Aaron Bastani
{{Short description|British writer}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Aaron Bastani
| image = Aaron Bastani 2021.png
| alt = Aaron Bastani
| caption = Bastani in 2021
| birth_name = Aaron John Peters
| birth_date = {{Birth year and age|1984|2}}
| birth_place = Bournemouth, Dorset, England
| death_date =
| death_place =
| spouse = {{marriage|Charlotte Gerada|2021}}
| occupation = {{hlist|Political commentator|Journalist|Author}}
| alma_mater = {{Nowrap|University College London (BA, MA){{cite tweet |author=Aaron Bastani |user=AaronBastani |date=4 January 2019 |title=My degree and masters were at UCL, neither was as remotely challenging as my doctorate. Don't let this ignorant nonsense undermine the excellent work of diligent students at Royal Holloway. It's a fantastic institution. |number=1081226981964955648 |website=Twitter |access-date=9 July 2022}}
Royal Holloway, University of London (PhD)}}
| known_for = Co-founder of Novara Media
| notable_works = Fully Automated Luxury Communism (2019)
}}
Aaron John Bastani (born February 1984){{Cite web |title=Aaron John BASTANI personal appointments – Find and update company information – GOV.UK |url=https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/officers/8r28VnikO13PzB_oq_nbpGCmYOA/appointments |access-date=2024-06-28 |website=find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk |language=en}} is a British political commentator, journalist and author. He co-founded the left-wing media organisation Novara Media in 2011 and regularly hosts and contributes to its Novara Live live news show on YouTube. Bastani popularised the term "Fully Automated Luxury Communism", which describes a post-capitalist society in which automation greatly reduces the amount of labour humans need to do. He authored the book Fully Automated Luxury Communism on the subject in 2019. He ideologically identifies as a socialist.
Early life
File:Aaron Bastani speaking 3.jpg
Aaron Bastani was born as Aaron Peters in Bournemouth to a single mother, who died in 2015. She was employed in cleaning, the service industry and social care, and voted for the Conservative Party. His Iranian father, Mammad Bastani, was made a British refugee during the Iranian Revolution. He took his father's name, Bastani, in 2014.{{cite web |last=Judah |first=Ben |date=27 April 2018 |title=Momentum: inside Labour's revolutionary movement |url=https://www.ft.com/content/0e99fc98-4872-11e8-8ae9-4b5ddcca99b3 |url-access=limited |work=Financial Times |access-date=26 September 2021}}
Bastani completed an undergraduate and master's degree at the University College London. At the Royal Holloway, University of London, Bastani completed a PhD thesis titled Strike! Occupy! Retweet!: The Relationship Between Collective and Connective Action in Austerity Britain under the supervision of Andrew Chadwick.{{cite web |title=Professor Andrew Chadwick |url=https://www.lboro.ac.uk/subjects/communication-media/staff/andrew-chadwick/#tab2 |publisher=Loughborough University |access-date=26 September 2021}}{{cite web |title=Aaron Bastani |url=https://www.theguardian.com/profile/aaron-peters |work=The Guardian |access-date=26 September 2021}} At weekends, he sold tomatoes while working on Novara Media projects.{{cite web |last=Bastani |first=Aaron |date=26 April 2016 |title=How I Wrote a 100,000 Word PhD in Six Months.|url=https://medium.com/@AaronBastani/how-i-wrote-a-100-000-phd-in-six-months-ca55e0c3cd |work=Medium |access-date=26 September 2021}} He held a significant role in the 2010 United Kingdom student protests against increased tuition fees as an activist and organiser.{{cite web |last=Cadwalladr |first=Carole |author-link=Carole Cadwalladr |date=18 September 2016 |title=The new left: don't call them Corbynistas |url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/18/momentum-activists-labour-jeremy-corbyn-feature |work=The Observer |access-date=26 September 2021}} During protest attendances as research for his PhD, Bastani was arrested twice, leading to a six-month extension. After he used a bin to jam open an HSBC bank door at a 2011 protest, he was convicted of a public order offence and served a year's community service at Mind and as a leaf sweeper.{{cite web |title=The Londoner: Comey swayed by Trump sex dossier |url=https://www.standard.co.uk/news/londoners-diary/comey-swayed-by-trump-sex-dossier-a3869581.html |work=Evening Standard |date=22 June 2018 |access-date=26 September 2021}} He completed his PhD in 2015 after writing the doctoral thesis in six months; in a blog post he credited this in part to his high carbohydrate diet and his purchase of a MacBook Pro.
Career
=Novara Media=
{{Main|Novara Media}}
File:Aaron Bastani, The World Transformed.jpg in 2017]]
In 2011, Bastani co-founded Novara Media, a left-wing news outlet, with James Butler. They were introduced to each other by Laurie Penny in the tuition fee protests. Named after the Italian city central to The Working Class Goes to Heaven, Novara Media was initially an hour-long radio programme on Resonance FM. In its early years, the organisation produced short-form media that Bastani compared to BuzzFeed, but it branched out into long-form content.{{cite web |last=Dolan |first=Andrew |date=26 October 2015 |title=Novara: new media for a different politics |url=https://www.redpepper.org.uk/novara-new-media-for-a-different-politics/ |work=Red Pepper |access-date=26 September 2021}} It experienced an increase in popularity under the Labour Party leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, whom it was positive towards. Novara Media interviewed Corbyn and other major Corbynist figures.{{cite web |last=Brooks |first=Michael J. |date=4 August 2019 |title=Red Player One: Aaron Bastani's Socialist Futures|url=https://thequietus.com/articles/26893-fully-automated-luxury-communism-aaron-bastani-interview |work=The Quietus |access-date=26 September 2021}} However, it was critical of the party under its following leader, Keir Starmer.{{cite web |last1=McDowell-Naylor |first1=Declan |last2=Thomas |first2=Richard |last3=Cushion |first3=Stephen |date=15 July 2020 |title=How left-wing media sites have changed their coverage of the Labour Party under Keir Starmer |url=https://theconversation.com/how-left-wing-media-sites-have-changed-their-coverage-of-the-labour-party-under-keir-starmer-142686 |work=The Conversation |access-date=26 September 2021}} Bastani has run video and podcast series for Novara Media including IMO Bastani and The Bastani Factor.{{cite book |last1=Gent |first1=Craig |last2=Walker |first2=Michael |year=2018 |chapter=Alternative Media: A new factor in electoral politics? |title=Political Communication in Britain: Campaigning, Media and Polling in the 2017 General Election |location=Basingstoke |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |pages=117–128 |doi=10.1007/978-3-030-00822-2_8|isbn=978-3-030-00821-5 |s2cid=158821728 }}{{cite web |last=Harpin |first=Lee |date=5 February 2021 |title=Jeremy Corbyn's 'attack dog' quits Labour - allegedly ahead of an investigation into his conduct |url=https://www.thejc.com/news/uk/jeremy-corbyn-s-attack-dog-quits-labour-allegedly-ahead-of-an-investigation-into-his-conduct-1.511596 |work=The Jewish Chronicle |access-date=26 September 2021}} Along with Michael Walker, Bastani has co-hosted The Fix and TyskySour.{{cite web |last=Chakelian |first=Anoosh |date=5 August 2021|title='Luxury communism now!' The rise of the pro-Corbyn media |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2017/09/luxury-communism-now-rise-pro-corbyn-media |work=New Statesman |access-date=26 September 2021}} For his role in Novara Media, New Statesman named Bastani the 50th-most-influential British left-wing figure of 2023.{{Cite web|date=17 May 2023 |title=The New Statesman's left power list |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2023/05/the-new-statesmans-left-power-list |access-date=13 December 2023 |website=New Statesman}}
=Fully automated luxury communism=
Bastani has been credited with popularising the term "fully automated luxury communism" (FALC). Bastani first used it in a 2014 IMO Bastani video for Novara Media. He argued for public ownership of automation as a way to improve falling living conditions and wages.{{cite book |last1=Hobson |first1=Thomas |last2=Modi |first2=Kaajal |title=Post Memes: Seizing the Memes of Production|chapter=Socialist Imaginaries and Queer Futures: Memes as Sites of Collective Imagining|year=2019|publisher=Punctum Books|doi=10.2307/j.ctv11hptdx.17|s2cid=219822944 }} He later said that the concept is based on Karl Marx's {{lang|de|Das Kapital}} and {{lang|de|Grundrisse}}, and imagines a society with decentralised control over technologies that reduce the amount of human labour required.{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/mar/18/fully-automated-luxury-communism-robots-employment|title=Fully automated luxury communism|work=The Guardian|last=Merchant|first=Brian|date=18 March 2015|access-date=26 September 2021}} Universal basic income (UBI) can be a short-term step towards this goal.{{cite book |last=Benanav |first=Aaron |year=2020 |title=Automation and the Future of Work |location=London |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=9781839761317}} The concept has been compared to a 1930 essay by John Maynard Keynes, Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, that predicted improving technology would lead to a 15-hour working week within a century.{{cite web |last=Matthews |first=Dylan |date=18 October 2019 |title=Basic income can't do enough to help workers displaced by technology |url=https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/10/18/20919322/basic-income-freedom-dividend-andrew-yang-automation |work=Vox |access-date=26 September 2021}} Hobson and Modi criticised FALC as a misunderstanding of economics and how technology relates to social orders, saying that it assumes a gendered notion of labour and ignores ecological factors. In The Wall Street Journal, Andy Kessler argued that the idea is "complete baloney" because it would "fail in real life" due to "productivity". Kessler saw government actions in the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States as "a version of partly automated luxury communism".{{cite web |last=Kessler |first=Andy |author-link=Andy Kessler (author) |date=16 May 2021 |title=Automated Luxury Communism? |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/automated-luxury-communism-11621185487 |url-access=subscription |work=The Wall Street Journal |access-date=26 September 2021}}
The phrase, and variant "fully automated luxury gay space communism", circulated online as a meme after Bastani's usage.{{cite web |last=Lowrey |first=Annie |date=20 June 2019 |title=Give Us Fully Automated Luxury Communism |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/give-us-fully-automated-luxury-communism/592099/ |url-access=limited |work=The Atlantic |access-date=26 September 2021}}{{cite web |last=Syverson |first=Tom |date=7 June 2017 |title="Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism": Has the Time For Universal Basic Income Finally Come?|url=https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/universal-basic-income/fully-automated-luxury-gay-space-communism-univers/ |work=Paste |access-date=26 September 2021}} In the essay Socialist Imaginaries and Queer Futures, Thomas Hobson and Kaajal Modi said that the phrase originated as a "tongue-in-cheek" phrase used by "London-based lefties". Beckett said that the phrase was characteristic of Bastani, as it is "attention-grabbing" and "armoured against attack with a sparkly coating of irony". Other leftist people and groups use similar phrases, such as the communist group Plan C's phrase "luxury for all".
==''Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto''==
{{Main|Fully Automated Luxury Communism}}
Bastani wrote a book named after the term, Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto, published in 2019 by Verso Books.{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/29/fully-automated-luxury-communism-aaron-bastani-review|title=Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani – a manifesto for the future|work=The Guardian|last=Beckett|first=Andy|date=29 May 2019|accessdate=26 September 2021}} In it, he conceives of a Third Disruption that would see the overthrow of capitalism and effective use of solar power for energy and mineral-rich asteroids for resources. Bastani opposes capitalism for creating short-term incentives that lead to artificial shortages. With technological advancement, UBI and free public services could be achieved in an environmentally sustainable manner.{{cite book |last=Jordan |first=Bill |chapter=Introduction |pages=1–16 |year=2020 |title=Automation and Human Solidarity |location=Cham |publisher=Springer Publishing |isbn=978-3-030-36959-0 |doi=10.1007/978-3-030-36959-0_1|s2cid=242523009 }}
Critical views
The Quietus commented that he is known for "regularly engaging in Twitter jousts", and regularly attracts controversy over his views. In 2017, he tweeted a false claim about Labour's membership figures increasing by 150,000 that was widely repeated; Sam Bright of the BBC suggested that the information could have originated from a typo by Richard Burgon, who tweeted the same claim shortly after Bastani.{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-40251890|title=False claim that Labour membership surged by 150,000|publisher=BBC|last=Bright|first=Sam|date=12 June 2017|accessdate=26 September 2021}} After criticising the Remembrance poppy and Royal British Legion in 2018, saying the Poppy Appeal was "grotesque", "racist" and "white supremacist", Bastani was criticised in The Sun and by Labour MPs Tom Watson and Nia Griffith.{{cite web |title=Watch: Nia Griffith slams Aaron Bastani poppy comments |url=https://labourlist.org/2018/11/watch-nia-griffith-slams-aaron-bastani-poppy-comments/ |work=LabourList |date=11 November 2018 |access-date=26 September 2021}}
Andy Beckett of The Guardian described Bastani in 2019 as "an effective but slippery broadcaster and online presence: always fluent and flexible, able to switch from fierce defence of Corbynism to cheekier updates on the busy British left's latest preoccupations". The Labour MP Jon Cruddas criticised Bastani, among other left-wing figures, in his 2021 book The Dignity of Labour, for prioritising an educated cosmopolitan youth over "workers". Prospect{{'}}s Andrew Fisher found Cruddas's account of Bastani's "technological determinism" to be mistaken.{{cite web |last=Fisher |first=Andrew |date=30 March 2021 |title=Keir Starmer desperately needs a philosophy—can Jon Cruddas help? |url=https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/arts-and-books/keir-starmer-desperately-needs-a-philosophy-can-jon-cruddas-help |work=Prospect |access-date=26 September 2021|url-access=limited}}
Personal life
In August 2021, Bastani married Charlotte Gerada in Malta.{{cite tweet |first=Aydin |last=Dikerdem |user=AydinDikerdem |date=30 August 2021 |title=A privilege to see my brilliant former colleague @char_gerada & the indefatigable @AaronBastani get married this weekend. After a tough few years, nothing warms the heart more than seeing two people celebrate their love for each other, surrounded by friends, family & comrades 💖 |number=1432386964167274497 |website=Twitter |access-date=9 July 2022}} Gerada is a Labour councillor on Portsmouth City Council who was first elected in May 2021.{{cite web |last1=Harding |first1=Charlotte |date=2 June 2021 |title=Why I got into politics and became a city councillor |url=https://generationtribe.co.uk/why-i-got-into-politics-and-became-a-city-councillor/ |website=Generation Tribe |access-date=9 July 2022}}{{cite web |title=Councillor Charlotte Gerada – Central Southsea |url=https://www.portsmouthlabourparty.org.uk/labour-team/2021/02/26/3175/ |publisher=Portsmouth Labour Party |date=26 February 2021 |access-date=9 July 2022}} Bastani's daughter was born in November 2023.{{cite web|url=https://novaramedia.com/2024/01/05/i-just-had-a-daughter-but-being-a-centrist-dad-never-made-less-sense/|title=I Just Had a Daughter. But Being a Centrist Dad Never Made Less Sense|work=Novara Media|last=Bastani|first=Aaron|date=5 January 2024|accessdate=20 January 2024}}
Bastani's mother was Catholic and his father was a non-practising Muslim. As an adult, he was baptised, had his First Communion and was confirmed, before marrying his wife in a Catholic ceremony. He said in 2024 that he had realised over the past few years how Catholicism had influenced his political values.{{cite AV media|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf84WHEtWBY|title=Would The World Be Better Without Religion?: Ash Sarkar talks to Aaron Bastani|publisher=Novara Media|date=28 January 2024|accessdate=17 March 2024|time=3:00–6:00}}
In July 2023, Bastani reported being attacked by a man who shouted his name and assaulted him. Bastani, who described pacifying his aggressor, believed the violence was politically motivated.{{cite web|url=https://www.thenational.scot/news/23679001.novara-medias-aaron-bastani-attacked-near-home/|title=Novara Media's Aaron Bastani 'attacked near home'|work=The National|last=Morrison|first=Hamish|date=25 July 2023|accessdate=26 July 2023}}
Bibliography
- {{cite book |last=Bastani |first=Aaron |year=2019 |title=Fully Automated Luxury Communism |location=London |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=9781786632654}}
References
{{reflist}}
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Category:21st-century British people
Category:Left-wing politics in the United Kingdom
Category:English people of Iranian descent
Category:English political commentators
Category:English Roman Catholics
Category:Writers from Bournemouth