Anti-Capitalism

BUILDING OVER PLANNING: RADICAL COUNTER-HEGEMONY AND THE DINOSAURS OF THE OLD LEFT

by E. Colin Ruggero

[2002] “The People’s Strike”: Analyzing A Day of Action by the DC Anti-Capitalist Convergence

by Michael Loadenthal

On September 27th, 2002, thousands of activists from around the world converged in Washington D.C. for a day of... more On September 27th, 2002, thousands of activists from around the world converged in Washington D.C. for a day of “non-compliance and resistance” in response to the bi-annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.  Many groups from around the country helped to organize protest actions against these organizations, but one collective of radicals took a chance and broke from tradition.  The People’s Strike, organized by the D.C. based Anti-Capitalist Convergence (ACC), was a uniquely innovative attempt to create a new structure for the organization of mass protest actions.  The ACC’s plan was a revolutionary first that helped to promote an empowering organizational structure and create an unstoppable, self-fulfilling prophecy that indirectly caused a work strike, and effectively caused the stoppage of business in downtown D.C.

The Legacy of the Anarchist “Black Bloc” as Political Actor

by Jason Malikow

Time and the University

by Eli Meyerhoff

co-authored with Elizabeth Johnson and Bruce Braun, published in ACME: An International E-Journal of Critical Geography, 2012.

Over the past twenty years, university administrators in North America, Europe and elsewhere have used the apparent... more Over the past twenty years, university administrators in North America, Europe and elsewhere have used the apparent ‘crisis’ in higher education as an opportunity to roll out neoliberal policies. For many working in the academy, the effect has been felt as a very real crisis of time, as budgets, resources and job positions are cut, and the working day is stretched to the limit. Resistance has often taken the form of struggles over wages and job security, and, by extension, over time measured in terms of the length and intensity of the working day. While such struggles are necessary, our contention is that they are not enough. Extending the distinction between kairos and chronos as developed in the writings of Giorgio Agamben, Antonio Negri, and Cesare Casarino, we wager that transforming higher education must involve more than “making more time” for our work; it must also “change” time. Only by so doing, we argue, can we realize — and expand upon — the university’s potential to interrupt the empty, homogenous time of capital and cultivate non-capitalist alternatives in the here-and-now. This paper thus makes three moves: one which critiques and analyzes the practices by which the university harnesses the creative time of living labor, making it both useful and safe for capital; a second which develops a ‘revolutionary’ theory of time that enables us to see capital not as the generative source of innovation, but instead as parasitic upon it; and a third, affirmative, move that explores experiments within and beyond the university with self-valorizing practices of collective learning, no longer as resource for state and capital, but as part of the ‘expansionary’ time of the common.

Toward a University of the Commons: The Experimental College of the Twin Cities

by Eli Meyerhoff

Creating Commons: Divided Governance, Participatory Management, and Struggles Against Enclosure in the University

by Eli Meyerhoff

co-authored with Isaac Kamola, published in Polygraph Journal, 2009

Social movements research and the ‘movement of movements’: studying resistance to neo-liberal globalisation

by Laurence Cox

(with Alf Nilsen). Sociological Compass vol. 1 no. 2: 424 - 442, 2007.

This article explores the state of research on the "movement of movements" against neoliberal globalisation.... more This article explores the state of research on the "movement of movements" against neoliberal globalisation. Starting from a general consideration of the significance of the movement and the difficulties inherent in studying it, it discusses the literature on the movement from within social movement studies, and argues that the response from social movement researchers falls short of what could be expected in terms of adequacy to the movement and its own knowledge production. It explores some effects of this failure and locates the reasons for it in the unacknowledged relationship between social movements theorising and activist theorising. The article then discusses the possible contributions that can be made by Marxist and other engaged academic writers, as well as the significance of the extensive theoretical literature generated by activists within the movement. It concludes by stating the importance of dialogue between activist and academic theorising and research in attempting to understand the movement.

News from nowhere: the movement of movements in Ireland

by Laurence Cox

210-229 in Social Movements and Ireland. Linda Connolly and Niamh Hourigan (eds.). Manchester University Press, 2006

A social movements analysis of the alterglobalisation / anticapitalist movement in Ireland. A social movements analysis of the alterglobalisation / anticapitalist movement in Ireland.

They Only Saw the Surface of Things

by J.W. Trull

Toward a Reconceptualization of Needs in Classrooms: Baudrillard, Critical Pedagogy, and Schooling in The United States

by Zachary Casey

In this paper I review Marx’s (1990) conceptions of use value and exchange value before turning to Baudrillard’s... more In this paper I review Marx’s (1990) conceptions of use value and exchange value before turning to Baudrillard’s (1981) critique of both in the capitalist construction of needs. I then use Baudrillard’s conception of the ‘system of needs’ to identify how this same process works in schools and classrooms. Namely, how students become conceptualized as commodities and how schools as the sites in which these commodities are produced become complicit with capitalist social reproduction. Finally, I take up the pedagogical project of redefining (humanizing) needs in a critical pedagogy that is decidedly anti-capitalist, while accounting for the various structural mechanisms in place in our present school system within the United States that work against such a critical pedagogy.

CAPITALISM AND ANTI-CAPITALISM

by James Heartfield

interventions Vol. 5(2) 271–289, 2003

Amongst the world leaders faith in the capitalist system is threadbare. With a declining base of popular legitimacy,... more Amongst the world leaders faith in the capitalist system is threadbare. With a declining base of popular legitimacy, contemporary elites lack the confidence to steer the world in any direction of their own. In many ways the protestors simply reflect the inner loss of certainty suffered by elites – giving it an external manifestation. The criticisms of the anti-capitalist
movement have been indulged to a surprising extent. At the World Bank, at the G8, and amongst the media, the anti-globalization protests have had an easy ride, as a nervous older generation looks on benignly at the idealism of youth. Again and again the protestors have been invited inside to share their insights with world leaders.

Sites of public (homo) sex and the carnivalesque spaces of reclaim the streets

by Gavin Brown

This chapter explores two sets of (often fleeting) contemporary urban spaces that demonstrate some of the emancipatory... more This chapter explores two sets of (often fleeting) contemporary urban spaces that demonstrate some of the emancipatory potential of the city – sites of public (homo)sex and the carnivalesque spaces created by the direct actions of the anti-capitalist disorganisation Reclaim The Streets(RTS). Just as the actions of RTS consciously attempt to undermine (however briefly) the privatisation of public space and the alienated conpartmentalism of our lives, the liminal spaces of public (homo)sex transcend the private/public binary through which contemporary sexual citizenship is defined. Although the spaces created by RTS actions and for public (homo)sex challenge certain societal norms and demonstrate the potential for new forms of commuality, I question the extent to which these spaces and the acts that constitute them are capable of promoting real and sustainable emancipatory change. Based on participatory ethnographic research in both sets of spaces, this chapter explores the tensions and contradictions contained within these sites.

Space for emotions in the spaces of activism

by Gavin Brown

Co-authored with Jenny Pickerill

This paper explores the role of emotions in activism. Although, increasingly, researchers have examined what emotions... more This paper explores the role of emotions in activism. Although, increasingly, researchers have examined what emotions inspire or deter different forms of political and social movement activism, this paper takes a new direction by considering what spaces, practices and emotional stances are necessary to sustain individual and collective resistance in the long-term. We argue that we need to sustain activism through emotional reflexivity, building sustaining spaces to create space for emotion in activism. Using empirical examples from different forms of autonomous (anti-capitalist) activism in Britain, the role and importance of emotions to the sustainability of activism is explored. In particular, we consider the role of different spaces in sustaining activists through the cycles of protest, what spaces of activism can be opened up by a closer attention to emotions, and how the spaces in which protest and other activist practices take place shape the emotional and affective engagements of participants. As autonomous forms of activism attempt to prefiguratively enact new post-capitalist social relations in the here and now, we suggest there is still some way to go in changing affective relationships within many of these groups.

Book Review: Capitalists and Conquerors by Peter McLaren, and Teaching Peter McLaren, edited by Marc Pruyn and Luis Huerta Charles

by Richard Kahn

Learning for Democracy, Vol. 1. No. 1, 2005

Enacting Anti-Capitalism: Traversing Masculinities of Protest in Korea

by Dan Bousfield