The Community and the Commune

Description

A common characteristic of the movements like Occupy and the 15-M is the construction of social spaces not submitted to commodification, spaces to built sociality without the need to consume, spaces of sociality beyond the logic of the relations of capital. And in these spaces new creation, frequently trying not to follow the logic of capital, take place. Since a movement for change cannot limit itself to an alternative world in some plazas (even if it is a highly important social laboratory and a central mean of visibility and propaganda) the movements try to shift into the concrete construction of sociality in concrete territories, like neighbourhoods and work places, trying to reshape them by building new social relations. This can be directly linked to the experience of the past two decades in Latin America, where it has been a central characteristic of movements from Argentina and Bolivia to Mexico and Venezuela to build concrete community and reshape space and territory. The presentation will argue that this concrete construction as community as class brings us back to the very heart of socialist, communist, libertarian ideas: the commune. We will see how it is not a coincidence that the idea of councils and the commune (which by being a form of direct and non representative democracy also pay tribute to the common characteristic of the “new movements” of rejecting representation) are back and can be found from Venezuela to Oaxaca, from New York to different theoretical proposals. The community is the concrete place of construction of sociality and an alternative society.

Period	11 Nov 2012
Event title	Historical Materialism 2012. Ninth Annual Conference
Event type	Conference
Location	United KingdomShow on map