Nick Johnson — Postcapitalism: Paul Mason’s ‘guide to our future’?

Book review.

The Political Economy of Development
Postcapitalism: Paul Mason’s ‘guide to our future’?
Nick Johnson

Chris Dillow — Back to pre-capitalism?

Will postcapitalism resemble pre-capitalism?

Stumbling and Mumbling
Back to pre-capitalism?
Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle

David F. Ruccio — What comes next?

Technological innovation increases possibilities. Technology alone does not bring any of those possibilities into actuality on its own. This involves people making choices, and that involves many often competing and conflicting factors — the interests of ownership, the interest of the environment, and the common interest.

…we do need to be aware of the ways the existing set of relations—the relations of capitalist commodity production—not only create capitalist subjects, but also noncapitalist subjectivities.
The way I’ve put it in my own writing, capitalist commodity production both presumes and constitutes particular kinds of individual subjects (which Marx referred to as “commodity fetishism”). But it also brings into existence new collective subjectivities—new ways of “being in common”—that can transcend capitalism.…

That alternative subjectivity—that “being in common” in relation to healthcare—can serve as the basis of a noncommodified, noncapitalist form of healthcare. And, pace Mason, new kinds of information technologies might even be useful for connecting producers and consumers in postcapitalist ways. There’s nothing automatic about it, of course. Still, both signal the possibility of ways of moving beyond capitalism.
The key is to find ways to combine emerging information technologies and ethical concerns in a political movement that is inspired by a fundamental critique: both what is wrong with the existing order and an imagining of a concrete alternative.

 The issue become much more obvious when the traditional factors of production — capital, alnd, and labor — are called what they really are — technology, the environment, and people.

The Rectification of Names (Chinese: 正名; pinyin: Zhèngmíng; Wade–Giles: Cheng-ming) is the Confucian doctrine that to know and use the proper designations of things in the web of relationships that creates meaning, a community, and then behaving accordingly so as to ensure social harmony is The Good.[1] Since social harmony is of utmost importance, without the proper rectification of names, society would essentially crumble and "undertakings [would] not [be] completed." — <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectification_of_names"> Wikipedia </a>

Then we might have a meaningful debate on what constitutes a good life ethically in a good society socially.

Occasional Links & Commentary
What comes next?
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics University of Notre Dame Notre Dame

David F. Ruccio — This is the end of capitalism?

Response to Paul Mason, The end of capitalism has begun.

I give Mason's argument more credence that Professor Ruccio does, but I agree that technology is not enough.

Nevertheless, technology is highly significant in Marx's analysis, which is based on historical materialism and economic infrastructure as foundational. Feudalism was chiefly agricultural and capitalism was mainly industrial. In fact, in time agriculture itself was mechanized and became agribusiness.

I harbor little doubt that the transition from the Industrial Age to the Information Age will be as transformational as the transition from the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age. This implies an economic realignment as well.

How that will manifest is remains unclear, since the world is still operating largely in terms of capitalism and industry.

We are witnessing emerging opportunities and challenges and how these are met will determine the next moment in the historical dialectic. What's coming will be different from capitalism but what it will look like is too early to tell.

However, the basics of information suggest that it will be distributed and networked, which implies a new approach to politics, economics and political economy. There is at last the potential for scaling up popular participatory democracy based on an informed electorate.

I suggest this is the takeaway.

As with the end of feudalism 500 years ago, capitalism’s replacement by postcapitalism will be accelerated by external shocks and shaped by the emergence of a new kind of human being. And it has started.

We don't know yet what that new kind of human being will be like, although we can get a sense of it by observing the difference between those who grew up in the analog age and those who have grown up in the digital age. It's a different "head."

Occasional Links & Commentary
This is the end?
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics University of Notre Dame Notre Dame