Thursday — Living Communism — Discussion & Dinner — Week 18
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CONTENTS:
0. About Thursday
1. Some notes on dinner
2. On Living Communism by New York Year Zero
3. Suggested Readings
4. Related links
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0. About Thursday’s Common(s) Course
What: Common(s) Course Meeting / Discussion & Dinner
When: Thursday, April 24th, 7PM
Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th floor
Who: Free and open to all
This Thursday we’ll be joined by some friends from New York Year Zero, who
have proposed a discussion and dinner around the notion of “living
communism,” based on a desire to share practices and connect with others
attempting to common the means of subsistence here in NYC. As part of our
ongoing inquiry into commoning the city and withdrawing from the community
of money, we hope this evening will bring together groups and individuals
engaged in various local initiatives to (self) organize housing, food,
education, care, and other spheres of social reproduction outside of the
market and state.
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1. Some notes on dinner
We’re planning to cook a simple vegan meal for dinner, but encourage
others to bring something to share: fruits, vegetables to cook or eat raw,
breads and cheeses, wine, etc. (consciously raised always appreciated when
possible). Dinner will follow our discussion, and will go on for as long
as you’d like.
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2. On Living Communism by New York Year Zero
I.
Communism is often offered as an inverse or opposite of capitalism,
collapse, but which for now remains obscure, unimaginable, impossible. As
with capitalism, its economies, finance, laws of value, etc. Their sole
practice remains some kind of mastery / endless diagnoses of the history,
mechanisms, and minutiae of capital. Never before have so many
dusty old books, or sitting home alone with their laptops. Never before
have materialists been so separated from the world, from their bodies,
from life itself.
international conference on the idea of communism, Antonio Negri publicly
took me as an example of those who claim to be communists without even
being Marxists. In short, I replied that that was better than claiming to
in orientation from analysis to life itself. From a politics which ignores
or takes for granted the basic questions and decisions of what it means to
live today (or whose answer is only misery and degradation, exploitation
and oppression); to a set of positions emerging and inseparable from the
form they take as life-in-common. Another way this could be narrated is as
an almost theological schism: either meaning and truth can only be found
in the final judgement/afterlife; or it can be accessed immediately in the
here-and-now.
For us the commune is not simply a place, a house, a farm, but a set of
relationships, bonds, commitments. Here the dictionary definition of
“solidarity” is far more profound, nuanced, and inspiring than the
shared, and inhabited collectively.
II.
Following the Occupy movement, and especially after Hurricane Sandy, our
attentions were focused less on assemblies and meetings, and more towards
communal dinners and potlucks. These seemed the most fundamental and
functional forms of self-organization with which we could engage, meeting
the needs and desires of a new temporality and rhythm of life in
post-Occupy, post-Sandy New York. These meals took place at the Brecht
Forum in the West Village, the Base in Bushwick, and in our homes all
across the city.
It became clear in 2012 that what we were up against was far more
complex–and insidious–than just bankers, cops, and democrats, but rather
a whole apparatus of governance which would require a different approach
to overcome. So our emphasis shifted from activism and agitation to life
and survival: from tactics to strategy. Often this practice dissolved into
our everyday lives, becoming illegible, invisible as “politics” (and
certainly as art). This for us was a victory, an accomplishment: our lives
were not simply theater or work.
In proposing something so simple, so basic, as gathering just to eat
together, to get to know each other better, to not have to perform the
roles of the militant, intellectual, whatever, we saw just how confusing,
anomalous, peculiar, and unfamiliar all this was. This is the reality of
New York City in 2014. The only solution is communism.
been trying, continuing with rather stubbornly, against what many forces
around us nudges us toward. We hope this discussion on “living communism”
can be a space to share experiences and ideas, to brainstorm, to encourage
and inspire each other. If it simply becomes another place, another event,
to critique, deconstruct, problematize, to contemplate and ponder, it will
be yet another missed opportunity.
The question–the reality–of the commune directly implicates we
ourselves, our friends and comrades. And only in our collectively coming
up against the limitations and prohibitions to living communism
today–whether economic, environmental, political, social–will we truly
realize the inevitability of insurrection, and the necessity for
revolution.
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3. Suggested readings
“On the one hand, we want to live communism; on the other, to spread
anarchy” – Call, 2004:
http://umfnyc.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/proposition-vi.pdf
“Find Each Other” – The Invisible Committee, 2007:
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/comite-invisible-the-coming-insurrection#toc9
“Kittens/Communism” – New York Year Zero & Donal Foreman, 2014:
Kittens/Communism
“We Are All Very Anxious” – Institute for Precarious Consciousness, 2014:
http://www.weareplanc.org/we-are-all-very-anxious/
“Graduate Student Workers of the World, Collectivize Your Stipends!” –
Duke Collective, 2014:
Graduate Student Workers of the World, Collectivize Your Stipends!
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4. Related links
Group Affect: http://year0.org/
1882 Woodbine: https://woodbine1882.wordpress.com/
Desiringmachine Soundsystem: http://machinedesiring.wordpress.com/
Ridgewood Fitness Club: https://www.facebook.com/ridgewoodfitnessclub/
Singularities in New York City: http://singularitiesnyc.wordpress.com/
Build the Party: http://umfnyc.wordpress.com/
Making Worlds: A Commons Coalition: http://www.makingworlds.org/