In Iain Banks’s celebrated science fiction ‘Culture’ series, he set himself the task of imagining a post-scarcity civilization and, crucially, what a good and useful life might consist of in such a society. Back in the world of the real, Aaron Bastani, co-founder of the Novara Media website, has written a feisty manifesto for just such a political entity: Fully Automated Luxury Communism. Before outlining what he means by the term, the author delineates the many morbid symptoms afflicting the current world order: disruptive crises ranging from neoliberalism’s hegemony to catastrophic climate change. In response to these multifarious challenges, Bastani proposes a blueprint for a new society; one in which advanced technology will free humanity from the necessity to work. Automation, he argues, will lead to abundance and hence leisure and, in his phrase, luxury communism. He quotes with approval another science fiction author, Arthur C Clarke: ‘The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play.’
In fleshing out his ideas, Bastani highlights the technological and societal advances which will underpin his radical vision. These stretch from the currently feasible, such as ubiquitous renewable energy and genetic editing, through the concept of Universal Basic Services, to the frankly science-fictional proposals of synthetic cloned meat and asteroid mining.
