Introduction: The Common and the Forms of the Commune (original) (raw)

CLASS OR COMMUNITY? MARX, THE RUSSIAN COMMUNE, AND CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL THEORY

History & Theory, 2021

This article explores the relationship between class and community through a discussion of peasant struggles and the commune during the Russian Revolution. Doing so, we show how Marx's class-oriented reflections on community can help us to understand the role that the peasantry plays (or should play) in processes of social transformation. This enables us, first, to understand the relevance of communal forms for Marx, who believed that communitarian ways of life were crucial for overcoming a value-based society. It is, in fact, a mistake to divide Marx's intellectual trajectory into two periods: a categorical Marx, who authored Capital and critically analyzed the classical theory of value, and a phenomenological, empirical Marx, who in the last years of his life abandoned writing Capital and focused instead on studying the Russian peasantry. Second, it enables us to discuss new externalist visions, such as postcolonial and decolonial theories, which postulate that the subordination of contemporary peasant communities is rooted in epistemol-ogy, culture, and local power relations. These theories are related to the old social-democratic canon, which conceives of social classes as preconstituted entities and of capital as a parasitic externality that is incommensurable with social dynamics. The experience of the Russian peasantry calls into question all externalist and ontological perspectives.

Subjectivity, Class, and Marx's “Forms of the Commune”

Rethinking Marxism, 2010

... But their social character did not appear in the form of yarn becoming a universal equivalent exchanged for linen as a universal equivalent, ie, of the two products exchanging for each other as equal and equally valid expressions of the same universal labour-time. ...

COMMUNE DEMOCRACY AND THE ASSOCIATIVE PUBLIC

"The argument of this book attempts to show the relevance of Marx's work to the attempt to create a new politics of citizenship. This argues that Marx is engaged above all in an attempt to formulate a new politics - specifically, a communist politics based upon the reintegration of political and social relationships, the overcoming of the state and civil society dualism and the dissolution of both spheres. This means defining democratisation as a repoliticisation, implying the extension of public spaces through a decentralisation resulting from the relocation of power from the abstracted political realm to the social realm. The concept of on active citizenship rooted in society is distinguished from the abstract citizenship conceded by the state, reading Marx in opposition to centralised, bureaucratised elitist state politics. Public life – libertarian communalism – social power and the state – conscious control – free association – commune democracy – the lost traditions of anarchism and marxism – postmarxism – democratisation – radical democracy – democracy as method – Norberto Bobbio, democracy and socialism – the social public."

Notes on Community and the Common in Marx

En Niall Bond (Ed.), The Concept of Community from a Global Perspective, Leiden / Boston, Brill, 2024, pp. 47-64.

Günther Rudolph-A Sketch of the Life and Work of a Tönnies Scholar in East Germany On the Reception of Tönnies' Work by the Left 86 Sebastian Klauke 6 Ferdinand Tönnies and the French-Speaking World 99 Niall Bond 7 When the Dream (Almost) Came True European Community from Ideology to Institutions 125 Antonin Cohen vi Contents Part 2 Disciplinary, Literary, and Artistic Expressions of Community 8 Community between Horde and Herd A Corpus Study 149 Jan Buts 9 Community as a "Near-Concept" Essay on Socio-anthropological Typology 169 Stéphane Vibert 10 What Does a Constitution Look Like? Community and the Powerful Narrative of Myth 189 Rémi Astruc 11 Laughing Together as a Strategy of Survivance for Native American Communities 207 Elisabeth Bouzonviller 12 Community and Music 226 Niall Bond Part 3 The Trajectory of the Notion of Community across the World 13 Community and the (Liberal) Individual 243 Françoise Orazi

Commune Democracy - Marx and the Paris Commune of 1871

A chapter from Rational Freedom vol 8 Political Structures The theory of commune democracy builds upon the conception of social control in going on to describe the overall form of work and of work relations. One thus proceeds to examine the organisation of labour within commune democracy. In sum, this study ties up the various themes of Marx’s political theory in terms of the community of everyday life, the democracy of ends, social self-mediation and the cooperative mode of production. The study shows that the principles which Marx elaborated with respect to the Paris Commune, particularly in terms of the dissolution of the state power into a society organised in terms of commune democracy, closely mirror the principles he developed more abstractly in the critique of Hegel's philosophy of the state.

Communalism as the Future of the Commune of 1871

The reference to the Commune of 1871 returns as a reference for contemporary movements, but following a usage that contrasts with those made by the left in the 20th century. It is no longer a question of overcoming the weaknesses of the Commune, but of asking the Commune how to go beyond certain impasses of left-wing traditions, such as left-wing republicanism, Marxism or anarchism. This is the sense of the ongoing construction of a communalist movement, which can find in the Commune of 1871 a set of inspirations - on the substitution of a confederation of communes for the state, the self-institution of a commune that is both democratic and social, and the emancipation of women - and in the work of Murray Bookchin a theoretical contribution to defining the relationship between communalism and ecology. With the development of popular assembly movements and commons around the world, a new communalist left is taking shape.

From communal turn in Late Marx to new communism of the commons

The text was presented at the Historical Materialism’s conference “Rethinking crisis, resistance and strategy” in Athens (2-5 May 2019). This is updated version prepared for the seminar “Communism: Return to the New Commons” held by Étienne Balibar at The Insitute for Critical Social Inquiry, The New School of Social Research in New York (2-9 June 2019).

Postscript: Communist Subjectivity and the Politics of Collectiversalism

Thomas Telios, Dieter Thomä, Ulrich Schmid (eds.): The Russian Revolution as Ideal and Practice. Failures, Legacies, and the Future of Revolution, 2019

In this book-chapter I argue in favour of an immanent and anti-normative undestanding of collective agency. After acknowledging the legacy of both the French and the Russian Revolution in establishing collectivity as the core element of revolutionary process par excellence, I go on to assume that both ‘the people’ and “the party” were paradigmatic collectivities brought forward by the French and the Russian Revolution yet failed to implement the totality of their goals. The reason for this was the fact that in the course of the revolutions they instantiated, those collectives were universalized, thereby forfeiting their collective and diverse character and, ultimately, falling back onto mere supra-individual entities. Though this can be easily attributed to adhering to a notion of subjectivity that bestows both the individual and the supra-individual subject with a metaphysically grounded revolutionary agency, the decentering of the subject that was pursued in the aftermath of May ’68 as a remedy to this problem is deemed as equally insufficient, since as soon as there is no subject, there is also no revolutionary subject and as soon as there is no revolutionary subject, there can be no revolution. With this framework, the paper maintains that an alternative understanding of the subject as a socially constructed collective subjectivity can serve as an alternative to this conundrum; an understanding of subjectivity that can be traced back to Marx’s understanding of the subject in which one’s “individual existence […] is at the same time a social being.” By taking into account similar notions (such as the assemblic identity, the plural body, the being-in-common) that can be found in intersectionality studies, the work of Judith Butler and Jean-Luc Nancy, I argue for the need to rethink the subject as a socially produced collective entity. Henceforth, this "communist subjectivity" as I call this type of subjectivity is being rendered capable of engaging in collective practices due to its social-ontological production as a collective. In the last part of the article, practices are sketched that derive from such an understanding of subjectivity. The point is that revolutionary politics need not be normative, i.e. they do not need to share a same goal, pursue the same interests, or demand a common identity. In contrast to such a normative understanding of collective revolutionary practices, my argument is that revolutionary and collective action is immanent to every subject due to the process of its collective, social-ontological structuration.