The final stages of late capitalism seem poised to make this generation's young people more precarious than ever. But a new brand of radical thinking has emerged to counter what seems to be an inevitable catastrophe under the rallying cry of: "Luxury for All!"
In light of the current fallout from the COVID crisis, if you as a reader/lister was to come across an article or, overhear a news story that ran an editorial saying something like: "Young people are dissatisfied with the state of society, and are frustrated with the political process", It'd most likely come across as so cliched that you'd probably roll your eyes and close the tab or, switch the channel since the story would just be a rehash of the same old bullshit we try so desperately to forget about.
By now, it's painfully obvious to the younger generations of today that we're on track to be the first generation in modern history to do less well than our already financially-struggling parents, because of inaction by older generations of political "leaders", we have the unenviable dignity of being the generation that has to solve climate change or be forced to live through climate breakdown, combined with the rise of the "gig economy" stemming from the service industry in apps like Uber/Lyft/Doordash, and, since there are business leaders looking forward to replacing workers with robots, anyone with a brain can already tell that the world beyond the 2020's is bound to be more uncertain, alienating, and unstable than ever before at any point in human history. Y'know, the normal doom and gloom shit we hear about regularly.
But, what if someone were to tell you that the world didn't have to play out like this? (hopefully that point's pretty glaringly self-evident and isn't too stupidly cliché). But, not only that, what if you were to also learn that there already existed a clear-cut, potentially achievable alternative political program to save humanity from our terrible future?
As the author of Black Label Detroit, it's easy to imagine the more optimistic readers/listeners among you may be cautiously curious to know more. And, predictably, the jaded & pessimistic crowd may think that this publication is doing nothing more than trying to paddle pseudoscientific, utopian, bullshit for just clicks and page views. Since, after all, the world has always been like this, and it's never gonna change... right? In response to that potential criticism, let this author assure you that the ideas & theories presented in this piece are 100% real, and have very much gained actual ground in the political world. Not only that, it's the editorial opinion of Black Label Detroit that the long term vision that this new, profoundly radical idea represents is too brilliant and vivid to ignore. That's why, as the years go on, and our collective material conditions continue to disintegrate, there's no doubt that you can expect to hear more and more disgruntled and radicalized young people self-identifying as "Luxury Communists" out in the open, as a provocative, seemingly-contradictory, statement to fight back against the slow cancellation of our future.
So, a bit of explanation is needed before anybody gets encouraged to click off: What originally seems like nothing more than a collection of random words slapped together which, at first glance, appears to be more fit as a dumb meme than an actual political philosophy is, in reality, the culmination one of the most radical political projects in recent memory. The project in question has achieved magnificent victories, such as propelling the unlikely leadership of a lifelong political outsider and their anti-establishment ideas (no, I'm not talking about Bernie Sanders). That politician's victory would be built upon one of the biggest examples of popular agitation being funneled into a political program ever, and which was fueled by the combined efforts of hundreds of thousands of student radicals engaging in politics for the first time.
Before the core principles of "Luxury Communism" (which, we're just gonna shorten to "LuxComm" for simplicity's sake, plus, to be honest, it sounds way sexier anyway) can even be analyzed, we need to travel back in time to the environment that laid the groundwork for such a movement to take hold in the first place, so, let's get to doing that:
Okay, well, picture this: if you were to hop into a time machine and decide that you wanted to take a vacation back to London in the Winter of 2010. Upon arriving to your destination, you'd probably feel as if you unwittingly stumbled into the biggest shitshow you'd ever witnessed in your life. The ruling Conservative & Liberal Democrat coalition government at the time probably felt the same way...
Some of the scenes you'd undoubtedly see stepping foot into central London would be a spectacle of absolute chaos: kids getting arrested left and right, police cars getting smashed and flipped over, protesters clashing with riot police in the streets, the type of shit you'd probably see in a political drama. After witnessing such a display, a question that would probably pop into our mind amidst everything going on would probably be something along the lines of "What the fuck happened to make all these people so angry?"
Well, as it turns out, there was a good reason for all this commotion. Starting in November of that same year, a two-month long span of mass student protests would erupt when the British government decided to raise college tuition fees the equivalent of $14k American dollars in a single year to help the government "balance it's books" during the financial crisis. Even as a couple years earlier, the government would rush to print half a trillion British pounds to save the country's banking sector from imminent collapse. Students were especially pissed at this move because a large portion of protestors themselves actually voted for the Liberal Democrat party (who, were a junior partner in the coalition government) in that year's elections on the explicit promise that they wouldn't raise tuition fees.
Rightfully feeling infuriated, cheated, and lied to, several days after the decision was finalized at parliament, the students would express their anger by: marching en-masse to Conservative party headquarters, clashing with the police officers guarding the building, kicking the building's windows down to allow the rest of the crowd to rush inside, lit a bonfire in the lobby of the HQ, somehow got access to the roof of the building and hung anti-austerity, anti-capitalist banners, and radical flags from the roof, making it a point to flip off the police helicopters as they flew by. While the scale of the mayhem shook the "respectable" leaders of the country's student unions who quickly condemned the actions, your average student protester, however, turned out to either be completely indifferent towards the subversive tactics, or actively cheered them on.
It was during this tumultuous political environment and the following anti-austerity protests of the next year where the man who would eventually go on to put the politics of LuxComm on the map got his initial experience with direct action. Aaron Bastani, the then 26 year old University College of London student, who, just couple months earlier had anonymous pics and videos circulating around the internet of himself ramming dumpsters into bank windows before urging other protestors to storm the building, and, scuffling with police in an attempt to free a friend from imminent arrest, started up an amateur hour-long podcast with his friend James Butler, dubbing the DIY venture "Novara FM". They would use this new platform communicate with the large & rising student movement at the time to cover it's developments. Eventually, four years later, and after slowly expanding the podcast project into an actual independent multimedia outfit (now rebranded "Novara Media"), Bastani would be interviewed about his ideas by the Guardian Newspaper, unaware that, in just a couple months, some key aspects of his politics and ideology would be reflected in one of the most powerful positions in the whole of UK politics.
On May 8th, 2015 the UK had an election that resulted in the ruling Conservatives forming a government all by themselves and their Liberal Democrats coalition partners nearly getting wiped out by voters as punishment for their betrayal on tuition fees. The nation's largest opposition party, the Labour party, also slid backwards, as many young people didn't see much difference between the platforms of the Labour party or the Conservatives. Since, the Labour party's leadership had been held by the same type of "centrist" politicians for decades, the party's weary members were desperate for newer ideas, and that's where a scruffy sixty year old socialist named Jeremy Corbyn would into the picture, and announced his candidacy for the leadership of the party. A member of parliament since 1982, Corbyn had essentially been a life-long rebel inside of Labour (going on record as voting against Labour nearly five hundred times throughout his years in office) which cement his position as one of it's most radical members. As a member of parliament, he used every opportunity he had to speak out against injustice and speak up for causes that he believed in, like as headlining a massive anti-Iraq war demonstration outside the houses of Parliament (keep in mind: Tony Blair, the prime minister at the time who would lead the UK into the disastrous war alongside the US under the Bush admin was also a member of Corbyn's Labour party).
Seeing a potential breakthrough for radical politics personified in the old man, youthful grassroots organizations such as Momentum , and independent outlets like Novara threw all of their infrastructure behind Corbyn. Which, along with the popular support he received during the campaign trail, resulted in Corbyn winning the leadership election in a landslide, catching nearly 60% of the vote. It was at this point that the "out of the box" politics of Bastani's Luxury Communism would leap from the four corner's of Novara's cramped, uninsulated London studio and forever into the spotlight and political spectrum. (Analysis of Corbyn's time as Labour leader could come at a later date, as it is the opinion of Black Label Detroit that his rise and fall is one of the most overt and successful examples of character assassination to occur in recent political history).
So, one could imagine that the skeptics among you may be thinking right now: "Well isn't this a cute biography for people I've never heard of in my life, I still don't have the foggiest idea what the hell 'luxury communism' is even supposed to be. What are you even getting at here?" All of that backstory was necessary in order to introduce the origins of the woman who has more or less become the face and biggest booster of the LuxComm ideology other than Bastani, and, who we'll use to finally analyze the aspects of this provocative idea:
Ash Sarkar, a notable anti-racist campaigner who would dedicate her life to radical politics after witnessing the bigotry her Bangladeshi mother would receive as a child (for example, she recalls the day when her mother was forced to clean human shit that was smeared on their front door by some neighborhood racist to embarrass her). Sarkar had been an on again- off again contributor to Novara since 2015 and would pretty much fly under the radar until one fateful day during an interview in 2018 when she was invited onto the morning news program "Good Morning Britain" to discuss her anti-Trump activism for an upcoming protest (the show is basically the UK's version of Good Morning America). The conversation would quickly spiral out of control however, when when host, and racist honey baked ham impersonator Piers Morgan (who just so happens to be a personal friend of Donald Trump's) provoked a shouting match with Ash before attempting to talk over when she attempted to defend herself. The crux of his "criticism" was basically the fact that he felt as if she was being "unfair" to Donald Trump, as well as suggesting that Sarkar had a softer opinion for Obama despite practicing some of the same policies that she was protesting against Trump for, an allegation which Ash repeatedly denied. The tension boiled over to the point where she would have to scream "I'm literally a communist you idiot!" at Morgan from him to stop asserting that Obama was supposedly Ash's political "hero".
After the interview wrapped up, instead of being dragged online for what she would later admit felt like a flopped performance on national TV in front of an audience of millions, the opposite of what she expected occurred. Ash & Peirs' argument would go viral, racking up millions of views on Facebook and Youtube with the vast majority of commenters zeroing in on Morgan's delusional and unprofessional behavior rather than Ash's understandable outburst.
Ash's frustration with being confused as an Obama stan is the first place we'll start off when discussing what the ideas behind LuxComm/Luxury Communism actually entails: First off, "Luxury Communism" (like the "classic" communism) are both branches of left wing ideology. If you only had a basic poli-sci 101 level understanding of politics, you'd probably think that left wingers would support Obama since he's a liberal, which, in American terms at least, means that he's "on the left". But, not only is this a wrong assumption, but it would be a pretty ignorant position to hold since leftwing politics and liberal politics are fundamentally opposed to each other. Without getting too deep into the weeds, liberal politics is a politics about reforming capitalism and it's social relations while leftism is a politics which seeks to replace capitalism with a newer, better system and redefine the social relations that people live under while doing it.
With that mini lecture outta the way, we can now begin digging into the more esoteric and exciting ideas inherent to the philosophy, which, Ash and Aaron are exceptionally sharp at articulating in their own words.
Usually when critics talk about socialism or communism, one thing that they always bring up are totalitarian dictatorships or failed states like North Korea, the Soviet Union, and Mao's China, since, according to them, they're supposedly "perfect" examples of why alternatives to capitalism don't work. And, any attempt to create an alternative political system only results in the ruin of those societies undertaking those projects. It's in response to questions such as these where the Novara crew have had some of their most interesting takes.
Ash for example, thinks that the examination of the failures of communism is an example of what she says is "important history done badly". Because while she acknowledges that it's important to look at those dictatorships as learning experiences that shouldn't have their flaws glanced over by dumb memes and T-shirts, she makes the point of saying that the level of criticism and analysis applied to those regimes also need to be applied to the world and the systems that we currently live under. For example, no one, for whatever reason, blames capitalism when recognized indicators of poverty in US and Britain (Food stamp & Food bank use) show that 1 out of every 9 Americans collect food benefits and food bank use in Britain rose 74% in the past six years respectively. No one bats an eye at the basic fundamentals of our system when more migrants have, and, continue to, die attempting to cross the Mediterranean into Europe than have died attempting to flee across the Berlin wall in an effort to save themselves and their families from various wars and climate breakdown caused by "first world" countries. And, no one seems to want to contend with our current system in the face of figures such as the fact that: for every one homeless individual there is in America, there are currently thirty-one vacant residential properties on the market that could house them.
When asked a similar question on a BBC sit-down interview, Bastani expands on this sentiment by asserting that he thinks the concept communism illustrated by Karl Marx in the late 19th century wasn't even possible with the technology of the 20th century, during the time that the philosopher's ideas were coopted by those Eurasian dictators, and, that only with our current level of technological advancement with revolutionary inventions such as gene therapies and super-smart AI do we have the opportunity to, as he said it: "build a society as radically different to capitalism as capitalism was to feudalism".
When the Novara crew is actually allowed to flesh out their ideas in a non-antagonistic way, we start to see just how brilliant they theorize our possible future could be. In the run up to Corbyn's second election performance in 2019, when he was looking to build upon the success he brought to his party two years earlier, Corbyn would double down on what was already considered to be "radical socialist" policies by listening to the grassroots of his party. That's exactly why, when interviewed during a grassroots political festival running in parallel to the Labour Party's policy conference at the time (appropriately titled "The World Transformed"), Ash talked in pretty glowing terms when Corbyn adopted forward thinking policies such as completely eliminating greenhouse gas production by 2030 (which would've made the UK have the world's most ambitious climate policy), abolishing private schools to eliminate unfair social advantages, creating a four day working week so people could work less and live more, and making municipal services (buses, utilities, etc.) completely free and publicly owned.
Despite the fact that Ash herself admits that her ideology is even more radical than Corbyn's, it's obvious to see that she was pleased with the fact that these policies undoubtedly had the fingerprints of "Luxury Communist" theory all over them. Bastani goes on to elaborate on the "end game" of LuxComm by suggestion that this theoretical brave new world can only come about if we undertake radical changes like: socializing the finance sector to end capitalism's "casino economy" and redistributing those resources to socially valuable enterprises, and, establishing long overdue changes to our society like making high speed internet a public utility (since we literally live in an era called "the information age"), and classifying access to the internet as a basic human right.
Okay, so, how is all of this even relevant to you or Black Label Detroit at the end of the day? After all, in that same 2019 election, Labour would go on to suffer one of the worst defeats in it's modern history due to the record unpopularity of Jeremy Corbyn, with a poll coming out that ranked him even more unpopular among British voters than billionaire pedophile Jeffery Epstein (remember when that bit about character assassination was mentioned earlier???). So, obviously, in the eyes of critics to alternative politics, his policies and the "unrealistic" theory of Luxury Communism can just be safely dismissed right? I mean, everyone knows that if a politician lost an election by running on a campaign of anti-racism, that means the entire concept of being against racism itself would just be wrong..
The journey of these ideas hold prescience to us across the ocean because this generation, and young people everywhere, despite not living in Britain, need to recognize that being pressured into supporting the politics of the status quo just isn't gonna cut it anymore. Despite the fact that we now have a Liberal politician in the White House who's explicit policy program is returning a sense of "radical normalcy back into politics", we know full and well that this stale political program will be just be inevitably smashed when it runs head-first into the profound challenges of the mid 21st century. And that, if we allow our brains to be taken out to brunch by either ignoring politics entirely or allowing our dissatisfaction and dissent to be recuperated back into the system, nothing is going to stop the inevitable swing of Global Trumpism from destroying our prospects for a radical future due to those "business as usual" politics popular among the establishment before the 2008 crisis that got us here in the first place. Our complacency will let those reactionary forces smash our fragile political systems in all the wrong ways under a hammer of anger and reaction.
At the end of the day, it's up to us to acknowledge that while it's good to have principled politicians who come along to speak to our plight, just like Bernie did over here, and Corbyn did over there, it's important to know that we need to be our own saviors. Saving ourselves from certain doom means allowing our morals to keep us uncompromising and dissatisfied with nothing less than a utopia. And, to birth that utopia means coopting the aspects that keep the people tied up in intellectual bondage to our current system: capitalism, by emphasizing the fact that we have the resources today to allow everyone on the planet to live in luxury. But, it's not enough to just evangelize these ideas only during elections, it means in engaging in some of the most desperate day-to-day political warfare in our lifetimes.
It's up to us specifically as observers across the Atlantic to pick up the torch that Luxury Communism ignited over in Britain and run with it as far as we can here so we can see where it takes us. In Bastani's book, Fully Automated Luxury Communism , where he fully fleshes out the ideas that he's cultivated over the years, one of the main themes running through the course of his book is the fact that if modern radicals are too timid to formulate a plan that reimagines the realities of the near future, the capitalists of today most assuredly aren't. Bastani points out the fact that the Obama admin granted companies the legal right to exploit natural resources in space back in 2015 and the fact that wealthy enclaves of global capital such as Luxembourg have set up legal frameworks to allow for a new privatized space race to be set into motion. What Bastani illustrates to the reader is the fact that these capitalists know full and well that even if humanity miraculously transitioned to a 100% renewable energy and a carbon-negative world in the near future, according to a 2014 study by the Club of Rome, crucial minerals for battery production like Copper, Lithium, Zinc, & Nickel will face extreme scarcity or complete depletion by 2050 or sooner without establishing some global network of continual mineral recycling infrastructure. Which, needless to say is a goal which is completely contradictory to the logic of capitalism. Even phosphorus, a naturally occurring element that's crucial for fertilizing crops on farmlands is scheduled to run out completely by sometime in the middle of this century. To overcome the hard limitations that humanity faces on a finite planet with finite resources, companies and their CEO's will seek to unshackle themselves, and the system of capitalism in general, from the issues they face on Earth by expanding into space. Which, would essentially cement capitalism's twisted contradictions and need for exploitation into the fabric of our very universe until the end of time. It's exactly why asteroid mining will likely be the next boom industry of the next 10-20 years, since, as self-described futurist and serial philanthropist Peter Diamandis puts it:
"Earth is a small crumb sitting in a supermarket full of resources."
Even with all this in mind, this report isn't just some blind endorsement of Bastani's specific vision of Luxury Communism. There are some blind spots in his book that really should be elaborated upon, for example: like while the chapter dedicated to outlining the blueprint for post-scarcity in resources sees the potential solution to the prospect of near-term mineral depletion in off-world mining, it doesn’t exactly go into too much detail about how space travel could be made more sustainable. That’s on top of not really getting into the current exploitative practices that take place in Congo or Bolivia. Then, when the book talks about the possibilities of medical tech like CRISPR to cure disease, it’s largely silent on how it would be practically implemented and what safeguards need to be used for the tech so that it doesn’t enable a new era of eugenics, or, elaborate forms of medical racism against historically harmed communities. The assumption that renewables will solely take care of our future energy needs without tackling nuclear power is a little dishonest. Most disappointingly, the section of the book regarding the need to socialize capital markets, while being one of the most radical ideas in the entire book by far, is probably one of it’s shorter sections, which, is kind of a shame. Because having the financial means to implement all of these ideas is where the rubber of theory meets the road of practicality. Some gaps in the premise appear when Bastani emphasizes the need for radicals to engage in electoralism to achieve these goals; but, doesn’t go into what the game plan would be if wealthy capitalists do (or, did, in the case of the UK’s 2019 election) rally together to crush any political movement that broke with neoliberalism. On top of not touching upon personal methods of direct action or agitation in general. The most critical flaw in the whole book comes from the idea that, unlike other radical thinkers such as Murray Bookchin or Peter Kropotkin, Bastani actively avoids illustrating what life would be like after the revolution/in a post-scarcity society; side-stepping the questions that they touched upon in their works regarding issues like: "How would people live in a post-scarcity society?" and, "What would anybody even do all day?" by hiding behind a bit of a cop-out quote from Marx saying about how supposedly “it’s not my job to make recipes for the chefs of the future”, a maneuver which, in the editorial opinion of Black Label Detroit, is pretty disappointing.
Even with all those counterpoints being made, these lingering questions fail to sink the very salient points that the book, movement, and ideology have all brought to the political forefront though. Again, it's up to us to fill in those blanks so that we can ultimately forge our own future. Which is why the author of this publication unreservedly recommends that anyone, be they recent convert, or cynical critic, to read the book. It's a very rewarding experience to complete.
One idea that profoundly interests this publication about the whole "LuxComm" project is the potential prospect of bringing the theory of unlimited luxury to disinvested and under-resourced communities. Do those people accept such a radical political program with open arms? Or, will they see Luxury Communism as just another cute, but, ultimately childish and unachievable political fantasy no different from "trickle down " economics? This time, cooked up by crazy kids who just need to "grow up" or "get real" about life instead of senile racists in suits? This publication's author prays that the passage of time will the kind to the imaginations of us crazy kids. Here in Detroit, heart of the post-industrial world, it's of the opinion of Black Label Detroit that this place is the most fertile breeding ground for this new type of politics that seeks to produce unparalleled levels of luxury not seen here since the height of the auto industry. After all, there have been some urges among political move-makers in this direction when it comes to automation (Detroit factory workers were some of the first people to become unemployed due to automation after all). Living all my life in a city where certain displays of wealth while in the wrong place at the wrong time means certain for death hundreds of men every year which happen, at the end of the day, over the potential ownership of some completely pointless accessories, makes me daydream for a better days where people aren't so eager to take a life over any petty status symbol, since, there really wouldn't be a need to take anything from anyone anymore. Everyone would be able to have their own customized and personalized Buffs if they so chose to.
Call this editorial position idiotic, or decry it's writer as a dumbass, whatever, but, it's not hard to think that the very people who're either likely to fall victim to, or partake in this type of pointless violence are the very same people who'd be interested in a politics that stripped the political project out of it's academic origins and sought to repurpose and recuperate it into the "ghetto" aesthetics of extravagant jewelry, teeth covered in rare metals, and elaborate chains, those same symbols that have been stigmatized and frowned upon for generations by "polite society". These symbols have the potential to successfully be transformed into increasingly common objects that dazzlingly reflect the essence of the type of society that fellow radicals believe we've been building towards for the past two hundred years instead of rare, envious signifiers of "power" or social position. Not only that, but, instead of attempting to "help" people cope with having to live in a world where they just have to "learn how to do more with less", we could emphasize the radical idea that even the neediest of people among us don't just deserve to live in luxury, but we as a collective deserve to enjoy the pieces of paradise we produce through our labor, together.
Hopefully, with enough effort and activism on our part, we can look back a few decades from now while enjoying a couple drinks with some friends, reflect on a successful political project actually becoming a reality, and laugh at all those hilariously ignorant oldheads who told us that limitless luxury was an impossibility, or, even more comically, thought it was a genuine insult to call us "Cristal Communists".
This author would definitely drink to a dream like that.
Links & Sources:
2. Buis, Alan "Study Conforms Climate Models are Getting Warming Projections Right" Nasa's JPL 2020
15. Jones, Owen "Owen Jones meets Ash Sarkar- is communism 'literally' back?" Owen Jones on Youtube 201821. Bastani, Aaron "Fully Automated Luxury Communism or Jeff Bezos?" Double Down News on Youtube 201931. Byrd-Hill, Idra "Retool blight removal bond for automation reskilling" Crain's Detroit Business 2019
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