PostCapitalism Buchzusammenfassung - das Wichtigste aus PostCapitalism

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Zusammenfassung von PostCapitalism

Name: PostCapitalism
Rating: 3.9 (111 reviews)
Author: Paul Mason

Paul Mason

A Guide to Our Future

3.9 (111 Bewertungen)

16 Min.

Themen

Internationale Wirtschaft Wirtschaftstheorie Sozialismus & Kapitalismuskritik Wirtschaft der USA

Inhaltsübersicht

PostCapitalism
in 8 Kernaussagen verstehen

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Kernaussage 1 von 8

What’s in it for me? Learn why capitalism is broken and what will come next.

Capitalism as we know it today posits that the best way to achieve affluence is to let people pursue their self-interest through the workings of free markets.

But in these blinks, it will be argued that this kind of capitalism has reached its limit. Just consider modern information technology, which produces new information goods such as MP3s or ebooks; these types of goods create serious tensions within a traditional capitalist economy, because they can be copied and shared at almost no cost.

These blinks explore the ways in which capitalism is broken, and why it quite probably won’t last too far into the future. In fact, there is a strong case to suggest that a postcapitalist society is possible – a different type of society that can be realized through collaborative efforts.

In these blinks, you’ll also discover

how governments sink deep into debts they can’t repay;
why Wikipedia conflicts with neoliberal market mechanisms; and
how Karl Marx overestimated the proletariat.

Neoliberal capitalism is broken, largely because of fiat money and financialization.

The modern form of capitalism in place throughout the Western world is called neoliberal capitalism, or neoliberalism. According to neoliberalism, the best way for a society to grow and be prosperous is for it to allow its individual citizens to pursue their self-interests in a free market.

However, neoliberalism is failing. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, economic growth will slow over the next 50 years, while inequality will rise by 40 percent in Western countries. Why?

One major contributing factor is the increased use of fiat money. Fiat money is currency that isn’t backed by gold or silver: it derives its value solely from the state that issues its notes.

Neoliberal economies use fiat money to counter financial crises. For example, the European Central Bank printed €1.6 trillion during the 2015 crisis, which itself originated in 2009 when certain member states in the Eurozone, such as Greece and Spain, weren’t able to repay their debts.

The neoliberal practice of countering financial crises with fiat money can cause follow-up crises years later, because fiat money allows governments to take on more debt, even if they’re unlikely to be able to repay it later on.

Financialization, which began in the 1980s, is another major cause of neoliberalism’s downfall. Financialization is the process by which stagnant incomes in the workforce are compensated with credit given by banks.

Credit cards, overdrafts, mortgages, student loans and automobile loans are now a regular part of everyday life in the neoliberal world. Over time, this bank credit means that more and more of a society’s money is imaginary, since the money is generated purely by the interest owed upon these loans and credits.

The two other major reasons for neoliberalism’s downfall are global imbalances and information technology.

Fiat money and financialization have caused serious problems in the current capitalist system, but there are two other major factors contributing to the downfall of neoliberalism.

The first of these is global imbalances, or the differences between a given country’s imports and exports of goods, services and investments. The main deficit countries, namely the United States and most of Europe, have to import more than they can export. The countries with a significant surplus are Germany, the Arab oil producers, China, Japan and most of Asia.

Capitalism has historically moved in cycles – but its current changes are unprecedented.

Have you ever heard of Nikolai Kondratieff? He was a major figure in twentieth-century economics.

Kondratieff spent eight years as a political prisoner in Moscow and was executed in 1938, all because he proposed that, instead of collapsing in crises, capitalism adapts and changes according to the present circumstances.

Information technology is leading us toward a postcapitalist economy.

In the 1990s, the rise of personal computers and information sharing started to change dramatically. People developed buzzwords like knowledge economy, cognitive capitalism and info-capitalism, concepts that had no place in the capitalist world.

The idea of “information technology” completely goes against the way supply and demand function in a capitalist economy. Our economy is becoming increasingly based on information products like software, ebooks, online news articles and songs on iTunes.

Karl Marx’s labor theory is consistent with information goods, but Marx had a flawed view of the proletariat.

According to capitalist theory, if everyone can listen to music online for free, it shouldn’t have any value. However, Karl Marx developed another theory that can account for the value of online music.

The value of information goods like online music can be measured using Marx’s labor theory. Marx’s labor theory states that a commodity’s value is determined by the number of socially necessary hours to produce it. “Socially necessary” hours aren’t merely the number of hours a person works, but the average amount of labor time needed to produce the good.

The transition from capitalism to postcapitalism will be a lengthy process shaped by new technologies and growing global problems.

Before capitalism, Western society had feudalism. How did one transform into the other?

The transition from feudalism to capitalism was lengthy and complex. In feudalism, which flourished from the ninth to the fifteenth century, lords granted their land to vassals for a fee.

The state could take deliberate steps to move toward a postcapitalist economy.

You can think of the advancement toward a postcapitalist society as a collaborative project, like Wikipedia. The goals of the postcapitalist project would be the eradication of carbon emissions, a market of products with no cost of production and close to zero labor time. What role would the state play in moving toward this?

First, the state could reform the market to make it favor sustainable, collaborative and socially just projects. It could provide tax incentives for solar panels or local energy systems, for example.

Final Summary

The key message in this book:

Capitalism has ruled the world for the past two hundred years, but its end is now in sight. Thanks to the Internet and new technologies, our economy is increasingly based on information goods that aren’t governed by the laws of supply and demand. That, combined with major shifts like global warming and migration, will force states to start moving toward postcapitalism.

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Worum geht es in PostCapitalism?

Postcapitalism (2015) offers a close examination of the failures of current economic systems. The 2008 financial crisis showed us that neoliberal capitalism is falling apart, and these blinks outline the reasons why we’re at the start of capitalism’s downfall, while giving an idea of what our transition into postcapitalism will be like.

Bestes Zitat aus PostCapitalism

Capitalism is an organism: it has a lifecycle – a beginning, a middle and an end.

—Paul Mason

Wer PostCapitalism lesen sollte

Capitalists and anti-capitalists
Students of sociology or politics
Anyone interested in what the future holds for modern-day societies

Über den Autor

Paul Mason is the economics editor of Channel 4 News. His other books include Meltdown: The End of the Age of Greed and Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions. He also writes for news outlets including The Guardian and The New Statesman.

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