Commonist Tendencies
Subtitle: Mutual Aid Beyond Communism
Edition: First edition
Publisher: Punctum Books
Published: 2013
Place of publication: New York City, USA
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 108
ISBN-13: 9780615849782
Description: As capitalist societies in the twenty-first century move from crisis to crisis, oppositional movements in the global North have been somewhat stymied (despite ephemeral manifestations like Occupy), 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 (through crises of capital), 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 and arrived at. The term commonsim is a useful way to discuss the goals and aspirations of oppositional movements, the movement of 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.
Table of contents: label: 01
title: Beyond Movements: Toward Commonism
pagenum: 1; label: 1.1
title: Of Blackouts and Commonist Tendencies
pagenum: 7; label: 1.2
title: Movement Nomads
pagenum: 12; label: 1.3
title: Common Practices?
pagenum: 16; label: 1.4
title: Conclusion
pagenum: 23; label: 02
title: Socialist Tendencies
pagenum: 27; label: 2.1
title: Utopian Socialism
pagenum: 28; label: 2.2
title: Marxism or “Scientific Socialism”
pagenum: 30; label: 2.3
title: Anarchy is Order
pagenum: 33; label: 2.4
title: Organization
pagenum: 36; label: 2.5
title: Syndicalism
pagenum: 38; label: 2.6
title: Social Democracy
pagenum: 41; label: 2.7
title: Bolshevism and Sovietism
pagenum: 43; label: 2.8
title: Forgotten Tendencies: Mutualism
pagenum: 46; label: 2.9
title: And Communalism
pagenum: 49; label: 03
title: Commonist Tendencies: Mutual Aid, Anarchy, and Communism
pagenum: 51; label: 3.1
title: Primitive Accumulation: Capital against Mutual Aid
pagenum: 58; label: 3.2
title: Lineages of Commonism: Kropotkin and Mutual Aid
pagenum: 63; label: 3.3
title: Theoretical Affinities: Constructive Anarchy and Autonomist Marxism
pagenum: 68; label: 3.4
title: Conclusion
pagenum: 71; label: 04
title: Commonism and Post-Political Politics: Gifts, Self-Valorization, and the Coming Communities
pagenum: 73; label: 4.1
title: Commonist Exchange; The Gift
pagenum: 74; label: 4.2
title: Commonist Production; Self-Valorization
pagenum: 76; label: 4.3
title: Collahorative Production and the Commonist Economy
pagenum: 80; label: 4.4
title: Commonist Counter-Power?
pagenum: 84; label: 4.5
title: Theoretical Affinities; Commonism and the Coming Communities
pagenum: 87; label: 4.6
title: Conclusion
pagenum: 89; title: References
pagenum: 93