Prefiguring communalism and economic democracy in the Basque Country

ABSTRACT

This article examines the emergence of a grass-root movement that brings back the past in order to prefigure communalist practices in the Basque Country. The movement comprises both the platform of Biltzarre and the Basque Cultural Instinct Team. Their proposal implies an invitation to consider a concrete ‘social myth' that brings forward the sovereign agency of an ancient socioeconomic cultural model (medieval Basque direct democracy) into contemporary anti-capitalist struggles. Although those practices have mostly withered away, they may still function as a source of inspiration for revolutionary purposes. Crucially, such experience helps us to overcome the ‘leftist melancholy’ pointed out by Enzo Traverso, in which social movements seem to start always from the scratch. The article stresses the importance of engaging with economic democracy debates critically, thus questioning the role prices and technology have in sharing economy and commoning models, and problematizes the limits they may have in global capitalism.

KEYWORDS:

• Prefigurative movements
• economic democracy
• sharing
• commoning
• Basque Communalism

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Ian Bruff, Nadim Mirshak and Ilias Alami for their useful suggestions and comments to earlier drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Xabier Renteria-Uriarte

Xabier Renteria-Uriarte is PhD in Economics and Lecturer of Global Economy and Management at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). He translates to economics the implications of social and political grass-root social movements, as with the basque ones, where he has been implicated for years, now in Biltzarre (see https://ehu.academia.edu/XabierRenteriaUriarte)

Jon Las Heras

Jon Las Heras is Lecturer of Global Economy and Sociology at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), and PhD in Politics from the University of Manchester. He studies the Political Economy of Labour, Trade Unionism, Communalism and Cooperativism, as well as the Political Economy of the Basque Country, Spain and the Eurozone. He is also participant in different social, labour and academic organizations (see https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jon_Heras).