When even James Corden – the cheeky English TV celebrity who became the darling of Middle America – is retweeting socialist rants, you know that capitalism’s time is up. The over-arching ideological epoch of the last century or so has brought us to the precipice of planetary catastrophe, and unless there is large-scale systemic change then surely we will go the same way as the dinosaurs. That capitalism needs to be replaced if we are to save the planet is almost mainstream thinking; even the UN seems to think so.
But what replaces it is far from certain, and the cause of much anxiety and hopelessness. There are of course many excellent local examples of societies, communities and cities that are experimenting with alternatives to capitalism. But the famous Marxist geographer David Harvey has always insisted that the biggest challenge to any anti-capitalist discourse is the ‘scale problem’. How can a localised eco-squat that has provided communal, green and equitable living for scores of people for decades ever become a blueprint for a planetary community? How does a city that has successfully kicked out politicians, the police and the mafia, and in so doing, massively increased the quality of life, become a model for an entire global region? A tangible and functional answer has always eluded even the most practical of utopian thinkers, and as such simply added to that feeling of hopelessness.
But in the midst of all this gloom, Aaron Bastani, with his new book, 'Fully Automated Luxury Communism' (or FALC) attempts to provide a hopeful answer. And – albeit with just a little leap of faith from the reader – he has been successful.
