oductive activities.
In the economy as a whole, the state would act to insure that what profits remain would be a reward for entrepreneurship, and not just a “rent” based on ownership. Creators of new knowledge would get the rewards of intellectual property rights, but those rights would be short-lived to encourage the flow of knowledge and the continued incentive for further innovation.
Another thing the state can do is strengthen the legal rights and protections of workers to give them more bargaining power in their relationship with capital. This will indirectly encourage the fuller application of new technologies that can produce economic abundance. “If we legally empowered the workforces of global corporations with strong employment rights, their owners would be forced to promote high-wage, high-growth, high-technology models, instead of the opposite.” Owners would try to make each worker as productive as possible if they could no longer profit from paying such low wages.
An obvious objection is that higher wages and productivity would have the downside of less employment. But for Mason, less employment in capitalist workplaces where owners profit by overworking and/or underpaying workers is ultimately a good thing. Ideally, workers would be better paid for the hours they worked, but also have the option of working fewer hours. They could then experience the decline of paid employment as a liberation, not an involuntary displacement.
The other side of the transformation of work is the increasing opportunities for work outside of traditional profit-centered firms, such as in non-profits and co-ops. Mason recommend that the state “reshape the tax system to reward the creation of non-profits and collaborative production.”
The replacement of millions of workers by automated systems is unlikely to be experienced as a good thing unless it has benefits for people as consumers, not just as workers. Here the state can facilitate the transition by providing a basic income to all households, to support those who are voluntarily or involuntarily outside the system of paid employment. That can improve the safety net for those who are displaced by new technologies. It also “gives people a chance to build positions in the non-market economy” by subsidizing participation in volunteer work, co-ops and adult learning opportunities. Market work would still be rewarding as long as minimum wages were higher than the basic income.
In the long run, the abundance of things made available by hi-tech production methods would bring the monetary cost of living down and reduce consumers’ dependency on earned income. People could rely more heavily on non-market forms of sharing, since they would have more time for unpaid but socially useful activity. As the income tax base became smaller, government’s ability to pay a basic income would decline, but so would people’s need for one.
Can democracy survive the transition?
Just about every one of Mason’s political suggestions goes against conservative thinking, which sees the free market as the creator of wealth and the limited state as its supporter. In the conservative view, the state should tax and regulate capital as little as possible, protect wealth against inflation with tight monetary policy, and keep people dependent on paid employment by providing only the most meager welfare benefits. Mason ends his book by warning that if the democratic state tries to facilitate a transition beyond capitalism, the economic elite may decide that preserving capitalism is more important than preserving the democratic state!
How long will it take before the culture of the Western elite swings toward emulating Putin and Xi Jinping? On some campuses, you can already hear it: “China shows capitalism works better without democracy” has become a standard talking point. The self-belief of the 1 per cent is in danger of ebbing away, to be replaced by a pure and undisguised oligarchy.”
We can already see the beginnings of an alliance between right-wing autocrats and blue-collar workers fearful of losing their jobs, e