Book Review: Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future by Paul Mason https://t.co/ETJmiRArNp via @LSEReviewBooks
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Peer2Politics
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on peer-to-peer dynamics in politics, the economy and organizations
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jean lievens
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It may not, as promised, predict the future. But this fresh and insightful book illuminates the present in unexpected, revelatory ways
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The problem with Postcapitalism is that Mason’s strategy doesn’t take into account the moves that capitalists themselves might make. True, it may be easier to imagine the end of the world than the continuation of the capitalist ruling class—but those who currently preside over that system have strong reasons to try to preserve it, and we should assume that their collective powers of imagination are at least as strong as ours. It is all too plausible that as the crises of the twenty-first century start to bite even harder, the ideological structure of the capitalist state—along, perhaps, with its embedded racial hierarchies—will harden, not fall apart. The threat of environmental disaster will serve to justify rather than undermine increasing inequality. Mounting pressure on resources will provide cover for more repressive, retrogressive measures. There will be new ways to silence and buy off the opposition.
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Was Marx's "Fragment of Machines" a prophecy coming true? Niki Seth-Smith reviews Paul Mason's "Postcapitalism".
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Co authored by Ann Pettifor and Geoff Tily
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The Ethical Economy introduces two major intellectuals mapping the transition from early industrial manufacturing and its economics based on objects (things you can drop on your foot) to today's information economies where intellectual property, intangibles, brands and reputation are the new source of value. Authors Adam Arvidsson and Nicolai Peitersen join Don Tapscott, Yoichi Benkler, Michel Bauwens and others in mapping this new economic terrain where information offers non-rival "win-win" opportunities for abundance through sharing and cooperation (if you give me information, you still retain it as well).
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Jeremy Rifkin's book, The Zero Marginal Cost Society, is at times thrilling, at times encyclopedic, and at times possibly hyperbolic. It is very well-written, it touches on an incredibly wide variety of modern topics, it builds on an exhaustive set of references, and most importantly it makes you think seriously about the future. You cannot possibly read this book without pausing at least a half a dozen times to ponder. There were parts of the book that presented me with completely new facts, claims, technologies, and predictions. For example, I hadn't considered the prospect of nearly zero marginal cost energy production. I don't know that I have as much confidence as Rifkin in that prospect coming true in the near future. But to contemplate the possibility and its implications alone was exhilarating. Similarly, I found fascinating his claim that "what makes the great infrastructure revolutions transformational is the convergence of new communications media with new energy regimes." I will be thinking a lot about this in my own work.
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“Social media enables mass collaboration, in which a large and diverse group of people who may have no preexisting connections pursues a mutual purpose that creates value.” The people who are engaged in the mass collaboration would be considered the collaborative community. Strategically, that is how Authors Anthony J. Bradley and Mark P. McDonald begin the second chapter of The Social Organization. This outlines how the chapter will elaborate on the three concepts that make up Mass Collaboration. The three concepts that produce mass collaboration are social media, community, and purpose.
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I recently read a pre-release manuscript that has since been published.Rethinking Money: How New Currencies Turn Scarcity into Prosperity is easily the best book I have read this year. Financial systems and currencies are not new topical areas for me but I was pleasantly surprised and then outraged with what I learned from some case studies in this new release by Bernard Lietaer and Jacqui Dunne. Many of you reading are already familiar with the Chiemgauer, Brixton pound, and other alternative, local currencies in operation right now in the US, Germany, UK, and elsewhere. We are also regularly informed that a solution to long-term economic stagnation is to go back to gold-backed currency and that devaluation is primarily attributed to the floating currency policies initiated in the 1960s and 70s. However, these authors convincingly argue otherwise with both startling historical precedents and emergent strategies taking place in the present day.
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On Thursday October 7, 2013, over 100 people gathered at Gleebooks in Glebe for the Australian launch of a handbook for activists called Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming Our Communities. Co-author, Katherine Gibson, research professor at the Institute of Culture and Society at the University of Western Sydney, says: “The book contains many examples of collective actions that are re-shaping the way we work and conduct business so that the needs of people and the planet are met with dignity. We hope community organisations, faith groups, neighbourhoods, high schools, unions and governments will be prompted to think about actions to put the well-being of people and the planet at the centre of economies.”
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Has Capitalism Had its Day?
According to award-winning economist and journalist Paul Mason, the world is on the cusp of seismic political and economic change.
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This article reviews Paul Mason’s book “PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future”. It discusses Mason’s version of long wave theory, the book’s interpretation of Karl Marx, its analysis of the Grundrisse’s “Fragment on Machines”, and aspects of political struggles and societal change. The conclusion is that Paul Mason is digital Marxism’s Henryk Grossmann 2.0.paul
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Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness by Frederic Laloux is on Ebonique’s to-re...
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The Power to Create Money out of Thin Air is a review of Geoffrey Ingham’s book, Capitalism (Polity Press, first published 2008). However, like all the best reviews, it has become a hook on which to hang discussion of the author’s contemporary pet themes. Here, these include primarily, capitalism’s ‘elastic production of money’. However, Pettifor also takes the opportunity to explain why misunderstanding about the creation of money is so widespread, and why orthodox economists are mainly responsible for the confusion.
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A review of the book The Wealth of Networks. How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler.
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The possibility of an economy based on "nearly free and shareable" goods and services is closer to reality than many, if not most, people can fathom. The concept of a zero marginal cost society is not only plausible, but in some cases already well underway. The collaborative economy is revealing new examples of how this is possible every day.
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BOOK REVIEW: 'The Zero Marginal Cost Society': Welcome to the Brave New ... - HNN Huntingtonnews.net
Marginal cost is the term used in the science of economicsand business to refer to the increase in total production costs resulting from producing one additional unit of the item. Zero marginal cost describes a situation where an additional unit can be produced without any increase in the total cost of production. Producing another unit of a good can have zero marginal costs when that good is non-rivalrous, meaning that it is possible for one person to consume the good without diminishing the ability of others to simultaneously consume it as well. --Wise Geek.com
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The history of debt is a vast and consequential topic that remains understudied. So there is no way this book could live up to its title. Much work remains to be done before anyone could produce a satisfying summary of debt history in 400 pages, if that will ever be possible. Graeber’s book is however a remarkably original achievement, and even the hubric title is well chosen. The ultimate value of this work depends on its reception, and whether it becomes a departure for further critiques and research. Hopefully this book will someday be re-written in several volumes, but this is a good start for now.
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Once upon a time not so long ago, computer programmers wore starched white shirts and stodgy ties, and worked in immaculate corporate spaces with giant machines called ENIAC and Colossus. But the anarchic, transformative power of these tools was too great to be constrained by the corporate world, and a generation of hippie hackers with names like Jobs, Wozniak and Gates threw off their ties and sparked an information revolution from their California garages. It’s a story we know well, but it’s also one we’re about to see retold in the field of manufacturing. Additive manufacturing, digital fabrication – however we choose to label it, the radical shift in “making” has broken the old model of assembly lines, of hierarchical shiftwork and production, and even of factories themselves. Ladies and gentlemen, manufacturing has – quite literally – left the building.
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Chris Anderson is a guru of the information age. Under his editorship, Wired, the voice of the digital world, has won zillions of prizes. His speeches on the economics of the internet command vast sums. He's a brilliant journalist; I know that, having worked with him before he was a big shot. But it is as an author that Anderson has gained most fame. He writes, broadly, about how digital technology has made the world a better place. His first book, The Long Tail, was hugely influential. In the bricks-and-mortar world, it said, in which the costs of marketing and distribution are high, companies make money by selling vast quantities of a few blockbuster items. In the digital world, in which the costs of marketing and distribution are low, companies can make money by selling small numbers of lots of different items.
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