Fully Automated Luxury Communism — A Review
FALC has been called radical and overly optimistic, but positions itself as the future. So what does FALC do right, and what questions still need answering?
Manifesto is the worst word in the English language. A manifesto is, of course, a collection of ideas meant to succinctly summarise a platform or perspective. But manifestos are also necessarily vague; a tease for those who become enthused by the ideas, and an underdeveloped mess for those who don’t.
For readers of Aaron Bastani’s Fully Automated Luxury Communism, taking either of these positions will be rather easy. Bastani revels in the techno-utopian outlook which has permeated recent left-wing writing but does so from a perspective that is not inconsiderate of the challenges and economic forces of our time. After spelling out the facts at hand — the five crises that, he claims, will be the reckoning of capitalism — Bastani proceeds to offer seemingly radical (and some would say laughable — to these comments we will return) vision of our future.
Though, radical is a relative word. It perhaps says more about us than Bastani that much of FALC’s apparent radicalism comes not from the techno-utopian challenge to our imaginations, but to the re-branding of that spectre which has hung over capitalism for 150 years, namely communism.
