A Future for Humanity?

Abstract

Clear Bright Future is Paul Mason’s radical defence of humanity from Trumpist populism and de-globalisation, neo-liberalism, the threat of machine learning and, notwithstanding the book’s title (lifted from Trotsky’s Testament), Marxism, which, he considers, needs a ‘kicking’. Mason redefines Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach so that the point of change is to understand the world, or more precisely, for him to understand the world. According to Mason, the declassed, amorphous but nonetheless conscious, yet unconscious, networked individual, who is far more complex, and so essential, than traditional classes, although not a traditional class, and so subjective and not objective, and so not essential, will adopt communism, even though it has not, and implement a new world order, somehow. Mainly it would appear by arguing that machines do not have feelings, but also by rehabilitating the absolute moral philosophy of Thomas Malthus, amongst other things.