A Plurality of Communisms

Abstract

The unending crisis in southern Europe has brought a new urgency to thinking and living in different ways. Responding to the exchange between Jodi Dean and Stephen Healy at the 2013 Rethinking Marxism International Conference, this article draws on recent examples in Spain of direct action at the local, regional, and national levels in order to question the perennial call to scale up. Is expansion inherently desirable? Is it a priority? What are the tradeoffs? Where does this urge come from? Are there visions of mass mobilization that don't replace one universalizing tendency with another?

Key Words:

• Commons
• Crisis
• Direct Action
• Scale
• Spain

Notes

1 See “La PAH Huelva en contra de la represión a la movilización,” Corala de Vecinas La Utopía, 3 March 2015, http://corralautopia.blogspot.com.

2 A recent Human Rights Watch report details the impact and extent of Spain’s housing crisis. See “Spain: Rights at Risk in Housing Crisis,” Human Rights Watch, 28 May 2014, http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/05/27/spain-rights-risk-housing-crisis.

3 See Luis Díez, “Jóvenes ocupan la biblioteca de Rivas, cerrada sin estrenar hace 6 años,” Cuartopoder, 19 February 2013, http://www.cuartopoder.es/laespumadeldia/2013/02/19/jovenes-ocupan-la-biblioteca-de-rivas-cerrada-sin-estrenar-hace-6-anos.

4 See “Squatting Europe Kollective,” accessed 4 April 2015, http://sqek.squat.net.

5 Examples are Efecto Gamonal in Burgos and Som Can Vies and Barceloneta in Barcelona.

6 See also the website of Partido X, accessed 4 April 2015, http://partidox.org/en.