Four Futures: Life after Capitalism by Peter Frase (review)

Peter Frase's Four Futures is a well-developed study of how a postcapitalist egalitarian society could be created. As the title suggests, the book is organized around four chapters detailing possible future societies. There are two utopian visions contained in chapters entitled "Communism" and "Socialism," and two contrasting dystopian worlds in "Rentism" and "Exterminism." Frase takes each of these societies in turn and analyzes the possibility of creating a utopian one, where humanity cares about finding a solution to the climate crisis and embraces technology (automation) for positive outcomes. Throughout the book Frase warns the reader of the totalitarian alternatives that the misuse of postcapitalist opportunities could lead to, and uses references to dystopian fiction and other cultural phenomena to demonstrate an alternative dystopian future, if humanity fails to focus on the task in hand.

Frase argues that the two future elements that humanity fears the most are ecological disaster and automation. The outcome of developing automation has been debated for some time, starting with the Industrial Revolution, which took place first in Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During the revolution, the creation of large mechanized factories led to concerns that manual jobs would be replaced, leaving the masses in poverty. William Morris wrote about such matters in Useful Work Versus Useless Toil in 1885 and called upon the bosses to embrace technology and let workers use the extra leisure time that automation created to their own advantage. Frase is therefore inaccurate when arguing that the discussion around politics, specifically class struggle and the inequality created by automation, has been overlooked. However, a serious discussion has yet to be had with regards to class and climate change, making Frase's contribution important.

Four Futures acknowledges the changes in which wealth has been attained in recent decades. Landownership, a system that formed the basis of the work of economists such as Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes and which is further explained in the chapter on communism, is no longer the footing of the capitalist class. Instead, power is concentrated among those who own the property rights to intellectual data, with software manufactures, Silicon Valley tech company's and venture-capitalists developing as the owners of wealth in the twenty-first century. This phenomenon is explained further in the chapter on rentism.

Frase's other premise is that ecological destruction is inevitable, and that humanity will have to adapt to the changes it brings. Climate change was the basis of the chapter on socialism, where Frase drew on the work of scientists and intellectuals to provide evidence that humanity will need to embrace automation to adapt to ecological changes and build an egalitarian postcapitalist society. These adaptations included a rapid transition to green energy and embracing automation such as robot carers, which are automated replacements for human health workers, and 3-D printers. These adaptations would be backed up by a system of wages via a universal basic income and cryptocurrencies. However, Frase is also aware that these technologies could create a dystopian future as easily as they could a utopian one. This warning is seen in chapter 4 of the book, "Exterminism," which is based on a scenario in which Frase argues that for the mega-wealthy most goods are effectively free, creating a kind of communism for a few people.

The reader of Four Futures should not be fooled into thinking that this book lacks humanity or praises the robot overlords. It is written with humor and warmth and there are glimpses of familiarity in an abundance of cultural references, seen in films, novels, and television series. Inevitably, George Orwell's utopian 1984, the Hunger Games trilogy and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein are all used to demonstrate various points. However, Frase's research also turned up new and interesting discoveries, such as Orson Scott Card's novel, Ender's Game where children fought interstellar wars online, as if they were using drone technology. Frase also used older cultural references...