Artificial intelligence systems are evolving at a rapid pace, yielding huge profits and powers to the corporate giants that invest in them. At the same time they offer new tools in a number of fields, including the field of art creation. Artists already use such systems to produce new works, while the jobs of their colleagues in the film and recording industries are threatened precisely by the implementation of these systems. Issues that related to copyright, the risk of personal data, the control of personal life, the uncontrolled growth and development of artificial intelligence systems are on the conferences’ agenda, while at the same time artificial intelligence opens up new avenues of artistic expression, creating a wave of creativity, innovation and research.
A prominent application of artificial intelligence in art is the use of generative adversarial networks (GANs). Artists and technologists collaborate to train algorithms on massive datasets of existing artworks, allowing AI to imitate and create new artworks in a similar style. This process has led to the development of visual artworks that challenge traditional notions of inspiration and artistic authority, blurring the boundaries between human creation and that of the machine.
In this context we attempt to deepen the discussion around the opportunities and challenges presented by artificial intelligence. While offering new ways and means of creating and appreciating art, it also raises questions about the role of technology in creative free expression, the ethical implications of art manufactured by artificial intelligence and the future of kinds of synergy between humans and machines.
First Panel 4-5.30 pm: Art and Artificial Intelligence. New possibilities and new challenges
Speakers:
Yiorgos Drosos, “GaUNs* + A.I. Art and Technologies of Artificial Intelligence”.
*GANs: Generative Adversarial Networks New Media Artist, Special Education Staff, New Media Lab, Dept Visual and Applied Arts AUTH
Dimitris Ioakeimidis (Jo Di), “Artificial Intelligence as a Catalyst for Social and Political Change through Art” Dentist – Content Creator Fanourios Moraitis (Nourako), “Large Language Hallucinations” Reference to how LLMs (Large Language Models) work Assistant Professor of Digital Sculpture, ASFA
Kostis Stafylakis, “Homegrown AI: all we want!” Assistant Professor of Fine Arts, Expanded Media and Forms, Department of Fine Arts, Athens School of Fine Arts
Faye Tzanetoulakou, “Technological Sublime” Doctor of Art History, AUTH, Post-doctoral Researcher, UTH, Teaching Staff at UNIWA
The moderator of the panel is Journalist and Curator Dimitris Trikas —– Second Panel 6-7.30 pm: Artificial Intelligence in the Age of Oligarchies: How New Technology is Intervening in Knowledge and Power Relations
Speakers:
Yanis Varoufakis, “Are We Socializing Artificial Intelligence? Or are we dying as a species? Here’s the dilemma“ Doctor of Economics, Professor University of Athens, Secretary General MeRA25. Former Member of the Greek Parliament and Minister of Finance
Yiannis Mitrou, “The “big data” as a political condition: Digitality and the Unconscious” Doctor of Philosophy, Psychoanalyst, visual artist
Dimitris Sarafianos, “Ex machina ars. Cuius est? Who does it belong to?”
Doctor of Law, Art Critic, Director of Lofos Art Project
Georgia Skartadou, “Counter-trained Vision” Researcher, Member of Forensis
Aristotle Tympas, “On the Invisible Shaping of Algorithms and Big Data: Sexist, Racist, ecocidal and class biases” Professor of the History of Technology in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Director of the English-language interdepartmental MA of Science, Technology and Society, University of Athens
The moderator of the panel is Journalist Kostas Raptis Supervisor of the event: Faye Tzanetoulakou
The event will be broadcasted livestream on the page of the Center for Post-Capitalist Civilisation on social media https://www.facebook.com/metacpc
In the framework of the International Museums Day, in the basement of the exhibition space will be presented the video installation “OPEN THE BLACK BOXES” by the visual artist Danae Stratou, following the open online invitation: https://opentheblackboxes.org/invitation-in-the-era-of-ai-labour-relationships-and-the-human-creativity/ The words collected through the OPEN CALL_IN THE ERA OF AI, will to be used for the video piece, as a participatory digital art project, a collaboration of Danae Stratou and the non-profit organization Vital Space, a global, interdisciplinary, cross-media artistic platform that deals with pressing issues of our time. The project is based on the principle of “think global – act local”. It invites people all over the world to submit a Single Word to the website in response to one of two questions: “What threatens you the most?” “What are you most eager to preserve?”
We live in the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution. Technology gallops, bringing cataclysmic changes in the production process, labor relations, artistic creation. Automation, robotics and Artificial Intelligence are changing everything in the way we work, in the way we express our creativity. But we must not forget: the opaque design, the ownership of the technology and the ways of using it, are what determine the mark of its consequences in our lives. However, the discussion on this very important issue has so far been absent from the public sphere and from political dialogue.
SPEAKERS’ BIOGRAPHIES
Yanis Varoufakis was born in 1961 in Athens. He is an Economist, Professor, author. He studied mathematics and economics in Britain, where he taught at the universities of Essex, East Anglia, Glasgow, and Cambridge, before “immigrating” to Australia, as a Professor at the University of Sydney. In 2000 he returned to Greece and took up the position of Professor of Economic Theory at Athens University. In the period 2012-2014 he taught at the University of Texas, Austin. In January 2015, he was elected Member of Parliament, garnering the most votes in the country, and took over as Minister of Finance. After five and a half months of hard work of confrontations with the troika, on the evening of the referendum of July 5, 2015 he resigned as a minister and continued his confrontation with the policies that reproduce the crisis on a pan-European level. On February 9, 2016 in Berlin, with European politicians and intellectuals, co-founded the Movement for Democracy in Europe DiEM25. In 2019, MeRA25, the Greek electoral arm of DiEM25, entered the Parliament with 9 seats.
Yiorgos Drosos is a visual artist. He teaches at the Department of Visual and Applied Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in the laboratory “New Media in Visual Arts”. He specializes in New Media, image and sound. The core of his work is the correlation of movement with space and time. He has 6 solo exhibitions and has participated in numerous group exhibitions. He has created educational applications and has supported two museums, the State Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Natural History.
Dimitris Ioakeimidis was born in 1982 in Nea Ionia, Magnesia. He graduated from Dental School of AUTH in 2008. He moved to the Netherlands in 2010, working as a dentist in Groningen and the The Hague, while since 2021 he has also taken over the management of the emergency dental clinic of Westeinde Hospital incidents. Outside of the professional course, he engages with music and online content creation. He created one of the first blogs in Greece and since 2013, through the website jodi.graphics informs and comments on political events in Greece and Europe.
Yiannis Mitrou is Dr. Philosophy, visual-performance artist, director and theorist of Contemporary art and Psychoanalysis. He taught for the last five years at School of Fine Arts of AUTH, Department of Visual and Applied Arts and teaches at Interdepartmental master’s programs Art theory and psychoanalysis and artistic practices. Studies: 1996, Bachelor of Science, Aristotle University, Department of Physics / 1996-97, Master’s courses in theoretical physics on Chaos, Department of Physics, AUTH/ 1997-99, Scholarship for original scientific research, Nuclear Fusion Institute at Orsay, Paris-Sud / 2005, Master of Systematic Philosophy, Department of Philosophy and of Pedagogy, AUTH / 2010-2013, Teaching Psychoanalysis, Faculty of Educational Reason, Educational Society of Northern Greece / 2014-2017, Training under supervision as a psychoanalyst / 2017, PhD: “Phenomenology of the Unconscious: The Lacanian Paradigm field”, in collaboration with the Department of Philosophy and Pedagogy of AUTH with the departmentof Psychoanalysis, Paris VIII. Research experience: 1997-99, work on the relationship between Art and Science in the context of of the scholarship from the Nuclear Fusion Institute of Paris-Sud / 2000-02: scientific advisor and manager of educational programs in Macedonian Labor Institute / 2003: Founds the International Performing Arts Research Laboratory-Alma Kalma. Artistic and scientific collaborations: 2013, Philosophical Research Laboratory in the Imaginary of AUTH, in collaboration with the Center de Recherche surl’Imaginaire, University Stendhal-Grenoble III / 2003, Research Institute of Performing Arts-J. Grotowski, Poland / 2005, Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, Pondedera, Italy / 2012 -14, Department of Performing and Experimental Arts of the Art Academy of Moscow / 2018, Club Art Organization New Orleans, America / 2019, Artistic director of the organization: International Meeting Performance Art, parallel event of the International Short Film Festival of Drama. The directions of his research concern the Philosophy of Art, Language and Politics in articulation with Phenomenology.
Fanourios Moraitis (Nourako) lives and works in Athens. His work is about practices of post-digital plasticity and the study of algorithms as expanded artistic processes. He has a degree in Electronic Engineering & Engineer in Computer Science from the Technical University of Crete and obtained an MSc. in Art and Technology from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden with a scholarship from the A. S. Onassis Foundation. He worked at the French National Institute of Informatics and Automation (INRIA) and studied at the Art Students League of New York. He is a graduate of the Athens School of Fine Arts, where he now teaches at the rank of Assistant Professor. He has exhibited in Greece and abroad and his works are in private collections.
Dimitris Sarafianos is a lawyer, Doctor of Law and Director of the Lofos Art Project. He has been a member of the Board of Directors at the Athens Bar Board and Vice-President of the Hellenic Union for Human Rights. He is the Director-Legal Advisor of the Greek Collecting Society for Works of Visual Arts OSDEETE. His articles have been published in Greek and English magazines and books.
GeorgiaSkartadou is a Researcher at the Forensis group, the sister organization of Forensic Architecture. She holds an undergraduate degree from the School of Architecture from Aristoteleion University of Thessaloniki and a Master’s degree in Digital Arts from Ionian University. Her research activity focuses on the understanding of possibilities and limitations that new media/technologies provide to their claims of social interactions and interventions. Her experience on tools and practices comes from the professional occupation in the field of cinema and video games.
Dr. KostisStafylakis is a visual artist and art theorist with a PhD in Political Science from the Department of Political Sciences and History at Panteion University, Athens. He graduated from the Athens School of Fine Arts and he also holds an MA in Art Theory and an MA in Continental Philosophy from the University of Essex. His works often take the form of navigation through the online and physical space of fringe social groups. His published essays delve into the relation between the “mimetic”, the “social, and the ”the “political”. He has taught and lectured at undergraduate and graduate programs at the Athens School of Fine Arts, the University of Patras, the University of Western Macedonia and other institutions across Greece and Europe. He has been a post-doc researcher at ASFA and Aristoteleion University of Thessaloniki. He was curator and co-curator of the Outburst of the digital swamp (Overkill festival, NL, 2023), the 6th Athens Biennale ANTI, the 4th Athens Biennale AGORA, Weasel Dance at Goethe-Institut
Athen, Twisting C(r)ash at the Batiment d’Art Contemporain Geneva, The Suspension of Litanies and Fuyuhiko Takata at ViZ Laboratory for Visual Culture, and more. His most recent solo shows were GZPRM GOPNIK at KEIV Athens (2023), Chloroquine Juggalo at KEIV Athens (2021) and the two-person show Readiness: Civil War at Panke Gallery, Berlin (2022). His artistic activity includes participations at Prepper Paradise, Bureau Europa (2022), Bless’ed Curse by soloshow.online (2021), Toxicfest at Tick Tack Antwerpen (2021), Oblique Field (by Gossamer Fog, London, 2021), Enter: New Commissions by Onassis Foundation (2020), Kultursymposium Weimar (2019), the “Festival of Democracy” of Geneva (2017), Neue Ravensburger Kunstverein (2017), “Omonoia” 5th Athens Biennale (2016), 1st NSK Biennialof Folk Art (2014), Hell as Pavillion at Palais de Tokyo (2013), Truth is Concrete by Steirischer Herbst, Graz (2012), Monodrome 3rd Athens Biennale (2011), Media Impact at the 4th Moscow Biennial (2011) and more.
FayeTzanetoulakou holds a PhD in Art History, Aristoteleion University of Thessaloniki. She is a University Scholar at the University of Thessaly. She teaches the courses Social Function of Art, and Art and Materiality at the University of West Attica, and is conducting Postdoctoral research at the School of Architecture at the University of Thessaly on contemporary Environmental Art. She works as an Art Critic/Exhibition Curator, and is the Arts Editor at culturenow.gr She has been Secretary General of the Greek Section of the International Association of Art Critics, AICA. She is an environmental activist and supports the Zero Waste movement.
AristotleTympas is Professor of History of Technology in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science of the University of Athens, with specialization in the study of Artificial Intelligence and energy transitions. With studies in Chemical Engineering at Aristoteleion University of Thessaloniki, a Master’s degree and a PhD in technology-science policy and history – sociology of technology in the USA. He is the director of the English-language Master’s program in the interdisciplinary field of Science, Technology, Society, member of the Gender Equality Committee of the University of Athens, vice president of research at the European Inter-University Association on Society, Science and Technology, and action chair at the European research network on the role of new technology in shaping European borders and immigration. He holded the chair of Tensions of Europe: Network on History, Technology and Europe. He was a visiting scholar at MIT.
The conference “AI: Means of Emancipation or Dystopia?” is organized by the meta | Center for Post-Capitalist Culture in collaboration with Lofos Art Project, Velvendou 39, Kypseli.
What kind of world will we live in? What era is dawning before us?
We are living through the sunset of a world order and the dawn of a new macro-historical cycle.
Taking the war in Ukraine and the crisis of the pandemic as its starting point, the book outlines the shaping of a new global order and discusses the completion of three different and partly overlapping historical cycles: the post-Cold War order (1991-), the post-war world (1945-) and a great era of human history (19th century-), the ‘Age of the Great Deviation’. By the middle of the 21st century, and with 2037 as a landmark year, the three historical cycles that have defined the metamorphoses of order during the last two centuries will have been completed: the Great Deviation will expire.
From history to political geography, from the completion of the American hegemonic period to the return of Asia, from technology to demography, and from modernity to postsecularism, this book attempts a long-range dissection of developments, with the aim of providing a tool for understanding the world-historical changes taking place on the cusp of the end of an era and the beginning of a new macro-historical cycle.
A tool for understanding our world; a dangerous book | Introduction by Sotiris Mitralexis
This book by Dimitris V. Peponis outlines ‘the end of the great deviation’ and ‘the shaping of the new global order’; it begins apropos of ‘the Ukraine war and the pandemic crisis’, but the end thatit describes and analyses is not quite that recent in nature – since the foundational coordinates of the era that emerges after this end and its succeeding state are not dictated by the usual, ‘journalistic’ rules of current affairs. Essentially, the book deals with the closure, completion and eclipse of three distinct yet partly overlapping historical cycles:
a cycle of about thirty years (~1991–2023): the end of the post-Cold War (and US-centric) order;
a cycle of about eighty years (~1945–2020s): the end of the post-war (and West-centric, or more correctly North-centric) world;
and a cycle of about two hundred years, two centuries (early 19th century–mid-21st century): the completion of a wider era, Eurocentric at first and West-centric afterwards, characterised by Anglo-Saxon primacy: the end of the Age of the Great Deviation, as it is characteristically referred to in the book.
Although the title of the book predisposes its readers for a study in international politics with elements of history or, as we have learned to call it, ‘international relations’, we are used to referring in such terms to discourses and analyses of a more topical nature[1] or, if you like, of a journalistic nature – even if they seem quite scholarly in nature. What we have here is a project claiming a more comprehensive, a deeper tracing of the coordinates of the world in which we live and, by implication, of the world that is gradually yet quite discernibly emerging: it is a ‘broader’ tool for understanding our world.
Before addressing theUkraine war, the book gives from its opening pages a preview of the ‘bigger picture’, a brief outline of the elements and, as we said, the coordinates ofan emerging world. It proceeds to study a precondition forunderstanding the nature and stakes of what apparently began in 2022 on the European continent with the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, that is to say, a reflection on the world wars that preceded it in the 20th century: the Great War (WWI) and its sequel (WWII), the distortions in their historiography, their vital fronts and their unresolved nature. Subsequently, the book studies the causes and stakes of the Ukraine war and continues with the dissection of the central issues of the wider field, which largely transcends the territory of Ukraine per se: issues of political geography, the nature of war, peace and deterrence, the position and state of the European Union, strategic dilemmas, ‘West’ and ‘East’, ‘North’ and ‘South’, the uses of historiography, future possibilities. The first part of the book deals with these and is followed, in the second part, by a more comprehensive exploration of the conclusion of the period of American hegemony in world affairs. The third part returns to elements and patterns of the previous ones, yet from a different perspective – illuminating, among other things, elements of political geography, demographics, ideologies, and macrostructures beyond the news cycle. The book concludes with a selective reading of the developments during the COVID-19 pandemic and especially during the lockdowns and the use of technology in that context as a further indication of the beginning of a new historical cycle, concomitant to the previous readings from a different perspective and starting point. In a way, the book as a whole is an expanded version of the note with which it closes: a chronology that a scholar and researcher of our times might write from a possible and distant future.
Instead of ‘choosing sides’ in all kinds of dichotomies and dilemmas of our time, the book presupposes the demonstration of the false nature ofthese dichotomies and dilemmas: ‘West and East’ or ‘the West and the Rest’, ‘liberals versus illiberals’, ‘democracies versus autocracies’, ‘progress’ versus ‘conservatism’, ‘future’ versus ‘past’, at least in the way we have come to understand them in the context of certain historiographical schematisations. It undermines the very backbone of the dichotomies with which we have learned, or been taught, to structure our thinking, leading us to conclusions in our absence, as if by an autopilot. Since, as we say at mέta, the old tools are broken; the old rules simply do not apply anymore. In this respect, this is a dangerous book.
This book is published on the initiative of mέta, the Athens-based Centre for Postcapitalist Civilisation. Dimitris V. Peponis has been collaborating with the mέta’s research sector since 2021, and the main fruit of this collaboration is the present book, co-edited by yours truly and Stefanos Reppas –whom I’d like to emphatically thank from these pages. Already from its title, mέta, the Centre for Postcapitalist Civilisation signals the objective of engaging with an era measured in centuries (the two plus centuries of capitalism, in this case) and with that which succeeds it, yet is still pending; by referring to postcapitalism, i.e. to what comes after capitalism, mέta joins a discussion on a period that rather escapes the limits, scope and horizon of daily discourses on the political, as far as its scope is concerned. In particular, the introductory text of mέta’s research sector states that
‘It has been noted that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, invoking the need for serious reflection on the end of the existing order and a transition to a postcapitalist way of life. Yet the future of the world economy is but one of the aspects of postcapitalism. After all, capitalism itself might be prima facie an economic system, but it has evolved into a comprehensive political, cultural, anthropological and international order. Postcapitalism, however it might evolve, is not merely the modification of an economic system; it will prove to be a new political, cultural, anthropological, civilisational paradigm — a new era indeed. A dystopian one, a utopian one, or anything in between. And the turbulences of the gradual transition are to be witnessed by all. The oligarchic decline of liberal democracy engenders countless variations of authoritarian tendencies; the supply chain of tributes for the global minotaur are increasingly interrupted; novel desiderata for emancipation are articulated; the chasms between megacities and provinces nurture silent, cold civil wars; the emergence of a non-Anglophone, non-Atlantic, non-liberal, non-bipartisan state as the planet’s largest economy is just around the corner, overturning a two-centuries-old order; the changes in global demography and geopolitics are vertiginous; climate change is threatening our very existence. Transformations of gigantic proportions radically reshape the world before our very eyes.’
The analyses, concepts and frameworks of the present work by Dimitris V. Peponis do not necessarily follow the specific iteration ofthe broader view referred to in the above rather indicative diagnosis, they chart their own path, focusing primarily on the causes and conditions of the colossal changes in international politics and beyond; however, it will probably become obvious to the reader that the present work is an essential, arguably irreplaceable, precondition for any analysis claiming a range such as the one above. In this context, the editors express our certainty that the reader holds in their hands a truly valuable book: a tool for understanding our world which, if anything, has been missing from the public sphere and debate – and whose crucial nature will unfold and reveal itself in time, beyond the spinning magic mirrors of current affairs.
Sotiris Mitralexis
PhD in Political Science and International Relations
mέta’s research director
[1] A potentially useful note: although this book is not about monitoring current events but about the bigger picture, it is worth clarifying that it was completed at the end of November 2022, i.e. that it takes into account the events that took place up to that time.
18 October 2021 marked exactly forty years since PASOK’s first electoral victory. The “Change” of 1981 was the event that marked the Third Greek Republic like few others.
The limits, contradictions, integration and subsequent degeneration of PASOK (a journey that was less short than that of SYRIZA) and ultimately its actual death in the era of the memoranda do not negate the need to reflect on the post-metapolitefsi period as a whole, to reflect on the timeliness of the claims for national independence, popular sovereignty and social justice and, of course, to confront, in today’s very different circumstances, the question of claiming the socialist transformation that was posed at the beginning of the post-independence period by an ever-expanding section of Greek society.
In this book, Vassilis Asimakopoulos, Sissy Velissariou, Yannis Mavris and Chrysanthos Tassis – together with the testimony of Dimitris Livieratos and the intervention of Yannis Varoufakis – attempt an anatomy of the past with an eye to today and tomorrow.
Throughout history, technology and its evolution have significantly impacted the societal modes of production and organisation. The highest rise in technological evolution has been observed under the capitalist system. Technology has not, as of yet, proved to be capitalism’s demise. However, some believe that advances in Artificial Intelligence and automation render them radically different technologies to those of the past and will mean capitalism’s demise and the dawn of a new, postcapitalist era. This paper will assess this claim by looking at historical evidence and contemporary theoretical and empirical work to argue that, while it is possible that such technologies are radically different to those of the past and might bring about the fall of the capitalist system, such claims cannot yet be substantiated due to the early stage of the aforementioned technologies’ development.
Vasilis Lianos is a graduate student studying for the MSc Political Theory at the University of Amsterdam. He first completed the MA in Global Political Economy at Leiden University and the BSc in Politics and International Relations at the University of London. He likes to delve into the topic of a postcapitalist society in the hope that it might, one day, come to pass
Life under capitalism. Rampant debilitating denial for the many next to vile enrichment of the few. Material deprivation, denial, and denigration. Dignity defiled. Michael Albert’s book No Bosses advocates for the conception and then organization of a new economy. The vision offered is called participatory economics. It elevates self-management, equity, solidarity, diversity, and sustainability. It eliminates elitist, arrogant, dismissive, authoritarian, exploitation, competition, and homogenization. No Bosses proposes a built and natural productive commons, self-management by all who work, income for how long, how hard, and the onerousness of conditions of socially valued work, jobs that give all economic actors comparable means and inclination to participate in decisions that affect them, and a process called participatory planning in which caring behavior and solidarity are the currency of collective and individual success.
A member of mέta’s Advisory Board, Michael Albert is a founder and current member of the staff of Z Magazineas well as staff of Z Magazine`s web system: ZCom. Albert`s radicalization occurred during the 1960s. His political involvements, starting then and continuing to the present, have ranged from local, regional, and national organizing projects and campaigns to co-founding South End Press, Z Magazine, the Z Media Institute, and ZNet, and to working on all these projects, writing for various publications and publishers, giving public talks, etc. Albert is the author of 21 books. Most recently these include: No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World (Zero Books, 2021), Fanfare for the Future (ZBooks), Remembering Tomorrow (Seven Stories Press), Realizing Hope (Zed Press) and Parecon: Life After Capitalism (Verso). Many of Albert`s articles are stored in ZCom and can be accessed there along with hundreds of other Z Magazine and ZNet articles essays, interviews, etc.
Statement by Michael Albert:
I boundlessly celebrate the publication of a Greek translation of “No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World” by Topos Books in collaboration with the wonderful Centre for Postcapitalist Civilisation, mέta. Greece, like so many other places, including my U.S., not only confronts a very dangerous economic, political, and ecological future, but also a potentially equitable, self managing, and green one. Moreover, Greece’s population, I think like people everywhere, is steadily realising as much. So “No Bosses” in Greek is timely. Like any book’s author, I of course want the ideas conveyed by “No Bosses” to reach widely, be critically assessed and refined, and be shared. But with a book presenting a postcapitalist vision, this desire is really the whole point. Emerging from past practice and seeking to aid future practice, a book like this has merit only insofar as it facilitates and promotes further thoughtful strategic activism today and into the future. That is what mέta stands for and so too the book “No Bosses”. I hope it proves useful in Greece, as I hope it proves useful wherever folks seek to move beyond capitalism.
This book presents the new Precariat – the rapidly growing number of people facing lives of insecurity, on zero hours contracts, moving in and out of jobs that give little meaning to their lives. The delivery driver who brings your packages, the uber driver who gets you to work, the security guard at the mall, the carer looking after our elderly…these are The Precariat.
Guy Standing investigates this new and growing group, finding a frustrated and angry new underclass who are often ignored by politicians and economists. The rise of zero hours contracts, encouraged by fat cat corporations as risk-free employment, and by silicon valley as a way of outsourcing costs and responsibility, has been exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. At the same time, in its experience of lockdown, the western world is realizing the true value of these nurses, carers and key workers.
The answer? The return of income security and meaningful work – the principles 20th century capitalism was built on. By making the fears and desires of the Precariat central to economic thinking, Standing shows how concepts like Basic Income are not just desirable but inevitable, and plots the way to a better future.
A member of mέta’s Advisory Board, Guy Standing is Professorial Research Associate, SOAS University of London, and an honorary professor at the University of Sydney. An economist with a PhD from the University of Cambridge, he is a Fellow of the British Academy of Social Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, co-founder and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), and member of the Progressive Economy Forum. In 2016-19, he was adviser to Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, John McDonnell.
He was professor in SOAS, Bath and Monash Universities, and Director of the ILO’s Socio-Economic Security Programme. He has been a consultant for many international bodies, was Research Director for President Mandela’s Labour Market Policy Commission, and has implemented several basic income pilots. His books include The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, published in 23 languages (fourth edition, 2021); The Corruption of Capitalism (third edition, 2021); Basic Income: And how we can make it happen (2017); and Plunder of the Commons (2019). In 2020, he collaborated with Massive Attack in a video based on his book, Battling Eight Giants: Basic Income Now (2020).
Book launch in Athens, Greece:
Discussion with Yanis Varoufakis and Q&A with the audience:
mέta Working Papers’ series “Towards (a Better) Postcapitalism: A Handy How-To Guide” publishes solicited policy papers on aspects of how would a non-dystopian postcapitalism look like. The series focuses on three ‘pillars’:
Production | Allocation | Decision Making
i.e., how could/would postcapitalist production be like (and who would own the means of production), what shape would the allocation of goods take (and which alternatives to the market economy may be explored), and what would be the main tenets of postcapitalist decision making and democracy.
In this paper,Michael Albert revisits certain aspects of PARECON (‘participatory economics’) as a viable postcapitalist model.
Michael Albert is a founder and current member of the staff of Z Magazine as well as staff of Z Magazine’s web system: ZCom. He is a member of mέta’s Advisory Board. Albert’s radicalization occurred during the 1960s. His political involvements, starting then and continuing to the present, have ranged from local, regional, and national organizing projects and campaigns to co-founding South End Press, Z Magazine, the Z Media Institute, and ZNet, and to working on all these projects, writing for various publications and publishers, giving public talks, etc. Albert is the author of 21 books. Most recently these include: No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World (Zero Books, 2021), Fanfare for the Future (ZBooks), Remembering Tomorrow (Seven Stories Press), Realizing Hope (Zed Press) and Parecon: Life After Capitalism (Verso).
The Centre for Postcapitalist Civilisation, mέta, presents Alexandria Shaner’s & Michael Albert’s mέta Working Paper entitledParticipatory Economics Overview: What, Why, How (accessible here), part of the “Towards (a Better) Postcapitalism: A Handy How-To Guide” series under “Allocation.”
mέta Working Papers’ series “Towards (a Better) Postcapitalism: A Handy How-To Guide” publishes solicited policy papers on aspects of how would a non-dystopian postcapitalism look like. The series focuses on three ‘pillars’:
Production | Allocation | Decision Making
i.e., how could/would postcapitalist production be like (and who would own the means of production), what shape would the allocation of goods take (and which alternatives to the market economy may be explored), and what would be the main tenets of postcapitalist decision making and democracy.
In this paper, Alexandria Shaner & Michael Albert provide an overview of PARECON (‘participatory economics’) as a viable postcapitalist model.
Alexandria Shaner is a sailor, writer, organizer, and activist. Based in the southern Caribbean, she is an in-structor at the School for Social and Cultural Change and active with RealUtopia.org and The Climate Reality Project.
Michael Albert is a founder and current member of the staff of Z Magazine as well as staff of Z Magazine’s web system: ZCom. He is a member of mέta’s Advisory Board. Albert’s radicalization occurred during the 1960s. His political involvements, starting then and continuing to the present, have ranged from local, regional, and national organizing projects and campaigns to co-founding South End Press, Z Magazine, the Z Media Institute, and ZNet, and to working on all these projects, writing for various publications and publishers, giving public talks, etc. Albert is the author of 21 books. Most recently these include: No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World (Zero Books, 2021), Fanfare for the Future (ZBooks), Remembering Tomorrow (Seven Stories Press), Realizing Hope (Zed Press) and Parecon: Life After Capitalism (Verso).
Orchestrated irrationality in our public discourse is produced by technologically enhanced and commercially purposed atomization and tribalism. Public discourse now leans away from a humane, free, and reasoned political rationality and towards self-interested, calculative, herd conformism. The bulls and bears of consumer society have largely displaced the civic logic of the liberal democratic pursuit of the common good. The power interests that govern global consumerism are enhanced by subordinating the common good ends of genuinely political life to the self-interested and profit driven dynamics of the market. Orchestrated irrationality in our public discourse makes politics into a meaningless theatre of incommensurate tribal interest narratives, which is a convenient distraction from the collaborative consolidation of market power and state control. This orchestrated irrationality can only be combatted by seeking to de-atomize citizens and de-tribalize the public square in order to recover the priority of political life over market and authoritari-an power in our public discourse. That is, a post-capitalist civilization that is ori-ented to a genuinely political and universally moral rationality must replace the present global order. Once we can identify the problem and the direction of cure for orchestrated irrationality, we can then take steps towards a different civilisational life-world.
Dr Paul Tysonis an interdisciplinary scholar working across sociology, theology and philosophy. He is an honorary senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland, Australia, and a member of mέta’s Advisory Board.
mέta Working Papers’ series “Towards (a Better) Postcapitalism: A Handy How-To Guide” publishes solicited policy papers on aspects of how would a non-dystopian postcapitalism look like. The series focuses on three ‘pillars’:
Production | Allocation | Decision Making
i.e., how could/would postcapitalist production be like (and who would own the means of production), what shape would the allocation of goods take (and which alternatives to the market economy may be explored), and what would be the main tenets of postcapitalist decision making and democracy.
In this paper, Savvina Chowdhury addresses the first pillar: postcapitalist production.
Savvina Chowdhury, PhD, teaches feminist political economy at the Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Washington. She is currently working with youth at a juvenile detention centre and is interested in popular education. Savvina also works with Economics for Everyone, a community-based group that holds free, monthly popular education workshops in downtown Olympia, inviting dialogue and discussion on the historical and contemporary crises of capitalism.
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