Project Zero: How Is Capitalism Going to End? An Interview with Journalist Paul Mason

Capitalism is on its last legs and is about to be destroyed by a generation so connected by technology that they have more loyalty to their phone than to their social class.

That's what I took from meeting Paul Mason, economics editor of Channel 4 News, VICE's one-time Northern Soul correspondent and the author of a new book that you should probably read: Postcapitalism – A Guide to Our Future.

The book is ambitious, but to boil it down: Mason reckons capitalism as we know it can't really handle the pace of the technological change it has unleashed—specifically when it comes to information technology. It'll have to be replaced, and he calls this replacement "postcapitalism."

I recently met Mason in a small meeting room of the offices of Penguin—of which his publishers Allen Lane are part—in London. As we sat down, his publicist stood a small wall of copies of his book behind his head—with its distinctive cover that Mason describes as "moody"—a bit like the company logos that every soccer manager must perform post-match interviews in front of. Presumably, then, Allen Lane would like you to buy the book after reading this article. They'd probably be annoyed if somebody ripped a PDF and put it on the internet for people to download for free. Which is a bit ironic, since a key theme of the book is how the unstoppable free flow of information facilitated by the internet is going to destroy capitalist trade as we know it.

Take, for instance, copyright law: a fundamental plank of the economy as we know it, hammered out since about the 18th century, and one that basically doesn't make sense in a world of Pirate Bay and album leaks.

"I don't think the Beatles made their first album because they wanted to be charging 99p a track because they still own the copyright to it when they're all dead," said Mason. "They made it so they could shag beautiful women, take drugs, and have a fantastic time while they were young. That's why they did it. And that's why anybody does everything, actually. That's not to be sexist about it—that's why men and women throughout the ages have done amazing creative things; because they want to be valued, have their voice heard, and I think it's mad to imagine that copyright can exist forever. It should be just tapered much more cleverly."

You may recognize Mason from his dispatches on Channel 4 News, reporting from Greece as it gets pushed into a financial abyss, Scotland as it nearly lurched away from the UK, and wherever else the tectonic plates of the world economy and politics are shifting. When we met, his experience as a communicator came into play, talking not just with his hands but, at times, seemingly with each limb and facial feature pointing in a different direction. Beneath the relatively traditional delivery style of a public service newscaster lies a radical political mind with its roots in the traditional left—young Mason was a supporter of Workers' Power, a Trotskyite sect—that is perhaps given a little more room to breathe when he writes op-eds for the Guardian or writes books such as his 2012 hit, Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions.

McCartney's quibbling over the rights to Sgt. Pepper illustrated just one of the ways that technology undermines capitalism. How can supply and demand make sense when the supply of an mp3 is infinite? It can't, really, and this leads to what Mason calls the "zero-price vortex." Tangible things also get dragged into this zero-price vortex—the value of shoes is "dependent more on socially created ideas (the brand) rather than the physical cost of production." Add to that the destruction of the relationship between how much stuff costs and how much people get paid to make it and capitalism has a pickle on its hands. Can the system survive stuff being free?

Mason argues it can't, and that the harbingers of a change to postcapitalism are what Mason calls networked individuals—the young, digitally connected people who, much like John, Paul, George, and Ringo before them, just want to get laid. But they could use technology for so much more than Tinder and Happn, if only they could recognize it.

"If they began to understand the power of cooperation and networking in their lives, in the same way they understand its personal power—the ability to have three girlfriends at once—you can harness that power, in a much more interesting way, actually."

When he says this, I can't shake the thought of the stereotyped internet generation of cutesters intagramming from the Cereal Killer Café as the leaders of some nauseating, sweet potential revolution.

MASON gives instead the example of Chinese factory workers, who in the West we mainly think of as the suicidal producers of smartphones, rather than avid users of the devices: "They're banned from even touching their mobile phone during the actual work day, they march to work, they carry their tin plate with them, and they eat together, so they look like utterly regimented individuals. But when they're in their own space—say, they go up to the toilet—first thing they do [is get on their phones], 'How much are you getting [paid]? My mate from village X in back-of-beyond shanty town Y [is getting paid this], you're getting this, I'm getting this—this is not right.'"

https://www.vice.com/read/paul-mason-interview-postcapitalism-845