Anti Capitalist Social Movements

Space is never a neutral ‘stage’ on which social actors play their roles, sometimes cooperating with each other, sometimes struggling against each other. Space is a product of interrelations, and is always under construction.  Its co-constitutive role in the development of social relations is multiple and complex: a reference for identity-building and re-building; a material condition for existence and survival; a symbol and instrument of power. However, as much as space has been made instrumental for the purposes of heteronomy (from class exploitation to gender oppression to racial segregation), space (spatial re-organisation, spatial practices and spatial resources) is also a basic condition for human emancipation, i.e. for autonomy and freedom. Recognising the way space has been used for resistance, especially in those more specifically left-libertarian contexts (from the early anarchist organising efforts in the 19th century, to the Paris Commune, to the early kibbutzim, to the makhnovitchina in Ukraine, to the socio-spatial revolution during the Spanish Civil War, to the contemporary re-birth of left-libertarian and sometimes specifically anarchist praxis among social movements such as Mexican Zapatistas) is important. Here, a greater understanding of space can teach a great deal about both limits and potentialities, particularly in relation to the possibilities and tasks of re-purposing and re-structuring the built environment, changing images of place, and overcoming old and new boundaries of all sorts.

In an attempt to start rectifying a lamentable disparity in scholarship, we evince fruitful points of similarity and difference in the ideas of Simone de Beauvoir and Ayn Rand, paying particular attention to their views on long-term projects. Endorsing what might be called an “Ethic of Resolve,” Rand praises those who undertake sustained goal-directed actions such as careers. Beauvoir, however, endorses an “Ethic of Ambiguity” that makes her more skeptical about the prospects of carrying out lifelong projects without deluding oneself. Our study teases apart the strengths and drawbacks of these views.

Adopting an ‘anarchist squint’ (Scott, 2014: xii) this paper aims to expose, subvert, and undermine the dominant prima facie assumption that we live under a ‘neoliberal capitalist’ order. It achieves this primarily by drawing attention to the pervasive nature of alternative economic modes of human organisation within western society. Celebrating an ontology of economic difference, the paper argues that many of the existing ‘alternative’ modes of human organisation enacted through everyday material, social and emotional coping strategies are demonstrably and recognisably anarchistic. Far from being a residual and marginal realm, these anarchist forms of organisation – underpinned by mutual aid, reciprocity, co-operation, collaboration and inclusion – are found to be deeply woven into the fabric of everyday ‘capitalist’ life. Exploring the key implications for the organisation of everyday work, particularly at the household and community level, an economic future is envisaged in which anarchist modes of organisation flourish. The paper concludes by discussing why anarchist forms of organising and organisation should be harnessed, and how this might occur.

This paper examines the politics of possibility for rural activism in reform era China. By periodizing rural reforms from 1990, we explore the political-economic changes that have coalesced in the reform era, and how these changes condition forms and possibilities of activism. We argue that the current modernization–urbanization drive that emerged around 2008 is foreclosing opportunities for the pro-peasant cooperative forms that New Rural Reconstruction activists imagined earlier in the decade. Instead, as the process of capitalist agrarian change deepens in the countryside, food- and farming-related activism now resembles the state’s focus on markets and consumption, to the detriment of addressing social relations of production. Without a focus on distributional politics and power, this shift has the potential to further entrench existing inequalities within and across rural and urban spaces. The contextual work undertaken in this paper is currently absent from the emerging literature on China’s agrifood transformations.

The first edition of this Research Handbook offers unparalleled insights into the large-scale resurgence of interest in Marx and Marxism in recent years, with contributions devoted specifically to Marxist critiques of law, rights, and the state.

The Research Handbook brings together thirty-three scholars of Marx, Marxism, and law from around the world to offer theoretically informed introductions to the Marxist tradition of social critique, contemporary Marxist analyses of law and rights, and future orientations of Marxist legal analysis. Chapters testify to the strength of Marxist critical tools for understanding the role of law, rights, and the state in capitalist societies.

Exploring Marxist critique across an extraordinarily wide range of scholarly disciplines, this Research Handbook is a must-read for scholars of law, politics, sociology, philosophy, and political economy who are interested in Marxism. Graduate and advanced undergraduate students in these and related disciplines will also benefit from the Research Handbook.

The volume is edited by Paul O'Connell (Reader in Law, SOAS, University of London) and Umut Özsu (Associate Professor of Law and Legal Studies, Carleton University).

Contributors include Max Ajl (Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Social Sciences, Rural Sociology Group, Wageningen University & Research), Rémi Bachand (Professor of Law, Université du Québec à Montréal), Miriam Bak McKenna (Lecturer in Law, Lund University), Clyde W. Barrow (Professor of Political Science, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley), Enzo Bello (Associate Professor, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro), Bill Bowring (Professor of Law, Birkbeck, University of London), Honor Brabazon (Assistant Professor of Sociology and Legal Studies, St. Jerome’s University in the University of Waterloo), Gustavo Capela (PhD Candidate in Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley), Cosmin Sebastian Cercel (Associate Professor of Law, University of Nottingham), B. S. Chimni (Distinguished Professor of International Law, OP Jindal Global University), Pablo Ciocchini (Lecturer in Criminology, University of Liverpool), Natalia Delgado (Lecturer in Law, University of Southampton), Matthew Dimick (Professor of Law, University of Buffalo), Radha D’Souza (Reader in Law, University of Westminster), Michael Head (Professor of Law, Western Sydney University), Nate Holdren (Associate Professor of Law, Politics, and Society, Drake University), Rob Hunter (Independent Scholar, PhD in Politics, Princeton University), Talina Hürzeler (Independent Scholar, LLB, University of New South Wales), Bob Jessop (Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Lancaster), Rene José Keller (Independent Scholar, PhD in Law, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, and PhD in Social Work, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul), Rafael Khachaturian (Lecturer in Critical Writing, University of Pennsylvania), Stéfanie Khoury (Independent Scholar, PhD in Sociology of Law, Università degli Studi di Milano and Universidad del País Vasco), Dimitrios Kivotidis (Lecturer in Law, University of East London), Daniel McLoughlin (Senior Lecturer in Law, Society, and Criminology, University of New South Wales), Eva Nanopoulos (Senior Lecturer in Law, Queen Mary, University of London), August H. Nimtz (Professor of Political Science and African American and African Studies, University of Minnesota), Paul O’Connell (Reader in Law, SOAS, University of London), Chris O’Kane (Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley), Rebecca Schein (Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Carleton University), Igor Shoikhedbrod (Assistant Professor of Political Science and Law, Justice, and Society, Dalhousie University), Nimer Sultany (Reader in Law, SOAS, University of London), Christine Sypnowich (Professor of Philosophy, Queen’s University), and Ahmed White (Professor of Law, University of Colorado at Boulder).