Paul Mason’s Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future is all over the place right now.[1] He is the economic editor of Channel 4 News in the United Kingdom, A journalist and broadcaster, he likes to see himself as a philosopher. According to one of the newspapers that present an overview of his last book, “the end of capitalism has begun.” What is more, the postcapitalist era has begun without us even noticing. “At the heart of further change to come is information technology, new ways of working, and the sharing economy,” argues Mason. “The old ways of working will take a long time to disappear,” he adds, “but it’s time to be utopian.” Lengthy as it is, the overview tells me little of any weight. He celebrates new freedoms, such as the right to marry one’s own gender, but he offers no clue of how postcapitalism differs from capitalism in terms of political economy. To wit, the term applies to capitalism as it has come to pass rather than any new and distinct social system. Thus it is postutopian, to coin another cute term. But there is one thing that is conspicuously absent from Mason’s overview of his book: climate change. Apparently, it has nothing to do with postcapitalism, which will perhaps do away with it without us even noticing. In short, the key problem of our age is shoved under the proverbial rug. Pace Mason, the end of capitalism has indeed begun, but you are entirely innocent of the actual reason for its demise.

Footnote

1. London: Allen Lane, 2015.