Capital and communal residue

Abstract

Capitalism is pervasive today. It flattens and homogenizes, breaking down people, objects, and space into tradable commodities (Schmid, 2023). In doing so, however, capital generates a residue, an organically arising resistance to its grinding processes (Lefebvre, 1991). These residues take on a communal character, forming new ways of being within the shell of the old, a locus of collectivist methods of social and economic organization. Developing a heightened understanding of these radical economic formations, particularly the problems they face in a hostile world, is necessary if we are to comprehend a way of life outside of the exploitation of today. Accordingly, this project is an investigation into the liberatory nature and pervasive barriers faced by two community-led economic efforts, with an eye for the social scientific and philosophic contradictions that drive social developments. The two cases, a food cooperative and a community supported fishery, are united in both their goals of community-controlled economic activity and in the dilemmas they encounter in implementing these goals in a broadly capitalist society. The problems they face are significant; the capitalist socioeconomic totality seeks to impose itself and its contradictions upon the community economies, while the community economies in turn attempt to carve out an interstitial niche within the socioeconomic whole. This study details the ways in which the community economy case studies manage this tension, and from there extrapolates to a discussion on the horizons and difficulties of interstitial change within capitalism, as seen in both the case studies specifically and in communal economic efforts more broadly. It was found that community economies’ durability and staying power are directly linked to the degree of communal support they receive. More specifically and less tautologically, community economies rely upon differential social spaces. These are the spaces in which the hegemonic capitalist social relations are left behind and communal ways of being predominate. This operates on a spectrum; both case studies involved the creation of differential social space to some extent. The extent and depth of these spaces is the key factor; the greater the communal residues, the greater the possible success and durability of the community economy. Strong egalitarian social relations are the key. As Lefebvre indicates, it is only through the absorption of the economic sphere by the social that a different world is possible (Lefebvre, 2014).