Marx, work, agency and postcapitalist prefiguration

Abstract

Marx's interpretation of ‘praxis’ as a primary expression of what we are, of self-realisation and what we might achieve as social beings, frames his revolutionary thought. This article connects Marx's unique approach to certain forms of contemporary grassroots resistance and community-based postcapitalist responses to global heating and the totalitarianism of capital. In particular, his appreciation of humans as at one with nature supports a postcapitalist imaginary abolishing the contradiction between humans and more-than-human nature intrinsic to capitalist practices. By reference to critical theorists such as Jasper Bernes and autonomist Marxist authors Harry Cleaver and P.M. (Hans Widmer), the article identifies key principles of a nonmarket socialist form of postcapitalism, i.e. beyond both state and money. Work as waged labour under the rule of capitalists gives way to ecologically and socially constructive activities fulfilling collective sufficiency cogoverned and coproduced by all. Work is freed up as semi-voluntary activity, negotiated within a community mode of production where the product is both predetermined (co-planned) and, later, shared on the basis of satisfying basic needs. In contrast to strictly defined capitalist waged work, now standard across various geographies and cultures, the postcapitalist community mode of production proposed establishes convivial and ecologically appropriate work within local geographies of community sufficiency. Even as universal (global) principles typify the community mode of production, symbiotically respectful relations between humans and nature give rise to unique localised geographies of ecological diversity and pluralism.