PostCapitalism cover art

PostCapitalism

A Guide to Our Future

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

PostCapitalism

By: Paul Mason
Narrated by: Paul Mason
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Penguin presents the unabridged downloadable audiobook edition of PostCapitalism, written and read by Paul Mason.

From Paul Mason, the award-winning Channel 4 presenter, PostCapitalism is a guide to our era of seismic economic change and how we can build a more equal society.

Over the past two centuries or so, capitalism has undergone continual change - economic cycles that lurch from boom to bust - and has always emerged transformed and strengthened. Surveying this turbulent history, Paul Mason wonders whether today we are on the brink of a change so big, so profound, that this time capitalism itself, the immensely complex system by which entire societies function, has reached its limits and is changing into something wholly new.

At the heart of this change is information technology: a revolution that, as Mason shows, has the potential to reshape utterly our familiar notions of work, production and value and to destroy an economy based on markets and private ownership; in fact, he contends, it is already doing so.

This audiobook has been updated as of March 2017.

©2016 Paul Mason (P)2016 Penguin Audio Economics International Macroeconomics Politics & Government Thought-Provoking Economic inequality Economic disparity US Economy Imperialism

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Knowledge and Power cover art
Clear Bright Future cover art
The Establishment cover art
How to Stop Fascism cover art
The Innovation Illusion cover art
The Locust and the Bee cover art
Capital in the Twenty-First Century cover art
Blackshirts and Reds cover art
The Selfish Gene cover art
The End of Influence cover art
Guns, Germs and Steel cover art
Antonio Gramsci cover art
Fully Automated Luxury Communism cover art
The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution cover art
Knowledge and Decisions cover art
Superintelligence cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
Thank you for opening my eyes.
Specially coming from a socialist country.
I agree that, making small experiments plus technology, will help us understand the future of the economy. Like driving at night with better headlights.

History of economic development on Earth.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
If you are interested in understanding the present and near future this book is essential. Mason's conclusions are unconvincing but his analysis is brilliant. There is nothing earth shattering but the way various historical and contemporary political and economic threads are brought together is really helpful.

Essential reading

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Clearly thought out and rationally argued. A refreshing view from the left based on some fascinating sources.

This will become a seminal text in the future.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The historical aspect of this book with especially its critique of Marx and the direction Soviet Russia took was very interesting; some new stuff learned. In this regard it was quite a balanced book. As for a vision of the future it seemed somewhat naive and hopeful. The idea that software theoretically lasts forever for example was naive. It doesn't. The machines on which it runs die and their replacements often cannot run the older software at all. Software has the same legacy issues that most products have; in fact software is often more short lived than common household electrical appliances. It also comes with a maintenance cost due to security issues/bugs etc.

The idea that information is free is also flawed. Storing the information is massively expensive - Google's huge data centres are acknowledged in the book but somehow the cost of maintaining and replacing hardware, cabling and having the energy to run the servers does not get factored into the cost of information. Neither does the cost of accessing the information via data charges, ISP fees, standing charges (to maintain the cabling infrastructure etc.). This audio book is verbal information recorded as digital data - it was not free. The servers where it is stored are not free. The device I listened to it on was not free. The internet connection I used to download it was not free.

The idea that Wikipedia is free is also demonstrably false. It may be free at the point of access but Wikipedia regularly has fundraisers - it actually costs millions of dollars a year to run in hard cash.

As for the vision of the future much of the concerns and observations about capitalism are bang on the money (it does indeed seem to be beginning its death throes). However, I found the vision of a future information economy to be somewhat incomprehensible. Yes a citizens income paid for from savings gained by technology would seem like a good idea (but is highly unlikely to happen) but the repetitive mantra of the (not so) free information economy just didn't make sense to me. It is almost on a par with modern theoretical physics.

I wish I could share the positive future vision held by the author but he has a somewhat utopian view of humanity. Capitalism is a system that has grown as a reflection of humanity on the whole. While people have their good side (some more than others) the predominant forms of behaviour are manipulative, self serving, competitive and adversarial to the point of violence. The author does not address the fundamental state of human nature and how the world we see is really a reflection of it. Yes we can blame leaders but we collectively put them there. We (the masses) choose to listen to the media lies, to have the scope of our reality shaped by outside forces. Most people are not looking for a new way of shaping the economy, they are trying to get more money for a better house or car. Trying to pay for the kids holidays. Very few people have the slightest interest in economics, how fractional reserve lending works etc. We are tribal and defensive.

From considering history and the current state of world economics, including many salient points addressed by this book, I can only see a big war coming. A big one. The one that most people think can only exist in Holywood movies.

On the reading - yes the author restarts many sentences in this reading and why they were not edited out is somewhat mystifying. At first I thought this was a subversive reminder that a real fallible person had written the book and hence a nudge for us all to remember that we too are fallible humans but there were so many it did get quite annoying. Especially given that the fab technology and the ease with which this commercial paid-for release could have been made error-free.

A fascinating perspective on economic history...

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

What made the experience of listening to PostCapitalism the most enjoyable?

Mason reads fantastically well and the minor errors and retracing are so minor, and I think make it all the more human. I actually enjoy them. I feel so much more able to understand the complexity of economics and argue the case for an alternative to modern capitalism now. Let me at em!

What was one of the most memorable moments of PostCapitalism?

The section on Shakespearian history;

Fantastic take down of capitalist economics!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Very clearly explained. An interesting listen. I think Paul Mason might be onto something although some of it sounds like daydreaming.

Interesting

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
brilliant thinking. earnest delivery and an accurate summary of complex competing systems undermined by about 20 continuity errors in the audiobook. get a kindle or hard copy. Paul Mason is worth listening to

fantastic eye opener

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Enjoyed it thoroughly although this version includes reading errors by the author, thought these would be edited out as it's a bit distracting.

enlightening map into a better future

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The parts when he is at his strongest is thinking about the trends and technologies which will influence the future and how to exploit them for the good of mankind. His particular emphasis on voluntary services makes for interesting reading.

Where this book is hard going is the large scale emphasis on 19th and early 20th century theories particularly Russian ones whilst interesting in small amounts becomes tedious after a while. And this section seems the be focused on demonstrating his communist credentials rather than appealing to the wider audience.

Good conclusion hard going in places for the non socialist

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I’ve listened to scores of books (including the cassette borrowed from the library) I’ve never known such poor production values - so many careless mistakes- why?

Encouraging start - poor production

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews