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Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work
A major new manifesto for a high-tech future free from work
Neoliberalism isn’t working. Austerity is forcing millions into poverty and many more into precarious work, while the left remains trapped in stagnant political practices that offer no respite.
Inventing the Future is a bold new manifesto for life after capitalism. Against the confused understanding of our high-tech world by both the right and the left, this book claims that the emancipatory and future-oriented possibilities of our society can be reclaimed. Instead of running from a complex future, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams demand a postcapitaiist economy capable of advancing standards, liberating humanity from work and developing technologies that expand our freedoms.
Neoliberalism isn’t working. Austerity is forcing millions into poverty and many more into precarious work, while the left remains trapped in stagnant political practices that offer no respite.
Inventing the Future is a bold new manifesto for life after capitalism. Against the confused understanding of our high-tech world by both the right and the left, this book claims that the emancipatory and future-oriented possibilities of our society can be reclaimed. Instead of running from a complex future, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams demand a postcapitaiist economy capable of advancing standards, liberating humanity from work and developing technologies that expand our freedoms.
245 pages, Paperback
First published September 22, 2015
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11550 people want to read
About the author
Nick Srnicek
30 books156 followersNick Srnicek is an American writer and academic. He is currently a lecturer in Digital Economy at King's College London.
Born in 1982, Srnicek took a double major in Psychology and Philosophy before completing an MA at the University of Western Ontario in 2007. He proceeded to a PhD at the London School of Economics, completing his thesis in 2013 on "Representing complexity: the material construction of world politics". He has worked as a Visiting Lecturer at City University and the University of Westminster.
Srnicek is associated with the political theory of accelerationism and a post-scarcity economy.
Born in 1982, Srnicek took a double major in Psychology and Philosophy before completing an MA at the University of Western Ontario in 2007. He proceeded to a PhD at the London School of Economics, completing his thesis in 2013 on "Representing complexity: the material construction of world politics". He has worked as a Visiting Lecturer at City University and the University of Westminster.
Srnicek is associated with the political theory of accelerationism and a post-scarcity economy.
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July 4, 2018
This book is particularly useful for its comprehensive history of neoliberalism and especially how it went from an ideology that at one time was very much on the fringe and understood as belonging only to the loony right to becoming central to our society and virtually ‘common-sense’. The authors here say the left needs to similarly have a long term plan to change the paradigm our society takes for granted and therefore to change what is considered to be common sense. Given the abject failures of neoliberal policies, you might think this would be a relatively easy task – but that isn’t now common sense works. The authors idea is to change the way we think about fundamental problems and to therefore reinvent the future.
Part of the argument here is that too much of what has passed for left progressive action in the past has been grossly ineffectual. The Occupy Movement, the anti-war movement prior to the Iraq War – none of these came close to achieving their objectives.
One of the proposals is to shift-the-debate, shift-common-sense by getting the left to stop calling for full employment, but to rather call for full unemployment. That is, the expectation underlying this book is that automation is about to destroy most jobs anyway – so that rather than focusing on how to find ways to keep people employed, we should be looking for how best to manage a world without work.
One of the ways to achieve this is what I’m going to spend the rest of this review thinking about – a Universal Basic Income (UBI). I’m not going to pretend that I know the answer to whether this would be a good or a bad thing. Rather, I’m going to point out some of the pros and cons.
Last year my eldest daughter and I went to a discussion on a UBI organised by my University – it was mostly in favour and most of the people speaking were left-ish. One was an American academic who sounded to me a bit like John Denver. Anyway, rather than filling up my senses, he said some really interesting things about how a UBI would make the world a better place. One of the things it would do would be to make almost all jobs better. His argument being that at present capitalist have incentives to make jobs as boring and as awful as possible. This is because most of us are wage slaves, you know, a week or so away from financial ruin – so, he said we have no option but to accept jobs as they come. But if we had a UBI we would only accept jobs that were basically human – read Dan Pink’s ‘Drive’ for the things that make jobs basically human. It’s not as if we don’t know what would make jobs ‘worth doing’ – what would increase workers’ ‘intrinsic motivations’ – it is rather that the current economic incentives in society don’t allow for jobs to be made more interesting or worthwhile. Finding ways to change those incentives doesn’t seem like a terrible idea to me.
Another benefit of a UBI would be that people who have been displaced by the increasingly rapid disruptions technological change has brought about would be able to support themselves and might even be able to pay to acquire the new skills would need if they are ever to get back into the job market. Currently, in Australia, our ‘New Start’ allowance – essentially an unemployment insurance – is the second lowest in the OECD and has the most stringent requirements of any in the industrialised world. It is also set at a rate that is significantly below the official poverty line – the current government argues this is a good thing as it provides incentives for people to get back into the work force – you call it incentive, I call it starvation…let’s call the whole thing off. New Start has not been increased for 25 years – by either side of politics, not even the Australian Labor Party (labour only in name, neoliberal in all other ways). It is so self-evidently impossible to live on this allowance, that even businesses are calling on it to be increased. We only get away with this because this allowance is for the poor and any services for the poor inevitably becomes a poor services a universal rule is confirmed yet again. But because everyone would receive a UBI there is motivation for the whole of society to ensure it is set at a reasonable rate.
It isn’t at all clear how the next few decades are going to pan out in the world of employment – the assumption by the authors here is that most jobs are about to go. I’m not totally convinced this is necessarily the case – although, if it proves to be so I won’t be totally surprised, it is just that I don’t really know which of the two arguments about the future of work (that technological change always produces more jobs than it destroys – or that for some reason this time is different and all hell is about to break loose) is going to play out. One thing is utterly clear – we are in for major disruptions and the new jobs are likely to require significantly different skills to those most people currently hold. So, some form of ongoing learning is going to prove necessary, even if the best of all possible scenarios plays out and jobs suddenly become plentiful again. As such, a UBI would seem to help alleviate this problem.
The other blindingly obvious fact of the world over the last few decades has been growing inequality. Inequality is accelerating and it really does need to be addressed. An article I saw today said that over half a million people in the US are literally homeless. No society should accept this – it is an obscenity. A UBI would go some way to redistribute wealth towards those who need it.
I’m not as interested in the arguments against a UBI from the right – particularly about how it kills the work ethic. Personally, I believe people prefer to be useful to society, and so will work if given the option, particularly if the work is meaningful. If you are going to argue with me on this point, do try to remember that I write these reviews purely out of the love of writing them, that is, for no remuneration at all. I don’t know how useful people find them, but I do write them to be useful. Even if only in helping people decide the books they would rather not read. My point being, don’t tell me people don’t do things if there is not financial reward, because I think I know better than that.
However, I do think there might be problems with a UBI – not so much that it will crush the Protestant Work Ethic – god forbid – but that it is likely to be used by the right as a way to kill off social security, public services and so on. That is, give everyone a basic income and then tell them that they have to use it to pay for all the things the state currently provides – public education, health care, child care. You know, so the impact is that the poor spend all of the money they receive in this UBI on the things they currently receive anyway.
I think if we did have universal unemployment, that people will need some sort of training in a life without work, or without the necessity to work. Given the first question we are normally asked when we meet other people is ‘and what do you do?’ and that there is a clear social stigma associated with being unemployed, if work is going to be done by machines and by only a very few or, as this book predicts, eventually no one at all, then society’s idea of how people acquire self-worth will also need to change.
It is not at all clear to me what is going to happen next. If the doomsayers are right, or even just a little bit right, about what is our immediate future on jobs, then we either ‘fix’ this somehow now or it isn’t clear to me how social harmony and cohesion are going to be maintained. A boot to the face for all eternity is highly effective over the short term, but I don’t know if it is really sustainable long term. Having the majority of the population living like dogs amongst endless opulence just doesn’t seem like an ideal society to me.
This was quite an interesting book in a lot of ways – like I said, I’m not sure a UBI is the panacea many people make it out to be, and I don’t see how we will be allowed to ‘tax the rich’ to the extent that would be necessary to bring it about, but even proposing options to the monolith that is current neoliberal group think feels like a revolutionary act.
Part of the argument here is that too much of what has passed for left progressive action in the past has been grossly ineffectual. The Occupy Movement, the anti-war movement prior to the Iraq War – none of these came close to achieving their objectives.
One of the proposals is to shift-the-debate, shift-common-sense by getting the left to stop calling for full employment, but to rather call for full unemployment. That is, the expectation underlying this book is that automation is about to destroy most jobs anyway – so that rather than focusing on how to find ways to keep people employed, we should be looking for how best to manage a world without work.
One of the ways to achieve this is what I’m going to spend the rest of this review thinking about – a Universal Basic Income (UBI). I’m not going to pretend that I know the answer to whether this would be a good or a bad thing. Rather, I’m going to point out some of the pros and cons.
Last year my eldest daughter and I went to a discussion on a UBI organised by my University – it was mostly in favour and most of the people speaking were left-ish. One was an American academic who sounded to me a bit like John Denver. Anyway, rather than filling up my senses, he said some really interesting things about how a UBI would make the world a better place. One of the things it would do would be to make almost all jobs better. His argument being that at present capitalist have incentives to make jobs as boring and as awful as possible. This is because most of us are wage slaves, you know, a week or so away from financial ruin – so, he said we have no option but to accept jobs as they come. But if we had a UBI we would only accept jobs that were basically human – read Dan Pink’s ‘Drive’ for the things that make jobs basically human. It’s not as if we don’t know what would make jobs ‘worth doing’ – what would increase workers’ ‘intrinsic motivations’ – it is rather that the current economic incentives in society don’t allow for jobs to be made more interesting or worthwhile. Finding ways to change those incentives doesn’t seem like a terrible idea to me.
Another benefit of a UBI would be that people who have been displaced by the increasingly rapid disruptions technological change has brought about would be able to support themselves and might even be able to pay to acquire the new skills would need if they are ever to get back into the job market. Currently, in Australia, our ‘New Start’ allowance – essentially an unemployment insurance – is the second lowest in the OECD and has the most stringent requirements of any in the industrialised world. It is also set at a rate that is significantly below the official poverty line – the current government argues this is a good thing as it provides incentives for people to get back into the work force – you call it incentive, I call it starvation…let’s call the whole thing off. New Start has not been increased for 25 years – by either side of politics, not even the Australian Labor Party (labour only in name, neoliberal in all other ways). It is so self-evidently impossible to live on this allowance, that even businesses are calling on it to be increased. We only get away with this because this allowance is for the poor and any services for the poor inevitably becomes a poor services a universal rule is confirmed yet again. But because everyone would receive a UBI there is motivation for the whole of society to ensure it is set at a reasonable rate.
It isn’t at all clear how the next few decades are going to pan out in the world of employment – the assumption by the authors here is that most jobs are about to go. I’m not totally convinced this is necessarily the case – although, if it proves to be so I won’t be totally surprised, it is just that I don’t really know which of the two arguments about the future of work (that technological change always produces more jobs than it destroys – or that for some reason this time is different and all hell is about to break loose) is going to play out. One thing is utterly clear – we are in for major disruptions and the new jobs are likely to require significantly different skills to those most people currently hold. So, some form of ongoing learning is going to prove necessary, even if the best of all possible scenarios plays out and jobs suddenly become plentiful again. As such, a UBI would seem to help alleviate this problem.
The other blindingly obvious fact of the world over the last few decades has been growing inequality. Inequality is accelerating and it really does need to be addressed. An article I saw today said that over half a million people in the US are literally homeless. No society should accept this – it is an obscenity. A UBI would go some way to redistribute wealth towards those who need it.
I’m not as interested in the arguments against a UBI from the right – particularly about how it kills the work ethic. Personally, I believe people prefer to be useful to society, and so will work if given the option, particularly if the work is meaningful. If you are going to argue with me on this point, do try to remember that I write these reviews purely out of the love of writing them, that is, for no remuneration at all. I don’t know how useful people find them, but I do write them to be useful. Even if only in helping people decide the books they would rather not read. My point being, don’t tell me people don’t do things if there is not financial reward, because I think I know better than that.
However, I do think there might be problems with a UBI – not so much that it will crush the Protestant Work Ethic – god forbid – but that it is likely to be used by the right as a way to kill off social security, public services and so on. That is, give everyone a basic income and then tell them that they have to use it to pay for all the things the state currently provides – public education, health care, child care. You know, so the impact is that the poor spend all of the money they receive in this UBI on the things they currently receive anyway.
I think if we did have universal unemployment, that people will need some sort of training in a life without work, or without the necessity to work. Given the first question we are normally asked when we meet other people is ‘and what do you do?’ and that there is a clear social stigma associated with being unemployed, if work is going to be done by machines and by only a very few or, as this book predicts, eventually no one at all, then society’s idea of how people acquire self-worth will also need to change.
It is not at all clear to me what is going to happen next. If the doomsayers are right, or even just a little bit right, about what is our immediate future on jobs, then we either ‘fix’ this somehow now or it isn’t clear to me how social harmony and cohesion are going to be maintained. A boot to the face for all eternity is highly effective over the short term, but I don’t know if it is really sustainable long term. Having the majority of the population living like dogs amongst endless opulence just doesn’t seem like an ideal society to me.
This was quite an interesting book in a lot of ways – like I said, I’m not sure a UBI is the panacea many people make it out to be, and I don’t see how we will be allowed to ‘tax the rich’ to the extent that would be necessary to bring it about, but even proposing options to the monolith that is current neoliberal group think feels like a revolutionary act.
May 30, 2016
The first half is a convincing and much-needed critique of left wing localism/horizontalism, holding up the left's inadequacy in contrast to the success of the neoliberal project.
I enjoyed the macroeconomic approach, looking at the bigger picture from pre-industrialism into the future, and found that the concept of surplus in the labour market provided a very simple and useful way to explain the dire need to move beyond the industrial work ethic, into a new kind of common sense.
In taking this 'bigger picture' macro view, the authors manage to avoid any really thorny issues. The call for a long-term counter-hegemonic project is totally valid, but by nature is a rather fluffy concept that might leave some seeking more short-term concrete suggestions (beyond campaigning for UBI and increased automation).
A much more serious flaw is the lack of any discussion about the environment. It seems a little ridiculous to be discussing a long-term manifesto for the future with climate change (and other issues such as the finite supply of rare metals that are necessary for technological progress) looming like several stupendous elephants in the room. It's clear that the authors' knowledge is substantial regarding political economy and organisation, but seems very weak on ecology / agriculture. For instance they are quite dismissive of food localism and organic farming, blithely assuming that industrialised agriculture is more efficient and intensive, which is untrue. Yes, there are some instances where it requires less carbon to grow food in New Zealand and ship it to the UK, rather than growing it here in energy-intensive greenhouses, but the latter is a straw man. Clearly it would be much better to eat only seasonal produce that grows within the locality. I would hope that localised food production would be one of the huge areas of growth in a post-work world where people have lots of time tinker about on the allotment.
The authors concede that their argument is limited to only deal with the 'Western' situation, but in narrowing down their parameters for the sake of practicality, they have also created the book's biggest contradiction. They claim that we are faced by incredibly complex issues on a global level, and that rather than reducing the scale/complexity of the problem (which is impossible), we need to scale up and complexify our solutions, and to universalise our ideas. However they seem to be offering a solution which is only partial, applying to a particular set of first-world societies and pretending that environmental collapse is not an immanent threat.
They seem to be setting up the general principle, and leaving it to others to worry about the particulars. This is frustrating, but understandable, and when the general principle is so invigorating and agreeable it's easy to forgive them: the book is merely the starting point for a much larger conversation that needs to be taken onward and diversified according to other circumstances around the world. Hopefully in the near future these ideas will be incorporated into a larger, more complex and satisfying manifesto that results in a post-work world for everyone - the image of a few progressive first-world societies moving into fully automated luxury while the rest of the world slaves and burns away is horrific.
I can't help being left with the feeling that this has simply come too late. It seems logical to ape the prior success of our neoliberal rivals, however their project took about 40 years to reach fruition and took place against a very different backdrop. Will the left-accelerationist agenda even be possible in another 40 years time given the degree of social and political change that will take place in reaction to climate crises, mass-migrations etc? But maybe thats just my own pessimism - I really applaud the authors for taking a constructive, positive position when all around them are crippled by worry and despair.
I enjoyed the macroeconomic approach, looking at the bigger picture from pre-industrialism into the future, and found that the concept of surplus in the labour market provided a very simple and useful way to explain the dire need to move beyond the industrial work ethic, into a new kind of common sense.
In taking this 'bigger picture' macro view, the authors manage to avoid any really thorny issues. The call for a long-term counter-hegemonic project is totally valid, but by nature is a rather fluffy concept that might leave some seeking more short-term concrete suggestions (beyond campaigning for UBI and increased automation).
A much more serious flaw is the lack of any discussion about the environment. It seems a little ridiculous to be discussing a long-term manifesto for the future with climate change (and other issues such as the finite supply of rare metals that are necessary for technological progress) looming like several stupendous elephants in the room. It's clear that the authors' knowledge is substantial regarding political economy and organisation, but seems very weak on ecology / agriculture. For instance they are quite dismissive of food localism and organic farming, blithely assuming that industrialised agriculture is more efficient and intensive, which is untrue. Yes, there are some instances where it requires less carbon to grow food in New Zealand and ship it to the UK, rather than growing it here in energy-intensive greenhouses, but the latter is a straw man. Clearly it would be much better to eat only seasonal produce that grows within the locality. I would hope that localised food production would be one of the huge areas of growth in a post-work world where people have lots of time tinker about on the allotment.
The authors concede that their argument is limited to only deal with the 'Western' situation, but in narrowing down their parameters for the sake of practicality, they have also created the book's biggest contradiction. They claim that we are faced by incredibly complex issues on a global level, and that rather than reducing the scale/complexity of the problem (which is impossible), we need to scale up and complexify our solutions, and to universalise our ideas. However they seem to be offering a solution which is only partial, applying to a particular set of first-world societies and pretending that environmental collapse is not an immanent threat.
They seem to be setting up the general principle, and leaving it to others to worry about the particulars. This is frustrating, but understandable, and when the general principle is so invigorating and agreeable it's easy to forgive them: the book is merely the starting point for a much larger conversation that needs to be taken onward and diversified according to other circumstances around the world. Hopefully in the near future these ideas will be incorporated into a larger, more complex and satisfying manifesto that results in a post-work world for everyone - the image of a few progressive first-world societies moving into fully automated luxury while the rest of the world slaves and burns away is horrific.
I can't help being left with the feeling that this has simply come too late. It seems logical to ape the prior success of our neoliberal rivals, however their project took about 40 years to reach fruition and took place against a very different backdrop. Will the left-accelerationist agenda even be possible in another 40 years time given the degree of social and political change that will take place in reaction to climate crises, mass-migrations etc? But maybe thats just my own pessimism - I really applaud the authors for taking a constructive, positive position when all around them are crippled by worry and despair.
February 3, 2016
> sums up my own thoughts on what they call 'folk political' tendencies in the current popularity of anarchist and anarchist-like radical formations like The Invisible COmmitte and Tiqqun, the popularity of locally-produced goods, etc. However, it focused on its limitations while not looking at its potentials for organizing and establishing counter-hegemony
>demand automation? demand more free time? the book's insistence to go beyond the 'old' demands of labor to accommodate new realities is fine, but proposes nothing on how these demands can possibly be fought for in actual political struggle
>refuses to call 'socialism' and uses 'post-work society' instead, reeks to much of anarchist 'against work' shibboleth and overestimates the role of machines in the production of goods
>refuses to call capitalism capitalism, calls neoliberalism as the dominant system
>very vague, too many prescriptions ("we must do this, do that") some of which are spot on while many are obviously just rationalizations of academic disappointments with the 'left'
>demand automation? demand more free time? the book's insistence to go beyond the 'old' demands of labor to accommodate new realities is fine, but proposes nothing on how these demands can possibly be fought for in actual political struggle
>refuses to call 'socialism' and uses 'post-work society' instead, reeks to much of anarchist 'against work' shibboleth and overestimates the role of machines in the production of goods
>refuses to call capitalism capitalism, calls neoliberalism as the dominant system
>very vague, too many prescriptions ("we must do this, do that") some of which are spot on while many are obviously just rationalizations of academic disappointments with the 'left'
May 13, 2021
250 pages of straight fire holy shit
August 23, 2017
So I'm someone with a technology background who recently got into leftist politics, and I feel like this book was written for me. It's a short book (less than 200 pages before endnotes) and so it's obviously not meant to be a comprehensive guide to how to get to a post-work world, but rather an outline of what we'd need to consider in order to make one (a marathon not a sprint, etc). I found it very inspiring and I think it would resonate even with those who haven't read any other Verso books before. Going to try to get all my tech friends to read it.
![Profile Image for Ryan :].](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1600811379i%2F52259147._UX200_CR0%2C0%2C200%2C200_.jpg&w=128&q=75)
December 26, 2020
I read this entire book during shifts at work. I got paid to read this book and write this review. I am Inventing the Future. It is now.
December 30, 2019
I approached it eagerly because it belongs to a broader genre -- postcapitalism, postscarcity, cyberutopianism, autonomism, etc -- that's the main focus of my current research. It was well worth reading for their positive agenda, but required some suppression of the gag reflex for all the disingenuous strawmanning of horizontalism and prefigurative politics. To the extent this is the showcase manifesto of left-accelerationism, it definitely illustrates some problems with that milieu.
January 8, 2019
In order to regain our ground as Leftists, we must recognize the limitation of folk politics.
Folk politics (politics of immediacy) fetishizes activism for activism's sake without regards for long terms strategy and goals and is insufficient to challenge neoliberal capitalism's global hegemony. Hegemony necessarily requires long term, strategic planning across the board, traversing not only institutions both inside and outside the state but also infrastructure as well.
With the aim of constructing a new counter-hegemony to neoliberal consensus, Nick and Alex calls for the creation of a broad based popular coaliation/constituency to wage a POLITICAL struggle for Universal Basic Income, reduced working days, repurposing existing and emergent technologies and means of production for non-capitalist ends, and full automation (full employment).
For instance, the UBI scheme that the authors have in mind is "nonreformist" because it will not be a substitute for welfare but function as an additional safety net.
In their view, these "non reformist reformist" proposals will land us squarely in a post-work future, albeit not yet a non-capitalist future as there would still be commodity production/exchange and the profit motive.
At this point it's only a fair question to ask if these proposals taken as a whole isn't just one massive reformist package dressed up in the language of lukewarm class struggle? What about the abolition of value?
For their part, the authors also reject the viability of traditional class struggle and of the traditional revolutionary proletariat, considering the decaying boundary between work and precarity.
Nonetheless, this book is an essential read for anyone interested in how projected trends in technology will transform work and wageslavery, for better or worse.
An excellent review of the book can be found here
http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/20...
Folk politics (politics of immediacy) fetishizes activism for activism's sake without regards for long terms strategy and goals and is insufficient to challenge neoliberal capitalism's global hegemony. Hegemony necessarily requires long term, strategic planning across the board, traversing not only institutions both inside and outside the state but also infrastructure as well.
With the aim of constructing a new counter-hegemony to neoliberal consensus, Nick and Alex calls for the creation of a broad based popular coaliation/constituency to wage a POLITICAL struggle for Universal Basic Income, reduced working days, repurposing existing and emergent technologies and means of production for non-capitalist ends, and full automation (full employment).
For instance, the UBI scheme that the authors have in mind is "nonreformist" because it will not be a substitute for welfare but function as an additional safety net.
In their view, these "non reformist reformist" proposals will land us squarely in a post-work future, albeit not yet a non-capitalist future as there would still be commodity production/exchange and the profit motive.
At this point it's only a fair question to ask if these proposals taken as a whole isn't just one massive reformist package dressed up in the language of lukewarm class struggle? What about the abolition of value?
For their part, the authors also reject the viability of traditional class struggle and of the traditional revolutionary proletariat, considering the decaying boundary between work and precarity.
Nonetheless, this book is an essential read for anyone interested in how projected trends in technology will transform work and wageslavery, for better or worse.
An excellent review of the book can be found here
http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/20...
Read
October 17, 2015When did 'modernisation' become a euphemism for life getting worse in the interests of the rich? Why do 'Conservatives' now advocate change, while the left is too often reduced to mere resistance or a desire to turn the clock back? What happened to bold visions of a better future for everyone?
This is a brave and necessary book, which makes a powerful case for a serious rethink. Disdaining the current trend for 'folk politics', though sympathetic to the urges behind it, they sensibly note that "The reality of complex, globalised capitalism is that small interventions consisting of relatively non-scalable actions are highly unlikely to ever be able to reorganise our socioeconomic system." Examining the birth of neoliberalism, once itself a counter-hegemonic strategy, and its "long-term redefinition of the possible", Srnicek and Williams suggest a similar and opposite strategy is now needed from the left. Even the first goal they suggest - the end of work - seems utopian at present, but they have the chutzpah to see it as but a first step on the road to redefining human civilisation. Something which, as they observe, has been done plenty of times before, often from even worse starting points than ours*. They're also keenly aware of the range of interests sometimes overlooked by the traditional left, and talk usefully about ways of building common cause with intersecting but historically non-identical struggles from environmentalism to feminism and beyond.
It's a very smart book, and a visionary one too, but I'm not sure it'll ever be a bestseller. They're very good about avoiding jargon for jargon's sake, and in its ambitious field it's definitely an easier read than eg Vaneigem, but it's still unavoidably technical. I think the authors would be the first to agree that what would be brilliant now is for some new Wilde to read this and sublime it into a new 'Soul of Man under Socialism'. This is a first manifesto, a pointer in the right direction, a theoretical grounding. Whilst knowing that little here is likely to appear in undiluted form any time soon, I certainly hope that a slow filtering-through might begin, not least if people in the Corbyn and Sanders teams get hold of copies.
(I got mine from Netgalley; this may have changed now, but it was up with no gatekeeping, so that anyone who joined the site could download a copy. Lots of publishers do that as a standard promotional tactic, of course, but Verso being Verso, I can't help wondering if in this particular case there was also an element of deliberate evangelism)
*Though for me one of the book's flaws is the way they skip over feudalism in suggesting a fairly seamless transition from individual subsistence agriculture to urban labour. Yes, in the developing world now, many people are being driven off the land and into the slums - but in mediaeval Europe, the cities were beacons of freedom for the rural poor, a lure despite shocking death rates and the like. Indeed, for others of the global poor, that's still the case today.
This is a brave and necessary book, which makes a powerful case for a serious rethink. Disdaining the current trend for 'folk politics', though sympathetic to the urges behind it, they sensibly note that "The reality of complex, globalised capitalism is that small interventions consisting of relatively non-scalable actions are highly unlikely to ever be able to reorganise our socioeconomic system." Examining the birth of neoliberalism, once itself a counter-hegemonic strategy, and its "long-term redefinition of the possible", Srnicek and Williams suggest a similar and opposite strategy is now needed from the left. Even the first goal they suggest - the end of work - seems utopian at present, but they have the chutzpah to see it as but a first step on the road to redefining human civilisation. Something which, as they observe, has been done plenty of times before, often from even worse starting points than ours*. They're also keenly aware of the range of interests sometimes overlooked by the traditional left, and talk usefully about ways of building common cause with intersecting but historically non-identical struggles from environmentalism to feminism and beyond.
It's a very smart book, and a visionary one too, but I'm not sure it'll ever be a bestseller. They're very good about avoiding jargon for jargon's sake, and in its ambitious field it's definitely an easier read than eg Vaneigem, but it's still unavoidably technical. I think the authors would be the first to agree that what would be brilliant now is for some new Wilde to read this and sublime it into a new 'Soul of Man under Socialism'. This is a first manifesto, a pointer in the right direction, a theoretical grounding. Whilst knowing that little here is likely to appear in undiluted form any time soon, I certainly hope that a slow filtering-through might begin, not least if people in the Corbyn and Sanders teams get hold of copies.
(I got mine from Netgalley; this may have changed now, but it was up with no gatekeeping, so that anyone who joined the site could download a copy. Lots of publishers do that as a standard promotional tactic, of course, but Verso being Verso, I can't help wondering if in this particular case there was also an element of deliberate evangelism)
*Though for me one of the book's flaws is the way they skip over feudalism in suggesting a fairly seamless transition from individual subsistence agriculture to urban labour. Yes, in the developing world now, many people are being driven off the land and into the slums - but in mediaeval Europe, the cities were beacons of freedom for the rural poor, a lure despite shocking death rates and the like. Indeed, for others of the global poor, that's still the case today.
February 1, 2022
Straight fire in under 200 pages. Do you want to build a better future that has an expansive UBI, Post-Work, Post-Scarcity society that is actually possible and scalable? Read this book.
This book begins with a look at "folk-politics'' and the traditional form of organizing on the left. We examine that even when these movements had many bodies behind them and respectable political force that they failed in any of a number of ways. We critique blind horizontalism and direct democracy while as they may be ideal goals they do not scale to a nation state level.
In opposition to this we study Neoliberalism's history and how it's ideals rose to power through a hegemony of think tanks, schools, and policies that were developed even before the first hint of Neoliberalism was considered at the nation state level. When crisis occured within Keynesian economics Neoliberalism was there as a fully fledged system waiting in the wings to leap into action.
Srnicek argues that to create a new left society we must construct a valid and self-expanding counter-hegemonic system to compete with Neoliberalism.
So what would be in this counter-hegemony? Srnicek asks the left to drop the call for full-employment and syndicalist-led workforce and set our sights on full automation and a post-work world in which we build the tools that provide for us. To distribute these goods we require a post-scarcity economic system with an expansive universal basic income and equitable distribution for goods.
Now don't get me wrong, these are lofty far off goals, but we already see scarcity on the decline and automation displacing workers. When the inevitable crisis occurs we have this counter-hegemony ready to spring into action so the legwork must be completed now.
I encourage any utopian, solarpunk, or leftist to give this one a fair read. Overall 6/5 book and I loved having to have read it.
This book begins with a look at "folk-politics'' and the traditional form of organizing on the left. We examine that even when these movements had many bodies behind them and respectable political force that they failed in any of a number of ways. We critique blind horizontalism and direct democracy while as they may be ideal goals they do not scale to a nation state level.
In opposition to this we study Neoliberalism's history and how it's ideals rose to power through a hegemony of think tanks, schools, and policies that were developed even before the first hint of Neoliberalism was considered at the nation state level. When crisis occured within Keynesian economics Neoliberalism was there as a fully fledged system waiting in the wings to leap into action.
Srnicek argues that to create a new left society we must construct a valid and self-expanding counter-hegemonic system to compete with Neoliberalism.
So what would be in this counter-hegemony? Srnicek asks the left to drop the call for full-employment and syndicalist-led workforce and set our sights on full automation and a post-work world in which we build the tools that provide for us. To distribute these goods we require a post-scarcity economic system with an expansive universal basic income and equitable distribution for goods.
Now don't get me wrong, these are lofty far off goals, but we already see scarcity on the decline and automation displacing workers. When the inevitable crisis occurs we have this counter-hegemony ready to spring into action so the legwork must be completed now.
I encourage any utopian, solarpunk, or leftist to give this one a fair read. Overall 6/5 book and I loved having to have read it.
August 31, 2021
Los autores de este libro son dos jóvenes economistas que proponen usar la tecnología para liberar al ser humano de la carga del trabajo, el cual suele ser un factor de preocupación y angustia para quienes tienen uno y mucho más para quienes sufren su falta. Y esto supondría, por supuesto, superar el capitalismo imperante que frena el crecimiento de las personas.
En “Inventar el futuro” hay un profundo –pero no por ello inentendible– análisis de los contextos económicos, políticos y sociales de algunos países. Argentina, por ejemplo, aparece mencionada. Srnicek y Williams agudizan la mirada sobre los movimientos de protesta de la izquierda y de agrupaciones más espontáneas de gente que ocupa espacios públicos. Una de las grandes críticas de los autores es que generan “ruido”, pero no acciones. Todo esto deriva luego en un enfoque sobre el triunfo del neoliberalismo.
El planteo es muy claro y lo suficientemente general como para no marear a quien lee. A lo último, hay una cantidad enorme de referencias bibliográficas para seguir leyendo. Recomiendo particularmente la lectura de “Manifiesto aceleracionista” (2013) –es cortito y está en internet–, de los mismos autores, ya que enumera y explica los problemas que ellos tratan en “Inventar el futuro”. Creo que con eso la lectura del libro se vuelve más redonda.
En “Inventar el futuro” hay un profundo –pero no por ello inentendible– análisis de los contextos económicos, políticos y sociales de algunos países. Argentina, por ejemplo, aparece mencionada. Srnicek y Williams agudizan la mirada sobre los movimientos de protesta de la izquierda y de agrupaciones más espontáneas de gente que ocupa espacios públicos. Una de las grandes críticas de los autores es que generan “ruido”, pero no acciones. Todo esto deriva luego en un enfoque sobre el triunfo del neoliberalismo.
El planteo es muy claro y lo suficientemente general como para no marear a quien lee. A lo último, hay una cantidad enorme de referencias bibliográficas para seguir leyendo. Recomiendo particularmente la lectura de “Manifiesto aceleracionista” (2013) –es cortito y está en internet–, de los mismos autores, ya que enumera y explica los problemas que ellos tratan en “Inventar el futuro”. Creo que con eso la lectura del libro se vuelve más redonda.
February 10, 2016
i liked the critique of folk politics
i didnt like the critique of actually existing socialism which seems historically ignorant
verdict: pretty fly for a trot guy
i didnt like the critique of actually existing socialism which seems historically ignorant
verdict: pretty fly for a trot guy
March 31, 2021
Günümüz solunun sorunlarını irdeleyen bu kitap benim için gerçekten ilgi çekici bir okuma oldu. Yazarlara göre bugünün solunun en büyük sorunlarından bazıları mazide kalması, kapitalizmi eleştirmesi dışında bir sey yapmaması ve savunmada olmasıdır. Yazarlar diyor ki, günümüz folk siyaseti o kadar parçalanmış, diğer mücadelelerden kopuk ve de amaçsız ki, ulaşa bildikleri küçük zaferler bile büyük görülüyor ama gerçek sorun da bu ki bu küçük zaferler sermayenin yalnızca kısa süreliyine askıya alınmasıdır. Yani folk siyaseti unutulunca sermaye tekrar işbaşına geçer ve bir süredir yapamadığını yapmaya başlar.
Peki yazarlar ne öneriyor ? Yazarlar Neoliberalizm tarihini irdeliyor ve böyle bir soru soruyorlar: Solun bir Mont Pelerin Cemiyyeti ola bilir mi ? Ve de ardından Solcu bir Mont Pelerin Cemiyyeti için zorunlu olan şeyleri sıralıyorlar. Diyorlar ki, eğer günümüz solu etkili olmaq istiyorsa, neoliberal iktisatçıların Keynesçi politikalar döneminde yaptıklarını bugün solcu düşünürler yapmalı. Bir nevi gelecekte büyük bir kriz baş gösterdiğinde solun hegemonya kurabilmesi için hem halk temelinde hem de entelektüel temelde bir sol platform inşa edilmeli. Yazarlar ayrıca diyorlar ki, günümüz makineleşmesi (robotlaşma veya 4. sanayi devrimi) insanları özgürleştirmeyecek. Zira kapitalist bir ekonomide insansız bir ekonomi kar temelli olacaktır. Zaten neoliberal kapitalizmin sorunu bu ya: yenilikçi görülür ama aslında değildir, zira kar getiremeyeceği için birçok teknolojik yeniliği bastırır ve de patentlere boğulmuştur. Bu tür bir dünya özgür olamaz. Yazarlar, solun sanayi sonrası ütopyasının şimdiki kapitalist sistemden farklı olarak insanları özgürleştireceğini söylüyorlar. Zira solcu bir ekonomide günümüz sağının neoliberal ekonomisinin post-endüstriyel gerçek yüzünden farklı olarak yenilikler kar için değil, yaşam için olacaktır. Ve sonda yazarlar sendikaları ve işçi grevlerini tartışıyor ve günümüzde ve de gelecekte hangi tür grevlere ihtiyaç duyduğumuzu ve de duyacağımızı harika biçimde anlatıyor.
Geleceğimizin neoliberal ekonomide nasıl olacağını ve solcu bir ekonomide nasıl olabileceğini bilmek isteyenler için tavsiye edilir.
Peki yazarlar ne öneriyor ? Yazarlar Neoliberalizm tarihini irdeliyor ve böyle bir soru soruyorlar: Solun bir Mont Pelerin Cemiyyeti ola bilir mi ? Ve de ardından Solcu bir Mont Pelerin Cemiyyeti için zorunlu olan şeyleri sıralıyorlar. Diyorlar ki, eğer günümüz solu etkili olmaq istiyorsa, neoliberal iktisatçıların Keynesçi politikalar döneminde yaptıklarını bugün solcu düşünürler yapmalı. Bir nevi gelecekte büyük bir kriz baş gösterdiğinde solun hegemonya kurabilmesi için hem halk temelinde hem de entelektüel temelde bir sol platform inşa edilmeli. Yazarlar ayrıca diyorlar ki, günümüz makineleşmesi (robotlaşma veya 4. sanayi devrimi) insanları özgürleştirmeyecek. Zira kapitalist bir ekonomide insansız bir ekonomi kar temelli olacaktır. Zaten neoliberal kapitalizmin sorunu bu ya: yenilikçi görülür ama aslında değildir, zira kar getiremeyeceği için birçok teknolojik yeniliği bastırır ve de patentlere boğulmuştur. Bu tür bir dünya özgür olamaz. Yazarlar, solun sanayi sonrası ütopyasının şimdiki kapitalist sistemden farklı olarak insanları özgürleştireceğini söylüyorlar. Zira solcu bir ekonomide günümüz sağının neoliberal ekonomisinin post-endüstriyel gerçek yüzünden farklı olarak yenilikler kar için değil, yaşam için olacaktır. Ve sonda yazarlar sendikaları ve işçi grevlerini tartışıyor ve günümüzde ve de gelecekte hangi tür grevlere ihtiyaç duyduğumuzu ve de duyacağımızı harika biçimde anlatıyor.
Geleceğimizin neoliberal ekonomide nasıl olacağını ve solcu bir ekonomide nasıl olabileceğini bilmek isteyenler için tavsiye edilir.
March 13, 2016
This is a superb book, precisely the sort of analysis that the left is lacking at the moment.
Srnicek and Williams start with a critique of the modern left. After the collapse of communism and the manifest failure of social democracy in the face of the neoliberal assault of the last 30-40 years Srnicek and Williams show how the left has retreated into defensive tactics that lack any sense of overarching strategy. The term they use for this approach is "folk politics", meaning a defensive withdrawal into resistance characterised by 'horizontalism' and 'localism'. Small scale local protest is valued over large scale challenge to the overall system. Organisation is horizontal - exemplified by the Occupy movement - based on direct democracy and consensus decision making. The emphasis is on defending gains made over the last century from the drive of neoliberalism rather than seeking new gains.
Meanwhile the defeat of social democracy has been built on a long term neoliberal project pursued over decades by the opponents of the then dominant Keynsian consensus. In contrast to the modern left, this project used multiple channels - think tanks, academic work, journalism and more - to establish an alternative set of policy solutions which, when systemic crisis arrived in the 1970s, was able to establish itself as the only possible response ("there is no alternative").
Srnicek and Williams use the language of Gramsci to define this as establishing neoliberal "hegemony" and use the remainder of the book to think through what an attempt to build a new left-progressive movement to counter this hegemony might look like.
They stress that a modern left project should be built around three key pillars. Reclaiming the commitment to progress as such; a commitment to a universal programme of change; and a belief in and commitment to 'synthetic' freedom, specifically that this is only 'true' freedom if it comes with the capability to realise it. In short the left needs to be less tactical and defensive and instead become more strategic and lead the drive into the future.
They move on to establish the direction of travel for modern Capitalism, which is increasingly towards reducing the amount of work required and increasing the surplus population - leading to "the misery of not being exploited". In particular they stress the influence that automation is predicted to have in the coming decades.
This leads into a number of key demands which could be used to shape this new left project. Prominent here is the for a basic income coupled with maximising automation as a means of reducing the requirement to work (rather than to increase capitalist profits). This will create the opportunity for revolutionary change. The left should reclaim a transformational view of the future to which people can aspire.
To achieve this, Srnicek and Williams believe the left needs to create a much broader 'counter hegemonic' movement, learning from the approach of the neoliberals over the last 70 years. The initial goal of this project should be to expand the "Overton Window" - the breadth of what it is possible to discuss as part of 'normal' political discourse. While protest movements such as Occupy will form part of this, the movement should they believe be more eclectic with a range of elements within the overall drive for change. Again the emphasis is on a Gramscian approach to building hegemony as a key requirement to any realistic move into power.
If there is a weaker part to the book, it is this section on organisation where it does not feel that what the authors are laying out is a convincing way forward for the left. However as a critique of the shortsighted and defensive nature of the modern left it is insightful, and as a manifesto for the future rejuvenation of the left built around the opportunities to move beyond capitalism that are beginning to present themselves, this book is inspiring.
Srnicek and Williams start with a critique of the modern left. After the collapse of communism and the manifest failure of social democracy in the face of the neoliberal assault of the last 30-40 years Srnicek and Williams show how the left has retreated into defensive tactics that lack any sense of overarching strategy. The term they use for this approach is "folk politics", meaning a defensive withdrawal into resistance characterised by 'horizontalism' and 'localism'. Small scale local protest is valued over large scale challenge to the overall system. Organisation is horizontal - exemplified by the Occupy movement - based on direct democracy and consensus decision making. The emphasis is on defending gains made over the last century from the drive of neoliberalism rather than seeking new gains.
Meanwhile the defeat of social democracy has been built on a long term neoliberal project pursued over decades by the opponents of the then dominant Keynsian consensus. In contrast to the modern left, this project used multiple channels - think tanks, academic work, journalism and more - to establish an alternative set of policy solutions which, when systemic crisis arrived in the 1970s, was able to establish itself as the only possible response ("there is no alternative").
Srnicek and Williams use the language of Gramsci to define this as establishing neoliberal "hegemony" and use the remainder of the book to think through what an attempt to build a new left-progressive movement to counter this hegemony might look like.
They stress that a modern left project should be built around three key pillars. Reclaiming the commitment to progress as such; a commitment to a universal programme of change; and a belief in and commitment to 'synthetic' freedom, specifically that this is only 'true' freedom if it comes with the capability to realise it. In short the left needs to be less tactical and defensive and instead become more strategic and lead the drive into the future.
They move on to establish the direction of travel for modern Capitalism, which is increasingly towards reducing the amount of work required and increasing the surplus population - leading to "the misery of not being exploited". In particular they stress the influence that automation is predicted to have in the coming decades.
This leads into a number of key demands which could be used to shape this new left project. Prominent here is the for a basic income coupled with maximising automation as a means of reducing the requirement to work (rather than to increase capitalist profits). This will create the opportunity for revolutionary change. The left should reclaim a transformational view of the future to which people can aspire.
To achieve this, Srnicek and Williams believe the left needs to create a much broader 'counter hegemonic' movement, learning from the approach of the neoliberals over the last 70 years. The initial goal of this project should be to expand the "Overton Window" - the breadth of what it is possible to discuss as part of 'normal' political discourse. While protest movements such as Occupy will form part of this, the movement should they believe be more eclectic with a range of elements within the overall drive for change. Again the emphasis is on a Gramscian approach to building hegemony as a key requirement to any realistic move into power.
If there is a weaker part to the book, it is this section on organisation where it does not feel that what the authors are laying out is a convincing way forward for the left. However as a critique of the shortsighted and defensive nature of the modern left it is insightful, and as a manifesto for the future rejuvenation of the left built around the opportunities to move beyond capitalism that are beginning to present themselves, this book is inspiring.
September 9, 2016
The gist is: rather than embracing 'folk politics' like crunchy Occupy make-no-demands bullshit, the left should be embracing a modern vision of the future: work should not be mandatory to survive and most human labor should be automated. Capitalism is absolutely not going to get us there so we need a post-capitalism system in place in order to progress to the next mode of being human.
Worth reading if you work in tech.
Worth reading if you work in tech.
June 15, 2018
We need to think big. The natural habitat of the left has always been the future, and this terrain must be reclaimed.
Argues the Left needs to go beyond shortsighted 'folk politics' and start thinking big again. Instead of full employment, the Left needs to start thinking about automation and full unemployment. The author's prescription:
To get there, we need to build a counter-hegemony based on utopian thinking and a return of left wing economics (and expanding popular economic literacy as a whole). The penultimate chapter on technological hegemony and Laclau's populism I found kind of hard to follow – though the bit about Allende's cybernetics stuff was cool.
It was really good at defining some common terms that are sometimes left murky by others. Examples:
Neoliberalism
Proletariat:
Hegemony:
Folk politics:
Highlights:
The problem:
On progress:
What the future portends:
Revolution vs reformism:
Interesting idea of shadow work:
A UBI feedback loop (I'm starting to come around to Matt Bruenig's idea for a UBI, with his justification that a basic income already exists for the rich):
Argues the Left needs to go beyond shortsighted 'folk politics' and start thinking big again. Instead of full employment, the Left needs to start thinking about automation and full unemployment. The author's prescription:
A twenty-first-century left must seek to combat the centrality of work to contemporary life. In the end, our choice is between glorifying work and the working class or abolishing them both.135 The former position finds its expression in the folk-political tendency to place value upon work, concrete labour and craftwork. Yet the latter is the only true postcapitalist position. Work must be refused and reduced, building our synthetic freedom in the process.136 As we have set out in this chapter, achieving this will require the realisation of four minimal demands:
1. Full automation
2. The reduction of the working week
3. The provision of basic income
4. The diminishment of the work ethic
To get there, we need to build a counter-hegemony based on utopian thinking and a return of left wing economics (and expanding popular economic literacy as a whole). The penultimate chapter on technological hegemony and Laclau's populism I found kind of hard to follow – though the bit about Allende's cybernetics stuff was cool.
It was really good at defining some common terms that are sometimes left murky by others. Examples:
Neoliberalism
Proletariat:
Hegemony:
Folk politics:
Highlights:
The problem:
On progress:
What the future portends:
Revolution vs reformism:
Interesting idea of shadow work:
A UBI feedback loop (I'm starting to come around to Matt Bruenig's idea for a UBI, with his justification that a basic income already exists for the rich):
May 12, 2018
Това трябва да ни е манифестът.
Малката достъпна книжка, която да пробутаме на всичките си нецинични познати и да видим съгласни ли сме с предложенията ѝ и да се обединим около тях.
Въпреки че започва с много елементарните неща, които почти те отказват да четеш, преди да мине през депресиращо точна критика на окюпай и всички асамблеи, в които някога си участвала, за да стигне до това какво правим занапред.
И да обедини идеите, за които все си говорим и четем – автоматизация, преразпределение, безусловен базов доход – в цикъл на позитивна обратна връзка, водещ към изграденото (вместо неизбежното) бъдеще, което да е по-добро от настоящето ни.
Въпреки че се дават конкретни предложения, амбицията тук е да започнем да говорим за тях и да ги ошлайфаме, и това със сигурност приветствам.
Малката достъпна книжка, която да пробутаме на всичките си нецинични познати и да видим съгласни ли сме с предложенията ѝ и да се обединим около тях.
Въпреки че започва с много елементарните неща, които почти те отказват да четеш, преди да мине през депресиращо точна критика на окюпай и всички асамблеи, в които някога си участвала, за да стигне до това какво правим занапред.
И да обедини идеите, за които все си говорим и четем – автоматизация, преразпределение, безусловен базов доход – в цикъл на позитивна обратна връзка, водещ към изграденото (вместо неизбежното) бъдеще, което да е по-добро от настоящето ни.
Въпреки че се дават конкретни предложения, амбицията тук е да започнем да говорим за тях и да ги ошлайфаме, и това със сигурност приветствам.
February 15, 2025
I didn’t agree with everything presented here but I appreciate that this book is an open invitation to a dialogue about creating change and that the authors are invested in addressing criticism. These days ideas about systemic change are in the air so it’s good to have more fuel for thought.
March 24, 2020
An interesting attempt at presenting an alternative path for the contemporary left. Sadly it fails to ground it arguments in anything else than empty posturing and metaphysical normative claims. The understanding of technology and limitations thereof are astounding and makes the arguments hard to sell. Other than a interesting albeit quite superficial critique of "folk-politics" it has little to come with. The lack of what we could call an immanent critique and inability to ground their arguments in historical tendencies or trends makes it superficial at best.
December 28, 2021
If “Capital” is the Bible of the left wing, this one — is the New Testament.
Sure, there are some unanswered questions, but this work is not a manual that you get with your IKEA furniture: it requires additional reflection by readers and other leftist writers.
I definitely suggest reading this no matter where do you place yourself on ideology scale or whether you’re interested in social sciences. It is extremely easy to read and understand but more importantly it’s about our life, our problem and our future.
Sure, there are some unanswered questions, but this work is not a manual that you get with your IKEA furniture: it requires additional reflection by readers and other leftist writers.
I definitely suggest reading this no matter where do you place yourself on ideology scale or whether you’re interested in social sciences. It is extremely easy to read and understand but more importantly it’s about our life, our problem and our future.
November 20, 2015
While it's not perfect by any stretch, it gets more than enough right to be an excellent primer on why we need a politics reconfigured around work. More importantly, it structures its demands to be mutually reinforcing. And their insistence upon developing an organizational ecology (akin to that built by the neoliberals after the 50s) is spot on. It's an easy read suitable for a general audience, and the assumed familiarity with leftist tropes is kept to a minimum.
April 16, 2016
this book contains both an extremely important critique of the left and the framework for a post-capitalist world. inventing the future argues that the left today must abandon the fetishization of folk politics and immediate, small scale results; must reclaim modernity and create a long-term counter-hegemonic movement in order to challenge neoliberal capitalism. essential reading for leftists.
July 22, 2025
An excellent exercise in militant (rather than ontological) reason. While the Laclau traces are not how I would have approached this book, the theory in the background here is uniformly rigorous and the footnotes are fairly impeccable.
***
Rereading this with someone new to leftwing politics. Let's see how it aged.
***
Rereading this with someone new to leftwing politics. Let's see how it aged.
March 25, 2017
A world without work is a nice thought but i doubt the Left as it is can rally to abolish capitalism and the culture of neoliberalism without shedding a lot blood. But one can dream. Reading this book helps in that dreaming department. Hah.
February 26, 2018
It's a nice idea for the left to rally around a hopeful vision of the future without work, but this book was too light on specific recommendations. And despite the fact they decry impenetrable academic language, I suspect this too will be needlessly inaccessible for many readers.
January 1, 2021
The central conceptual innovation here is the introduction of the concept of “folk politics” on the left, whose tactical embrace of direction action has led to unfortunate tendencies such as preferring feeling to thinking, spontaneity over institutional reform, local custom over broad scalability, personal experience over systematic analysis, ethical purity over political achievability/victory, and the familiarities of the past over the unknowns of the future. It is a cry for a renewed utopian imaginary.
In terms of its intellectual agenda, the book is partly a history of how neoliberalism went from a fringe intellectual of rightwing whackos to the dominant global ideology; partly a proactive roadmap for achieving an ethically sound post-work world, one that escapes from neo-colonialist, racist, sexist, and environmentally devastating form of capitalism that obtains today; and partly a description of the kind of politics that will be needed to accomplish that transition, one very much at odds with “folk politics” and instead reliant on a hierarchical rather than horizontal model of organization.
Substantively, it paints a utopian portrait of a “left modernity” defined by full automation, steady reduction of the work week, the provision of basic income for all, and open borders. This is “fully automated luxury communism” in full cry.
In terms of its intellectual agenda, the book is partly a history of how neoliberalism went from a fringe intellectual of rightwing whackos to the dominant global ideology; partly a proactive roadmap for achieving an ethically sound post-work world, one that escapes from neo-colonialist, racist, sexist, and environmentally devastating form of capitalism that obtains today; and partly a description of the kind of politics that will be needed to accomplish that transition, one very much at odds with “folk politics” and instead reliant on a hierarchical rather than horizontal model of organization.
Substantively, it paints a utopian portrait of a “left modernity” defined by full automation, steady reduction of the work week, the provision of basic income for all, and open borders. This is “fully automated luxury communism” in full cry.
October 19, 2017
Inventing the Future offers a vision for a new radical politics. It begins with a critique of current left-wing thought and practice, then launches into a call for new thinking that accounts for likely future developments, especially automation.
I should really begin this review with some throat-clearing. I came to Inventing the Future with an uneven background. In some ways, I'm well prepared; in one, I'm not.
Since 1980 or so I've read widely and, occasionally, deeply in the left wing political tradition. Marx, Marxists, anarchism, Situationism, etc. have all passed before my eyes. I've been in some reading groups, several unions that struck, and also taught a bit of this world. So that's useful for making sense of this book.
Unfortunately, I haven't read much of the accelerationist field. This seems to be a school of thought calling for politics to be based on, well, accelerating social and political change. Some years ago I looked into a little of early Nick Land, who represents the right wing accelerationists; I haven't read The Accelerate Manifesto (2013), which is the leading left document. Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek wrote that manifesto, and perhaps one should read that before tackling Inventing the Future. Some friends of mine recommend this, so maybe I'm going about things backward.
All right, on to the book.
The first half criticizes contemporary left-wing politics from a series of angle. A key target is what Williams and Srnicek dub "folk politics" (9), which covers small scale projects and movements, from slow food and eating local to occupations and democratic experiments disconnected from larger initiatives. The left is also cowed by the triumph of neoliberalism. Williams and Srnicek are fascinated by that movement's rise to planetary hegemony, repeatedly referring to the Mont Pelerin Society as the model of a patient, far-seeing, and ambitious project that the left should emulate. There's also a sense that left wing and liberal people fail to look ahead to a possible future.
In its second half Inventing the Future proposes new ideas and movements in a very ambitious way. These chapter propose "to break us out of neoliberalism, and to establish a new equilibrium of political, economic, and social forces... an open-ended escape from the present" (108).
To begin with, Srnicek and Williams propose to reduce work by automating it. Along with this revolutionary development they call for a form of universal basic income (118). Through these two movements work would be "delinked" from income (178).These developments should free up social space for a more just way of living, along with social experiments in new ways of organizing life. For example, UBI could free women from unpaid household and caring labor (122).
In addition, building social movements required for achieving such goals would lead to a gigantic mega-movement, a counter-hegemonic strategy capable of acting at a global scale and truly building a world beyond capitalism (131).
I'm impressed by the book's vision and enthusiasm for a new future. It ends on a lyrical note:
Unfortunately, the book misses some key steps. On a small level, I was surprised to not see any evocation of the American anarchist Bob Black, who was notorious/famous for calling for and end to work back in the 1980s. At a more important level I agree with Michael Chance's review when he criticizes Srnicek and Williams for focusing on the developed world (and really just a slice of it), underplaying the global context. Chance also sees the book as largely failing to address environmental issues, notably climate change.
Yet I still admire the book for its willingness to imagine a radical future. In a 2017 saturated with dread and reaction, Inventing the Future recalls us to daring visions, as well as ambitious planning. What a shot in the arm!
(now to read more left Accelerationism)
I should really begin this review with some throat-clearing. I came to Inventing the Future with an uneven background. In some ways, I'm well prepared; in one, I'm not.
Since 1980 or so I've read widely and, occasionally, deeply in the left wing political tradition. Marx, Marxists, anarchism, Situationism, etc. have all passed before my eyes. I've been in some reading groups, several unions that struck, and also taught a bit of this world. So that's useful for making sense of this book.
Unfortunately, I haven't read much of the accelerationist field. This seems to be a school of thought calling for politics to be based on, well, accelerating social and political change. Some years ago I looked into a little of early Nick Land, who represents the right wing accelerationists; I haven't read The Accelerate Manifesto (2013), which is the leading left document. Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek wrote that manifesto, and perhaps one should read that before tackling Inventing the Future. Some friends of mine recommend this, so maybe I'm going about things backward.
All right, on to the book.
The first half criticizes contemporary left-wing politics from a series of angle. A key target is what Williams and Srnicek dub "folk politics" (9), which covers small scale projects and movements, from slow food and eating local to occupations and democratic experiments disconnected from larger initiatives. The left is also cowed by the triumph of neoliberalism. Williams and Srnicek are fascinated by that movement's rise to planetary hegemony, repeatedly referring to the Mont Pelerin Society as the model of a patient, far-seeing, and ambitious project that the left should emulate. There's also a sense that left wing and liberal people fail to look ahead to a possible future.
In its second half Inventing the Future proposes new ideas and movements in a very ambitious way. These chapter propose "to break us out of neoliberalism, and to establish a new equilibrium of political, economic, and social forces... an open-ended escape from the present" (108).
To begin with, Srnicek and Williams propose to reduce work by automating it. Along with this revolutionary development they call for a form of universal basic income (118). Through these two movements work would be "delinked" from income (178).These developments should free up social space for a more just way of living, along with social experiments in new ways of organizing life. For example, UBI could free women from unpaid household and caring labor (122).
In addition, building social movements required for achieving such goals would lead to a gigantic mega-movement, a counter-hegemonic strategy capable of acting at a global scale and truly building a world beyond capitalism (131).
This freedom finds many different modes of expression, including economic and political ones, experiments with sexuality and reproductive structures, and the creation of new desires, expanded aesthetic capabilities, new forms of thought and reasoning, and ultimately entirely new modes of being human. (180-1)To get there a strategy should embrace technology for its liberatory possibilities, while at the same time picking up utopian dreams in order to free up a futuring imaginary. This new form of Gramscian organization would have to grapple with a wide range of social and political areas, from education (142) to state power (168) to media, as well as forming some organizations like think tanks (164-5). There's that Mont Pelerin inspiration.
I'm impressed by the book's vision and enthusiasm for a new future. It ends on a lyrical note:
We must expand our collective imagination beyond what capitalism allows. Rather than settling for marginal improvements in battery life and computer power, the left should mobilise dreams of decarbonising the economy, space travel, robot economies - all the traditional touchstones of science fiction - on order to prepare for a day beyond capitalism. (183)
Unfortunately, the book misses some key steps. On a small level, I was surprised to not see any evocation of the American anarchist Bob Black, who was notorious/famous for calling for and end to work back in the 1980s. At a more important level I agree with Michael Chance's review when he criticizes Srnicek and Williams for focusing on the developed world (and really just a slice of it), underplaying the global context. Chance also sees the book as largely failing to address environmental issues, notably climate change.
Yet I still admire the book for its willingness to imagine a radical future. In a 2017 saturated with dread and reaction, Inventing the Future recalls us to daring visions, as well as ambitious planning. What a shot in the arm!
(now to read more left Accelerationism)
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October 17, 2021It’s very radical and conceptual. What this book is proposing is that full automation will free us of exploitation and it’ll provide a new a way of thinking about a life revolved around work (along side other demands for action: UBI, reduced hours, a societal shift from an entrenched grind/hustle culture). I still haven’t really formed an opinion about this book. I like the theoretical basis, but the book will step back from time-to-time from speaking in absolutes to their proposed solutions. It’s pretty audacious to write a book about demanding full automation, then concede there is no technocratic solution, and there is no necessary progression into a post-work world. So how do we envision a world operating under full automation? I don’t know.
June 18, 2021
this book definitely advocates for policies to the left of my personal beliefs but everyone with left-leaning politics should read this book
May 6, 2024
me, perpetually in contradiction: working in the pinnacle of liberal financial (energy) markets, and then reading the most leftist post-capitalist market-reformist book ever.
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