Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto

by Aaron Bastani

Replicating the Preston Model is the first step in building an economic alternative that breaks with neoliberalism without needing national state power. Despite being delivered in local contexts, the consequences of that would be significant. In the UK, for instance, the NHS alone employs an astonishing 1.4 million people. Between that and the country’s schools, colleges, universities and other public institutions, it is clear there is sufficient scale to radically remake the British economy from the bottom up. All in a country which, by international standards, is heavily slanted towards its national capital. The ambition of scaling the ‘Preston Model’ goes beyond simple damage limitation or mitigating the worst excesses of austerity. Far from lifeboat socialism, it would be the first step by which regional and national economies are revived. Street by street, town by town, city by city. How that is achieved is through municipal protectionism, where local, worker-owned business would be actively favoured over multinationals and industry giants.