*That's quite a good event report. I don't know this guy, but obviously he was there and paying close attention.
Max Dovey
To: Digital_bahaus_2016 reviewFully Automated Luxury Communism
or Full Employment for the Creative Class?
A diverse selection of artists, designers and entrepreneurs spent two
days in Weimar last week imagining how to use design, software and
networks can permeate or alter existing political and social
structures. For anyone unsure of the meaning of luxury communism: it
is a vague concept introduced by a few sensationalist articles
published in [1]Vice last year. The provocative Fully Automated Luxury
Communism functions as a stylish placeholder for a new school of
thought that concatenates socialist fantasies such as a post-work
society and universal basic income (UBI) within a landscape of
technological accelerationism and hyper-capitalism.Fully automated luxury communism enables the left to vocalize a vision for the future
that utilizes aspects of technological acceleration to bring about
socialist values and anti-capitalist politics. A distinct reference for
this movement is Alex Williams and Nick Srniecks book [2]Inventing the
Future (2015) in which the authors lay out a framework for the
political left to create a socialist utopia that involves fully
automated labor and universal basic income. The picturesque town of
Weimar and the cultural history of Walter Gropius's Bauhaus provided
the perfect backdrop to discuss the prospect of a socialist
technological revolution imagined and initiated through the arts and
design.Much of the first day of the Summit was spent discussing existing
technological products and services, and presenting working
alternatives. [3]Trebor Scholz from The New School in New York
highlighted some workers cooperative movements that are countering
share economy companies with initiatives such as [4]Peerby a platform
that facilitates borrowing and sharing of community resources or[5]
LaZooz the driver owned car share business. Within these initiatives
there is a focus towards improving workers rights within the on-demand
economy, as tech companies now manage an increasingly large portion of
the labor market (1/3 of American workforce is an independent
freelancer) the the need for legal rights and unionization becomes
increasingly pertinent.Rather than wait for Governments to pass laws
to protect independent contractors working in the share economy, many
within the Platform Cooperativism movement are working to build
services with added social awareness, with collective equity and
workers rights built into the software design of the platform. This
type of activism draws upon the managerial coordination of trade
unionists, but pulls in the on-demand platform consumer as an honorable
and equitable member. Although it is seems like familiar tactics for
the left to unionize and protect workers rights in the face of
expansive and exploitative capitalism, we have yet to see how models
for trade unions can flourish alongside silicon valley enterprises.
Will it be necessary for platform co-ops to scale, or collaborate with
traditional unions, will they be able to compete in the on-demand
market whilst still ensuring workers with stable and secure
livelihoods?Another concept that is fearlessly escalating into European-wide policy
is Universal Basic Income (UBI). [6]Johannes Ponader from Mein
Grundeinkommen (My Basic Income) spoke of the rapid popularity of his
self initiated basic income lottery, a collective crowdsourced UBI
scheme that annually allocates 12,000 to one of its members. While
these DIY schemes are directly implementing UBI, the national
government of Switzerland just held their first public referendum on
the matter, which showed just 23% of voters to be in favor of such a
system. Like many within the Basic Income movement, Ponader appears
unconcerned with achieving immediate mass appeal with UBI, rather he
presents the prospect of UBI as the inevitable solution to mass
automation of the labor market. Many within the Basic Income movement
believe that the 23% in favor of UBI in Switzerland will increase over
time and since the initial poll 69% of all the Swiss voters believe
that there will be more referendums on the idea.Throughout the two days the word decentralized was regularly used to
refer to more fair or equally distributed systems. However, as we have
repeatedly seen with Bitcoin and more recently in consensus based
systems such as [7]ConsenSys, decentralized does not inherently mean
more democratic.Although both platform co-ops and venture communist
style approaches try to put human co-ownership at the center of their
design, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) and other
de-centralized alternatives have regularly been exposed as biased,
unequal and centralized concentrations of power and wealth.The crypto-currency bitcoin for example was been revealed to have over 70%
of the wealth owned by 1% of the [8]bitcoin community and more recently
the democratic fairness of DAOs was challenged in an article on
[9]Hacking Distributed. With buzz-words such as de-centralized It is
important not to automatically denote that this implies more democratic
because there is lots of evidence to suggest that this is not the case.Bruce Sterling took the stage on the second day to provide an extensive
list of existing contexts and scenarios where some of the luxury
communist values ideals are already put in practice. These ranged from
pensioners (post-work society), cruise liners (machine designed for
luxury) and the Amish community (no capitalism, collective workforce,
no WiFi) and Christiania, the outlawed area of Copenhagen collectively
governed by its artist and bohemian residents.Sterling ran through these existing social structures highlighting the qualities that they
share with a luxury communist future, repeatedly asking himself (and
the audience) if they sincerely wanted to live in one of these
communities. It brought the make believe contradictory notion of luxury
and communism firmly to ground. As Sterling presented his personal
Pinterest account, in which he highlights his favorite interior designs
within sqauts and communes, the values of counter culture movements
such as squatting become little more than superficial style indicators,
devoid of meaning or political value.Sterling did an excellent job at revealing this oversight, intentionally highlighting refugee camps
as pertinent examples of post-work commune living outside of state or
market governance. When some of the political values within the
luxury communism vision are connected to places of extreme poverty such
as refugee camps and homeless shelters, the demands for luxury
communism appear short sighted and problematically naïve.To put a stop to any further dreaming of post-work utopias [10]Evgeny
Morozov delivered a meticulous diagnosis of the political economy that
left little space for designers to imagine alternative political or
social orders.Morozov views Fully Automated Luxury Communism as an
euphemism for full employment for the creative class insisting that
the audience dont have the luxury to talk about communism. Morozov
propels the effects of neo-liberalism as the paralysis of what is left
of the political left and candidly presents an ideology so far
ingrained into Western culture that any alternative is simply indulgent
fantasy. Admittedly, his forecast for Luxury Communism is probably the
most likely, he presents the intrusion of Silicon Valley into
state-based welfare and highlights the interest of tech giants into
schemes such as UBI.Silicon Valley's research into UBI and Googles
recent acquisition of Metamind (used to diagnose patients in the UKs
National Health Service) all indicate a dwarfing of state run services
to outsourced tech services that, in Morozov's view, will give way to a
Silicon Valley entrepreneurial welfare state.According to Morozov, digital tech companies are attempting to substitute state welfare in
order to protect themselves from the instability of their current
economic model that relies on the speculative advertising market and
provide the freedom to manage citizens without the interventions of
governments or as Silicon Valley often nicknames The Paper Belt.
Morovoz claims that as Google and Facebook move towards neo-feudalism
and cities become orientated around smart technology and openness, open
data style hack labs are futile attempts to frantically prototype
alternatives before the eventually engulfing of entrepreneurial
welfare.For Morozov, the inevitable narrative for post-capitalism is
entrepreneurial welfare, based on a feudalist monopoly that uses
citizen data to produce commercial identities and post-border
nationalities. This sobering diagnosis punctured much of the excitement
towards socialist technological accelerationism and Morozov clearly
sees any significant global change originating from within politics,
not design.When asked directly for an example of transformative
politics he half heartedly indicates support for the 5 Star Movement in
Italy. This direct democratic movement is a bottom-up initiative to
reform politics from the socialist left. However, as they gain
increasing power and reach an electorate majority I wonder how Morozov
will sustain his reductive separation between the bureaucrats and tech
elites, when if his prediction of entrepreneurial welfare is correct,
the two will no longer be distinguishable.His support for 15M movement
as the only distinct movement from the left that can grasp the full
scale of neo-liberalism is condescending and far from convincing. He
seemingly neglects the work done by organisations such as [11]D-cent
who have developed digital tools for direct democratic parties
(including 15M movement) across Europe. When Morovoz claims that the
political right have been the only ones capable of harnessing networked
technology to fuel their political ambition, he is referring to a
historic trajectory rather than acknowledging recent technological
activism. I would argue that there is an increasing movement showcased
not only within this conference but in design communities throughout
Europe that are attempting to challenge Morozovs diagnosis with p2p
collective organization, open source technology and political power.In response, [12]Vinay Gupta presented a pragmatic design-based
schematic to solve the humanitarian crisis with open source and
de-centralized technology. Gupta's diagram presented 6 basic human
needs that could be solved with relatively cheap p2p technology.
Injury, illness, thirst, hunger, coldness, heat.Gupta ran through a bunch of technological solutions to most of these problems while
insisting that these basic needs have to be met before we can begin
discussing or designing post-work utopias for ourselves. Gupta presents
all of this in a feasible way, incidentally avoiding political issues
with logic, applied science & networked computing. By deploying an
infrastructure suggested by Gupta, we would practically begin fighting
battles we can actually win, such as micro water filters to prevent
disease or 3D-printed homes that could provide shelter less than E500.He argues that part of the reasons this is not happening is that
activists are still using an outdated paradigm to frame their approach;
in his opinion quoting Karl Marx won't cure some of the oppressive
qualities of global capitalism but designing some innovative solutions
with new technologies might.It remains to be seen whether Luxury Communism will become more a vogue
topic to discuss over dinner and indulge in the undeniably attractive
potential for post-work lifestyles and basic incomes. Morozov can
deflate this indulgence by arguing that global change will only
originate from within politics. In doing so he overlooks the tremendous
impact that design and technology have already had in the world, in so
far that powerful tech companies are apparently now attempting to
absorb and replace national services.Restoring socialist organizations such as co-ops and trade unions will provide shelter for a politically
or socially aware elite whilst the tech giants get their teeth stuck
into Governance 2.0. If Morozov's prediction is accurate than Silicon
Valley business ventures will attempt to turn state welfare into a
on-demand service economy for everything.I think it's quite conceivable that in 30 years we could be living in a post-work society
and it is intriguing to see a political vision hoping to restore core
social values, such as welfare states and labour unions, in the face of
networked platform capitalism. Perhaps by envisioning this now we can
begin to work out how the political left can strategically counter this
imminent possibility, without retreating to local politics and small
scale activism.Therefore spending a few days indulging in the
potential implications of "Fully Automated Luxury Communism," as
frivolous as it may sound, was a productive necessity, not just to
identify a cohort of fellow ambitious futurists but also to get a sense
of how the left will have to create something far more inclusive than
basic luxury communism.[13]http://networkcultures.org/moneylab/2016/06/10/fully-automated-luxu
ry-communism/References
- https://www.vice.com/read/luxury-communism-933
- https://www.versobooks.com/books/1989-inventing-the-future
- http://www.newschool.edu/facultyexperts/faculty.aspx?id=93094
- https://www.peerby.com/
- http://www.lazooz.net/
- https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Ponader
- https://consensys.net/
- https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/who-owns-all-the-bitcoins-an-infographic-of-wealth-distribution/2015/01/24
- http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/05/27/dao-call-for-moratorium
- http://www.evgenymorozov.com/
- http://dcentproject.eu/
- https://twitter.com/leashless
- http://networkcultures.org/moneylab/2016/06/10/fully-automated-luxury-communism/
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