Four Futures: Life After Capitalism (Jacobin)

I have bought several copies of the book to share with friends and my granddaughter. This is an excellent book which lays out four possible scenarios to contemplate the future. It is a very readable and thoughtful book. The author has a good grasp of Marxism and unlike many Marxists knows how to apply Marxist ideas to the problems we are facing today. The author adds humor and examples from popular culture which makes the book very readable. As the author states, "I hope to reclaim the long left-wing tradition of mixing imaginative speculation with political economy." I think he does this very successfully. The author's idea to decommodify labor and have a universal basic income are compelling ideas for the future.

Peter Frase has successfully constructed four possible futures that I could imagine coming into existence--and the possibilities he sees range from positively heavenly to downright horrific. The major corrective of the text is to the overt optimism of most "tech-futurist" models, which tend to glamorize technological innovation as though it will automatically lead to a utopia or utopia-adjacent outcome. The futures, presented convincingly as ideal-types (homage to Weber), seem quite plausible and well outlined. Frase presents the book as social science-fiction, and I found it to be a great way to merge the social science approach with the inescapable inexactness of a future-prediction-oriented book. The book is a perfect length to get across his models, leaving room for so many unknowns but sketching out how the world could look depending on the choices we collectively make over the next few decades. I do like that Frase does not sugar-coat the horrors that might await us if we do not take seriously the inflection point we not are living in, and he does not assume that humans cannot be downright horrible to one another and sleep perfectly well. I would have liked to see more in the text about climate change and the real possibilities that climate change brings; I think the horrific outcome that Frase sees as one of the four futures could emerge more easily than he seems to imagine because the text emphasizes work and automation over the impact of climate shifts. I believe it could easily be the converse reality that we face in the next few decades. I was also expecting, from a sociologist, to see more emphasis on human population dynamics, migration, and food production, which will all be chaotic for the next half-century as climate shifts push every button on the human population control board. There is a focus in the text on labor.

Nice work, exploring four scenarios for the future, which of course are already present in society just not widely distributed. Compelling, references to different science fiction; distopias and utopias bolster his arguments and make the work very accessible. Its very clear which of the 4 futures makes sense to Peter, and to me so if you are looking for an unbiased view - this isn't it.

It's a bit scattered and surface level - the scenarios are barely sketched out and then go so quickly on tangents that at first I was confused and expecting deeper discussions of scenarios until I realized I was almost done with the book. There are some interesting references and it's a short read, so maybe worth taking a look.

A compelling exploration of how technology and climate change play a role in the future of society and economy. You can see a little bit of each future in modern society, which makes all of them seems plausible, and troublesome each in their own way. One thing is for sure: we should have a universal basic income, and stop treating jobs like the only source of status and personal satisfaction.

In Four Futures: Life After Capitalism, Peter Frase uses metaphor from popular culture, for example, Star Trek, to describe what life might look like after capitalism, whether we evolve into each future or have it thrust upon us on two axis: equality v. hierarchy and abundance v. scarcity. Communism is equality and abundance. He does not specify how this will look exactly, but he uses a citizens dividend as a possible route to get there (the dividend gives labor a higher supply cost for work, which raises wages and increases abundance as everyone can buy what they need or maybe, if people don't work, less of what they want but don't need). Increased automation is a possibility I see here, which would give us the same amount of stuff for less work. There is also the problem of professional slaves, like doctors and especially nurses, who are needed and cannot be automated away. They will begin to resent an idle nation, as would soldiers or astronauts. There is also the question of whether the dividend was just for adults or will be adjusted for family size. We already have one just for the kids, but it is about twelve sizes too small and some only collect it at year's end rather than when needed at every paycheck. Rentism is hierarchy and abundance. The key feature of this future is ownership of intellectual property, both for production and consumption (from branding to bioscience). This also includes land rent paid by the many to the few. I support an ownership alternative, where workers own the means of production of their company, including intellectual property. You could use social insurance collections to buy employee companies, with the contribution equalized so each employee gets the same amount of stock per period. Going back to the abundance problem, I would develop in-home agriculture (hydroponics and growing meat from stem cells). These homes would be expensive, so the cooperative would give you no interest loans to buy them and may even build them for you. These cooperatives would buy the land and hold it for their members, solving the problem of land rent. I would also keep the benefits of creating intellectual property closer to the actual developers rather than giving them to the capitalists and their pet CEOs. You will get more innovation, not less. Socialism is where equality meets scarcity. Eco-socialism, which Joel Kovel proposed in his 2000 run for president, falls into this category. Basement agriculture in cooperative built homes could also be a solution here - one that involves government less (although NASA is developing the whole habitat angle, or was, for a mission to Mars). Running out of resources is the theme to this future, although I still think Mathus was wrong. We will always figure out how to grow food, clean water and air and deal with floods (and maybe even control carbon) and will use government, industry and cooperatives to do so. Currently, there is no urgency, however, because enough of the middle class has been bought off with their toys and wages to ignore the urgency of upcoming scarcity. Socialism is never to be seen as a permanent state - it is the road to eventual communism and abundance. If cities can rise out of the Arabian dessert, most anything is possible in dealing with scarcity. The problem is scarcity of distribution, not of actual resources. Exterminism is where hierarchy meets scarcity. In this future, the elite separate themselves from society and let society begin to dies off or be killed through prison, police violence, war, environmental disaster (see Flint) and cutting welfare benefits. The evidence that this is happening now is hard to dispute. Indeed, Trump seems to champion Muslim exterminism. Zero population growth, rather than dealing with scarcity is a way to keep poor people from breeding - more exterminism. How do we fight this? Blow the whistle and increase that Child Tax Credit that I mentioned above. In cooperatives, every member is in an enclave and every person could be valuable. There are many under-educated geniuses out there who have been given poor educations because of their darker skin. Just look at the drug trade. These are complex enterprises. Recruiting everyone ends scarcity. My impression in reading this book is not that these are four discrete futures, but four trends that are going on simultaneously. The conclusion of the book states exactly that. Now that we know, we can start doing something about it.

I am a rare English Book Reader and spotted this one after browsing the book index then be attracted! From this book, the author's provision mind on different kind of consequence from each possible future outcome is much fulfilling. I pretty love the Anti-Star Trek Term for quoting capitalist to spend their every pence with good profit in turn may drive into the dead end of capitalism. Robotic, AI, basic income and auto-pleasure game are tipped through his creative scenarios projected. Well Done Peter and foresee to have more books and essay coming from u!

An engaging, critical examination of possible futures in aftermath of ecological crises and mass automation. Incisive and disturbing possibilities of rentier or exterminist options by ruling elite who might put class interests ahead of humanity.

I bought this book with great expectations. Unfortunately it hasn't stand to them. Is not developing that much the theory and possibilities of the 4 possible futures after capitalism, but often strands into something relatively related to it (robots doing all the job? climate change?) and extends longer about it that about the dystopic future itself. Gives lots of references to popular science fiction like Star Trek, Star Wars... but I wish there was a more serious treatment.

O primeiro capítulo, como premissa, já paga o investimento.

This is a thoughtful piece (set alongside Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism..) with extremely good background reference material pointers. The framing of the ideas as speculative (social science-) fiction is a neat one, though for someone who reads a LOT of SF, it misses some seminal futurism work (e.g. John Christopher wrote a lot of stories about semi-utopic possible futures much as pictured here, back in the 60s, plus Neal Stephenson's work often contains back stories of a similar nature (e.g. the Diamond Age, although most of the SF literature i've seen takes the dystopic alternates presented in this work - Ursula Le Guin's Dispossesed actually has 2 contrasting planets so she can contrast the dystopia with a near utopia which has scarce resource, which is an interesting departure from the scenarios here). That's just a minor whinge, though, as this is clearly written, and is something we all will have to confront in the next couple of decades, as the pace of environmental change picks up and the deployment of mass scale automation (e.g. self driving cars/trucks, smart homes, potentially free at the point of use green electricity, etc) accelerates. Current tired political dogmas of the left an the right are failing to address either of the key challenges discussed here in any meaningful way, so its great to have a clear, and relatively undogmatic dissection of the choices ahead.

Peter Frase has done a good job in giving an idea what a future world would look like , with the the current socio economic condition the future seems gloomy for the masses of us working class people while the tiny ruling elite of the world are living under true Communism on the back of other superfluous humans still true of the present scenario. And it's true We have arrived to a future of abundance for the few.

It's excellent.