So-Called Luxury Communists Envision a Post-Work Society Ahead
Left-leaning techno-utopians talk of a possible future when machines do the heavy lifting, employment as we know it disappears, and humanity enjoys an era of unprecedented leisure.
damoses (CC BY-ND 2.0)
Left-leaning techno-utopians tell of the possibility of a future when machines do the heavy lifting, employment as we know it disappears, and humanity enjoys an era of unprecedented leisure.
Brian Merchant reports at The Guardian:
Located on the futurist left end of the political spectrum, fully automated luxury communism (FALC) aims to embrace automation to its fullest extent. The term may seem oxymoronic, but that’s part of the point: anything labeled luxury communism is going to be hard to ignore.
“There is a tendency in capitalism to automate labor, to turn things previously done by humans into automated functions,” says Aaron Bastani, co-founder of Novara Media. “In recognition of that, then the only utopian demand can be for the full automation of everything and common ownership of that which is automated.”
Bastani and fellow luxury communists believe that this era of rapid change is an opportunity to realise a post-work society, where machines do the heavy lifting not for profit but for the people.
“The demand would be a 10- or 12-hour working week, a guaranteed social wage, universally guaranteed housing, education, healthcare and so on,” he says. “There may be some work that will still need to be done by humans, like quality control, but it would be minimal.” Humanity would get its cybernetic meadow, tended to by machines of loving grace.
Read more here.
— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.
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