''Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto'' is a book by

Aaron Bastani Aaron Bastani (born 1983/1984) is a British journalist and writer. He co-founded the left-wing media organisation Novara Media in 2011, and has hosted and co-hosted many of its podcasts and videos. After a 2014 video for the publication, he popu ...

first published by

Verso Books Verso Books (formerly New Left Books) is a left-wing publishing house based in London and New York City, founded in 1970 by the staff of ''New Left Review''. Renaming, new brand and logo Verso Books was originally known as New Left Books. The ...

in 2019. It argues that technology can be used to create a

post-scarcity economy Post-scarcity is a theoretical economic situation in which most goods can be produced in great abundance with minimal human labor needed, so that they become available to all very cheaply or even freely. Post-scarcity does not mean that scarc ...

of widespread prosperity.

Synopsis

The book argues that human history can be divided into three broad periods, each characterized by substantial changes in technology:

prehistory Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of ...

to the dawn of

agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...

; agriculture to the

Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...

; and the present period, characterised by the explosive spread of

information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system (I ...

. Bastani suggests that the prosperity ushered in by technology is inconsistent with contemporary models of

capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for Profit (economics), profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, pric ...

. While capitalism is organised around a logic of

scarcity In economics, scarcity "refers to the basic fact of life that there exists only a finite amount of human and nonhuman resources which the best technical knowledge is capable of using to produce only limited maximum amounts of each economic good. ...

, the technologically-mediated prosperity he predicts is characterised by the absence of scarcity.

Critical reception

British journalist

Andy Beckett Andy Beckett (born 1969) is a British journalist and historian. He writes for ''The Guardian'', the ''London Review of Books'' and ''The New York Times'' magazine. He studied Modern History at Balliol College, Oxford, and journalism at the Univer ...

wrote that Bastani "bases his predictions on a broad-brush reading of history", commenting that " me readers will finish this book exhilarated and energised. Others will be unconvinced, or utterly baffled." Ville Kellokumpu argues that the work fails to account sufficiently for the impact of

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...

and the dependence of contemporary industry on

fossil fuel A fossil fuel is a hydrocarbon-containing material formed naturally in the Earth's crust from the remains of dead plants and animals that is extracted and burned as a fuel. The main fossil fuels are coal, oil, and natural gas. Fossil fuels m ...

s. Jason Barker agrees, commenting that ecological destruction appears to be the consistent result of past technological transitions and that, in this respect, it is likely that the future will resemble the past.

References

{{Reflist 2019 non-fiction books Books about capitalism Books about communism Economics books Verso Books books Books about automation