“It was never about money!”: Articulating a Commoning Anticapitalist Strategy in German Common Economies

In this paper, we delve into a contentious issue within commoning literature: the role of money in anticapitalist strategy and praxis. Focusing on German Gemeinsame Ökonomie (“Common Economies”), income sharing groups in the radical left, we examine the boundaries of money as a transformative tool and the social relations cultivated through commoning money. By militantly engaging with individuals who pool their finances into shared bank accounts, the paper explores the operational dynamics and underlying rationale of Common Economies along three analytical and political categories that form our proposed commoning anticapitalist strategy. First, individual commoners and processes of subjectivation that can potentially reconfigure common senses. Second, communities and the very contentious process of boundary-making as a balance between subsistence and political potential. And third, the accumulation of collective capacities and their deployment to articulate a commons autonomy aiming to overcome the capitalist organisation of life. Situating money commoning within the framework of reproductive commoning, we argue that Common Economies do not see money sharing as an end in-itself, but as a means that allows them to liberate collective work and direct it towards radical anticapitalist action. Finally, we analyse the shortcomings of Common Economies as a commoning anticapitalist strategy: a lack of internal diversity of the groups, the challenge of upscaling, and the inherent contradictions of using money in trying to overcome capitalism. This investigation contributes to a nuanced understanding of money as a capitalist tool that can be hacked to rebuild reproductive commons in the Global North.