That’s great! I hadn’t thought of that.
So pessimism can be a positive force after all. That increases my conditional
optimism for the future. <smile>
Evan
From: Miriam Vieni
Sent: Saturday, November 24, 2018 4:18 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Optimism, was Re: Would communism work with
computers?
Ah, but when I am pessimistic, I’m angry and that causes me to want to act
against the forces that make me angry. I’ve made choices in my life that
expressed my social values and my anger at the anti-humanistic forces in
society. So pessimism and anger can be positive.
Miriam
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Evan Reese
Sent: Saturday, November 24, 2018 3:38 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Optimism, was Re: Would communism work with
computers?
I agree, it is what one does with those facts that really makes a difference.
But whether one is optimistic or pessimistic can have a lot to do with what one
does with those facts.
For example, if one is pessimistic, one could well give in to despair and opt
out of the political process altogether. Conversely, if one is optimistic, then
one might decide to not drop out, perhaps even to increase one’s efforts to
ensure a positive outcome.
There is a danger in optimism though. There is a risk that one can become
complacent. That has to be guarded against. I’ve already mentioned the danger
of pessimism, the possibility of a sense of hopelessness that can cause one to
just disengage from things.
The economist Paul Romer distinguishes between two kinds of optimism,
complacent optimism, and conditional optimism.
Complacent optimism is the child waiting for presents on Christmas morning.
Conditional optimism is the child who wants a treehouse, and realizes that if
he gets some wood and nails, and persuades some other kids to help him, he can
build one.
Conditional optimism is the belief that problems are solvable. Complacent
optimism is the belief that they will solve themselves.
So I am conditionally optimistic about our future, not complacently optimistic.
Evan
From: Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Saturday, November 24, 2018 2:55 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Optimism, was Re: Would communism work with
computers?
But what difference does it make? It seems to me that it is what one does with
those facts that makes a difference.
_________________________________________________________________ Isaac Asimov
“Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in
telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after
death?No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.One person recently, goaded
into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you
believe in anything?"Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in
observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers.
I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence
for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and
more solid the evidence will have to be.” ― Isaac Asimov On 11/21/2018
10:14 PM, Evan Reese wrote:
I don’t think it is pessimistic to assess the world as it is. But two people
can take the same set of facts, one feels hopeful, while the other sees gloom
and doom. Facts are facts, but people can have differing opinions about what
those facts portend for the future.
For example, one person can view all the actions of the Trump administration
and still be optimistic that the checks and balances of our constitution will
ultimately do their job, while another person can take the same facts and be
pessimistic that those checks and balances will hold up.
I’m not saying I am one or the other of those two examples. I just picked the
first thing to come to mind for illustration.
Evan
From: Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2018 3:20 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Optimism, was Re: Would communism work with
computers?
But what good is optimism? It seems to me that we are better off assessing
the world as it actually is in order to act accordingly to get what we want.
That means that being realistic is advantageous over either optimism or
pessimism. But it also seems to me that any attempt to see the world
realistically is what you call negative or pessimistic.
_________________________________________________________________ Isaac Asimov
“Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in
telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after
death?No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.One person recently, goaded
into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you
believe in anything?"Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in
observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers.
I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence
for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and
more solid the evidence will have to be.” ― Isaac Asimov On 11/18/2018 6:14
PM, Evan Reese wrote:
Yes, genetics, which is horribly complicated, has to be a lot of the source
of our outlooks on life.
It seems that circumstances may be able to move that outlook perhaps a
little, but I’m doubtful that circumstances would, say, make someone who is
really pessimistic convert to raving optimism.
Now I have a book here called Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman,, who’s a
big wheel in the modern positive psychology movement, but I haven’t read it
yet. I imagine he has data on this subject that I haven’t heard about, and
obviously, from his title, he may disagree with me that people really can learn
to be optimistic. I’ll see what he says and then reevaluate if he sounds
convincing enough.
For now at least, it seems that people’s temperments are pretty set early
on in life, probably by genetics.
Evan
From: Miriam Vieni
Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2018 5:59 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Optimism, was Re: Would communism work with
computers?
Not blindness, one’s individual experiences along with, I suppose, biology.
As a matter of fact, I’ve known many blind people who have an extremely
positive view of life and who do not feel that blindness has, in any way,
affected their life negatively. I remember one woman, I think it was when I was
getting the one guide dog I had, who was totally blind, who told me vehemently
that she had no wish to see and if doctors said that they could restore her
sight, she’d refuse because she was perfectly content as she was and she didn’t
believe she was missing anything. No, it isn’t blindness. It’s the way that I,
a person with partial vision, adjusted to my situation. But different people
adjust differently. I’ve met people with approximately the same amount of
sight as I had, who didn’t see as much as I ddid because they didn’t use it as
I did or because, perhaps, physically, it was different. Actually, maybe it’s
an inheritable trait. My older daughter is pessimistic, more so than I, but not
my younger daughter, whom we adopted.
Miriam
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx On Behalf Of Evan Reese
Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2018 5:40 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Optimism, was Re: Would communism work with
computers?
Miriam, you are not paying attention.
I cannot now recall, (although I know it’s been several times at least),
that I’ve said that I do not ignore bad news.
Did I not say that I read most of what you post here? And the proof is in
the fact that I often respond to the stories you post here. I even posted a bad
news story myself, from the Economist, about Jamal Khashoggi's murder, and how
it looked as though it was bearing out my cynical prediction that it would
probably pass without much serious consequence to Saudi Arabia, or MBS. I could
certainly post more, and I may if I think it’s important; but you’ve got the
darkness angle pretty much covered.
So I vehemently reject the notion you seem to have that I look for only
positive stories, view the world through rose colored glasses. That is
demonstrably false, false, false! I’m not going to let you mischaracterize my
views in that way.
What I do in fact do is read both bad, and good, news. I actually read more
bad news than good, because it really is important to know what problems exist
so that we can know what they are in order to work to mitigate them. However, I
also do in fact look for good stories because I think the notion that paying
attention to only one side of a story is not only mentally unhealthy, it is
dangerous because it leads to, what can be, a self fulfilling pessimism. I do
not apologize for that.
And being blind has little or nothing to do with one’s optimism or
pessimism. I have been almost totally blind since birth, and I do not feel that
the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Conversely, there are many sighted
people who feel as you do, and also many that feel, as I do, that while we have
many serious problems, that is not the same as believing that we are doomed. I
am not sure what ultimately causes people to have an either glass half full or
glass half empty outlook on life, but I am highly doubtful that blindness is
connected to it.
Evan
From: Miriam Vieni
Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2018 4:46 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Optimism, was Re: Would communism work with
computers?
I guess I want to respond to Evan’s underlying charge, that I have a
negative attitude, that I read only negative stories. One can, if one chooses,
ignore the bad stuff and look for positive stories, look at the world through
rose colored glasses. That’s a personal choice, similar to the choice of having
faith that God loves us and has a reason for everything. For me, the signs of
disaster are all around us and if we don’t heed them and make our choices based
on reality, we not only doom ourselves, we doom succeeding generations. I
imagine that my life experience has predetermined me to view life in this way.
As a visually impaired person, I had to, from childhood on, understand the
world in which I lived, plan ahead to be able to function effectively in that
world, and never underestimate the obstacles. When I’ve been diverted from that
manner of functioning, bad things have resulted. So, while I support and
applaud any honest efforts to improve life for people, I’m cognizant of the
dangers and difficulties. I know that human nature includes the capacity to
cooperate, to love, to sacrifice for others, but it also includes the lust for
power, and aggression, and rage. Therefore, I don’t assume that human
institutions are benign. And I do think that we are now living in a very
dangerous time in a sick and corrupted society. Aside from news articles and
books, I see the problems in the everyday experiences of the people around me
and in the changes that I’ve encountered in my own life. The symptoms are
people’s distraction, forgetfulness, feelings of being under pressure, and the
impersonal nature of the interaction between people.
Miriam
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Miriam Vieni
Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2018 4:10 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Would communism work with computers?
Evan,
I think it’s really nice that Amazon is increasing the wages of their
workers. I imagine that, probably, they might be increasing the hourly wage to
$15 for warehouse workers, if they’re lucky. One of those bad news articles to
which you refer, that I read the other day, said that if the minimum wage were
keeping up with our economy’s productivity and if it were comparable to its
value in 1970, it would be $25, I think that was the amount. So if you had a
family, a wife and one or two children, and wanted to provide a relatively
comfortable life for them, nothing fancy just comfortable, could you do it on
$15 an hour? I know that you read a lot and you’re very intelligent. But I
think that it’s all theoretical to you. I don’t know if you have daily contact
with real people who are living under our present conditions.
Miriam
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Evan Reese
Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2018 2:26 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Would communism work with computers?
Oh come Miriam.
I’ve read a lot of what you post here, and if that is any guide, and I
don’t see why it shouldn’t be, you spend most days consuming bad news. It’s an
unbalanced news diet. Just as someone who only consumes one kind of food would
not be expected to get proper nutrition, someone who only consumes one kind of
news is not likely to draw trustworthy conclusions.
We are not all screwed. Didn’t you, (perhaps in an unguarded moment), post
an article about how Amazon was increasing their wages?
And I am not talking about certain autocratic governments that ran what I
define as a planned economy. I am talking about certain autocratic governments
that ran what they themselves defined as a planned economy.
Evan
From: Miriam Vieni
Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2018 11:10 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Would communism work with computers?
I actually have more to say on the subject because you originally said
that our economy works better than a planned economy. I don’t read The
Economist and therefore,I’m not thinking within the usual framework of how
mainstream economists think and write. But I’m familiar with it because I hear
it on the news. I certainly hear it on Marketplace on NPR which, by the way is
sponsored by, (yes I know supposedly there are no sponsors), the Koch
Brothers). When economists say that an economy is working well, they’re talking
about it working well for business, for the stock market, for investors. We’re
all supposed to assume that the rest of us will benefit. But we don’t
necessarily benefit. Production is up. Output is up. Profits are up. But the
workers don’t benefit, nor does the general public. The profits are re-invested
into the business but only in financial terms. Stock holders profit. CEO’s
profit. The business doesn’t improve working conditions or service to its
customers. Games are played with its finances. Everything is financialized.
Most of us can’t even understand the intricacies. One of the things I’ve been
reading about for years is how we manufacture money and what that means. It’s
complicated. Apparently, what it means eventually, is that we’re all screwed.
It’s like global warming. The use of fossil fuels is killing us. So, for that
matter, is raising cattle so we can consume all that meat. The raising of
cattle produces even more CO2 than the fossil fuels. But all those corporations
are making money and they’re officers are living well. So we’ll fight wars to
keep control of oil supplies. Oh, and by the way, fighting those wars is also
bad for the environment. So people can be wealthy and live high on the hog now,
and to hell with the future. My point is that talking about economic systems
and saying that our “mixed” economy works better than a “planned” economy,
makes no sense to me. It depends on what you mean by “works better”. And the
other thing is that when you say that, are you actually talking about the
economy, or are you thinking about particular autocratic governments that had,
what you define as”a planned economy”? Just suppose, if Cuba had been treated
as a friendly country after its revolution, if it had been left alone and had
set up a socialist economic system, if the US had had normal economic relations
with it, that planned economy might have done really well. Castro would not
have had to be as authoritarian because he wouldn’t have been under threat of
US invasion or his own assassination. It’s hard to know what a real socialist
economy in a truly democratic country would be like because the western nations
have never permitted such a thing to exist.
Miriam
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Evan Reese
Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2018 10:28 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Would communism work with computers?
It is a mixed economy. That is, certain aspects are planned, but certain
aspects are not.
If you believe our economy is anything like the kind of planned economy
Roger is talking about, I think you are not understanding what he means by that.
Nobody is sitting in some central ministry somewhere and deciding how many
boxes of cereal should be produced.
Nobody is sitting in some central ministry somewhere and deciding how many
cars should be produced.
I could go on with a few million more examples, but I think it is clear
enough.
Our economy is not planned in anything like the way Roger is thinking of.
Evan
From: Miriam Vieni
Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2018 10:14 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Would communism work with computers?
Evan,
From everything I read, we have a planned economy. It is planned and
structured to benefit the wealthy. Just read a bit about how the IMF deals with
developing countries. Look at our tax structure. Look at how the international
banking system works. Think about all those meetings like the G 7, G 20, Davos,
etc. Look at the world population or even, just at the US population, at the
percentage of people whose health, housing, nutritional, and educational
needs are met. The economic inequality isn’t accidental. The fact that you
feel that you are part of a sector of humanity whose needs are met, doesn’t
mean that our economic system is working properly or that it is unplanned.
Miriam
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Evan Reese
Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2018 9:27 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Would communism work with computers?
So far at least, despite all of its shortcomings, and there are many, the
unplanned economy has done quite a lot better than any planned ones I’ve heard
about.
Perhaps, at some future date, with sufficiently powerful computers, a
planned economy might work. But I would have a hard time trusting the people in
charge of the computers doing the planning.
Evan
From: Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2018 8:53 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Would communism work with computers?
Well, I don't think this author quite understands what Marx was all about
and he really goes wrong when he equates Stalinism with communism as if there
is no other choice, but he still hits on a few things that can be agreed on. I
have answered you claims that communism could not work by pointing out that for
the majority of time that humans existed it was the only economic model, but
primitive communism is still not something that we would want to return to.
Even though prehistoric people participated in a communist economy they didn't
know it. They had no concept of economy and one thing they did not do was plan
their economy unless you count something like storing up food for the winter.
Capitalism is not a planned economy either. Oh, the federal reserve may fiddle
with the interest rates or tax policy may be changed with claims of definite
effects, but the real effects are not even close to the effects claimed in the
rhetoric. What we need is an economy planned with human needs in mind and
without profit as a motive. Marx, lenin and others have had a lot to say about
how that should be done, but it is unquestionable that they did not have
computers. Computers have become a lot more powerful than they used to be and
are becoming even more powerful. In the past economic planners could use pencil
and paper to make calculations and then came adding machines and then came
computers which are primitive by today's standards. By the way, I remember
reading a book from the NLS called Stonehenge Explained. Without digressing too
much into what it was all about I will just say that the author used what he
considered an extremely advanced computer to make calculations about the rocks
that make up Stonehenge. He raved about that computer that he used in the early
sixties that took up a whole building and that he had to apply for time on and
had to wait for months. Most of us now have home desktop computers that are
many times more powerful than that one. So when doing economic planning we
really should take advantage of whatever tools that we have available to us and
I am sure that these computers can make that planning many times more efficient
than Marx or Lenin ever imagined. One of Lenin's more famous quotations was,
"Soviet power and electrification equals communism." I doubt that he literally
believed that. It was more of a political slogan meant to emphasize the
importance of bringing electricity to the Russian people. And, like I said,
Russia was something of a backward country at the time of the revolution. There
were very many areas where no one had ever seen a light bulb and bringing
electricity to the masses was a high priority. That has been mostly
accomplished. I suppose there might still be s few outposts in the backwoods of
the Russian territory that still don't have electricity, but that would be very
rare. The essential technology now is the computer. It just could be that a
world soviet power combined with the use of computers for an economy that would
be geared toward human needs rather than profit would equal communism.
_________________________________________________________________ Isaac Asimov
“Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in
telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after
death?No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.One person recently, goaded
into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you
believe in anything?"Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in
observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers.
I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence
for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and
more solid the evidence will have to be.” ― Isaac Asimov On 11/12/2018
10:21 PM, Evan Reese wrote:
Roger, I found this while looking for something else. It’s something I
saved and then forgot about. It’s speculative, but thought you, and perhaps
others here, might find some interest in it.
Evan
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122568/what-if-stalin-had-computers
What If Stalin Had Computers?
A new book contemplates the end of capitalism (again)—it's a nice story,
but a terrible plan
By Malcolm Harris @bigmeaninternet
When will capitalism end? It’s not a new idea, and even the capitalists
suspect it will happen. After all, every other mode of production has fallen,
and capitalism isn’t a steady-state system. It simply isn’t built to stay the
same. As firms incorporate new technologies, capacity increases per-capita, and
jobs change, so too does the nature of commodities and consumption. It happened
with the assembly line, and it’s happening again with information technology.
In 1930, John Maynard Keynes famously predicted these trends would reduce
everyone’s daily toil to part-time by now, while Karl Marx thought the same
developments would compel workers to seize the whole system and abolish
wage-labor in general. But the system still lives.
If the history of postcapitalism so far is a repeating chorus asking “Are
we there yet?”, then the new book from Channel 4 economics editor Paul Mason,
Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future, is a reassuring “Almost!” from the front
seat. Like a good co-pilot, Mason keeps his eyes on his indicators, and he has
the end in sight. Or at least on his graphs. How the transition might occur is
less important than that it must.
Marxist economics is not a vibrant field within the anglophone academy or
public sphere. Even Thomas Piketty’s best selling import, Capital in the
Twenty-First Century, didn’t take much more than a good title from the
communists. Mason is an oddity, as an economics commentator of some stature (at
least in the UK, where he has been an economics/business editor since 2001) who
believes that labor is the source of all value. He spends much of the first
half of Postcapitalismredeeming the work of heterodox Soviet economist Nikolai
Kondtratieff, whose model of 50-year four-phase market cycles is Mason’s
preferred historical gauge.
ADVERTISEMENT
The Kondtratieff wave explanation is an intuitive way to look at 200
years of economic history: In Mason’s telling, industrial capitalism has
completed four cycles since 1790, driven by the interrelated processes of
technological innovation, global expansion, capital investment, and not least
by labor struggles. The story a cycle goes more or less like this: Capitalists
incorporate new productive technology, sharing the proceeds with workers;
profits slow and workers fight with their bosses as firms try to depress labor
costs; when capitalists can’t find any more savings, they’re forced to
incorporate new technology and start the cycle over. Despite its Soviet
origins, mainstream British and American economists have found the model useful
for describing how capitalism manages to persist.
The problem is we seem to have broken the cycle. Where workers should
have been able to leverage their power for higher living standards, capital
instead outsourced production, smashed unions, captured the regulators, and
expanded money supply by unpegging the dollar from gold. Mason calls this
counter-cyclical move “neoliberalism,” and it’s a helpful definition for a term
sometimes used carelessly to refer to anything bad and capitalist. Kondratieff
described a dance between capital and labor that was theoretically
sustainable—a heresy that did not go over well with Stalin, who felt that the
proletariat was only days from halting the waltz.
As it turned out, Stalin was wrong and capital broke up with labor, not
the other way around. Mason calls our current situation the “long, disrupted
wave”: The lights are on, and Kondratieff’s dance is over. This isn’t the only
relationship that’s broken; capitalist economics is incompatible with
information technology, Mason claims. As the supply of some commodities (like
music files) becomes infinite, price-setting becomes arbitrary and
unsustainable. How do you measure the amount of labor in replicable file? The
adaptable system of production that Kondratieff saw from the other side is
sinking. “The most highly educated generation in the history of the human race,
and the best connected,” Mason writes, “will not accept a future of high
inequality and stagnant growth.”
Postcapitalism really begins here, at the bargaining table with capital
and labor looking for a plan that will settle their differences once and for
all. If the world is headed for imminent ecological collapse, then to continue
on with our current capitalist mode of production is suicide. Maximizing actors
don’t kill themselves, so the operative question is what to do next. How can we
maintain people’s standards of living while socializing production, reducing
labor, saving the environment, and making the best use of new technology? Mason
has some ideas.
The book really comes into its own when Mason addresses the possibilities
of contemporary planning. He does not go as far as to endorse “cyber Stalinism”
but at the very least poses its thesis: What if the problem with the Soviet
Union was that it was too early? What if our computer processing power and
behavioral data are developed enough now that central planning could outperform
the market when it comes to the distribution of goods and services?
If you raised your hand and said this in an American ECON100 class, you’d
be laughed out of the room, so Mason as prominent public employee deserves a
lot of credit for bringing it this far into the English-speaking mainstream.
The possible socialized uses of technology is an exciting can of worms. Using
large sets of behavior and population data, capitalist firms like Amazon and
Google have developed predictive capacities that would make Soviet
cyberneticians weep with joy. Capitalism says that the best use of this
capacity is to sell people stuff, but parts of this process are so socially
unproductive and unnecessary—we don’t just have clickbait sites, we have
third-rate clickbait sites—that it can’t possibly be the case.
“Imagine if Walmart or Tesco were prepared to publish their customer data
(suitably anonymized) for free,” Mason writes. “Society would benefit:
everybody from farmers to epidemiologists could mine the data, and make more
accurate decisions.” This is just the beginning; remaking productive machinery
in the collective interest means driving necessary labor down as far as
possible with data analytics and self-management. Why can’t a meatpacking
factory function like a web startup, with room for autonomy and achievement
targets instead of required hours? It’s fun to imagine how we could do better
than capitalism if we all decided to, especially if no one had to worry about
creating and maintaining false scarcity around info-tech goods.
The best existing example I can think of for the kind of efficiencies
Mason predicts is the difference between Netflix and Popcorn Time. Netflix is,
of course, the $28 billion media streaming company with over 2000 employees.
Popcorn Time is a legally shady alternative that streams media torrents over a
clean ad-less interface. It’s a functional and free alternative, what
economists would call a replacement good. Popcorn Time makes no money, and has
a staff of 20 around the world who volunteer their labor part-time. Netflix is
(as a streaming company) a near-total waste of time. Those 2000-plus workers
could be developing a nutritious Slurpee and designing a distribution
infrastructure. Or babysitting. Hell, they could be lowering the collective
labor burden enough so everyone has time to masturbate one extra time a year,
and it would still be more socially useful than charging rent for access to
digital content.
In Mason’s telling, postcapitalism involves an abundance of resources,
including free time. Without capitalism’s wastefulness, we can refashion the
world to allow human potential and creativity to blossom. It’s an enjoyable
thought experiment, but capitalists are not looking to make a deal. Given the
choice, I have no doubt that the ownership class will literally abandon the
planet Earth before they surrender capitalism. Bosses no longer negotiate with
organized labor if they can avoid it; they’d rather make a blanket offer to all
workers as individuals: Work and/or starve. Violence and coercion don’t play
much of a role in Postcapitalism, but that’s not true of capitalism. Huge,
advanced police forces ensure this is the deal whether people “accept” it (as
Mason says) or not.
Imaginative as it is, Postcapitalism is not a revolutionary book. As
Malcolm X observed very clearly of revolution after revolution: “What was it
for? Land! How did they get it? Bloodshed!” Capitalists understand this
principle very well, and their state proxies are well-armed. The vanguard
movements of postcapitalism that Mason identifies—the global occupy sequence,
Brazilian World Cup protesters, fracking blockaders—have all been forced out of
whatever territory they were able to take temporarily, and that’s with the
authorities exercising significant restraint relative to their capabilities.
Since postcapitalism doesn’t detail the “How?”, it doesn’t have to answer “How
do we kill that many cops?”
There’s a reason Marxists—even heterodox ones—don’t usually speculate on
how to arrange communism: Marx says not to. “Communism is for us not a state of
affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to
adjust itself,” he writes with Engels in The German Ideology. “We call
communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.” Not
even Marx claimed to know what communism will look like, but he knew it would
have to destroy capitalism first.
It’s hard to follow Marx into his beautifully hopeful “will have been”
idea of history without thinking he’s doing some sword-in-the-stone prophecy,
but he nonetheless reveals important problems with postcapitalism. I cannot
imagine the real movement that could, in retrospect, validate Mason’s version
of history. The true qualities of capitalism, including the weak points where
it finally fails, will only be visible in the shadow of whatever social force
destroys it. The people Mason describes, at least as motivated and defined by
the historical factors he describes (education, connection, stagnant wages), do
not seem willing or able to confront the system at the necessary scale or with
the required intensity. To borrow a perspective from Marx, I do not believe
Mason’s theory of capitalism will have been the case.
The true story of capitalism, like all social forms, will be written in
its ashes. Until then, a theory of historical necessity and a couple bucks will
get you a cup of coffee. Mason criticizes leftists for being against things
that exist instead of for things that could be, but the position of the cart in
relation to the horse isn’t up for sensible debate. Postcapitalism is still one
revolution away.
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