Defragmenting our selves
I spent some time reading Mouffe and Laclau’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, in part because of its claimed influence on the more insurgent left parties across Europe, including Podemos in Spain. It took time because it is not an easy book to read. By the end, I was not entirely sure it was time well…
While watching an enthusiastic group of young people (many in their twenties) discussing their plans to change the Labour Party last night, I felt my heart sink a little, even though I too am pleased by the change of leadership of the party. The problem, I realised, is that, being in my mid-thirties, I have…
When I read Paul Mason’s Guardian teaser for his new book Postcapitalism, I had been mentally drafting a blog post entitled No One Solution, or something like it. Since it turns out Paul and I are in accord on quite a few things, I’m turning that unwritten post into a review of Mason’s article. I…
The city of Oaxaca has sunny weather, a beautiful colonial centre, and arguably the best food in Mexico. It is not, on the face of it, the type of place to forment political unrest. But in the main square of the city the first thing you see is a camp surrounded by political slogans. It…
Last week I found myself, for the sake of a trip out of Mexico City, at some pre-Colombian pyramids. They were big. They were pointy. They dominated the surrounding landscape. Much exploitation must have been necessary to build them. A group of people who considered themselves more important than the others presumably got those others…
[tl;dr for this post: consensus is often a fake consensus, not just because we’re doing it wrong but because we are trying too hard to make it happen and that creates certain pressures, social, animal or otherwise. Sometimes we just don’t agree, and we need to admit that and leave room for disagreement.] I wanted…
I’ve finally got around to reading Dan Hind’s Common Sense, which I’ve been meaning to do for ages on the grounds that I usually agree with his articles and The Return of the Public was at least interesting. Common Sense is a pamphlet in the tradition of the more famous Common Sense by Tom Paine. Here’s a video of…
Ostrom wrote about the governing of Common Pool Resources, in Governing the Commons. In particular she was writing in opposition to neo-liberal economics which was claiming at the time that private ownership was the only way to solve the mythical ‘Tragedy of the commons’. . Ostrom created a list of common design principles from the experience of…
This week I interviewed some people from Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH), an organisation for people affected by bad mortgages and evictions in Spain. I’ll write it up properly later but a summary of why they seem to be successful: 1. The organisation is a network of local groups made up mostly of…
Last night I was at an event put on by Stir magazine, ‘Old Forms, New Strategies: Trade Unions, Co-operatives and the Commons’, which discussed the historical lack of co-operation between trade unions and the co-operative movement in the UK. The lack of interaction is not an accident. A mixture of ideology and self-interest means that…