Defragmenting our selves
An organisation I am part of – let’s call it The Process because I like it that the Spanish language uses that term for organising – held a large assembly last weekend. The Process is aiming to do ‘relational organising’, or perhaps another way of putting that is that we are trying to form a…
We live in a time when the public discussion on rights often has a conservative hue to it. There are institutions that enforce rights, bodies that define them, campaign groups that attempt to expand them. Economic rights have however always been more controversial than the social rights laid out in most constitutions. The right to…
Spending some time in Cuba recently was a good opportunity to consider the problems of trying to common institutions from the inside, that is to say, bring them under the control and effective ownership of those who they affect, and particularly those who work within them. Applying this to the institutions that structure our daily…
Renting a home in London can be a living nightmare. Renters feel little control over their own homes, are forbidden to hang pictures on a wall, or take up state support in hard times. Their happiness and mental health is held hostage to the whims of landlords who refuse to do essential repairs or enter…
The idea of commoning is on the rise, or rather, is having a resurgence. Talk of the commons appears in unexpected places, from the radical to the less so. From a marginal idea a few years ago it has drifted, with the help of digital technology, into a position where parties and campaigners refer to…
We live in times of high political turbulence. Surveying flailing governments from Spain to the United States, it seems a good moment to face up to the evidence of system failures that face us. Millions going to food banks or unable to afford decent housing in the richest countries in the world reveals a systems failure. An…
Residents of New Cross, London have rejected the borough of Lewisham’s proposal to build council-owned private rental housing on public land. The council plans to run a profit-making housing business in an area of deprivation and housing need. “We want more council housing, not private housing. The council just wants to make money,” said a…
Ana Maria owns the casa in which I’m staying. She is talkative, enthusiastic, and helpful. When we entered the room I was to stay in, I put down my bags. She promptly moved them to what she felt to be a more appropriate place. Her advice on restaurants and buses and places to go has…
This work by Pablo Iglesias, leader of insurgent Spanish party Podemos, is now subtitled ‘Podemos and the future of a Democratic Europe’. It wouldn’t have been so originally, because Podemos did not exist when the book was first written. This makes the book of historical interest, though the addition of appendices in this 2015 edition…
Across the world the political centre ground is disappearing, and the new enemy of the people is globalism. Watching the rise of the nationalist right is particularly frustrating if, like me, you took part in protests in the late 1990s and early 2000s against globalisation. These protests for a few years united the radical left…