bcbm
5th March 2011, 03:53
Nowtopia is a term that attempts to describe the myriad efforts to reclaim and reinvent work against the logic of capital. Nowtopia identifies a new basis for a shared experience of class. Specifically, the exodus from wage labor on one side, and the embrace of meaningful, freely chosen and “free” (unpaid) work on the other. No longer can our waged jobs be assumed to define us, and no longer can they be the primary basis for politics. Precisely because so many people find their work lives inadequate, incomplete, degrading, pointless, stupid and oppressive, they form identities and communities outside of paid work—in spaces where they are not working class. It is in these activities that people, who are reduced on the job to “mere workers”, fully engage their capacities to create, to shape, to invent, and to cooperate without monetary incentive. They “work” or “labor” in a way in which the particular substance of their activity is meaningful. These communities may not look much like the working class organizations of the past two centuries, but it is important to recognize that in this topsy-turvy period of system breakdown and transition, new political forms are emerging to reshape the endless struggle between capital and humanity. In the face of widespread dismissal of nowtopian movements as “lifestyle” politics or irrelevant “dropout” culture, we argue that they are in fact new political forms that are addressing directly many immediate problems of capitalist society.Chris Carlsson discusses the thesis of his book, Nowtopia, for the Antipode journal (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00782.x/full):
(for a longer treatment, see also here (http://p2pfoundation.net/Nowtopia))
“Social revolution is not much talked about these days. The last great outpouring of revolutionary rhetoric was ultimately silenced by the failures and co-optation of national liberation movements, the demise of Soviet-modeled “socialism”, and the defeat and partial absorption of radical movements by a resilient capitalist world order. In the oppositional vacuum that appeared in the wake of (self-proclaimed) triumphant liberal capitalism, initiatives to change life that were borne of dissatisfaction and alienation went underground, burrowing into the interstices of daily life, where they are slowly raising their heads under the aegis of a broad range of autonomous initiatives.
Working for a wage reduces work’s purpose to an empty, abstract monetary reward. Work done for its own sake is fundamentally different. Defined by the person doing it, deemed good and necessary on its social and/or ecological (rather than financial) merits, un-waged work fulfills and confirms a multidimensional sensibility, providing a whole range of feelings and experiences beyond the narrow instrumentalism of work for money. Work that is not coerced through the need to make money is always more satisfying to do, when the reason and reward for your work is not the ultimately empty abstraction of money, but comes from the multiple, complex intimate connections that we maintain and create through our work, our creative activity. The quality is “better” too, because everyone does their best work when determining their own purpose and pace.
Dissent may erupt into direct insubordination, but the nowtopian exodus from capitalism’s hollow “choices” often amounts to non-subordination. Nowtopic social movements are not creating alternate systems of “self-valorization” as much as they are removing the mediator of value from their engaged practices in the world. These movements go beyond hobbies like working on your own home or car (activities that remain within the logic of individual consumers). Community gardeners, alternative fuel innovators, anti-consumer bicyclists (to name a few of the nowtopian movements visible today) are producing communities and collectivities that embody a different sense of the individual and the group. Also, they represent technological revolts that have a more accurate and nuanced sensitivity to ecological practices and their relationship to local behaviours, because the goal is not obscured by the demands of the market or a boss. Taken together, this constellation of practices is an elaborate, decentralized, uncoordinated collective research and development effort exploring a potentially post-capitalist, post-petroleum future.continued:
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-radical-potential-of-nowtopian-struggles-2/2011/02/25
(for a longer treatment, see also here (http://p2pfoundation.net/Nowtopia))
“Social revolution is not much talked about these days. The last great outpouring of revolutionary rhetoric was ultimately silenced by the failures and co-optation of national liberation movements, the demise of Soviet-modeled “socialism”, and the defeat and partial absorption of radical movements by a resilient capitalist world order. In the oppositional vacuum that appeared in the wake of (self-proclaimed) triumphant liberal capitalism, initiatives to change life that were borne of dissatisfaction and alienation went underground, burrowing into the interstices of daily life, where they are slowly raising their heads under the aegis of a broad range of autonomous initiatives.
Working for a wage reduces work’s purpose to an empty, abstract monetary reward. Work done for its own sake is fundamentally different. Defined by the person doing it, deemed good and necessary on its social and/or ecological (rather than financial) merits, un-waged work fulfills and confirms a multidimensional sensibility, providing a whole range of feelings and experiences beyond the narrow instrumentalism of work for money. Work that is not coerced through the need to make money is always more satisfying to do, when the reason and reward for your work is not the ultimately empty abstraction of money, but comes from the multiple, complex intimate connections that we maintain and create through our work, our creative activity. The quality is “better” too, because everyone does their best work when determining their own purpose and pace.
Dissent may erupt into direct insubordination, but the nowtopian exodus from capitalism’s hollow “choices” often amounts to non-subordination. Nowtopic social movements are not creating alternate systems of “self-valorization” as much as they are removing the mediator of value from their engaged practices in the world. These movements go beyond hobbies like working on your own home or car (activities that remain within the logic of individual consumers). Community gardeners, alternative fuel innovators, anti-consumer bicyclists (to name a few of the nowtopian movements visible today) are producing communities and collectivities that embody a different sense of the individual and the group. Also, they represent technological revolts that have a more accurate and nuanced sensitivity to ecological practices and their relationship to local behaviours, because the goal is not obscured by the demands of the market or a boss. Taken together, this constellation of practices is an elaborate, decentralized, uncoordinated collective research and development effort exploring a potentially post-capitalist, post-petroleum future.continued:
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-radical-potential-of-nowtopian-struggles-2/2011/02/25