Paul Mason author of Clear Bright Future

Say what you like about Paul Mason, he has had a remarkable career. His rigorous and curious reporting from uprisings all around the world have informed millions. He is the author of 5 nonfiction books on politics and economics and one novel based on his experiences in China. He has written two plays, one adapted from his book Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere and the other about the women exiled to New Caledonia and he is a regularly to be seen offering fiery punditry on the various news panel programmes. Apart from Owen Jones, it is hard to think of a more prolific and influential British, left-wing commentator. He has certainly profoundly impacted my thinking. His book Postcapitalism introduced me to the zero marginal cost revolution, ideas of post-scarcity and post-work politics. Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere and YouTube clips of his reports had a huge impact on how I covered the Gilets Jaunes movement as a wannabe journalist. Indeed, his reporting was what inspired me to go to the protests in the first place. Love him, loathe him or be broadly supportive but occasionally baffled by him, you cannot deny that Mason is titan of journalism and British punditry.

For those unfamiliar with his work outside journalism, his books have focussed on a few main themes; the collapse of neoliberalism after 2008, the composition of the working class under neoliberalism, the revolutions triggered by neoliberalism’s continuous decline and the system that could replace it when it does eventually die. These themes are all pertinent within his latest book Clear Bright Future which aims, as its subtitle suggests, to mount “a radical defence of the human being” in the face of control by machines and attacks on humanism.

The chronicling of vast historical and technological forces as well as these snapshots of how they affect locales around the globe means the book sometimes reads like you’re watching an Adam Curtis documentary

CBF covers a panoply of subjects drawing on everything from neuroscience, fiction, Marxism and shoe-leather reporting to analyse the current crisis and mount an intellectual counter-offensive to the forces Mason perceives to be responsible. The book’s central thesis is that humanism — a belief in the sanctity of humanity — has been under attack by the machine-like logic of market fundamentalism for the last thirty years, leaving us as fragmented two-dimensional “selves”, atomised by the economic system and performing our lives via various platforms or social situations. As if this wasn’t enough, Mason argues that this hollowing out of the self has left us vulnerable to totalising machine control. If we carry on as we are now, we will sit passively by while elites apply market logic to AI and needlessly allow the deep-tech revolution to be governed by the same “fuck-you ethics” that sees gangsters awarded hero status and bankers making millions speculating on markets while other people die sleeping in the doorways of their glass and steel towers.

Mason details the political and economic crisis fantastically. The first three parts of the book The Events, The Self and The Machines thrillingly explain how the crisis of capitalism helped produce the reactionary, racist and misogynist sentiment that Trump harnessed and how new digital technologies were able to amplify and diffuse these messages among the American population. Not all of these ideas are new, but Mason’s characteristic examination of how the intersection of technology and economic forces affect how we live is a refreshing way of looking at some of the themes pursued by papers such as Norris and Inglehart’s The Silent Revolution in Reverse, which argue that cultural insecurity is the main driver behind this right-wing populist backlash, but that it has been turbocharged by the adverse economic effects felt by many since the crash. The book opens on a scene of Mason running through a riot in Washington before he goes on to explain how this fits into a macro-economic and political narrative. The chronicling of vast historical and technological forces as well as these snapshots of how they affect locales around the globe means the book sometimes reads like you’re watching an Adam Curtis documentary. Mason gives a history of neoliberalism in four distinct phases which takes the reader from the Fed to the favela, into Tiannamen square, along a flow of cheap credit into post-Soviet Russia and then through the various economic breakdowns that started neoliberalism’s death spiral. When the geographical and temporal trajectory of the book spins on a dime between the paragraphs in this chapter, you can’t help but imagine Brian Eno playing in the background as your mind conjures the vivid images of blunders, riots and conspiracies that he describes.

Mason lambasts the liberal tendency to assume that Hannah Arendt is the be all and end all in understanding the current fascist wave and argues that we can’t just live a non-fascist life, we have to live an anti-fascist one. Foucault’s techniques for the non-fascist life would lead you “from the pilates gym to the shrink, attending anti-Trump protests in Washington and donating to the democrats” whereas Mason’s conception of the anti-fascist life means;

“putting your body in a place where it can actually stop fascism, and having done so, holding it for long enough for other people to find it, populate it and live”

He plays the hits, again laying out a post capitalist vision of the future, again suggesting that technological revolutions can bring about human emancipation. He argues that if we carry on with Nietzechean fuck you ethics we’ll enter a (even worse) dystopia and lays forth a vision of a new technologically aided humanism based on humanist Marxism and a conception of Aristotelean virtue ethics to be incorporated into any AIs at their outset. It’s persuasively argued, clearly considered, compelling stuff and Mason’s ability to look into the long-term gives the book a sense of credibility that he sometimes loses in his heat of the moment Twitter takes and idiosyncratic policy proposals.

Occasionally the book falls down in its assumptions about how deliberate and pre-planned the phenomena described are. While he does acknowledge that “the Russians did it” narrative is a convenient liberal conspiracy theory to ignore their own abject failures, he still paints Cambridge Analytica as a dark force manipulating our politics. While, it is fair to be terrified about Facebook leaks and the improper use of user data, it seems unfair not to mention that the targeted ads and psychographic techniques made infamous by the CA scandal were also used to great effect by the Obama campaign. In light of this the call to make an anti-fascist alliance with the neoliberals can seem troubling. While we should be trying to convince the likes of the Economist not to praise Bolsonaro just because they like his pension reforms, the very fact that they think this is acceptable at all suggests they probably shouldn’t play any part in the resistance until they renounce neoliberalism. A good example of this working is Peter Daou, an ardent Clintonite turned Bernie supporter. So, perhaps we shouldn’t be allying with the neoliberals as much as reshaping them where possible and taking power and isolating them where it is not. When the left’s programme is completely antagonistic towards the class interests of these people who are conditioned into thinking that greed is good, attempting an alliance seems like a waste of time.

Mason also makes a great deal about the anti-humanism of the modern academy. He argues the case well, and there must be some truth to it as Foucault is one of the most cited thinkers in the humanities, but to say that post-modernism has captured people’s minds seems a bit of an overstatement. His explanation of the neoliberal self which echoes the work of Wendy Brown and Mark Fisher, appears more relevant to the non-philosophy-nerd majority. These minor quibbles aside, it is a fantastic book. Those on the left that denounce Mason as a Posadist or a crank should rethink, you may not agree with him on everything but he is doing the thinking needed to address some of the most pressing issues of the day.