--- schema_version: "library-reader-v1" source_type: "original_book" title: "Fully Automated Luxury Communism A Manifesto" author: null edition: null publisher: null year: null isbn: "9781786632623" library_document_id: "6dfd053e-a721-41da-a147-63bee43ea5ea" source_sha256: "1abf214ba80dbc1c2c27dfbaa4c324d483354085cfb676f2df827d68fa33ed6f" pdf_physical_page_count: 288 pdf_physical_page_index_base: 0 range_start: 210 range_count: 10 html_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/6dfd053e-a721-41da-a147-63bee43ea5ea?start=210&limit=10" markdown_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/6dfd053e-a721-41da-a147-63bee43ea5ea.md?start=210&limit=10" previous_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/6dfd053e-a721-41da-a147-63bee43ea5ea.md?start=200&limit=10" next_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/6dfd053e-a721-41da-a147-63bee43ea5ea.md?start=220&limit=10" --- # Fully Automated Luxury Communism A Manifesto > 页码规则：PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX 是从 0 开始的权威文件物理页索引；PRINTED_PAGE 是页面中识别出的印刷页码，可能为空，二者不得混用。 ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=210 | PRINTED_PAGE=\~ 10 Fundamental Principles: The Break with Neoliberalism Burn neoliberalism, not people. Clive Lewis Carillion’s Collapse and the East Coast Line Although FALC is the political project befitting the Third Disruption, it is a historic moment that will require decades to play out, just as the Second Disruption did following Watt’s steam engine. That is no reason to wait, however. Instead we must begin where we stand, by breaking with neoliberalism and building viable alternatives. So while the political horizon is one of a world beyond work and scarcity, the most pressing task is to discard an orthodoxy built on weak trade unions, precarious labour markets, falling wages and privatisation to break with, in a word, neoliberalism. In each sphere the tide must be turned and, while doing so, placed within an explicit commitment to creating a world entirely diferent to that of the present. \~ ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=211 | PRINTED_PAGE=202 This break must start by switching of the privatisation and outsourcing machine. The reason why is simple: its prevailing logic demands that every public good – from healthcare and education to housing – be sacrificed on the altar of private profit and shareholder value. In this respect privatisation and outsourcing must be viewed as two sides of the same coin. While the former has taken centre stage in undermining the state ’s provision of public goods – with whole industries privatised en masse over the last fifty years – the latter has proven equally efective in funnelling private profits while maintaining a veneer of public ownership and accountability. The consequences of this have been to make workers poorer and degrade services, often in the name of ‘consumer choice ’, while draining communities of local wealth and know-how. Shorthand for the failures of outsourcing is the collapse of Carillion, a construction and ‘facilities management’ company that declared bankruptcy in early 2018. With up to 90 per cent of Carillion’s work subcontracted out, as many as  30,000 businesses faced the consequences of its ideologically driven mismanagement. Hedge funds in the City, meanwhile, made hundreds of millions from speculating on its demise. A favoured pastime of establishment thinkers is to query the very existence of neoliberalism, despite the fact some of the world’s most illustrious historians and social scientists have written about it at length. A suficient response to their line of questioning is simple enough, however, to just utter the name of the former construction giant. How else can you explain the rationale behind a company funded by government contracts that, when it collapses, punishes workers and rewards the casino economy of financial speculation? Carillion’s economic function, particularly after 2010, would have failed to make sense in any other era. With the imposition of austerity, however, it had a vital role to play as it – along with similar companies such as Serco, Sodexo, Capita and G4S – distributed downward pressure on wages while Britain became the world’s second-largest outsourcing market. 202 paradise found ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=212 | PRINTED_PAGE=203 With the imperative being to push through public sector cuts, particularly in local government, while demonstrating the superiority of the private sector, these companies played a critical role in transferring hundreds of thousands of jobs while paying workers less. Indeed, Britain’s private sector employment ‘miracle ’ subsequent to 2010 was possible only because of outsourcing. Its success, however, was inimically tied to falling pay, rising in-work poverty and stagnant productivity. The breakneck speed of Carillion’s downfall shows how outsourcing impoverishes workers in its default setting and, worse still, can cause chaos across whole sectors of the economy. Not only does this jeopardise the delivery of key services and infrastructure but it does so on the back of precarious workers. What is more, multinationals like Carillion efectively use public funds to intensify local poverty while furnishing returns to company shareholders based elsewhere – often in larger, afluent cities. Not only is this model frighteningly efective in its ability to impose falling wages, but also in ensuring capital vacates left-behind towns and cities like never before. As a result, it is responsible for both income and regional inequality. Yet, while Carillion’s collapse demonstrated the pernicious logic of outsourcing, even it failed to match the sheer stupidity of what happened to Britain’s East Coast Main Line – connecting the capitals of Edinburgh and London by rail. Returned to public ownership in 2009, when its operator Stagecoach said profit margins were too low in the context of recession, it subsequently became a beacon of excellence, winning twelve industry awards while requiring the lowest level of government investment as a percentage of its total income compared to any private operator. Yes, you read that correctly: the only rail provider in public ownership needed less taxpayer funding than any of the private ones. Unsurprisingly, despite functioning extraordinarily well, the East Coast line was reprivatised in 2013. This was before it had to be ‘temporarily’ renationalised once more in 2018 when it failed to make a profit, despite subsidies, for its private owners. While the story of the East Coast Main Line is almost funny, the tragedy is that the joke is on us. Fundamental Principles 203 ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=213 | PRINTED_PAGE=204 Thus, because Britain’s private rail providers, just like its outsourcing companies, are nothing more than machines designed to extract value for shareholders at the expense of workers and service users. As well as costing the taxpayer a fortune through subsidies, Britain’s rail companies charge some of the most extortionate fares in  Europe, with the McNulty report, published in 2011, concluding costs were 40 per cent higher compared to state-owned providers on the Continent. The reason why the words of certain politicians resonate when they say the system is ‘rigged’ is because when it comes to the ever-growing swathe of public services subject to privatisation and outsourcing, what they are saying accurately describes everyday reality. Privatisation is not about improving outcomes or services, but pursuing a political agenda which redistributes wealth from the majority of society to a small elite. This is not even the ‘free market’, but a bizarre hybrid allying the worst features of market capitalism with state socialism. 204 paradise found ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=214 | PRINTED_PAGE=205 The Haringey Development Vehicle While not as economically far-reaching as the collapse of Carillion, or absurd as the East Coast Main Line, the rise and fall of the Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV) in north London ofers another example of the neoliberal meat grinder in action. A joint efort coordinated by the local Labour council and property developer Lendlease, its intention was to respond to the twin problems of the housing crisis and central government reducing local budgets as the result of austerity. In this respect it mirrors outsourcing. There the solution to unemployment is jobs whose wages increase poverty, while the HDV wanted to build homes that ordinary people could not aford. In a London borough where the average home was already fifteen times the median wage, the HDV wasn’t a solution to the housing crisis – it entrenched it. This feedback loop is no accident. Neoliberalism reduces the capacity of public bodies to spend money while simultaneously intensifying social problems like homelessness and poverty. This means the only available options to respond – even if public actors are otherwise minded – are increasingly market-oriented. It is like an ouroboros – the snake of ancient mythology that eats its own tail – intentionally designed to create inequality and a weak incapable state. That the HDV was overseen by a Labour council was significant. Unlike the East Coast Main Line this was not an obvious example of partisan ideology, where irrationality borders on fanaticism. Instead it was instructive of how neoliberalism can imbricate itself within a fabric of necessity, the refrain of ‘there is no alternative ’ rendered a self-fulfilling prophecy. Fundamental Principles 205 ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=215 | PRINTED_PAGE=206 The Grenfell Fire The neoliberal machine has human consequences that go beyond spreadsheets and economic data. Beyond, even, inwork poverty and a life defined by paying ever higher rents to wealthy landlords and fees to company shareholders. As bad as those are they pale beside its clearest historic expression in a generation: the derelict husk of Grenfell Tower – a 24- storey residential block in West London where, in June 2017, seventy-two people lost their lives. Just days after a general election where Theresa May lost her parliamentary majority, a fire broke which would ravage the building in a manner not seen in Britain for decades. The primary explanation for its rapid, shocking spread across the building – finished in 1974 and intentionally designed to minimise the possibility of such an event – was the installation of flammable cladding several years earlier, combined with poor safety standards and no functioning sprinklers – all issues highlighted by the residents’ Grenfell Action Group before the fire. The cladding itself, primarily composed of polyethylene, is as flammable as petroleum. Advances in material science means we should be building homes that are safer, and more eficient, than ever before. Instead a cut-price approach to housing the poor prevails, prioritising external aesthetics for wealthier residents. In the case of Grenfell that meant corners were cut and lives were lost. This is not a minor political point and shows the very real consequences of ‘self-regulation’. It was under the Thatcher government that fire safety standards in homes were deregulated, while enforceable requirements were abandoned for ‘guidelines’ which the building industry could choose to implement or ignore. Months before Grenfell some Tory 206 paradise found ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=216 | PRINTED_PAGE=207 MPs had openly spoken of how Brexit meant such a slap-dash approach could be taken further still, with Jacob Rees-Mogg – a prominent right-wing MP – musing how Britain’s departure from the EU ofered the chance to further reduce environmental and safety standards, ‘We could say, if it’s good enough in India, it’s good enough for here. There ’s nothing to stop that.’ John McDonnell, Labour’s shadow chancellor, caused consternation among the same establishment which takes Rees-Mogg so seriously when he labelled Grenfell ‘social murder’ claiming that ‘political decisions were made which resulted in the deaths of these people ’. Yet it was Clive Lewis who incurred the greatest wrath of all when he tweeted an image of the destroyed tower along with the words ‘burn neoliberalism, not people ’. That drew gasps of anger from some quarters, but perhaps that was because those eager to defend the status quo grasped that much of the public would agree with the Labour MP. While not immediately apparent – such is the intention with a political settlement presenting itself as reality – Grenfell was a result of overt political choices. The regulatory changes introduced by Thatcher and extended under New Labour represented a core feature of neoliberal ideology: optimal outcomes are more likely the less you interfere and allow market equilibrium to do its job. That same pernicious ideology had previously provided cover for outsourcing, privatisation and regeneration, despite the facts speaking against it. Now it had led to people dying in their beds. Despite the magnitude of these issues, a break with all of this is not only plausible but increasingly easy to distinguish. As well as a handbrake on an increasingly dysfunctional present, it is also the first step to FALC. Its primary features are threefold, consisting in the re-localisation of economies through progressive procurement and municipal protectionism; socialising finance and creating a network of local and regional banks and, finally, the introduction of a set of universal basic services (UBS) which take much of the national economy into public ownership. While some of this will resemble the nationalisations of the previous century, much of it will not. Fundamental Principles 207 ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=217 | PRINTED_PAGE=208 But before changes at a national level can be enacted by governments of the radical left, locally we can start right away. Indeed, in its own way, a revolution from below has already begun. Ending Neoliberalism 1: The Preston Model Two centuries ago the inventor Richard Arkwright’s home city of Preston was at the leading edge of the Second Disruption as it, like towns and cities across Lancashire, embraced the new technologies of steam-power and coal. More recently, however, Preston had become a backwater, with manufacturing going elsewhere and its early advantage in the Industrial Revolution exhausted long ago. As a result its economic future resembled that of Britain more generally, its best bet being to attract as many low-productivity, service-sector jobs as it could. That explains why, until 2011, local politicians bet the house on a proposed shopping centre, named ‘Tithebarn’, which they reckoned would create thousands of new jobs. So when the Tithebarn project finally sank, the city’s politicians found themselves out of ideas. The truth was that the global economic crisis which started several years earlier made the development highly unlikely, no matter the wishes of local government. Premised on an economic model of retail and consumer debt, the numbers no longer made sense. Within the broader context of austerity and spending cuts, imposed most harshly on local government, prospects for Preston’s economy appeared bleaker than ever. 208 paradise found ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=218 | PRINTED_PAGE=209 But then something surprising happened, with Preston turning what seemed like a terminal setback into an opportunity. It did so by taking inspiration from the US city of Cleveland and its own response to similar problems it faced a few years earlier. There the response to a budgetary crisis had been heterodox and unprecedented, with local government refusing the default medicine of privatisation and outsourcing – focusing instead on energising the city’s economy through the procurement of ‘anchor institutions’ like schools, hospitals and universities. In time it proved a success, so much so that the approach came to be titled the ‘Cleveland Model’. Its adoption in Preston, relatively unique in the context of the UK, provided the most unexpected of triumphs. Working with the Manchester-based Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES), Preston Council approached the town’s anchor institutions in 2011 proposing to redirect as much of their spending as possible back into the local economy. Six agreed to participate. This cooperative efort between civic and public institutions meant that locally focused contracts covered everything from school lunches to large-scale construction projects. All of this meant that while local anchor institutions spent £38 million in Preston in 2013, and £292 million in Lancashire, by 2017 those figures had increased to £111 million and £486 million respectively. While that alone was impressive, even it fails to illustrate the extent of change that locally focused procurement achieved, with a multiplier efect taking of in the city as pounds continually recirculated throughout the local economy. That meant that while real wages for workers in Central Lancashire fell after 2008, much as they did across Britain, in Preston – despite austerity – they actually went up. Fundamental Principles 209 ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=219 | PRINTED_PAGE=210 Where other authorities privatised, Preston grew its own businesses, even encouraging worker-owned cooperatives. In late 2016 the city was chosen as the best place to live and work in the north-west, ahead of Manchester and Liverpool. Two years later it took the accolade of being Britain’s most improved city. Replicating the Preston Model is the first step in building an economic alternative that breaks with neoliberalism without needing national state power. Despite being delivered in local contexts, the consequences of that would be significant. In the UK, for instance, the NHS alone employs an astonishing 1.4 million people. Between that and the country’s schools, colleges, universities and other public institutions, it is clear there is suficient scale to radically remake the British economy from the bottom up. All in a country which, by international standards, is heavily slanted towards its national capital. The ambition of scaling the ‘Preston Model’ goes beyond simple damage limitation or mitigating the worst excesses of austerity. Far from lifeboat socialism, it would be the first step by which regional and national economies are revived. Street by street, town by town, city by city. How that is achieved is through municipal protectionism, where local, worker-owned business would be actively favoured over multinationals and industry giants. This would not only ofer a swift means of reversing privatisation, but simultaneously help build a more resilient, socially just alternative. Whereas the primary values of the present system are cutting costs and maximising shareholder value, here regional and income inequality would be mitigated and a far broader range of ownership models would emerge. In reality this would mean that the only companies able to bid for specific local contracts would have to meet specific criteria, whether it is being based within a certain distance (perhaps ten kilometres or within a county or state); being a worker-owned cooperative; ofering organic products or being powered by renewable energy. Shareholder value would be replaced by these kinds of metrics in calculating what makes the most sense. 210 paradise found 下一段：[继续读取](https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/6dfd053e-a721-41da-a147-63bee43ea5ea.md?start=220&limit=10)