“More and more the automation of production, and also the possibility in general of trusting almost every type of work and activity to machines and computers, requires a laughably small quantity of human labour power. Therefore why shouldn’t everyone profit from the wealth produced by machines and from the time freed from labour? Today, absurdly, work that is no longer necessary continues to be imposed because only through this is it possible to conceive of the distribution of money, allowing the continuation of the cycle of production and consumption and the accumulation of capital.

“But it is already a cycle that is slowing; overproduction and the collapse of consumption due to the spread of unemployment and poverty are driving an irreversible crisis, which capitalism frantically tries to save itself from with criminal games of financial speculation. The prospect of the destruction of whole generations, of whole countries, of the planet itself because of the senseless exploitation of its resources – this is the spectacle in which we are assisting today, the spectacle of a perverse voracity to concentrate immense wealth in the hands of just a few and to leave in its wake poverty and the wreckage of a world that could be rich and happy.

“But a new era is waiting for humanity, when it will be freed from the blackmail and the suffering of a forced labour that is already unnecessary and the enslavement to money, which prevent the free conduct of activity according to the aptitudes and desires of each and steal and degrade from the rhythm of life, at the same time that there is the real possibility of widespread and general wellbeing. This was the meaning, and could again be the meaning today and in the future, of that old rallying cry: Vogliamo tutto!”

– Nanni Balestrini, from the preface to Vogliamo Tutto