Clear Bright Future: A Radical Defence of the Human Being

Paul Mason has a very well constructed thesis and has certainly done his homework. Very thought provoking. I'm sure to refer to again and again to get his perspective on where we are headed and what we can do guide us in the right direction.

The Professor in the last book of CS Lewis' Narnia series (The Last Battle) mutters "It's all in Plato, all in Plato". If you replace the visual image of the Professor with a proudly Northern economics journalist in a leather jacket shouting "it's all in Marx, all in Marx", that catches something of the spirit of this book.It is a very wide-ranging book, moving fairly effortlessly from worldwide vignettes of real life from his journalism into explorations of both Marxist and Liberal thought.As might be expected from the title and sub-title, the author is a fierce opponent of what he terms right-wing authoritarianism and the techno-literate fascism of the alt-right (some of this was an eye-opening horror to this reader!) and he goes into some detail as to both the threat they pose but also the mechanisms by which they have achieved increasing success. However, he lays a lot of the blame for the rise of these onto left-wing postmodernist thought, which undercut the appeals to rationality and science that Mason, and Marxism generally, wishes to make. He has a special dislike for Nietzschean philosophy, which he believes underpins both fascism and the more extreme forms of capitalism.More time and effort is spent both condemning and, more importantly, burying neoliberalism which he feels has left capitalism in contradictions it cannot get out of, hence the need for radical change. He explores this in some detail by showing the history of how it has reduced the power of the worker, the nation and the users of communications' technology, whilst increasing the power of multi-nationals, tech companies and financiers. Naturally the 2008 crash and its consequences are fully explored.Marx is praised, particularly because the author feels his development of the labour theory of value is better able to explain the contemporary and future world of free networked information. The author also wishes to reclaim the humanist Marx, as opposed to the determinist Marx that was later emphasized. He is no slavish acolyte though: Marx does get criticized at points. The position of the working class throughout the history of capitalism is foregrounded.He lays great emphasis on the possibilities of (more-or-less) free networked information and individuals as both the lever for change and its paradigm. However, he equally sees great dangers for human freedom and well-being in the increased power of tech giants and surveillance states exploiting increasingly powerful artificial intelligence. The examples are very wide-ranging here, incorporating Atari's original video game Breakout and cult classic Blade Runner...The book finishes with the authors hopes for the future and his call to arms, both in the general hope of a communism of abundance and freedom, with some specific directions and recommendations for achieving this.Short summaries like this cannot do Mason's arguments justice: his arguments are deeper and wider than that: Trump, Russia, racism, sexism, pornography, crime, the Iraq War, UKIP etc. all get a place. I really enjoyed it! It resembles a George Monbiot book in many ways, in the richness and variety of the discussions and the boldness in putting out solutions to be torn apart, or built upon.I did have some criticisms: I thought that the author was unduly confident that capitalism would collapse rather than evolve and he was very sanguine about the capability of states and his networked humans to create systems which could resist algorithmic controls and authoritarian states. This mirrored a slight romanticization of the working class and an important gap for me: he never seemed to say whether the defeat of organized labour by neoliberalism was inevitable or the result of bad tactics. It seems possible that the power of organized labour was just as responsible for breaking down the post-war Keynesian consensus as the financiers and conservatives the author does in fact blame. He shows that he is a man of the Left, and the Right may not get an entirely fair hearing, although he does try and be as fair as he can to thinkers like Hayek, for example.The book is highly recommended for anyone interested in the wider direction of contemporary politics, economics and society. The author has a very readable style, doing the detail without getting dull, and whether one agrees with the author or not, is full of fascinating argument and insight. It builds upon his previous book, Postcapitalism, but with a slightly wider purview than that book. Casual readers wanting to know what the author believes in general could probably make do with either one of the books, but those more interested in his thought will want both.

I bought this book after reading the excellent "Utopia for realists". I had heard about both of these books on radio 2 and after I was so impressed with the first one I decided to buy this one. My initial thoughts were that it would be about the future and technology, particularly AI etc... Now I am not a particularly politicaly in-tune man so maybe others will find it more interesting than I did but you cannot turn a page without "Trump" being mentioned or "neo-Liberal" or misogyny or racist or even fascist. Just seems to be a book that has jumped on the trump hate bandwagon. There may be some genuinely good content in this book but I never made it past the first 50 or so pages, this is the first book out of hundreds that I haven't at least seen through to the end, it is simply too opinionated, where utopia for realists came across as calm and built points up in a logical way this book seems shouty and constantly off at a tangent. If you are really into politics I'm sure you'll enjoy this more than I did, if not, I wouldn't bother.

The problem for Marxists (and especially the revolutionary left) after the 1980s was how do we change the world after the demise of the old traditional working class. Where are the gravediggers of capitalism now?What Mason is attempting to do in this book is look at how we can defeat neo liberal capitalism despite this apparent lack of 'a class with radical chains'.His answer is to propose that the atomised but networked individual of the 21st century can be mobilised against the looming authoritarianism of a failing capitalism and we can gain control of the potential of the algorithm and AI to construct a new, human based world order.Big concept stuff and essential reading for anyone who is trying to understand how we can break the machine before it swallows us up.

This is an insightful and entertaining read. Mason's writing is erudite and full of passion.His summaries of the politics and economics after the collapse of USSR, his dissection of Trump and the state of US society and politics, and the case he makes how progressives can defeat authoritarian nationalists are brilliant. His articulation of Marx's humanism was also fascinating.I also found a fair few things frustrating. Too often he references an ill-defined and homogeneous ‘Neoliberal Elite’ as being at the root of all that’s wrong with the world. When he specifies who, what and how as he does in some places he is very compelling; but too often he comes across as a crank conspiracy theorist himself, of the kind he abhors (e.g. substitute ‘XYZ Elite’ in many of the book’s paragraphs, Mason starts to resemble the alt-right he so powerfully takes on elsewhere).There are a few inconsistencies and contradictions that stand out in the book. Some are merely irritating: such as on the one hand celebrating the potential for technology to rid us of menial work and free up time to pursue an Aristotelian good life, whilst also calling for supermarkets to abolish self-checkouts (those of us who have worked the checkouts for more than just a Saturday job may find that patronising). Some are more objectionable: such as the brilliantly articulated case against the scourge of nationalism in the first half of the book, undermined by a celebration of Scottish nationalism and independence in the second, as if the drivers of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ nationalism are somehow mutually exclusive.Some of the chapters and sections also feel a bit random: a brief attack on contemporary China and its breed of ‘Marxism’ (needed more than a few pages, or not including at all); an attack on ‘nudge’ theory that feels overblown (e.g. it’s hard to believe that the small prompts that discourage people from speeding down my local high street, or to pay their tax on time, are part of a neoliberal assault on our very humanity); and, a rant about effect of internet-based videos on children’s brains that reads like a 21st-century Mary Whitehouse.Overall, though, well worth a read.

With the far right rising, Clear Bright Future addresses what went wrong with neoliberalism... how it left us vulnerable. Lightbulb moment for me is where Mason links the market to the machine: both control behaviour in ways we need to acknowledge and address. He has an equivocal relationship with automation. Yes, it can free us from work, liberating us to something that feels like utopian socialism. But unless AI is encoded with humanity there is the risk that it could control us.That concern is the heart of the book. We need a new (Marxist) humanism. Mason goes back to the humanist Marx (rescuing him from the failed and brutal experiments of twentieth century Stalinism), perhaps mischievously calling him the last Enlightenment philosopher.There’s a lot in here. Too much for a brief amazon review. And I’m not going to try because my dogs need feeding!I’d recommend this book to all who want to look up from the hurry and scurry of today and from the ins and outs of current politics to think about the big questions of the future. It’s urgent, vital, stuff written in fluent, intelligent and engaging prose. Five stars from me.