Commonist Tendencies Mutual Aid Beyond Communism [Paperback]

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 capitalisms imposition. And this conflict has been engaged in the various spheres of human life, as mentioned above. Commonism, (and commlS.