The Antifa Book Club

Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani - Chapter 12: FALC: A New Beginning

Today we're reading chapter 12, "FALC: A New Beginning," and it begins by immediately addressing the profound and complicated relationship between technology and politics, asserting, "Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral". Rather, the context from which technology is conceived, created, and utilized—specifically the political, ethical, and social contexts—determines its impact and benefit. While technology may not determine history, it certainly possesses the capacity to disrupt and shape it, making "the history of technology... the most relevant". The chapter posits that the Third Disruption, characterized by innovations like AI, renewable energy, and gene editing, exhibits both modern and historical tendencies, having emerged alongside new concepts regarding selfhood, nature, and production models. T o fully grasp the present moment, from the rise of synthetic meat to advancements in artificial intelligence, requires examining underlying social movements (such as green activism demanding animal welfare and climate action) just as much as observing the internal dynamics of capitalism that drive extreme supply and automation. This chapter explores why certain revolutionary ideas remain historically inert until the necessary technology renders them commonplace, much as the widespread availability of the printed word made the concepts central to the Reformation inevitable, long after their initial conception. The Third Disruption is defined by the fact that core innovations—including photovoltaic cells, lithium batteries, and the silicon transistor, which have seen "continuous progress since the 1950s"—are now bringing extreme supply to information, labor, and resources. This unprecedented abundance fundamentally challenges two central premises of capitalism: the notion that scarcity will always exist, and the assumption that goods cannot be produced if their marginal cost approaches zero. Consequently, the direction of this overwhelming technological and economic transformation—whether it results in greater liberation or widespread collapse—will be determined by politics, specifically the "binding decisions on all of us that we collectively choose to make".

Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani - Chapter 11: Reforging the Capitalist State

Chapter 11, titled "Reforging the Capitalist State," delves into the necessary economic and political transformation required to facilitate the transition to Fully Automated Luxury Communism (FALC). The chapter initiates this discussion by evaluating the viability of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), noting that it is conceptually radical because it presents a "wage without work" that could undermine capitalism's disciplinary control over labor. However, UBI is critiqued as being politically ambiguous—supported by both progressive groups and neoliberal thinkers like Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek—and potentially leading to the complete marketization of the welfare state. Furthermore, models show that an adequate UBI is often prohibitively expensive ("unaffordable") while an affordable UBI remains inadequate for substantially reducing poverty. Consequently, the chapter advocates instead for Universal Basic Services (UBS), arguing that providing resources like housing and healthcare as human rights is a more robust political program. UBS aligns perfectly with the tendencies of the Third Disruption, where extreme supply causes costs (for information, energy, and labor) to move toward zero, rendering the price mechanism increasingly inefficient for allocating essential resources. The reforging of the state centers heavily on challenging the established financial architecture and measurement standards, beginning by exposing the myth of neutral central banks. The chapter argues that central banks already engage in deep political planning, and their purpose must be actively repurposed away from monetarism (which privileges low inflation to the advantage of asset-holders and creditors) towards explicit social goals, such as rising wages, high productivity, and affordable house prices. This would include measures like setting a target for zero nominal house price inflation. Crucially, the chapter highlights the inadequacy of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a metric for success in an era of technological abundance. Since extreme supply and digitization create massive free, non-market value—such as with music streaming or resources like Wikipedia—and drive deflation, the actual quality of life is no longer accurately captured by GDP. To address this, the chapter proposes moving toward an "Abundance Index". This index would measure success based on factors critical to overcoming the five civilizational crises, including CO2 emissions, energy efficiency, the falling cost of resources, the delivery of UBS, leisure time, health, and self-reported happiness.

Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani - Chapter 10: The Break with Neoliberalism

Today we're reading Chapter 10, "Fundamental Principles: The Break with Neoliberalism," and we're getting down to the actual groundwork. The central message here is that while the ultimate goal is Fully Automated Luxury Communism (FALC), we can’t wait decades to start. The immediate, critical task is to stop the current system—neoliberalism—which is built on privatization, precarious labor, and falling wages. This chapter uses vivid examples, like the chaos caused by the collapse of the outsourcing giant Carillion and the absolute absurdity of the East Coast Main Line railway repeatedly being nationalized and then re-privatized simply because it failed to make a profit for its private owners, to show how broken things are. Even more darkly, events like the Grenfell Tower fire exposed the deadly consequences of the neoliberal priority of "self-regulation" and cost-cutting over public safety and housing the poor. The good news is that the break with this old orthodoxy can start right now, from the ground up! The chapter outlines three key principles to launch this shift away from the "rigged system". First, it pushes for re-localizing economies through progressive procurement, championed by the "Preston Model," where local public bodies ("anchor institutions") deliberately favor local, worker-owned businesses [208–210]. Second, this requires socializing finance by creating a network of regional and local banks specifically designed to lend to these new worker-owned cooperatives, which currently struggle to access long-term credit. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the movement calls for the introduction of Universal Basic Services (UBS), making essential resources like housing, transport, education, healthcare, and information free public goods, accessible to everyone, fundamentally shifting them away from being commodities for profit. By starting this break with neoliberalism now, we lay the necessary foundation for achieving the long-term goals of FALC, ensuring technology serves the common good and supports the urgent need for decarbonization.

Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani - Chapter 9: Popular Support: Luxury Populism

Chapter 9 is where we stop talking about machines and start talking about politics. The core dilemma the book throws out is that while technology "makes history," it doesn't set the rules for that history. If we just let the exponential abundance of the Third Disruption unfold unchecked, the predictable result is just going to be "novel forms of profiteering" instead of widespread liberation. We’re left with a huge question: How do we actually translate these incredible technological possibilities into tangible political power so that the needs of people—not just maximizing profit—are met? That tension between technological promise and political failure is exactly what Chapter 9 is designed to resolve. This is where the chapter, boldly titled "Popular Support: Luxury Populism," really takes off. The argument here is that for any political project to succeed in directing the possibilities of the Third Disruption toward people's needs, it must be populist. It completely rejects the old guard approach of "elite technocracy" and refuses to accept that we must constantly sacrifice ourselves on the "altar of profit and growth". Instead, it calls for a new movement, described as a "luxury" populism. This isn't about some anti-utopian retreat from modernity to save the planet; it’s about demanding "everything"—the limitless prosperity and abundance that technology has already made possible. The goal is simple: fight for the resources necessary for everyone to lead happy, fulfilling, or as the book puts it, "expanded lives".

Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani - Chapter 8: Food without Animals: Post-Scarcity in Sustenance

Today we're reading Chapter 8 of Fully Automated Luxury Communism. It starts by arguing that we are facing a civilizational cliff edge because of how we eat, specifically pointing out that the world's population is expected to hit 9.6 billion by 2050, requiring a massive 70% increase in food production. But here’s the kicker: humanity is already consuming the resources of 1.6 Earths annually, and meeting that future demand would require over two planets under our current systems. The chapter pins the ecological disaster directly on our plates: the intense demand for meat and dairy in wealthier countries, which strains the planet, causes a mass extinction event, and degrades agricultural soils. We’ve got a massive, immediate problem, and climate change is only making it worse, with forecasts predicting devastating yield reductions for staples like rice and wheat across the Global South. Avoiding widespread famine by mid-century will be an astonishing feat. But this isn't just a doom-and-gloom chapter; it's about the radical solution already emerging from the Third Disruption: cellular agriculture. Imagine a world where food is an informational good that can be reprogrammed, allowing us to grow things like cow-less milk, synthetic seafood, and cultured meat. The sources highlight the exponential cost collapse that makes this so mind-blowing: Mark Post's first lab-grown hamburger cost $325,000 in 2013, but the price plummeted so fast that within just three years, a cultured meatball cost only $1,000. This revolutionary process uses dramatically less land, water, and human labor, while producing substantially fewer greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional farming. The chapter promises that this technology is not only necessary to solve the global food crisis and climate disaster but that it’s bringing us closer to a future of post-scarcity in sustenance much sooner than anyone expects.