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hangry 's review for:
Fully Automated Luxury Communism
by Aaron Bastani
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
I really wanted to love this book. Possibly too much. Possibly, I pinned my hopes for a left wing coherent vision of the future and how we re-establish society to get there on this book, and that’s why it fell so short of my expectations.
The first 2/3 of the book detail historical developments in tech and predict future ones. I found this a little tedious, with references to the “state of nature” and “agricultural revolution” juxtaposed with descriptions of widely available gene editing and lab grown meat feeling too much like over-trodden ground.
I wasn’t sure whether the final third was intended as a manifesto for luxury communism, or a pragmatic guide as to how to get there, but I felt it fell short in both categories. Instead, it gave a lukewarm rehash of previous arguments, and some examples of how movements away from neoliberalism have been beneficial.
As I said I may have had too high expectations, and I did learn some things from this book- about Marxist theory and some ideas that rang true about the current state of the labour movement - but overall it was a bit meh for me.
The first 2/3 of the book detail historical developments in tech and predict future ones. I found this a little tedious, with references to the “state of nature” and “agricultural revolution” juxtaposed with descriptions of widely available gene editing and lab grown meat feeling too much like over-trodden ground.
I wasn’t sure whether the final third was intended as a manifesto for luxury communism, or a pragmatic guide as to how to get there, but I felt it fell short in both categories. Instead, it gave a lukewarm rehash of previous arguments, and some examples of how movements away from neoliberalism have been beneficial.
As I said I may have had too high expectations, and I did learn some things from this book- about Marxist theory and some ideas that rang true about the current state of the labour movement - but overall it was a bit meh for me.