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Four Futures
An exploration of the utopias and dystopias that could develop from present society Peter Frase argues that increasing automation and a growing scarcity of resources, thanks to climate change, will bring it all tumbling down. In Four Futures, Frase imagines how this post-capitalist world might look, deploying the tools of both social science and speculative fiction to explore what communism, rentism and extermininsm might actually entail. Could the current rise of the real-life robocops usher in a world that resembles Ender's Game? And sure, communism will bring an end to material scarcities and inequalities of wealth—but there's no guarantee that social hierarchies, governed by an economy of "likes," wouldn't rise to take their place. A whirlwind tour through science fiction, social theory and the new technologies are already shaping our lives, Four Futures is a balance sheet of the socialisms we may reach if a resurgent Left is successful, and the barbarisms we may be consigned to if those movements fail.
Summary of Peter Frase's Four Futures
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The author Kurt Vonnegut wrote a book in 1952 called Player Piano, which described a future where production was almost entirely carried out by machines, and where everyone was essentially superfluous from an economic perspective. But the society was rich enough to provide a comfortable life for all of them. #2 To imagine a totally postscarcity world as a utopia, it is necessary to imagine the sources of meaning and purpose in a world where we are not defined by our paid work. #3 Karl Marx believed that communism was beyond the realm of labor and leisure, and that it went beyond the world of work as we understand it. He believed that freedom began where work ended, and that one day we might be able to free ourselves from the realm of necessity altogether. #4 The idea of communism is that after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and the antithesis between mental and physical labor, labor will become not only a means of life but life’s prime want. In that case, we would all be able to do what we love.
Four Futures
It is easier to imagine the end of the world,' the theorist Fredric Jameson has remarked, 'than to imagine the end of capitalism.' 'Jacobin' Editor Peter Frase argues that technological advancements and environmental threats will inevitably push our society beyond capitalism, and 'Four Futures' imagines just how this might look. Extrapolating possible futures from current changes the world is now experiencing, and drawing upon speculative fictions to illustrate how these futures might be realized, 'Four Futures' examines communism, rentism, socialism, and exterminismor in other words, the socialisms we may reach if a resurgent Left is successful and the barbarisms we may be consigned to if those movements fail.
Reviewing the Movies
Rather than condemning Hollywood for its depravity and decrying all movies, these two film experts have taken a new look at the movies and help us evaluate them on a truly biblical scale.
Decoding the Human Body-Field
In this revolutionary look at the energetic physiology of the human body, Peter Fraser and Harry Massey introduce Infoceuticals--liquid remedies infused with electrodynamic information. Infoceuticals promote health by reestablishing the proper flow of information in the body's energetic fields.
Utopia as Method
Utopia should be understood as a method rather than a goal. This book rehabilitates utopia as a repressed dimension of the sociological and in the process produces the Imaginary Reconstitution of Society, a provisional, reflexive and dialogic method for exploring alternative possible futures.
The Rent Is Too Damn High
From prominent political thinker and widely followed Slate columnist, a polemic on high rents and housing costs—and how these costs are hollowing out communities, thwarting economic development, and rendering personal success and fulfillment increasingly difficult to achieve. Rent is an issue that affects nearly everyone. High rent is a problem for all of us, extending beyond personal financial strain. High rent drags on our country’s overall rate of economic growth, damages the environment, and promotes long commutes, traffic jams, misery, and smog. Yet instead of a serious focus on the issue, America’s cities feature niche conversations about the availability of “affordable housing” for poor people. Yglesias’s book changes the conversation for the first time, presenting newfound context for the issue and real-time, practical solutions for the problem.
The People's Republic of Walmart
Are multi-national corporations like Walmart and Amazon laying the groundwork for international socialism? For the left and the right, major multinational companies are held up as the ultimate expressions of free-market capitalism. Their remarkable success appears to vindicate the old idea that modern society is too complex to be subjected to a plan. And yet, as Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski argue, much of the economy of the West is centrally planned at present. Not only is planning on vast scales possible, we already have it and it works. The real question is whether planning can be democratic. Can it be transformed to work for us? An engaging, polemical romp through economic theory, computational complexity, and the history of planning, The People’s Republic of Walmart revives the conversation about how society can extend democratic decision-making to all economic matters. With the advances in information technology in recent decades and the emergence of globe-straddling collective enterprises, democratic planning in the interest of all humanity is more important and closer to attainment than ever before.
Climate Leviathan
**Winner of the 2019 Sussex International Theory Prize** -- How climate change will affect our political theory - for better and worse Despite the science and the summits, leading capitalist states have not achieved anything close to an adequate level of carbon mitigation. There is now simply no way to prevent the planet breaching the threshold of two degrees Celsius set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. What are the likely political and economic outcomes of this? Where is the overheating world heading? To further the struggle for climate justice, we need to have some idea how the existing global order is likely to adjust to a rapidly changing environment. Climate Leviathan provides a radical way of thinking about the intensifying challenges to the global order. Drawing on a wide range of political thought, Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann argue that rapid climate change will transform the world's political economy and the fundamental political arrangements most people take for granted. The result will be a capitalist planetary sovereignty, a terrifying eventuality that makes the construction of viable, radical alternatives truly imperative.
The Robbery of Nature
Bridges the gap between social and environmental critiques of capitalism In the nineteenth century, Karl Marx, inspired by the German chemist Justus von Liebig, argued that capitalism’s relation to its natural environment was that of a robbery system, leading to an irreparable rift in the metabolism between humanity and nature. In the twenty-first century, these classical insights into capitalism’s degradation of the earth have become the basis of extraordinary advances in critical theory and practice associated with contemporary ecosocialism. In The Robbery of Nature, John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark, working within this historical tradition, examine capitalism’s plundering of natu...
