Back
Aaron Bastani: Fully Automated Luxury Communism (2020, Verso) 3 stars

In his first book, leading political commentator Aaron Bastani conjures a new politics: a vision …

On global politics and economics of urgency, with hope

4 stars

I appreciate the direction Bastani is heading towards a lot. All the basic premises about global overproduction, growing inequality and climate crisis are decently analysed. The cause of this mess is also correctly attributed to politics. Yet many things made me shrug: from heavy leaning on the idea that economic progression curves are doomed to continue as they did before, to the very concrete economic proposals, which require much more context to evaluate (at least in my case). I expected more direct politics (apart from just advocating populism), and probably general inspiration. However, in my eyes this is a work born of urgency, and it does its job. It helps setting up an extremely important civilisational discourse by articulating perspectives and proposals to discuss. Bastani should simply be praised just for that.