The original version of the paper was presented at the Alternative Futures and Regional Prospects Symposium, UTS City Campus, Sydney, 22 Nov 2018 - 23 Nov 2018.
From Commoning the Alternatives to Commonism as an Integral Alternative to Capitalism
Any inclusive comprehension of the inner nature, deep structures,
and conflictual dynamism of capitalism is potentially a transformative
cognitive Commons. Likewise, to achieve an inclusive understanding of the
existing post-capitalist praxes and the imaginary visions of utopian futures require
cumulative, collective, and cooperative learning. Thus, theories of capital and
the post-/counter-capital alternatives can be generated and treated as the Commons.
In this paper, I argue that although there is no single/exclusive line of
historical progress beyond Capital, it is possible to create integral
theoretical frameworks for orchestrating common actions across different
alternative praxes. This becomes a strong possibility if our knowledge of the
existing or imminent post-capitalist experiences is liberated from the disintegrating
forces of the corporatized Eurocentric intellectual institutions. A transformative
scholarship in collaboration with communities of struggle is therefore
vitally needed today to generate educational Commons as a means for
establishing organic unities among alternative praxes. This in itself is a
prefigurative movement.
The political goal should then be to go beyond the localized fragmented radical struggles without reducing their multiformity to challenge the totalizing effects of the capitalist markets and states. The process of building organic unities or what we may call ‘Commoning the alternatives’ requires ‘organic intellectuals’ to help post-capitalist initiatives to self-reflectively explore and address their limitations. Therefore, Commoning the knowledge and experiences of alternatives is a self-rectifying endeavor that translates paralyzing assortments into collective learning processes through which each movement becomes capable of traversing (rather than transcending) their self-inflicted ideological boundaries and thereby of developing integral macro-political projects to transcend capitalism; i.e. a Commonist project.
Funding
UON FEDUA SNaPP Grant 2018
History
Declaration of conflicts of interest
No conflict of interestCorresponding author email
hamed.hosseini@newcastle.edu.auLead author country
- Australia
Lead author job role
- Higher Education Researcher
Lead author institution
The University of Newcastle, AustraliaHuman Participants
- No