The AFF is a third-way approach to labor through the gift economy that strives for utopias in the margins of contemporary economics.

In his remarkable book Envisioning Real Utopias (2010), Erik Olin Wright described three possible paths into a post-capitalist society. The Marxist path historically favored a radical break with capitalism in the shape of revolutions. In the light of the tragic consequences of the revolutions of the 20th century, this approach has lost all emancipatory credibility: totalitarian terrorism claimed millions of victims and the statist economy of real socialism simply did not work, least of all for the “labor force.” Social democracy’s path of reform has lost credibility as well, since the interventions of governments and unions did not really succeed in changing the balance of power. For Wright, it is clear that both revolution and reform have exhausted their possibilities. But what could an alternative strategy of transformation look like? Wright proposes that we start taking civil society seriously and “build new forms of social empowerment in capitalist society’s niches and margins” (2010: 303). In other words, he wants us to engage in alternative ways of living that are both attractive and viable, to build “real utopias” in the here and now that anticipate the future and make ever more societies actually move in this direction

Even though this strategy is partly rooted in anarchism, Wright is wary about a radical distancing from the state. What if, he asks, the emancipatory alternatives developed in societal niches actually threatened capitalism? Then the state would intervene, and smash these alternatives to save capitalism. This is why we need to form intelligent alliances with state actors. Contrary to what Marxist theory too simplistically claims, the state must balance very different interests, of which capitalism is just one. In fact, the state could itself develop an interest in introducing an unconditional basic income (UBI) to reduce unemployment and social exclusion in the face of digitalization and automation. Wright argues that a UBI, though it may at first serve capitalist interests, could take on a dynamic that erodes capitalism in the long run: A tax-financed unconditional basic income provided by the state would ... enable workers to refuse capitalist employment and choose, instead, to engage in all sorts of non-capitalist economic activities. ... UBI would underwrite a flowering of the solidarity economy, noncommercial performing arts, community activism, and much more. Unconditional basic income thus expands the space for sustainable socialist—socially empowered—economic relations. (Wright, 2016) Regardless of how plausible Wright’s proposals may be in detail, they show that our quest for new forms of living together must involve responding to three basic questions: Is the envisioned alternative desirable in normative terms? If so, is it practical, self-sufficient, sustainable, and does it prevent non-intended effects? And finally: Is it feasible, are there realistic strategies to enforce and establish it? Which groups of actors could have an interest in this to happen? How can we win them over? What kinds of resistance must we expect? All taken together, these questions form a little manual for transformation.

A post-capitalist society must give much more room to self-organization than state-socialist societies ever did. That kind of socialism was undemocratic, and it rested on an economic system in which state officials controlled everything and everyone. Mauss’ and Wright’s socialism is different. It is a socialism of voluntary association and civic cooperation which demands a radical democratization that would subject even the state to the power of civil society. What is more, an adoption of collective property does not necessarily imply that economic activities can no longer be coordinated in markets. We should not conceive of socialism and markets or socialism and democracy as opposites, but combine their principles to create a “third way.”

I have no blueprint for an alternative social order, and in fact we should be suspicious of all who claim that they do. But what I have in mind is a radical democratic, post-capitalist alternative based on Dewey’s concept of experimentalism: association and cooperation will unleash a potential of creative solutions, and interactions will allow us to imagine new worlds. Orthodox Marxists and state socialists opposed the principle of experimentalism because they believed in universal laws of history, in fixed stages of societal development that they were even willing to enforce through violence. But only in social experiments can we figure out how to adequately combine liberty and equality, and learn how we want to live and shape our economic activities in the future (Honneth, 2017). Therefore, experimental spaces have to be created, expanded, and defended. In the resulting society, the state would be mainly responsible for regulatory tasks, for defining general rules and enforcing them, though never by violence. A productive correlation between the state, markets, and civil society.