A growing number of leftist thinkers and academics argue that 21st-century tech revolutions could lead us to a classless political and economic model. The founders of Napster probably weren’t thinking about communism in 1999 when they made peer-to-peer sharing of digital audio files possible. But in doing so, they undermined one of the core elements of capitalism: scarcity. Without scarcity, prices drop to zero and markets stop working. So when people started duplicating and sharing songs for free, they destroyed the business model of record companies, one download at a time. Eventually, Napster was shut down by legal threats. But to British author and activist Aaron Bastani, it showed us a glimpse of our communist future. In his new book, Fully Automated Luxury Communism, he argues that new technologies, from solar energy and asteroid mining to CRISPR/Cas9 and satellite internet, could massively lower prices for all kinds of goods and services. Bastani is among a growing number of left-leaning researchers, writers and academics who are eyeing technology not as the job-stealing threat — but as an ally. | 