The communitarian revolutionary subject: new forms of social transformation

Abstract

The hope for a unique revolutionary actor in the twentieth century evaporated as a result of the weaknesses of social organisations. This paper examines the potential of an almost-forgotten group of revolutionary actors – collectively organised and deliberately involved in processes of social and productive transformation with a legitimate claim to territory – whose present-day activities involve them in concerted processes to consolidate a different constellation of societies on the margins of the global capitalist system. Indigenous and peasant communities throughout the Americas are self-consciously restructuring their organisations and governance structures, taking control of territories they claimed for generations. They are also reorganising production to generate surplus, assembling their members to take advantage of underutilised resources and peoples’ energies for improving their ability to raise living standards and assure environmental conservation and restoration. These communities are not operating in isolation. They coordinate activities, share information and build alliances. Hundreds of millions of people are participating in this growing movement; they occupy much more than one-quarter of the world’s land area. There is great potential for others to join them, expanding from the substantial areas where they are already operational. Global social networks are ensuring that this dynamic accelerates.

Keywords:

• Revolutionary subject
• collective
• community
• social transformation
• surplus

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Acknowledgements

This paper is a product of a collaborative effort of members of the ‘Sustainability Laboratory’ in the Department of Economics. We are particularly grateful to the prolonged discussions during its lengthy gestation period; the active members of this group are Wuendy Armenta, Erika Carcaño and Ana Lilia Esquivel. Previous work on this line of research was conducted as part of a European Community Research Program (FP-7) in which we collaborated with colleagues from eight countries on the subject of environmental governance in Latin America; the results are summarised in the book listed in the bibliography (see Barkin and Lemus, in De Castro, Hogenboom, and Baud). We are very grateful for the constructive and comradely comments we received from many colleagues in Mexico and abroad; in particular, we would like to thank Radhika Desai, Maarten de Kadt, Dominick Tuminaro and the members of the University of Zacatecas Seminar in Critical Development Studies. The careful reading and perspicacious comments from the two anonymous readers were quite important for the final revision.

Notes

1 eg Meadows and Meadows, Limits to Growth.

2 Berkes, Sacred Ecology.

3 Petras and Veltmeyer, “Are Latin American Peasant Movements Still a Force.”

4 Esteva, “The Zapatistas and People’s Power”; and Alvárez, Dagnino, and Escobar, Culture of Politics, Politics of Culture.

5 Bartra and Otero, “Indian Peasant Movements in Mexico.”

6 Garnett et al., “A Spatial Overview,” 369.

7 Harvey, “‘Listen, Anarchist!’”

8 Huanacuni Mamani, Buen Vivir/Vivir Bien; and Bengoa, La emergencia indígena en América Latina.

9 Barkin and Lemus, “Local Solutions for Environmental Justice.”

10 Wolf, Europe and the People without History.

11 See Barkin, “Overcoming the Neoliberal Paradigm” for the details of how they are operationalised.

12 Villoro, De la libertad a la comunidad, 41–2 (our translation).

13 Ibid.

14 Lenkersdorf, Cosmovisiones; and Nations, “Naming the Dragonfly.”

15 Villoro, De la libertad a la comunidad.

16 Barkin, “Communities Constructing Their Own Alternatives.”

17 See Kovach, Indigenous Methodologies; Wilson, Research is Ceremony; L. T. Smith, Challenges of Kaupapa Maori Research; and L. T. Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies.

18 Barkin and Lemus, “Local Solutions for Environmental Justice.”

19 Barkin et al., “Social Capacity for Surplus Management.”

20 Villoro, “Sobre el concepto de revolución,” 278 (our translation).

21 Polanyi, The Great Transformation.

22 Martínez Luna, Comunalidad y Desarrollo.

23 Arsel, Hogenboom, and Pelligrini, “The Extractive Boom in Latin America.”

24 Boyce, Narain, and Stanton, Reclaiming Nature; Zermeño, Reconstruir a México en el Siglo XXI; and Toledo and Ortiz-Espejel, México, Regiones que caminan hacia la sustentabilidad.

25 Wrenn and Waller, “Care and the Neoliberal Individual.”

26 Baran, The Political Economy of Growth; Baran, “On the Evolution of Economic Surplus”; and Gibson-Graham, Cameron, and Healy, Take Back the Economy.

27 Carcaño, “Las mujeres indígenas”; Petras and Veltmeyer, Extractive Imperialism in the Americas; and Armenta, “Acumulación de capital extra-económica.”

28 Vergara-Camus, “The MST and the EZLN Struggle for Land.”

29 Toledo, Ecocidio en México.

30 Ibid., 144–5 (our translation).

31 See Gonzales and González, “Introduction: Indigenous Peoples and Autonomy.”

32 eg Scott, Weapons of the Weak.

33 Borrini-Feyerabend et al., Sharing Power.

34 Baschet, Resistencia, Rebelión, Insurrección.

35 N. Smith, “The Revolutionary Imperative.”

36 Bonfil Batalla, México Profundo.

37 Barkin, De La Protesta a La Propuesta, ch. 27: 485–497.

38 Baschet, Resistencia, Rebelión, Insurrección, 7.

39 Porto-Gonçalves and Leff, “Political Ecology in Latin America.”

40 Participación de la Comisión Sexta del EZLN, El Pensamiento Crítico; Beaucage, “Belleza, placer y sufrimiento”; and Rodríguez, Defensa comunitaria del territorio.

41 A. Palerm, Obras hidráulicas prehispánicas; and J. Palerm, “A Comparative History.”

42 Barkin, Innovaciones Mexicanas en el Manejo del Agua.

43 Stevens et al., Securing Rights, Combating Climate Change; and Oldekop et al., “Reductions in Deforestation and Poverty.”

44 Silva Rivera, del Carmen Vergara Tenorio, and Rodríguez Luna, Casos Exitosos; Toledo and Ortiz-Espejel, México, Regiones que caminan; and Toledo and Barrera-Bassols, “Political Agroecology in Mexico.”

45 Barkin, De La Protesta a La Propuesta, ch. 29: 512–38.

46 Farrell, “Snow White and the Wicked Problems of the West”; Ameso et al., “Pastoral Resilience among the Maasai.”

47 Desmarais, La Vía Campesina; Borras, Edelman, and Kay, Transnational Agrarian Movements; Shattuck, Schiavoni, and VanGelder, The Politics of Food Sovereignty; SOCLA, “Scaling up Agroecology”; Val et al., “Agroecology and La Vía Campesina I”; Rosset et al., “Agroecology and La Vía Campesina II.”

48 CALG, Defending Commons’ Land and ICCAs.

49 Wen et al., “Ecological Civilization, Indigenous Culture.”

50 Borsatto and Souza-Ezquerdo, “MST’s Experience in Leveraging Agroecology.”

51 Rosset and Khadse, “Zero Budget Natural Farming in India.”

52 Saed, “Rojava”; and Fenelon and Hall, “Revitalization and Indigenous Resistance.”

53 eg Lönnqvist, Morral de experiencias; Pimbert, Food Sovereignty, Agroecology and Biocultural Diversity.

54 Enlace Zapatista, “What Is Missing Is yet to Come”; Fitzwater, Autonomy Is in Our Hearts.

55 Carcaño, “Las mujeres indígenas”; Serna de la Garza and Martínez Garcés, “Integralidad en la responsabilidad social empresarial”; Armenta, “Acumulación de capital extra-económica”; and Linsalata, “De la defensa del territorio maseual.”

56 Lang, König, and Regelmann, Alternatives in a World of Crisis; Esteva, Babones, and Babcicky, The Future of Development; and Escobar et al., Pluriverse.

57 Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century.

58 Marx, Precapitalist Economic Formations.

59 Harvey, “Marxism, Metaphors, and Ecological Politics,” 27.

60 Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, ch. 1.

61 Caycedo, The Historical Subject and Its Complexity.

62 Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto.

63 Barkin and Lemus, “Local Solutions for Environmental Justice”; Anderson et al., Everyday Experts.

64 Funtowicz and Ravetz, “Science for the Post-Normal Age.”

65 Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century; and Wolf, Europe and the People without History.

66 Little, “Marx on Peasant Consciousness,” in a comment on Engels’s comments on Marx’s essay, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.”

67 Baronnet, Mora Bayo, and Stahler-Sholk, Luchas “muy otras”; Enlace Zapatista, “May the Earth Tremble at Its Core.”

68 Illich, Tools for Conviviality; and Esteva, “Time to Enclose the Enclosers.”

69 O’Connor, “Capitalism, Nature, Socialism.”

70 Barkin, De La Protesta a La Propuesta, ch. 5: 127–35.

71 Garnett et al., “A Spatial Overview.”

72 Barkin, “Radical Ecological Economics.”

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this work comes from our university and the fellowship programmes of the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT)

Notes on contributors

David Barkin

David Barkin is a Distinguished University Professor at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in México City and emeritus member of the National Research Council. He is an ecological economist, and collaborates with post-capitalist societies to promote social well-being and environmental justice in Latin America.

Alejandra Sánchez

Alejandra Sánchez is a doctoral student in economics at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico City. Her research in ecological economics focuses on indigenous communities in Mexico.