppydream• 7 years ago

Unherd's review was a good read, the reviewer talking about how the book was wrong in an interesting way. https://unherd.com/2019/06/are-you-ready-for-fully-automated...

Fully Automated Luxury Communism

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