Abstract
Is it possible to think of other ways of producing concrete wealth, forms not fully subjected to the mandates of capital? In our work we think about this question through the theoretical lens of what we call the production of the commons in common. Our starting point, inspired by the work of Silvia Federici, is constituted by ever-renewing processes and human activities that favour the dignified reproduction of life, even amidst the devastation imposed on us by capitalism. We build an argument that revisits certain discussions on the political, understanding it as our capacity to self-determine the goals, rhythms and forms of our everyday life beyond and against capital.
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Notes
- 1.
We have approached these questions together with other colleagues from different universities during the permanent seminar ‘Alternative Modernities and New Common Sense’ (Modernidades alternativas y nuevo sentido común) that has been conducted during the last two years at the Colegio de Estudios Latinoamericanos of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (CELA-UNAM). A Spanish version of this work will be published in 2016 as part of the outcome of the seminar.
- 2.
We use the expression ‘ongoing’ codification following the words of Sartre in his Critique of Dialectical Reason (2004), where he refers to the human capacity of ‘ongoing totalisation’.
- 3.
We use politicity as a translation of politicidad, which Echeverría defines as the capacity to shape parts of our lives even within a system of structural domination by capital.
- 4.
Following Massimo de Angelis (2001), we speak of means of existence for the reproduction of life in order to go beyond the classic notion of the means of production and refer to all the material and symbolic means that guarantee the support and reproduction of life.
- 5.
The allegedly universal ‘free individual’, generally understood as a male proprietor of accumulated value in its abstract form or as a male that is involved in the production of value for others. It is worth noting that the ‘gender’ of the ‘abstract’ individual is in agreement with the ‘dominant male’ feature of capital that avoids, denies and conceals the world of reproduction.
- 6.
In order to demarcate the differences in our approach, we talk about the common, lo común, not the commons.
- 7.
In Marx there are at least three distinct notions of work: ‘live’, concrete and abstract. We are interested in emphasising the concrete character of the production of the common. A similar but somewhat different version of this discussion is evidenced in the contradiction between doing and labour (Holloway 2011).
- 8.
- 9.
Here, we once again use the Sartrean notion of ‘ongoing’ in order to describe the dynamic and creative quality of a process of reproduction of social life that must not be understood as simply repeated and daily.
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Aguilar, R.G., Linsalata, L., Trujillo, M.L.N. (2016). Producing the Common and Reproducing Life: Keys Towards Rethinking the Political . In: Dinerstein, A. (eds) Social Sciences for an Other Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47776-3_6
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