politics for the 99%

… instead over the past 25 years it has been the left’s project that has collapsed – Published on The Guardian, by Paul Mason, July 17, 2015.
(my comment: maybe capitalism ends, but it was only the tool to submit us … ending a tool is NOT ending automatically any submission, it may become even worse – Heidi).

… If you lived through all this, and disliked capitalism, it was traumatic. But in the process technology has created a new route out, which the remnants of the old left – and all other forces influenced by it – have either to embrace or die. Capitalism, it turns out, will not be abolished by forced-march techniques. It will be abolished by creating something more dynamic that exists, at first, almost unseen within the old system, but which will break through, reshaping the economy around new values and behaviours. I call this postcapitalism.  

As with the end of feudalism 500 years ago, capitalism’s replacement by postcapitalism will be accelerated by external shocks and shaped by the emergence of a new kind of human being. And it has started.

Postcapitalism is possible because of three major changes information technology has brought about in the past 25 years. First, it has reduced the need for work, blurred the edges between work and free time and loosened the relationship between work and wages. The coming wave of automation, currently stalled because our social infrastructure cannot bear the consequences, will hugely diminish the amount of work needed – not just to subsist but to provide a decent life for all.

Second, information is corroding the market’s ability to form prices correctly. That is because markets are based on scarcity while information is abundant. The system’s defence mechanism is to form monopolies – the giant tech companies – on a scale not seen in the past 200 years, yet they cannot last. By building business models and share valuations based on the capture and privatisation of all socially produced information, such firms are constructing a fragile corporate edifice at odds with the most basic need of humanity, which is to use ideas freely … //

… Is it utopian to believe we’re on the verge of an evolution beyond capitalism? We live in a world in which gay men and women can marry, and in which contraception has, within the space of 50 years, made the average working-class woman freer than the craziest libertine of the Bloomsbury era. Why do we, then, find it so hard to imagine economic freedom?

It is the elites – cut off in their dark-limo world – whose project looks as forlorn as that of the millennial sects of the 19th century. The democracy of riot squads, corrupt politicians, magnate-controlled newspapers and the surveillance state looks as phoney and fragile as East Germany did 30 years ago.

All readings of human history have to allow for the possibility of a negative outcome. It haunts us in the zombie movie, the disaster movie, in the post-apocalytic wasteland of films such as The Road or Elysium. But why should we not form a picture of the ideal life, built out of abundant information, non-hierarchical work and the dissociation of work from wages?

Millions of people are beginning to realise they have been sold a dream at odds with what reality can deliver. Their response is anger – and retreat towards national forms of capitalism that can only tear the world apart. Watching these emerge, from the pro-Grexit left factions in Syriza to the Front National and the isolationism of the American right has been like watching the nightmares we had during the Lehman Brothers crisis come true.

We need more than just a bunch of utopian dreams and small-scale horizontal projects. We need a project based on reason, evidence and testable designs, that cuts with the grain of history and is sustainable by the planet. And we need to get on with it.

Postcapitalism is published by Allen Lane on 30 July. Paul Mason will be asking whether capitalism has had its day at a sold-out Guardian Live event on 22 July. Let us know your thoughts beforehand at theguardian.com/membership.

(full long long text, graphs, videos, pictures, links to related articles).

Links:

Last fight? Ukraine nationalist leader calls on army, National Guard to stop obeying Kiev, on Russia Today RT, July 19, 2015;

Griechenland – Voller Klang und Wut, die viel bedeuten, im KOPP-Verlag, von Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, 18. Juli 2015: Syriza hat vor den Handlangern des einen Prozents kapituliert. In ganz Europa wird es verkündet und auch bis zu den unbekümmerten Amerikanern und Kanadiern hat es sich herumgesprochen. Das Einknicken von Syriza enthält eine ganz klare Botschaft: Das Sozialwesen des Westens steht vor dem Aus … // … Griechenland ist erst der Anfang. Die Wirtschaft zerfällt und vertreibt die Menschen aus ihrer Heimat. Das Sozialsystem geht unter, die Arbeitslosenraten explodieren. Die Griechen werden ihre Armut in andere EU-Länder tragen. Innerhalb der EU gilt Freizügigkeit, die Menschen können die Grenzen wechseln, wie sie wollen. Zerreißt in Griechenland das soziale Netz, lassen sich die Griechen von sozialen Netzen anderer EU-Länder auffangen, bis diese durch die Privatisierungen des Einen Prozents abgeschafft werden. Die Einhegung im Stil des 21. Jahrhunderts hat begonnen …;

Anatomy of a Crash, China Today, America Tomorrow, on Outsider Club, by Jason Simpkins, July 17, 2015;

Un nouveau modèle économique pour la Grèce, dans Huffington Post.fr, par Roland Duchatet , le 17 juillet 2015;

Greece and a German Ahab, on Counterpunch, by VICTOR GROSSMAN, July 17, 2015;

Socialism from below, on New Politics, July 17, 2015;

Utrecht to experiment with universal basic income, on I Am Expat.nl, by Emily McCallum, July 17, 2015;

How to Improve the Earned Income Tax Credit, on economics 21.org, by Jonathan Nelson, July 17, 2015;

Did Technology Save Us Or Destroy Us? A Story From The Near Future, on Media Post, by Kaila Colbin, July 17, 2015;

Soccer’s Sexist – Political Economy, on Jacobin Mag, by Zach Zill, July 16, 2015: Women’s soccer players are paid poorly because of a patriarchal funding model — not because their game is inferior;

Ord test of China farm ties, on farmlandgrab.org, by Brad Thompson, July 15, 2015 – (Homepage);

Les robots sont là… et ça devrait vous inquiéter, dans Journal du net JDN, le 15 juillet 2015: L’automatisation croissante de l’économie n’est pas assez prise en compte selon des chercheurs, qui plaident pour des mesures radicales;

Bankster und Geologen, alles dasselbe- Griechenland bleibt arm, 10.33 min, von conrebbi am 13. Juli 2015 hochgeladen;

Buy-to-let lenders face longer-term pain, on The Telegraph, by Tim Wallace, July 13, 2015: Tax changes in the Budget could be a major blow to specialist lenders, analysts warn;

Foster debate on basic wages policy, on BDliv.co.za, by TIAAN MEIRING, July 13, 2015;

Postcards from Greece – Day 1, 10.33 min, von conrebbi am 13. Juli 2015 hochgeladen;

Life Under Austerity, on Jaobin Mag, by Erik Forman & Eleni Eleftherios, July 12, 2015: a Greek fast-food worker on living under austerity, the difficulties of worker organizing, and the meaning of Oxi;

What Next in the Greek Crisis? on New Politics, by Barry Finger, Summer 2015/Vol:XV-3, Whole #:59;

Das Geheimnis der weißen Indianer- Genozide sind nicht einfach, 12.58 min, von conrebbi am 24. Nov 2014 hochgeladen;

La plante merveilleuse venue d’Inde, dans Santé Nature Innovation, par Jean-Marc Dupuis, le 4 mai 2014.