Book Review: Paul Mason’s Postcapitalism
In his famous 1950s book The Affluent Society, John Kenneth Galbraith presented a utopian vision of the future in which the need to work would be reduced to four hours a day and wealth would be shared much more equally among those who chose to work. for working. and those who opted for a life of leisure. Now, Paul Mason has produced an outline of the process by which this could be done. Extrapolating from current trends, particularly the growing abundance of “free stuff” on the Internet, and taking full account of the upcoming crises of climate change, population growth, and increased longevity, he explains how capitalism, like the proverbial old soldier, will not die. but they just fade away.
Galbraith built on the work of anthropologists who estimated that early man, living as a hunter-gatherer, needed to spend about four hours a day searching for food. In the modern age, with increasing use of automation, Galbraith envisioned a future in which man would once again spend just four hours searching for his daily bread. Now, following the explosive growth of personal computing and the Internet, Paul Mason can see more clearly how this transformation could come about. The first step in the process is the universal availability of free knowledge through websites like Wikipedia. Knowledge that has cost so much to produce can now be obtained by all who need it at no additional cost.
Mason sees a trend whereby more and more information, services, and products become abundant to the point where their ultimate cost is reduced to zero. This is described as a non-market economy growing alongside a declining market economy. Large companies that rely on cheap labor would be forced by the legislation to become ‘high-tech, high-growth, high-wage economic models’. And if this sounds too radical, Mason points to business models that have been outlawed in the past, such as those based on slavery and child labor.
Mason warns against the danger of capitalists creating monopolies as a defense mechanism against post-capitalism. He must resist the creation of monopolies and the rules against price fixing must be strictly enforced. Where a monopoly may be essential, such as in a service industry, it must be publicly owned. He argues that providing services such as water, energy, housing, transportation, health, telecommunications infrastructure, and education, at social cost, would be a much more effective strategic act of redistribution than increasing real wages.
Mason follows Galbraith in advocating that everyone should receive a basic income, though he is relatively less generous to the unemployed. Galbraith proposed that those who choose to remain unemployed receive about 90 percent of the income of those who work, while Mason advocates a universal basic income of just a third of the minimum wage. So while Mason charts a useful course toward Utopia, Galbraith might feel he still has a ways to go.
