Isaac Deutscher once wrote ‘socialism is not evolution’s last and perfect product or the end of history, but in a sense only the beginning’. This is how FALC is perhaps best conceived. It is a map by which we escape the labyrinth of scarcity and a society built on jobs; the platform from which we can begin to answer the most dificult question of all, of what it means, as Keynes once put it, to live ‘wisely and agreeably and well’.
Of course, any efective map must instruct its user about immediate next steps, the clarity of which must be as apparent as the intended destination. It is for this reason that FALC demurs from idealism or an overly optimistic view of human nature, ofering immediate action instead. While FALC is situated within a transformation as seismic as that of the arrival of agriculture, its concrete politics consist in specific, readily identifiable demands: a break with neoliberalism, a shift towards worker-owned production, a state-financed transition to renewable energy and universal services – rightly identified as human rights – placed beyond commodity exchange and profit.
FALC is not a manifesto for the starry-eyed poets. Rather it is born from the recognition of an increasingly obvious truth: amid the changes of the Third Disruption the ‘fact’ of scarcity is moving from inevitable certainty to political imposition.
This is not a book about the future but about a present that goes unacknowledged. The outline of a world immeasurably better than our own, more equal, prosperous, and creative, is there to see if only we dare to look. But insight alone is not enough. We must have the courage – for that is what is required – to argue, persuade, and build.
There is a world to win.
FALC
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