Compeerism can build a movement quickly—the time is now to beat the neofacists

Hannes, Professor of Geography at the University of West Georgia. “Coping With Money’s Monopoly on Value.” From Capital to Commons: Exploring the Promise of a World Beyond Capitalism. University of Bristol. Pp 181-184. /LJS

Compeerists seeking a large-scaled political movement of movements to help drive a systemic commons transition will naturally seek to spawn, solidify and tie together a commoner consciousness as outlined in the previous section. Yet, as was also made clear, such a consciousness, despite its idealized presentation, is far from monolithic. Instead, it will exist as variously coherent and internalized iterations, finding expression and definition from within a broad range of activities and efforts, many of which we have covered in earlier chapters. It is from within these actions, many having grown into micro-movements in their own right, that we find the most fertile ground from which a compeerist-oriented movement of movements could form. Building on the commoner consciousness that is there, the compeerist aim thus becomes to tie the various commons-oriented forces into a larger whole by creating a basic political consensus around the broad aim of expanding the commons and commoning as an alternative to capital. In this sense, ‘the commons’ becomes the ‘empty signifier’ noted by Laclau and Moofe (2014) as the amalgamating idea and discourse that can unify a large, diversified group of people by being able to encompass all of their various concerns, imperatives, and context-specific outlooks (see also Walljasper, 2010; Dardot and Laval, 2014). In the digital realm, then, promising initiatives to be brought into the fold of a broader mobilization would include hacker and pirating efforts; the production of free, open-source software; reclaiming data; establishing platform co-ops; and the various work geared towards decentralizing and democratizing the internet. Also included here are the broader demands being made for the revision or outright abolishment of copyrights and patents and the push to dismantle the monopolistic/oligopolistic power of the tech giants. In the material realm, common cause can be found in the numerous environmental and justice-oriented efforts seeking a sustainable and fair use of our global material commons; the pursuit of off-grid resilience capabilities; and the various initiatives to expand the urban commons, including the cooperativization and municipalization of key infrastructure. In the actual making of stuff, in turn, obvious synergies exist with the DIY, maker, open-hardware, and open-design movements, which are each motivated in different ways by a desire to exit materially based dependencies on capital with the help of an open-source digital commons. Not least, within the market-engaged production of material goods and services, important allies can be found in commons-oriented cooperatives, open-value-networks, and non-profits across key economic sectors. In employing the commons and commoning as an underlying ‘empty signifier’, compeerists hope that the various commoners involved in these visions and actions could be convinced that their work not only has macro-level political insinuations – in that they favour more commonsfriendly political-economic conditions – but that their (latent) policy preferences are also shared by a host of compatriots involved in disparate yet similar commons-related doing. Once these aligned political positionalities become self-evident, especially in the face of inevitable clashes with powerful capitalist interests, it becomes possible to see, at least for some, how a wide spectrum of commoners could coalesce into a movement of movements committed to a commons-based future beyond capitalism. Such a hopeful outlook is, of course, not shared by everyone, and many would dismiss such conjecture as being fundamentally out of touch with the socio-political realities on the ground. While difficult to assess such cynical claims in any objective way, compeerists could push back by first pointing to the vibrancy of the many commons oriented micro-movements that already exist. They could further draw attention to the numerous inroads achieved by commons-based political initiatives, particularly in municipalities across Europe; or note the macro-level waves of counter-capitalist uprisings in the last few decades – from the anti-globalization movement in the 1990s to Occupy Wall Street in the 2000s – which offered a glimpse of the tremendous, albeit still mostly diffuse and untapped, people power that seems to lie just beneath the surface. Also notable has been the strong showing since the turn of the century of upstart political parties and candidates taking a more adversarial stance to capital, as for instance in Greece and Spain (and to some extent Britain and the US). While these formal, electoral efforts (which, we should note, were not explicitly compeerist), ultimately failed to bring about paradigm-shifting policies, the fact that they garnered the support that they did points to underlying counter-capitalist sentiments and an openness to forging a different way forward. Lastly, it is also important to recognize that the nascent, compeerist-aligned forces that are taking form have the potential to significantly expand as the capital-state nexus flounders to deal with a host of culminating crises rooted in the dominant assemblages/apparatuses of the current political-economy (Varvarousis, 2020). These emerging dysfunctions offer compeerists fertile ground for expanding commoner consciousness and, more specifically, forcing an internal reflection of the repressed irrationalities inherent in the ‘middle class’ justification of the status quo (De Angelis, 2010). Taking these various points together, compeerism maintains that the eventual formation of a commons-centred, counter-capitalist movement of movement is by no means a far-fetched proposition. Critically, however, in considering the growing disillusionment towards capitalism’s hegemony, we must also acknowledge that compeerism will not inevitably be the embraced response. Indeed, the escalating symptoms of a capitalism in crisis (faltering wellbeing, failing governance regimes, wage stagnation, and rising precarity) could quite readily also give rise to sentiments that are inherently neo-fascist (anti-democratic and xenophobic), which is a trend that is already apparent the world over (Dyer-Witheford, 2015). The challenge facing compeerists here brings to mind De Angelis’s insistence that working in common is not the same as commoning, as the latter entails a certain form of commoner consciousness, as outlined earlier. As such, faced with the very real prospect of neo-fascist competition, compeerism must clearly stake out its position with the aim of winning out in the arena of public opinion and, ultimately, politics. This position will revolve around two intertwined points of contention, reminiscent of the clash between fascists and anarchists of old. The first centres on the question of decision making and how it is best governed. Here the neo-fascist’s preference of a patriarchal model of top-down authority is in stark contrast to the compeerists’ preference of diluting decision-making power, including in the economy, through maximal distribution. The second is the fundamental moral clash over who should be included in the universe of persons considered worthy of our concern and care, or put in more stark terms, who truly counts as human? This latter question hits on one of the key irrationalities suppressed by De Angelis’s middle class, namely the ‘othering’ that is internalized to blame a particular, generally powerless grouping of human beings for the loss of any wellbeing and/or security within the community. In doing so, responsibility on the part of the actors within capital and the state, that are actually culpable, is deflected. As long as this ‘othering’ is maintained, regardless of whether this is in a strictly capitalist or neo-fascist state, any transition along compeerist lines will be thwarted. For compeerists, then, the undemocratic, neo-fascist framework will need to be effectively debunked as illiberal, patronizing, dishonest, and parasitic; its primary aim being nothing more than the amassing of power (and wealth) in the hands of the few. The compeerist alternative, in turn, must come to be understood as a win-win option that could benefit the so-called 99 per cent of the entire globe, thus making such a pursuit not only empowering, fair, and rational, but also potentially cathartic in its ability to bring about a feeling of being in common, or what Hardt and Negri simply referred to as the ‘economic power’ of ‘love’ (Hardt and Negri, 2009, p 180). Yet, for such a discourse (and feeling) to take hold – given a broader context shaped by historical injustices and deeply ingrained sentiments centred on competition and mistrust – will undoubtedly require the patient application of compeeristaligned care and goodwill. This effort, furthermore, will have to emanate from the bottom up, that is, from the many commons-oriented initiatives and micro-movements on the ground, which is also where any formal, populisttype politics embracing the compeerist message would need to be rooted. Building on this point of a needed material groundedness from which change must emerge, we should keep in mind Chantal Mouffe’s (2005) reformulation of Carl Schmitt’s ‘friend-enemy’ dichotomy, where she makes the convincing case that we can never achieve a discourse-based, enlightened end of history. There will always be declared enemies that cannot see eye to eye, where the limits of rational discussion are laid bare. Consequently, compeerism’s prospects for outcompeting a neo-fascist alternative will also come down to its ability to deliver equitably and collaboratively governed commons realms that offer real contributions to overall wellbeing. This includes not only concrete material gains but also the social and psychological rewards that come with being able to take part in social relations involved in commoning. Only by offering such tangible benefits will larger segments of the population begin to open up to the compeerist message more broadly. In light of this demand, then, an overarching imperative for compeerists must be to establish a positive, snowballing feedback loop in which gains in the commons-based economic realm are leveraged to garner social mobilization and political clout, which is then applied to create even more robust compeerist-aligned economic capabilities and hence yet more social and political power. The effective execution of such a feedback loop as capitalism’s challenges come to a head is the only way the compeerist post-capitalist vision can both supplant capital while also ensuring neofascist alternatives do not get the upper hand. For such a spiralling process of compeerist economic and social usurpation to materialize, however, will necessitate deft, multi-scalar, political engagement and organization, including, crucially, in relation to ‘the state’.