Paul Mason: PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future

October 25, 2015 by Admin 1 Comment

This short video lays out Paul Mason’s perspective on a post-capitalist future. I have not yet read his new book, PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future, but it is in my queue.

Here is a link to an article written by Mason which elaborates his position: The End of Capitalism Has Begun

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Richard Symonds says

July 22, 2016 at 12:57 pm

Reading ‘Post-capitalism’ and found the chapter on neoliberalism very informative. Regarding money which is not ‘fiat’, gold is clearly outdated, so I was playing with the idea of a currency backed by energy resources. Specifically a world currency could be related to the global available energy output, but only from sustainable sources, The supply of energy in the future will be a major determinant of economic activity and with agreement could therefore control the money supply. If new sources became available – like nuclear fusion – the currency level might need to be re-set, but otherwise energy could be a stable backing for the money supply.

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The growing perception that existing social institutions are unreasonable and unjust, that reason has become unreason, and right wrong, is only proof that in the modes of production and exchange changes have silently taken place with which the social order, adapted to earlier economic conditions, is no longer in keeping -

Friedrich Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the netherworld whom he has called up by his spells.

-Marx and Engels

Man today is confronted with the most fundamental choice; not that between Capitalism and Communism, but that between robotism (of both the capitalist and communist variety), or Humanistic Communitarian Socialism. Most facts seem to indicate that he is choosing robotism, and that means, in the long run, insanity and destruction. But all these facts are not strong enough to destroy faith in man's reason, good will, and sanity. As long as we can think of other alternatives, we are not lost; as long as we can consult together and plan together, we can hope. But, indeed, the shadows are lengthening; the voices of insanity are becoming louder. We are in reach of achieving a state of humanity which corresponds to the vision of our great teachers; yet we are in danger of the destruction of all civilization, or of robotization.

- Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (1955)

In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness... It is not the consciousness of men that determines their social being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

- Karl Marx

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist....Soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

- John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money