PostCapitalism

A Guide to Our Future

By: Paul Mason

Narrated by: Paul Mason

Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

Penguin presents the unabridged downloadable audiobook edition of PostCapitalism, written and read by Paul Mason.

From Paul Mason, the award-winning Channel 4 presenter, PostCapitalism is a guide to our era of seismic economic change and how we can build a more equal society.

Over the past two centuries or so, capitalism has undergone continual change - economic cycles that lurch from boom to bust - and has always emerged transformed and strengthened. Surveying this turbulent history, Paul Mason wonders whether today we are on the brink of a change so big, so profound, that this time capitalism itself, the immensely complex system by which entire societies function, has reached its limits and is changing into something wholly new.

At the heart of this change is information technology: a revolution that, as Mason shows, has the potential to reshape utterly our familiar notions of work, production and value and to destroy an economy based on markets and private ownership; in fact, he contends, it is already doing so.

This audiobook has been updated as of March 2017.

©2016 Paul Mason (P)2016 Penguin Audio

Lots of food for thought, shame about the editing

Mason's overall premise is that capitalism is in crisis and is now in a position where it has to evolve into something new, due to the rise of automation and the sharing economy. He argues that capitalism is inherently unstable, especially in a time of abundance driven by the increasing importance of infinitely copyable information goods in the economy. He spends a long time (perhaps too long) seeking to understand the current situation by looking back at the 200 year history of capitalism, and its critics, particularly Marx. He also spends a good chunk of the book discussing the labour theory of value, and how it relates to an economy where less and less work is done by humans. He finally moves on to outlining a programme for the future, including positing the introduction of a universal basic income to ease the transition from capitalism to postcapitalism.

All in all, a very interesting listen. It's easy to find things to agree with and to disagree with in this book but Mason's enthusiasm and style had me coming back for more. I wish he'd spent a bit more time on the future, and bit less time on the past; every time he seemed about to start talking about the future he seemed to get distracted by putting it in its place the historical context of the Left.

Mason's narration is very good, but a minor niggle that spoiled an otherwise enjoyable listen is that the final product is really badly edited; there are lots of places where the narrator retakes a line that are left in the final audiobook.

Typical socialists not minding the quality

Interesting thesis that is well needed for the modern leftists, and quite a healthy read even for a "neoliberal" as myself (tired of being clumped up with neocons as usual). The problem is that the narrator has frustratingly many breaks where he just quits mid sentence and starts over again.
This is the shit you get when you just leave work when it's not done because your work day is over.