As capitalist societies in the twenty-first century move from
crisis to crisis, oppositional movements in the global North have
been somewhat stymied, confronted with the pressing need to develop
organizational infrastructures that might prepare the ground for a
real, and durable, alternative. More and more, the need to develop
shared infrastructural resources - what Shantz terms
"infrastructures of resistance" - becomes apparent. Ecological
disaster, economic crisis, political austerity, and mass-produced
fear and phobia all require organizational preparation - the common
building of real world alternatives. There is, as necessary as
ever, a need to think through what we, as non-elites, exploited,
and oppressed, want and how we might get it. There is an urgency to
pursue constructive approaches to meet common needs. For many, the
constructive vision and practice for meeting social needs
(individual and collective) is expressed as commonism - an
aspiration of mutual aid, sharing, and common good or common wealth
collectively determined. The term commonsim is a useful way to
discuss the goals and aspirations of oppositional movements,
because it returns to social struggle the emphasis on commonality -
a common wealth - that has been lost in the histories of previous
movements that subsumed the commons within mechanisms of state
control, regulation, and accounting - namely communism. In the
current context, commonism, and the desire for commons, speaks to
collective expressions against enclosure, now instituted as
privatization, in various realms. While the central feature of
capitalism is the commodity - a collectively produced good
controlled for sale by private entities claiming ownership - the
central feature of post-capitalist societies is the commons. These
counter-forces have always been in conflict throughout the history
of capitalism's imposition. And this conflict has been engaged in
the various spheres of human life, as mentioned above. Commonism,
(and commonist struggles), is expressed in intersections of sites
of human activity and sustenance: ecological, social, and
ideational. Examples of ecological commonism include conservation
efforts, indigenous land reclamations and re-occupations (and
blockades of development), and community gardens, to name only a
few. Social commons include childcare networks, food and housing
shares, factory occupations, and solidarity economics (including
but not limited to community cooperatives). Ideational commons
include creative commons, opens source software, and data
liberation (such as Anonymous and Wikileaks). This becomes
procreative or constructive. It provides a spreading base for
eco-social development beyond state capitalist control. It also
moves movements from momentary spectacles or defensive stances or
reactive "fightbacks." Commonism affirms and asserts different ways
of doing things, of living, of interacting. This book engages
various commonist tendencies. It examines communism, including
overlooked or forgotten tendencies. It provides an exploration of
primitive accumulation and mutual aid as elements of struggle.
Attention is given to constructive aspects of commonist politics
from self-valorization against capital to gift economies against
the market. It finally speaks to the need of movements to build
infrastructures of resistance that sustain struggles for the
commons. Written by a longtime activist/scholar, this is a work
that will be of interest to community organizers and activists as
well as students of social movements, social change, and radical
politics. It will be taken up by people directly involved in
specific community movements as well as students in a range of
disciplines (including sociology, politics, geography,
anthropology, cultural studies, and social policy). There is no
book that offers such a concise, readable discussion of the issues
in the current context, with particular emphasis on anarchist
intersections with communism.
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