Paul Mason is back, in the Guardian, and as daft as ever, more so in fact, having the constraints of the BBC removed seems to have completely unhinged him. He’s offering us up for consideration a seemingly endless stream of socialist consciousness, or just an extreme of socialism.
Having got joyously over-excited about the Arab Spring and ‘The New Global Revolution’ that was kicking off everywhere, hence the Tory majority, he is back, peddling the same old glorious student utopian spindrift that tells us that….
The end of capitalism has begun
Without us noticing, we are entering the postcapitalist era. At the heart of further change to come is information technology, new ways of working and the sharing economy. The old ways will take a long while to disappear, but it’s time to be utopian.
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.
Capitalism is dead…he’s right, I hadn’t noticed ( Must try that in Tescos…‘What you want money for all that!!!??? Don’t you know capitalism is f**king dead!!!???’)….and Mason has dreamt up a name for the aftermath…Postcapitalism. Wow man, what are you smoking? I want some.
Wasn’t Capitalism pronounced dead in the 1930’s?
Even Seumas Milne acknowledges the flaw in thinking like Mason’s.…’A Financial Times-Harris poll conducted across the advanced capitalist world this month found large majorities believe the financial crisis has been caused by “abuses of capitalism”, rather than the “failure of capitalism itself”‘
The problem with people like Mason is that they think Capitalism, like Communism, Fascism or Socialism (The unholy Trinity that proves three can be one) is an ideology. It’s not. It’s the default human way of living and working….producing something, or having a skill, somebody else might want and selling it, then buying something with the proceeds that you need and so on….there’s no manual, little red book or sacred text.
Mason bases his disinterred theory upon three scenarios…one that we are all put out of work by robots…heard that before….didn’t happen…has he not heard of Luddites? We adapt and new types of jobs are created. Second, he tells us, information is corroding the market’s ability to form prices correctly. That is because markets are based on scarcity while information is abundant….what? I make widgets and I can’t price them because…information is abundant???? What information? Just how does that stop me pricing my widgets?
Oh hang on…here’s the explanation… ‘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.’
Got that? Good.
He builds on that...Third, we’re seeing the spontaneous rise of collaborative production: goods, services and organisations are appearing that no longer respond to the dictates of the market and the managerial hierarchy. The biggest information product in the world – Wikipedia – is made by volunteers for free, abolishing the encyclopedia business and depriving the advertising industry of an estimated $3bn a year in revenue.
Hmmm…Okay…So Google is worthless then? Wikipedia is essentially an information service, an electronic book…Google provides a mechanism, a product, to search the internet amongst other things….it makes a lot of money…..only two days ago…
Google shares jump as profits handily beat expectations
Google shares jumped Thursday after the company reported quarterly profit that easily topped analysts’ expectations, helped by growth in advertising revenue.
The stock climbed more than 11 percent in extended trading after the Internet and technology giant posted adjusted second-quarter earnings of $6.99 per share on $17.73 billion in revenue. Sales were up from $15.96 billion.
Yep, they just can’t find a way to put a price on information and information technology….Google being completely unresponsive to the dictates of the market.
Here is the heart of his theory, what a postcapitalist™ economy will look like…
Almost unnoticed, in the niches and hollows of the market system, whole swaths of economic life are beginning to move to a different rhythm. Parallel currencies, time banks, cooperatives and self-managed spaces have proliferated, barely noticed by the economics profession, and often as a direct result of the shattering of the old structures in the post-2008 crisis….New forms of ownership, new forms of lending, new legal contracts: a whole business subculture has emerged over the past 10 years, which the media has dubbed the “sharing economy”. ….To mainstream economics such things seem barely to qualify as economic activity – but that’s the point. They exist because they trade, however haltingly and inefficiently, in the currency of postcapitalism: free time, networked activity and free stuff. It seems a meagre and unofficial and even dangerous thing from which to craft an entire alternative to a global system, but so did money and credit in the age of Edward III.
Such sub-economic structures and mechanisms have always existed, there have always been ‘sharing economies’, credit unions, co-operatives and even parallel currencies. People have always ‘down-sized’, dropped out of the ratrace and gone to live in communes to live the Good Life. To claim this is the start of a global economic revolution is a sign of just how desperate Mason is to see the Revolution rolling having been prematurely pronouncing its birth for the past 7 years.
Here he is dreaming of his postcapitalist™ utopia…
I believe it offers an escape route – but only if these micro-level projects are nurtured, promoted and protected by a fundamental change in what governments do. And this must be driven by a change in our thinking – about technology, ownership and work.
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.
All sounds rather complicated and as if we will need many committee meetings of the comrades to execute the plans….it may take 5 years but it’ll be worth it. I have an unfailing faith that Mason and his Pinko mates can work out just how many tractors we will need and just when the wife is supposed to turn up at the coal mine for her shift.
Up the workers!
Being a revolutionary looks like fun…..
….man the barricades!