From Commoning the Alternatives to Commonism as an Integral Alternative
to Capitalism
Abstract
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.