….devised two centuries before Marx’s concept of communism as “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs,” Winstanley’s ideas bore significant resemblances to the latter’s ideas, although Marx could not have known of Winstanley as the Diggers’ ideas were ruthlessly stamped out and were only re-discovered late in the 19th century… | more…
The UAW strike against Big Auto succeeded in winning impressive wage gains, but it failed to obtain a little-reported demand: that the auto companies reinstate defined benefit pension plans for new employees… | more…
Recently the podcast Cosmonaut hosted Chris Gilbert for a discussion of his new book ‘Commune or Nothing!’ They covered topics such as: The history of communes, the Venezuelan cooperative movement and the drive to build state-run industry; István Mészáros’ perspective on how the commune centers the communal control of the labor process; the problem of attracting the youth to communes today; the mystical side of communes in relation to human development, and more… | more…
Already in the early 1980s if not before: “It was clear to most of us that socialism couldn’t survive without radical democratisation … it had to be based on consent.” Nevertheless, for Sheehan as for many of us on the left, the demise of the socialist bloc represented a defeat and the restoration of capitalism. It was “the most dramatic upheaval, politically and psychologically,” Sheehan says. | more…
The book ends with a broad literature review on our possible postcapitalist future by Greg Albo. This concluding chapter and the rest of the book offer the reader hope to overcome the contemporary crisis and meet a healthier and happier future | more…
Listen to Chris Gilbert, author of ‘Commune or Nothing!’ as he details how Venezuela’s communards have plowed ahead with the construction of socialism even under the most difficult circumstances. | more…
So why not just end the U.S. embargo on Venezuela? If Venezuelans are coming here just to escape economic problems at home, reducing the embargo should bring about a major decline in Venezuelan asylum seekers. | more…
Commune or Nothing! Venezuela’s Communal Movement and its Socialist Project
by Chris Gilbert
$23.00 / 208 pages / 978-1-68590-023-6
Author’s Note
Karl Marx wrote that theory becomes a material force when it grips the masses. He should have added that theory usually grips the masses because it connects with ideas, projects, and dreams they have developed themselves. This is what generally happens in revolutions, and it is certainly the case for the idea of the communal project in Venezuela.
In 2009, ten years after the Bolivarian Process began, Hugo Chávez proposed the communal path to socialism in a historic television program. That project had solid bases in the thought of Marx and István Mészáros, yet it would have been dead in the water if the idea of replacing a society dominated by the logic of capital with one based on communal relations had not connected with aspirations and values already alive and operating in Venezuelan society.
As it turned out, self-organized communities around the country seized on the communal project, which resonated both with values shaped over the longue durée in Venezuela—through its enduring campesino, Indigenous, and Afro-Venezuelan traditions of self-governance | more…
One anonymous 17th century poet quoted by Angus in his conclusion put it best of all: “The law locks up the man and woman/ Who steals the goose from off the common/ And geese will still a common lack/ Till they go and steal it back.” | more…
Capital’s war against the commons continues today in the Global South, as does resistance to it. The removal of the people from the land to work in industrial cities is also part of the mechanism which creates the metabolic rift, one of the reasons for capitalism’s inherent environmental destructiveness. The route to overcoming this does not lie in individuals or communities returning to an idealised communal past. As Angus says, this has been the expectation of utopian communal groups since the Diggers established themselves on St George’s Hill in 1649… | more…
The War Against the Commons: Dispossession and Resistance in the Making of Capitalism
by Ian Angus
$26.00 / 246 pages / 978-1-68590-016-8
FOR ALMOST ALL OF HUMAN existence, almost all of us were self-provisioning. Together with our neighbors, we lived and worked on the land, obtained and prepared our own food, and made our own homes, tools and clothing. After our ancestors invented agriculture, most of us lived in small communities where the land was held and farmed in common, and most production was consumed locally.
Today, almost all of us have to work for others.
Our lives depend on, and are largely defined by, our jobs. All the productive wealth is owned by a tiny minority of individuals and corporations, and most of us cannot eat unless we sell them our ability to work.
That’s how capitalism works, and we are so used to it that it seems natural and obvious…. | more…
In his 1995 novel Radek, published in English translation for the first time last year by Monthly Review Press, Stefan Heym portrays Karl Radek as not only a man of the world but a perpetual outsider — a socially awkward contrarian with stereotypically Jewish features, thick glasses and a big mouth. In this, Heym likely saw in Karl Radek something of a kindred spirit. | more…
“Almost all HUAC witnesses with Communist connections were avoiding the jeopardy of contempt prosecution either by naming the names of others or declining to answer questions under the Fifth Amendment.,” explains biographer Dr. Steve Batterson. | more…