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Tiny Cinema (2022)

4.0 (1 Ratings) Rate It

Movie

A mysterious man tells six twisted tales of seemingly unconnected strangers whose lives will change...

Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders - Season 2

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TV Season

Dzhangal

Gideon Mendel

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Book

In this new book, acclaimed photographer, Gideon Mendel, - performed a type of contemporary...

Blood Work (2002)

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Movie Watch

Academy Award winner Clint Eastwood stars as retired FBI director Terry McCaleb, who is hired to...

Call of Cthulhu (7th Edition)

8.3 (6 Ratings) Rate It

Tabletop Game

Massively and enduringly popular role-playing game originally designed by Sandy Petersen, one of the...

Suswatibasu (1701 KP) rated Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future in Books

Nov 28, 2017

Some useful criticism and interesting speculation

As a former colleague of Paul Mason, I'm aware of his left-wing sensibilities having produced some of his work while he was in Greece celebrating Syriza's victory, the Scottish referendum as well as the war in Gaza. As a result, his own staunch views comes across strongly in this book, but I was surprised that he was able to critique Marxist polemics clearly without resorting to bias.

Mason writes about the way in which the present model of capitalism, and by extension the capitalist system itself, has reached a critical point. The old model is coming off the rails, sinking under the weight of the massive debts that it has created as a result of financialisation and downright fraud, and finding that its very success in transferring wealth upwards leaves it short of the demand that it needs to keep the wheels turning. It’s not suited to a world in which the marginal cost of the stuff that people want to buy is approaching zero. It is in any case ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of climate change, an ageing population and instability-induced mass migrations.

What's great about this book is the way it synthesises some of the best writing about the transformative potential of the internet and the web with a non-dogmatic perspective from the Marxist tradition.

There are a lot of arguments made in this book, that can easily be strung out into a university course. Consequently, Mason spreads himself a little thin in some areas such as climate change. Despite this, it's still important and worth the dense read.