Kategorie: English

Antiauthoritarian Communism and Postmonetary Alternatives

Online-Workshop, 11th of November

On saturday, 11.11.2023, AKUT invites you to an Online Workshop on Antiauthoritarian Communism and Postmonetary Alternatives with Anitra Nelson, Friederike Habermann, John Holloway and others. Feel free to distribute the invitation. 

Homepage: https://commonism.org/conference2023/

Time: 11.11.2023, 08:30am – 05:00pm EST / 2:30pm CET – 11:00pm CET

Participation link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/9195321982?pwd=ygyrZes2ep7DJLIabbbkaOkLLy7KqS.1; Meeting-ID: 919 532 1982

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Principles AKUT/Grundsätze AKUT

[Deutsch weiter unten]

AKUT was founded. These are its principles:

The Association Critique Utopia Transformation (AKUT) develops possibilities for a society free of domination and deals with the ways to get there. At the moment we are working in three fields: joint theoretical work on utopia and transformation, educational work (brochures, videos, conferences, workshops) and strategic debates. 

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Make Capitalism History

Out now: »Make Capitalism History. A Practical Framework for Utopia and the Transformation of Society« by Simon Sutterlütti & Stefan Meretz.

This open access book presents an alternative to capitalism and state socialism through the modelling of a post-market and post-state utopia based on an upscaling of the commons, feminist political economy and democratic and council-based planning approaches. It discusses the left’s need to explore non-capitalist modes of production, the inability of green or socialist market economies to produce real social and ecological change, and the need to look beyond traditional ideas of reform and revolution. The book discusses how a socio-economic organisation beyond money, wage labour, patriarchal division of work and centralised state planning may look like. It develops an approach to societal transformation based on seed forms of commons practices and social movements. This book will be relevant to activists, students and researchers interested in fundamental social change, political economy and feminist and Marxist economics.

The ,Commoning System‘ goes Global

At least, we are trying.

As first steps, we have translated our concept presentation into English and we are working on integrating the ValueFlows vocabulary into it. ValueFlows, noted at the point, is a really exciting project. It grew out of network resource planning software that has amazing similarities to our concept, but was designed as a monolith. To break down this monolith, they initiated a discussion between different open source economics projects and quickly realized that there was a lack of a common language between these projects – both on a human and technical level. The ValueFlows vocabluar is trying to open up communication here. It’s beautiful and is already being used in projects like HoloREA and Bonfire. There is a brief and worth to read article about that topic.

Links to our english presentation: peertube / youtube

The german version, the usual call for activism and the current version of the concept below.

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Response to an Ultra-leftist Critique of Cybersocialism

In a recent blogpost, Simon Sutterlütti criticises my model of a cybersocialist economy from an ultra-left perspective. His account of my proposal is largely accurate, so I will not have to waste much time to clear up misunderstandings. I do, however, think that his characterisation of my proposal as “wage-socialism” is a gross trivialisation of the, often brutal, exploitation of wage labourers under capitalism. I will outline the important difference between socialism and wage-capitalism and show that this difference is sufficient to overcome the essential problems of wage-capitalism. I will then respond to Sutterlütti’s views on the human motivation to work.

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Keime von etwas Neuem in schlammigen Pfützen (DE/EN/FR)

Für das Kunstprojekt VOILÀ: Where the river resides haben Indigo und ich einen Beitrag über den Kampf um Lützerath und Transformation geschrieben: Keime in etwas Neuem in schlammigen Pfützen. Ihr könnt ihn hier lesen.

EN: For the art project VOILÀ: Where the river resides, Indigo and I have written a piece on the struggle for Lützerath and transformation: A new kind of seed sprouts from muddy puddles. You can read the English translation here.

FR: Pour le projet artistique VOILÀ : Where the river resides, Indigo et moi avons écrit une contribution sur la lutte pour Lützerath et la transformation. Vous pouvez lire la traduction française ici.

Critique of (wage-based) Cyber-Socialism

1. My Critic of wage-based Cyber-Socialism
2. Dapprich’s Response to an Ultra-leftist Critique of Cybersocialism
3. My Defense of post-wage Commonism

As promised, I am happy to discuss Dapprich’s model of wage-labor-based cyber-socialism. I want to focus on his critic of the ‘higher stage of communism’ and his arguments for a contribution-based distribution of goods. First of all, let me say that I really enjoy discussing with state socialists, because at least we don’t have to debate over the possibility to reform markets and capitalism all the time. Probably a large part of the modern left is just as thoroughly fixed on the idea of a green or red market as the rest of society is. Secondly, I would invite all readers to read (at least) the first chapter of Dapprich’s dissertation. It is a nice and strong argument for “scientific utopianism” – loved it. And now, let’s start with his wage-socialism.

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공동관리주의자가 생산한 생계수단들 (»Peer-commonist produced livelihoods«)

The text »Peer-commonist produced livelihoods« is now available in Korean language (PDF)!

Dr. Jang, Hun-Gyo, from the Research Center on the Commons and Sustainable Society of the National Jeju University in South Korea, has carefully translated the text into Korean. That’s really great, thank you very much!

The text is a chapter of the following book: Ruivenkamp, G. & A. Hilton (2017). Perspectives on Commoning. Autonomist Principles and Practices, London: Bloomsbury Publishers (former Zed Books), p. 417-461. License: CC BY-NC 4.0