Yes mindset shift—the compeerist framework avoids pitfalls of previous radical movements while also giving people a viable alternative to capitalism

Hannes, Professor of Geography at the University of West Georgia. “Compeerists of the World Unite!” From Capital to Commons: Exploring the Promise of a World Beyond Capitalism. University of Bristol. Pp 177-181. /LJS

In line with De Angelis and Holloway, compeerism embraces the possibility of an outside to capital while acknowledging that this exterior is always contested and vulnerable. Compeerism also views the emergence of a different consciousness – the explosion of De Angelis’s middle class – as a necessary component of this ‘outside’. We can call this self-reflective, commons-oriented form of seeing and thinking ‘commoner consciousness’, which will find different sources and iterations depending on a person’s particular experiences and mental processes in their engagement with the capitalist mode of production. Yet, in an effort to avoid the overt vagueness for which some autonomist approaches have been critiqued, we can nonetheless attempt to offer a bit more specificity regarding what a commoner consciousness would entail, and, even more critically, the role of such a consciousness in the creation of a broader political mobilization. To begin, and in line with Holloway and De Angelis, compeerism does not see the essence of being a ‘commoner’ as rooted in some form of intellectual illumination; it is rather through acts of non- and counter-capitalist ‘doing’ and ‘commoning’ that commoner consciousness is brought about and sustained. Such doing could involve, for instance, volunteering at a soup kitchen or refugee centre; helping to organize a community maker/repair space; or building and contributing to the open-source designs of an offgrid tiny house that is intended to facilitate an exit from the demands of a never-ceasing earn-and-spend culture. As such, commoner consciousness is also not contingent on a conscious ‘class position’, but rather on the establishment of common interests and subsequent common organization in the face of capital’s exploitative/extractive nature more broadly (Hardt and Negri, 2005; De Angelis, 2010; Wright, 2021). Importantly, and following from this focus on doing, for commoner consciousness to be truly active it can never rest idle; commoning must continuously and intentionally be reengaged and reinvented to not be coopted. In other words, static and unreflective ‘anti-system’ positions, for instance choosing to be vegan, will not suffice; capital will simply respond with the McVegan burger at McDonalds and a vegan section at the local Walmart. Yet a key question that must be answered here is how the intentionality and depth needed to continuously challenge capital can be brought about, which would also go a long way to explain how a lasting and impactful counter capitalist movement of movements can be galvanized and sustained. Regarding such political mobilization, we can point out that many autonomists and anarchists, especially those falling in line with the thinking of Hardt and Negri (2017), would here refer to the spontaneous, decentralized, and intentionally amorphous multitude as the needed motor to propel any large-scale anti-capitalist activity and organization. The view here is that nothing can match the power of an anarchic swarm, leading to the ideal of the ‘headless’ movement, as exemplified in the Occupy Wall Street protests. Yet, it is precisely this thinking around the multitude that has also been dismissed as overly nebulous, and hence ineffective in explaining, let alone bringing about, progressive systemic change (De Angelis, 2007; Mouffe, 2009; Rancière, 2016). Indeed, with the Occupy movement increasingly in the rear-view mirror, it is not unfair to conclude that there were few lasting gains or concessions achieved. All the while capitalism marches on. The compeerist position, therefore, loosely shared by a smaller cohort of autonomists who are more critical of Hardt and Negri’s approach, is that greater unity and strategic intentionality is needed in the disparate and latently powerful forms of counter-capitalist consciousness already emerging (De Angelis, 2010; 2012; 2017a; Dyer-Witheford, 2015; Toupin, 2021). In compeerism, specifically, achieving this political cohesion is seen as ultimately depending on commoner consciousness embracing a malleable, but still broadly shared, morally informed political-economic outlook. This is decidedly not a vanguardist proposal for a grand and dogmatic ideology or a prescriptive agenda of specific actions that must be taken; indeed, the hierarchical power arrangements inherent in vanguardism are fundamentally counter to the compeerist preference for decentralized and egalitarian crowdsourcing. Rather, it is a call for a flexible yet cohering outlook and state of mind, which is seen as already being innate in most commoning-type doing, that can help commoners coalesce their efforts to actually achieve real systemic change (Bauwens and Ramos, 2018; Bollier and Helfrich, 2019; Kioupkiolis, 2020a; Ramos, 2020). Hence, in terms of its foundational, ethical core, the commoner consciousness espoused by compeerism is rooted in the broad value of human equality. As such, any form of oppression is rejected and resisted, including, for example, the use of identity-based bias and discrimination to exploit commons-based labour or to block or restrict access to the commons and commoning (Federici, 2012; 2019). Furthermore, the compeerist aspired-to commoner consciousness entails an embrace of justice and solidarity, rooted in a rejection of an ontologically posited, autonomous and individual subject. Instead, our social/psychological reality is better conceived as fundamentally inter-subjective and interdependent, giving rise to values such as openness, sharing, and collaboration (Bauwens 2005; Hyde, 2012; Bollier and Helfrich, 2015). It is this same inter-subjective outlook that lies behind the recognition of humanity’s geographical and hence ethical interconnectedness across distance and time, as emphasized in Chapter 6 with regard to the concept of power geometries (Massey, 1996). It follows, therefore, that the pursuit of an expansive and non-discriminatory commons is embraced as a global effort, requiring transnational mutual aid and camaraderie (Esposito, 2013; Dardot and Laval, 2014; Schismenos et al, 2020). At the same time, while the ethical and strategic embrace of inclusivity is seen as foundational, a well-honed and intentional commoner consciousness will also recognize that inclusivity cannot be infinite. Following Ostrom (2015), boundaries and regulations are still required for effective commons governance, especially when it comes to more physically limited, and hence rivalrous resources. Thus, the complex and contested nature of the commons reminds us of the quarrelsome politics that will always be a part of their governance. It is in light of the inevitability of politics, and indeed contestation, where the importance of more particular commons-centred dispositions come to the fore. It is these dispositions, which would ideally also be shared across commoner consciousness more broadly, that are needed to ensure the commons can, in fact, become the basis of a more just and sustainable prospering for everyone. Details of what an execution of such a mentality would entail are well expounded in the work associated with the Heteropolitics project initiated by Alexandros Kioupkiolis (2017). Here, political theory and commons practices are combined to articulate an ‘alternative’ politics that would be needed to intentionally align the management of the commons with the ideals of egalitarianism, fairness, and resilience. The result is ultimately an ‘agonistic’ form of commons-oriented politics that, in the words of Kioupkiolis (2020b, p 73), is rooted in ‘openness, diversity, elasticity, inclusivity, grassroots autonomy, participation, assemblies, process, horizontality, prefiguration, work in everyday reality, networking and action over fixed ideologies and closed identities’. These intentionally non-vanguardist, yet also purposedriven governance principles align well with the ideals compeerism adopts in its approach to commoning. However, compeerism is not just concerned with prefiguring or envisioning the commons, it is also, critically, about overcoming capitalism. This is where compeerism sees the value in commoner consciousness also maintaining a broadly shared, more macro-oriented political-economic outlook, which could function to tie commoners together within a powerful movement of movements. In terms of what the substance of such an outlook would entail, compeerism’s starting point aligns well with Michael Hardt’s (2010, p 353) basic premise, traced to the early Marx, that the ultimate aim of societal struggle is the ‘autonomous human production of subjectivity’. In other words, it is a broad and flexible embrace of the inherent value of pursuing, on our own terms, our self-determination as individuals and communities. Clearly, such a never-ending process of self-determination will vary over time and between people(s). Yet, from the compeerism perspective, a unifying ground to be found here is in the shared desirability to expand and wisely govern the material and digital commons needed to pursue our own and collective self-determination, and hence, thriving. As such, and keeping in mind the ‘middle class’ outlook that is to be ‘exploded’, a commoner consciousness would preferably evolve to entail a shared acknowledgement of the unsustainable, unjust, and squandering nature of our current organization of labour and resources. Further building on this insight, then, would be the conviction, given our technological endowments, that the principles of cooperation, collaboration, and mutual assistance are much more sensible principles for organizing our societies than those of cutthroat competition and targeted exclusion. Compeerism ultimately addresses these overarching internalizations by pursuing a replacement of capital by commonifying the means of production. Yet, at the same time, there is an intentional openness as to how these processes must unfold. For instance, private and/or state property are not presented as inherent evils needing absolute dismantlement. Instead, the degree to which these forms of property should be maintained, within the larger context of pursuing a vibrant and accessible commons, must be determined primarily by and for the people that are most impacted. It is in this light that we can also understand compeerism’s commitment to greater economic and political decentralization as a deliberate facilitation of localized self-determination, albeit within the confines of respecting the interests and concerns of legitimate external stakeholders (Bollier, 2017). This opening up to socioeconomic-political diversity, in essence, is what is meant by a post-ideological ideology, or post-ideology. It is an acceptance that communities may pursue divergent prioritizations, and find different answers to the same problem, while still being bounded within a set of overarching aims and principles.