Capitalism and poverty. Automation signals the final stage of capitalism. Basic income for a peaceful transition to post-capitalism

This article provides an impressionistic history of recent capitalism by describing its intrinsic tendencies to produce poverty and crises. It argues that the automation revolution and globalization are generalizing and globalizing poverty, especially since neoliberalism replaced Keynesianism. This picture is contradicted by the poverty statistics of the World Bank, but when these are examined carefully it is shown that the decrease in global poverty that they show is false. An examination of Marxist and mainstream theories of capitalist crises shows both that financiarization has become the main mechanism to keep afloat financial monopoly capitalism, and that conventional economic theory is impotent to deal with the current crises. Total automation is bringing to an end the wage-based society, which is incompatible with generalized automation. This in turn opens up the possibility of human emancipation from «forced», alienated work. Finally, Universal Citizen Income is regarded as an alternative that solves the aforementioned contradiction by saving and radically transforming capitalism.