The Singularity And Socialism

From the back of the book: The Singularity & Socialism is an exhilarating fast paced read showing the points of similarity and interconnection between Classical Liberal, Marxist, and Libertarian economic ideology and Complexity Theory/Economics and how they may change with coming technological advancements. The book updates the issues and illuminates many of today's debates allowing the reader to come to a better understanding of the surprising interrelatedness between ideologies and their eventual convergence at the event horizon of the coming Economic Singularity. The process needed for obtaining an almost zero marginal cost system is enumerated within its pages. Whether you are a: Conservative, Progressive, Libertarian, Marxist, Socialist, Transhumanist, Venus Project enthusiast or a Zeitgeist Movement follower you will greatly enjoy this well written book! If there is one book that frames the debate between the Techno-optimists/Singularitans and Sustainatopians today and transcends the argument between them, this is it! The underlying theme that this book takes up is, "what happens to our present ideological ideas about Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, Libertarianism and Conservatism when we reach the event horizon of the coming economic singularity." When abundance breaks out, how does that change our ideas about all of our political beliefs and economic systems that were founded upon a scarcity of resources and the means to fully, efficiently produce them in a new distributed way. The almost Zero cost society is possible with the evolution of Kevin Kelly's Technium, with a surprising convergence between the ideas found in classical liberal and traditional Marxian economics, coupled with complexity theory/economics and Techno-optimism. This work transcends the oppositional dialectics and seeks to recognize the possible convergence of all presently combative ideologies at the Omega Point we are accelerating toward.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” are the famous words of George Santayana. The twentieth century was a time of extraordinary developments in science and technology, which lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and brought to the middle and working classes of affluent societies a standard of living that they could only have dreamed of. The political influence of the middle class increased as the aristocratic elites were replaced with a technocratic and managerial ruling class. Science became the new god. The Singularity provides an in-depth analysis of the consequence of using the scientific view reduced to a universally applicable method in the creation of a “perfect” social model. The ideologies that resulted from this process are examined as power tools that caused death or untold suffering and misery for millions of people. The essay then shows how socially engineered nightmares, which did not end with the collapse of communism, threaten to destroy our entire civilization. The only way to stop being objects of recurrent experiments by a power-obsessed elite is to restore our faith, spirituality, and intellectual curiosity. Free will is the sparkle that makes us human.

The End of Socialism explores the difficulties socialism faces and examines the extent to which its moral ideals can guide policy.

Kalecki's ideas on economic functioning are discussed in this book, followed by an analysis of his contributions to the theories of long-run planning and growth under socialism. His ideas on social aspects of economic development under socialism are discussed.

Socialism: Past andFuture is prominent thinker Michael Harrington's final contribution. He composed a thoughtful, intelligent, and compassionate treatise on the role of socialism in modern...

The Quest for Evolutionary Socialism studies the interaction between social democratic politics and socialist ideals.

Unequal under Socialism examines the formation of racial, gender, and national identities and relations in the socialist state. With a specific focus on Bulgaria, a former socialist country in the Balkans, Miglena S. Todorova traces the intertwined local and global forces driving racialization, socialist state policies, and Eurocentric Marxist and Leninist ideologies, all of which led to valued and devalued categories of women. Roma women, Muslim women, ethnic Bulgarian women, sex workers, and female factory and office workers were among those marked by socialist authorities for prosperity, accommodation, violent reformation, or erasure. Covering the period from the 1930s to the present and drawing upon original archival sources as well as a constellation of critical theories, Unequal under Socialism focuses on the lives of different women to articulate deep doubt about the capacity of socialism to sustain societies where all women prosper. Such doubt, the book suggests, is an under-recognized but important force shaping how women in former socialist countries have related to one another and to other women in the global North and South.

In this prescient book, Klaus Dörre combines a vision of a climate-just society with a reformulation of socialist ideas that can guide the way to a ‘sustainable socialism’ for the 21st Century.

In this text, Roemer proposes a new future of socialism based on a redefinition of market socialism. The Achille's heel of socialism has always been maintaining innovation and efficiency in an economy in which income is equally distributed. Roemer points out that large capitalist firms have already solved a similar problem: in those firms, profits are distributed to numerous shareholders, yet they continue to innovate and compete. The author argues for a modified version of socialism, not necessarily based on public ownership, but founded on equality of opportunity and political influence.