Search

Angela’s view on postcapitalism. – A contribution to mέta.

It is almost twenty years since the Marxist cultural theorist Fredric Jameson wrote (or reiterated) that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”. In those twenty years, the need to imagine the end of capitalism became imperative.

The term ‘postcapitalism’ brings this need to the fore, with a potential double meaning: on the one hand, it is a springboard for potentially signifying an ‘after’, activating the political imagination prefiguratively. On the other hand, it accepts, through historical pragmatism (which, for me, is linked to historical materialism), that the experience of capitalism has existed and will exist. The “after” will not be created ex nihilo because, quite simply, there is no such process in the history of humanity and its environment — however we define the latter. There is no creatio ex nihilo in how modes of production, which are always modes of social reproduction, are linked. For those of us who belong to the segments of the population that refuse to distance themselves from the possibility of breaking with the extremely exploitative and oppressive context constituted by capitalism, awareness of the connection between slow processes and sudden events becomes crucial. This dictates the need for strategy.

Strategy has been both a demand and a characteristic of the emancipatory movements of the twentieth century, yet that is not to say that such movements have been homogeneous and certain of the course they wanted to chart. On the contrary, there was always within them the need to process the social data, possibly leading to conflicts, perhaps even internal ruptures. All these are elements of the historical process itself. We have seen or studied them, for example, as elements of the course of feminist movements – particularly perhaps the second wave. Today, the militant feminism of our time is at a turning point, as the environment in which it makes its demands has changed markedly since the 1960s and 1970s. There is a new international status quo where decisive processes are being
accelerated even for the right to protest and put forward demands — capitalism is far from “liberal” and the deadlocks it produces bring out most fascist tendencies.

The new militant feminist movements are not blind to the role of capitalism as a global condition but with local “expressions”. There is a long experience of struggles (with both victories and defeats), there is diverse theoretical work and radical thinking, and there is, finally, the need not to submit to the “siren call” of accepting the status quo and the dead-end reformism we are sometimes allowed, so that the most radical demands and perspectives are harnessed. The latter are the ones that shape the horizon of the ‘after’, but this horizon is lost from our visual field when there is no possibility of realising a strategy. What needs to be taken into account in strategy formulation? What kinds of alliances favour the strategy and which would weaken it?

I think this is a question for anti-capitalist feminism in all its manifestations, for the vision of the “after” as a complex and collective proposal on the political that can no longer wait. Either we imagine the end of capitalism with an “after” that abolishes exploitation and oppression, or we let capitalism initiate the end of all resistance.

Angela Dimitrakaki is a writer and art historian. Educated in Greece and the UK, she teaches contemporary art history and theory at the University of Edinburgh, focusing on Marxist and feminist thought.

She has published numerous scholarly articles as well as the booksGender, ArtWork and the Global Imperative (2013), Politics in a Glass Case (ed. with L. Perry, 2013), ECONOMY (ed. with K. Lloyd, 2015). Her literary work in Greek includes, among others, the novels Antarctica (1997, rev. ed. 2006), Antithalassa (2002), The Manifesto of Defeat (2006), Inside a Girl Like You (2009), AEROPLAST (2015), TINA the Story of an Alignment (2019, nominated for the Greek State Award) and the novel Four Testimonies to the Exhumation of the River Erinyes (2016, Short Story/Novel Prize of Anagnostis Magazine and the Kostas and Eleni Ouranis Foundation of the Academy of Athens).

She is a member of the editorial board of Third Text for which she has edited special issues on anti-fascism and social reproduction, and collaborates with several reviews/journals either in her field or of an interdisciplinary orientation.

Alexandra’s view on postcapitalism. – A contribution to mέta.

After more than 20 years dedicated to sociologically studying the younger generation, I could not express myself in any other way than through these studies, which have largely determined my political contribution to the Left.

Returning to these surveys over and over again and completing a study on the Greek brain drain, I arrive at the conclusion that, behind the ‘empirical data’, the central question is that of the relationship between the emotions and feelings of young people with movements and politics.

Attempting to codify these findings, I would say that what haunts young people aged 16-30 is anger or… angers in the plural. Political, social, existential. Anger and rage that often transcend, without negating, class backgrounds, national or ethnic origins, gender discrimination, and inequalities.

An anger which, however, conceals socio-political dimensions that we are called to pay attention to:

It is precisely these frustrations and anger that sometimes drive them to spontaneous movements and sometimes to fixation and resignation.

Today’s young people, who grew up in democratic systems and live in the world of online communication, have different expectations of democracy than the generation of May ’68 or the ’73 Athens Polytechnic uprising. They do not necessarily clash with the previous generation, they do not consider it ‘conservative’. They often demand broader rights that touch upon all generations. They also claim directness in communication, clarity and honesty.

At the political level, they make no secret of their dislike of politics and their lack of trust in politicians. When they vote, they often turn to the left of the traditional left or to the right of the conservative right, to the far right (especially those who have not attended a university). Their antisystemic vision rejects the centrist positions and the ‘wooden language’ of traditional political representatives.

Almost naturally, therefore, they choose to abstain from the electoral system. An abstention that expresses them, because they believe that no one counts them, that contempt for their real lives is hidden behind big words designed to hijack their vote.

And yet young people are hungry for life and creativity. They are looking for representatives that understand society and politics differently. Personalities who are touched by the subjective and emotional side of their lives.

We are therefore called upon to reflect on and redefine the existential trials of young people, leaving statistics aside for a moment. To see their faces, as I often see them in university halls and cafeterias. As I encountered them in Yannis Varoufakis’ book, ‘Another Now’. To encounter persons of youthful drive, embarrassment and frustration. Faces in search of another, unrealised, relationship with the self and the other; in their workspaces, in leisure and culture, in the university, in sexual expression, in friendships.

I have the feeling that it is precisely this multispectred, radical universe that I discovered in the surveys, as well as in ‘Another Now’ , that is worth conveying to young people by saying that, indeed, capitalism is dead. And that another world is asking to be born ‘without bosses and banks, stock markets and digital giants, billionaires and state authoritarianisms’.

My research discloses to me that this is the world they dream of. A different world to exist in. And that in order for this world to be engendered, it is not enough to merely angrily speak out angrily against the dominant system, as Iris does in ‘Another Now’.

There is no ‘secret vaccine against loneliness’. For this, they need to work employing all the means they have and we have —knowledge, science, cinema, the arts— and by echoing Yanis Varoufakis’ question: How far are we willing to go to conquer the dream? I believe that most young people will readily respond. Through their relationship with themselves, the relationship between themselves and the world, their need to build the social bonds that make society a social body from scratch. Through the ordeal of trauma. Here and now and… mέta.

Alexandra Koronaiou was born in Piraeus and studied at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Ioannina. Afterwards, she studied at the School of Social Sciences of the University of Paris V. She has been Professor of Sociology at Panteion University since 1998. Dean of the School of Social Sciences (2017-2021). Member of the Board of Directors of INEDIVIM (2015-2016), Vice-Chair of the Scientific Council of Social Sciences and member of the Advisory Committee of the IEP for the development of books in the social sciences (2017-2018). 

Since 2021 she has been a member of the General Assembly of the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (EL.ID.E.K). 

Since 2011 she has been the scientific manager of the following European research projects: 

1) MYPLACE (Memory, Youth, Political Legacy and Civic Engagement, FP7, 2011-2015, http://www.fp7-myplace.eu/); 

2) MYWEB (Measuring Youth Well-Being, FP7, 2014-2016, http://fp7-myweb.eu/). 

3) INNOSI (Innovative Social Investment: Strengthening Communities in Europe, Horizon 2020, 2015-2017, http://innosi.eu/). 

4) DARE (Dialogue about Radicalisation and Equality, Horizon 2020, 2017-2021) 

5) CoSIE (Co-creation of Service Innovation in Europe, Horizon 2020, 2017-2020) 

6) ECDP (European Cohort Development Project, Horizon 2020, 2018-2019)

7) Transitions, Emigration and Politics (TEmPo 2019-2023) 

The Programme is funded by ELIDEK.

Publications in academic journals and collective works (selection)

1 Koronaiou, A. et al. (2018) Attitudes towards the EU among young people in Eastern Germany, Greece, and the UK: embedding survey data within socio-historical context In H.Pilkington and G.Pollock (eds.), Understanding youth participation across Europe, London: Palgrave Macmillan. 

2. Alexandra Koronaiou & Alexandros Sakellariou (2018) “Young People, Transition to Adulthood and Recession in Greece: in Search of a Better Future”, in S.Irwin, A.Nilsen (eds.), Transitions to Adulthood through Recession: youth and inequality in a European Comparative Perspective, Abingdon: Routledge, pp.156-175.

3. Alexandra Koronaiou & Alexandros Sakellariou (2017) ‘Women and Golden Dawn: Reproducing the nationalist habitus’, Special Issue, Gender & Education, 29 (2): 258-275.

4. Koronaiou, A. and Sakellariou, A. (2017). “At the other side of the wall: the passage from employment to unemployment” In Ch. Karakioulafi and M.Spyridakis (eds.), Society, unemployment and social reproduction, Athens: Gutenberg.

5 Koronaiou at al. (2015) “Golden Dawn, austerity and young people: the rise of fascist extremism among young people in contemporary Greek society” in H.Pilkington and G.Pollock (eds.), Radical Futures? Youth, Politics and Activism in Contemporary Europe, The Sociological Review Monograph Series, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.

6. Koronaiou, A., Lagos, E., Sakellariou, A. (2015). “Singing for race and nation: Fascism and racism in Greek youth music”. In P.Simpson and H.Druxes (eds.), Digital Media Strategies of the Far Right in Europe and the United States, Lanham: Lexington Books.

7. Koronaiou, A. and Sakellariou, A. (2013). “Reflections on ‘Golden Dawn’, community organizing and nationalist solidarity: helping (only) Greeks”, Community Development Journal, vol.48, no.2, pp.332-338. 

8. Koronaiou, A. (2010). “Women’s leisure in Greece: fighting for a time of one’s own”. In M.T. Segal, and V. Demos (eds.), Advances in Gender Research, USA: Publishing Emerald Group 

9. Koronaiou, A. (2010), Women’s Free Time as a Precondition for the Development of Adult Education”. In A. Kokkos and D. Vergidis (eds.), Adult Education: International Approaches and Greek Trajectories, Athens: Metehmio.

10. Koronaiou, A. (2009), “Free Time and Recreation Spaces for the Albanian Immigrants in Greece”. In M. Spyridakis (ed.), Space Transformations: Social and Cultural Dimensions, Athens: Nissos.

11. Koronaiou, A. (2002). “Young employees and the social meanings of work”. In K. Navridis (ed.), Power, Violence, Pain, Athens: Kastaniotis. 

Research monographs (Books) 

1. Koronaiou, A. (1995). Youth and Media of Mass Communication, Athens: Odysseas

2. Koronaiou, A. (1996). Sociology of Leisure Time, Athens: Nissos

3. Koronaiou, A. (2002). Educating Outside School, Athens: Metehmio

4. Koronaiou, A. (2007). The Role of Fathers in Balancing Professional and Family-Private Life, Athens: KETHI

5. Koronaiou, A. (2010). When Work Becomes Illness, Athens: Pedio

Other articles and studies on youth socio-political participation, work, leisure and media have been published in scientific journals and the press. 

Mark’s view on postcapitalism – a contribution to mέta:

I really wish that I didn’t have to think about postcapitalism, but we do. It’s hard to think past something that is so encompassing and every day. But it’s precisely because capitalism has reached into so much of our lives, commodifying everyone and everything, that we need to think about a world that’s different.

Imagine a world without billionaires and oligarchs deciding what policies governments will pursue before you every get to vote on them.

Imagine a world where those elected to do something about the climate catastrophe actually dare to tackle the forces of carbon denial and deadly profit.

Imagine a world where housing is something that you live in rather than yet another asset class for the already-rich to dominate you.

Imagine a world where we do not allow entire sectors of the economy to become rent-generating cartels, and where we do not allow our social lives and the infrastructures that they rely on be sold-off to the oligarchic class.

Imagine a world where investment grows jobs and the incomes of ordinary people rather than disappearing into the Boardroom via stock buybacks or into financial speculation.

I actually can imagine that. It’s really not that difficult to do so. But we seem to be served by a political class that cannot see what we can see. Our job is to clarify their vision and demand their action. And if they continue to fail, to replace them. That to me is what postcapitalism actually looks like. A fair and functional and carbon-free economy where your vote and your voice actually counts. It’s not a revolution really. More a restoration of a system that has gone seriously off the rails.

Mark Blyth is the William R. Rhodes ’57 Professor of International Economics at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. Mark researches the political power of economic ideas as seen in his books Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002) and Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (New York: Oxford University Press 2015). He also researches the political economy of Europe and the US as seen in his 2015 book The Future of the Euro (New York: Oxford University Press 2015), Angrynomics (New York: Columbia University Press 2020) and in his forthcoming book on the politics of economic growth (with Lucio Bacarro and Jonas Pontusson) The New Politics of Growth and Stagnation (Oxford University Press 2022).

During the pandemic he learned to play the drums. Doing so gave him osteoarthritis in his thumb. All of which proves that no good deed goes unpunished.

Slavoj’s view on postcapitalism – a contribution to mέta:

Civilising Civilisations

What justifies the characterization of today’s global order as “corporate neo-feudalism” is a process that Marx didn’t envisage. When, due to the crucial role of the “general intellect” (knowledge and social cooperation) in the creation of wealth, forms of wealth are more and more out of all proportion to the direct labour time spent on their production, the result is not, as Marx seems to have expected, the self-dissolution of capitalism, but the gradual and relative transformation of the profit generated through the exploitation of labour – its transformation, namely, into rent appropriated through the privatization of general intellect. Let us take the case of Bill Gates: how did he become the richest man in the world? His wealth has nothing to do with the production costs of what Microsoft is selling (one can even argue that Microsoft is paying its intellectual workers a relatively high salary), i.e., Gates’s wealth is not the result of his success in producing good software for lower prices than his competitors, or in higher exploitation of his hired intellectual workers. Why, then, are millions still buying Microsoft? Because Microsoft imposed itself as an almost universal standard, (almost) monopolizing the field, a kind of direct embodiment of the “general intellect.” Things are similar with Jeff Bezos and Amazon, with Apple, Facebook, etc. etc. – in all these cases, commons themselves – the platforms (spaces of our social exchange and interaction) – are privatized, which puts us, their users, into the position of serfs paying a rent to the owner of a common as our feudal master. The big achievement of modernity, the public space, is thus disappearing, and the solution is not the nationalization of privately-owned commons – they are spread well beyond nation states.

But what makes the situation really dangerous, pushing us into a new barbarism, is that these global privatized commons co-exist with a new wave of strong nation-state competition which runs directly against the urgent need to establish a new mode of relating to our environs, a radical politico-economic change called by Peter Sloterdijk “the domestication of the wild animal Culture.” Till now, each culture disciplined/educated its own members and guaranteed civic peace among them, but the relationship between different cultures and states was permanently under the shadow of potential war, with each epoch of peace nothing more than a temporary armistice. The entire ethic of a state culminates in the highest act of heroism, the readiness to sacrifice one’s life for one’s nation-state, which means that the wild barbarian relations between states serve as the foundation of the ethical life within a state.Today, things are getting even worse. Instead of civilizing (the relations between) cultures, the ongoing privatization of commons undermines the ethical substance within each culture, pushing us back into barbarism. However, the moment we fully accept the fact that we live on a Spaceship Earth, the task that urgently imposes itself is that of imposing universal solidarity and cooperation among all human communities. There is no higher historical necessity that pushes us in this direction, history is not on our side, it tends towards our collective suicide. As Walter Benjamin wrote, our task today is not to push forward the train of historical progress but to pull the emergency break before we all end in post-capitalist barbarism.

Slavoj Žižek is a political philosopher, cultural critic, and Lacanian psychoanalyst; he is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University and International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities of the University of London. Slavoj Žižek is a prolific writer, whose work attracted international attention after the publication of his first book in English, The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989).

Lyndsey’s view on postcapitalism – a contribution to mέta:

Dancing after Capitalism

Will there be culture after capitalism? Yes, there will be dancing and singing, words and images. Hopefully, the songs will not be about the ends of capitalism but about the beginning of something new. But equally, the tunes could sound wearily familiar. What if we got to the end of capitalism but then discovered that we had forgotten how to dance?

Over fifty years after Guy Debord described how the ‘society of the spectacle’ meant that relationships between people were now mediated by images, the new brokers of power have given us a ‘society of the algorithm.’ It may well be that the capitalism of commodity fetishism is now collapsing under the weight of the stubborn truths of climate disaster and economic unsustainability. We used to believe that if we consumed the potent glittery things we could find a way of appearing in the world. Now we’re not so sure that the images can stop us – and life – from disappearing from the earth altogether.

But the means of cultural production are already under new management, and this should worry us about the prospects for new kinds of cultural, imaginative, political and ultimately earthly and planetary lives.

Intimately in-tune with our personal tastes and habits, the algorithms of the empires of big-tech are dedicated to giving us exactly what we like — so that we can like some more. Many millions of us think that what we would really like is something else, new, sustainable, real, something very different to this, so we click and indeed we discover others who have put similar thoughts and feelings into words, images, sounds, and objects. We experience for a time the pleasure and exhilaration that comes from being between one another in a creative space.

Before long, however, the hand of the hidden curator makes itself present. It is not simply that one is served more of the same, or even worse, more of what the curator assumes is your same, but that we are being served at all, and endlessly. The point is not that we discover, but that we ‘keep on discovering!’

The lostness that came with the society of the spectacle is as acute, perhaps keener still, in the production of culture that farms our curiosity and restlessness in this way. The writer, Julia Bell, has used the phrase the ‘Attention Industrial Complex’ to describe how the very thing that gives us art and culture  – our attention – is now monetised.

The ‘Crisis in Culture’ has of course been with us since the beginnings of capitalism. In her essay of that title, Hannah Arendt intuited early on that there was an intimate relationship between the increasingly apocalyptic exploitation of natural resources and the consumption of our creative resources.

It didn’t – and doesn’t – have to be like that. The word ‘culture’, she observed, originally ‘derives from colere – to cultivate, to dwell, to take care, to trend and preserve – and it relates primarily … to the sense of cultivating and tending nature until it becomes fit for human habitation’. This ‘attitude of loving care’, she  said, ‘stands in sharp contrast to all efforts to subject nature to the domination of man’.

Hannah Arendt, it may surprise some to know, liked to dance on tables. Learning how to dance again is, I think, part of  mέta‘s mission. I can’t wait to join in.

Lyndsey Stonebridge is a writer and professor of humanities and human rights at the University of Birmingham in the UK, where she works on new creative, collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches to human rights such as Refugee Hosts and Rights4Time.

She writes on twentieth-century and contemporary literature, political theory, and history. Recent books include, The Judicial Imagination: Writing after Nuremberg (2011), winner of the British Academy Rose Mary Crawshay Prize, 2014, and Placeless People: Writing, Rights, and Refugees (2018), winner of the Modernist Studies Association Best Book Prize 2018, and a collection of essays, Writing and Righting: Literature in the Age of Human Rights (2020). 

She is currently writing a critical-creative account of the relevance Hannah Arendt’s thinking for today, Thinking Like Hannah Arendt, which will be published by Jonathan Cape in 2022, and working on a new project, The Future of Hope. She is a media commentator and broadcaster, and writes regularly for The New Statesman.

Michael’s view on postcapitalism – a contribution to mέta:

In order to achieve a post-capitalist society, we need first to identify the defining institutions of capitalism.

In my view these are:

(1) private ownership of productive assets,

(2) authoritarian control of workplaces,

(3) production for profit and to maintain the conditions of owners ruling and profiting,

(4) a corporate division of labour with empowered employees (who I call a coordinator class) dominating disempowered employees (who I call a working class),

(5) remuneration for property and power (or for output); and

(6) allocation by markets or central planning.

Each of these institutional features creates class division and class rule; empowers the few and subordinates the many; produces obscene differences in status and wealth; destroys dignity; sacrifices sociality; and denies diversity. And even beyond all that, these institutional features together constitute a suicide machine that devours not only prospects for human fulfillment, but even prospects for human survival.

To get beyond capitalism, and more, to get beyond class division and class rule, and for that matter, to get beyond the economy abetting and intensifying all other social hierarchies, whether rooted in racial, cultural, gender, sexual, or political relations, and to get beyond our downward slide into a barbaric ecological nightmare, we therefore need to attain post-capitalism—and also post-racism, post-patriarchy, and post-authoritarianism.

Of course, what a worthy and sustainable future economy (or culture, family-life, or polity) will look and function like will depend on the actual experiences of escaping the past and entering the future. The details for later cannot be foreseen, much less legislated now. However, we can try to answer a paramount question. What are the minimal essential economic institutional features we must attain if our future selves are to be free and equipped to collectively self manage our post capitalist lives with dignity, equity, and social solidarity? We have a responsibility beyond waiting to see what emerges. We have a responsibility beyond fighting against current injustices. We also need to agree on a scaffold of key characteristics that will prove essential for attaining post-capitalism (and other extra-economic gains) and we need to struggle for and win those key features so that our future selves can live as they decide in a new world they create.

When I think about that responsibility, in particular regarding getting beyond capitalist economics, to me the key features together constitute what has sometimes been called participatory economics, sometimes participatory socialism, and sometimes other names as well, which names are mere labels. The features of this emerging participatory vision are these:

(1) a commons of productive assets (to replace private ownership of those assets),

(2) workplace and consumer self-managing councils (to replace authoritarian control over production and consumption),

(3) production for human fulfillment and development (to replace production for profit),

(4) jobs balanced to equilibrate their empowerment effects (to replace a corporate division of labour that elevates an empowered coordinator class above a disempowered working class),

(5) remuneration based on duration, intensity, and onerousness of socially-valued labour (to replace remuneration for property, power, or output),

(6) and decentralized cooperative negotiation of allocation called participatory planning (to replace markets and central planning).

The details of how each of these critical structures will form, much less the multitude of additional attributes any future worthy economy will include, will of course emerge, contingently, from practical experiences and popular sentiments, no doubt differently in different places that embody different histories and circumstances. But the advocates of this particular vision, including myself, claim that these few defining structures are essential if there is to be self management, equity, solidarity, diversity, sustainability, and classlessness. This set of proposed institutions is thus a scaffold to refine and build on. A scaffold for hope. A scaffold for commitment. And a scaffold for orientation. A post-capitalist economic vision.

Michael Albert is a founder and current member of the staff of Z Magazine as well as staff of Z Magazine`s web system: ZCom. Albert`s radicalization occurred during the 1960s. His political involvements, starting then and continuing to the present, have ranged from local, regional, and national organizing projects and campaigns to co-founding South End Press, Z Magazine, the Z Media Institute, and ZNet, and to working on all these projects, writing for various publications and publishers, giving public talks, etc. Albert is the author of 21 books. Most recently these include: No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World (Zero Books, 2021), Fanfare for the Future (ZBooks), Remembering Tomorrow (Seven Stories Press), Realizing Hope (Zed Press) and Parecon: Life After Capitalism (Verso). Many of Albert`s articles are stored in ZCom and can be accessed there along with hundreds of other Z Magazine and ZNet articles essays, interviews, etc.

Guy’s Twenty-first Century Good Society – a contribution to mέta:

We are living in an era of rentier capitalism, which has morphed from neo-liberalism. And we are confronted by an existentialist crisis in the Global Transformation, which could either lurch into a neo-fascist authoritarianism, with a panopticon and banopticon state, or to a new forward march based on a revival of the Enlightenment values of Liberty, Equality and Solidarity. To avoid the first and to achieve the second, we must forge a new vision of a Good Society – an agathotopia, not utopia (a Good Society for imperfect people, as James Meade put it).

The first task must be to dismantle rentier capitalism, which is vital for ecological survival. The struggle to do this must involve a class-based struggle respecting the aspirations and ecologically grounded values of the emerging mass class, the precariat. Every forward march is led by the interests of the new mass class, not the mass class of yesterday. And every transformation is armed with a new vocabulary, a new narrative and a new artistry. So far, the left across the planet has failed to meet the challenge, and most have not even tried.

Unless one’s enemy is correctly identified, we are unlikely to defeat it. Rentier capitalism is the scourge of society, the plunder of the commons and the generation of the precariat wallowing in chronic uncertainty, many reduced to being abject supplicants. We need a strategy to achieve a revival of the commons – all five varieties – and, inter alia, a basic income or common dividends as a fundamental republican right, constructed from a Commons Capital Fund.

Politically, only by mobilising the energy and anger of the precariat will we have a realistic chance of overthrowing the plutocratic fraud that passes for today’s democracy. For a revolt to succeed, there must be a clear idea of what society we want. For that, we must quickly put a méta to post-capitalism. We need a positive to replace a negative. And for that, we must have a vision that harnesses the dreams and surging energy that exists in the global precariat. It can be done.

Guy Standing is Professorial Research Associate, SOAS University of London, and an honorary professor at the University of Sydney. An economist with a PhD from the University of Cambridge, he is a Fellow of the British Academy of Social Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, co-founder and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), and member of the Progressive Economy Forum. In 2016-19, he was adviser to Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, John McDonnell.

He was professor in SOAS, Bath and Monash Universities, and Director of the ILO’s Socio-Economic Security Programme. He has been a consultant for many international bodies, was Research Director for President Mandela’s Labour Market Policy Commission, and has implemented several basic income pilots. His books include The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, published in 23 languages (fourth edition, 2021); The Corruption of Capitalism (third edition, 2021); Basic Income: And how we can make it happen (2017); and Plunder of the Commons (2019). In 2020, he collaborated with Massive Attack in a video based on his book, Battling Eight Giants: Basic Income Now (2020).  

Vasilis’ view on postcapitalism – a contribution to mέta:

At the beginning of the 21st century, a new world is emerging.

Not since Marx identified the manufacturing plants of Manchester as the blueprint for the new capitalist society has there been a deeper transformation of the fundamentals of our socioeconomic life. A new commons-based mode of production, enabled by digital technologies, redefines how we (can) produce, consume, and distribute. This pathway is exemplified by interconnected collaborative initiatives that produce a wide range of artifacts, from encyclopaedias and software to agricultural machines, satellites, and prosthetics.

For example, consider Wikipedia, a free and open encyclopedia that has displaced the Encyclopedia Britannica and Microsoft Encarta. Wikipedia is produced and maintained by a community of dispersed enthusiasts primarily driven by other motives than profit maximization.  Furthermore, in the realm of software, see the case of GNU/Linux on which the top 500 supercomputers run, or the Apache Web Server, the leading software in the web-server market.

In the same way, the emergence of networked micro-factories are giving rise to new initiatives in the realm of design and manufacturing. Such spaces can either be makerspaces, fab labs, or other co-working spaces, equipped with local manufacturing technologies, such as 3D printing and CNC machines or traditional low-tech tools and crafts. There is already a rich tapestry of such initiatives that do not need a unified physical basis because their members are located all over the world. For example, consider the L’Atelier Paysan cooperative that builds open-source agricultural machines for small-scale farming; the LibreSpace Foundation that produced the first open-source satellite in orbit; the OpenBionics project that produces open-source and low-cost designs for robotic and bionic devices; or the RepRap community that creates open-source designs for 3D printers that can self-replicate.

This emerging paradigm embodies both capitalist and post-capitalist aspects. On one hand, such initiatives draw their viability through partnerships with the dominant system. On the other, they rapture the core of the system pointing towards new paths. They create the world they envision, through the world they seek to transcend.

Vasilis Kostakis is Professor of P2P Governance at TalTech and Faculty Associate at Harvard University‘s Berkman Klein Center. Moreover, he is the Founder of the P2P Lab and a founding member of the rural makerspace Tzoumakers (Tzoumerka, Greece). Vasilis is interested in exploring how to create a sustainable post-capitalist economy based on locally productive communities that are digitally interconnected.

iLiana’s view on postcapitalism. – A contribution to mέta. 

Imagine a world where divisions based on race, gender, sexuality or nationality are non-existent. Imagine a world where the idea of class is obsolete. Imagine a time of equality in all possible senses. Salaries are colour-and-gender-blind, and are based on qualities such as commitment, knowledge, responsibility and reliability. Wealth has been redistributed, there are no tycoons or oligarchs anymore, and the difference between the lowest and the largest income is merely symbolic. Nobody starves. Health-care and education are free throughout the globe. There are no borders. Everybody has a place to call home. The turbo-capitalist concept of growth is obsolete. Everything is carefully constructed so that the earth is not damaged anymore. The pace is slower. But the levels of happiness have increased. Nations are obsolete; therefore, conflicts and wars are obsolete too. 

In this world, culture has had a huge role in this change. Cultural producers from organizations the world over, created a memorandum where the idea of culture and art was proposed as one that needs to be equally redistributed and free for everyone. The concept of the white cube doesn’t exist anymore. Works of art are no longer contemplated for their aesthetic qualities. Art can be produced by everyone and for everyone. It is not for sale, but can be accessed by anyone, or rented by anyone that wants to experience any form of art in the comfort of their own home. The profits from renting works of art or donating to visit museums that are open 24 hours, 7 days a week, are used to support new scientific research, to combat climate deterioration and disaster (still a result of past tropes of turbo-capitalism) or for research for all non-human societies of the planet, that are in need of interpreters and infrastructures.  Could this be art in a meta-capitalist future?

iLiana Fokianaki is a curator, theorist and educator based in Athens and Rotterdam. Her research focuses on formations of power and how they manifest under the influence of geopolitics, national identity and cultural and anthropological histories. In 2013 she founded State of Concept Athens, the first non-profit institution of its kind in Greece which she directs to this day. State of Concept has worked with artists such as Forensic Architecture, Kader Attia, Sanja Ivekovic, Laure Prouvost, Jonas Staal, Hito Steyerl a.o. while collaborating with local and international curators such as WhW and Nick Aikens. Fokianaki has curated exhibitions for Kunstinstittut Melly (formerly known as Witte den With CCA, Rotterdam), KADIST Foundation, La Colonie Paris, e-flux New York, Museum of Contemporary Art Ljubljana (MG+MSUM), Galerija Nova Zagreb a.o. Her most recent project THE BUREAU OF CARE (2020-2022), received the European Cultural Foundation’s solidarity grant. She is currently working on the exhibition Machinations which is planned for 2023 at Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid (co-curator) and a solo exhibition of Kurdish film collective Rojava Film Commune at Artspace, Auckland. She has developed lecture series for several institutions, such as GOSSIPS (2019) for Het Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam. Fokianaki is a lecturer at the Dutch Art Institute, and has lectured in academies, independent spaces, museums, and foundations worldwide. She publishes regularly in journals such as e-flux, Frieze a.o. and has participated in several publications. Her book “Gossips: WomXn Gather” will be published in 2021. 

Mari’s view on postcapitalism – a contribution to mέta:

Rethinking the Human in Human-Robot Interaction 

Over the last 15 years there has been a dramatic increase in human-robot interaction (HRI) research. The progress that has been made in technological aspects of robotics has served to emphasise the gap in knowledge of human perception and behaviour as people gradually begin to encounter and interact with robots. It is inevitable that the next generation of robots will interact with people to a much greater extent than ever before. In 2018 the International Federation of Robotics projected that more than 22 million robots with a value exceeding USD 4.6 billion would be sold for personal and domestic use in 2019 [IFR, 2018]. Japan has responded to its coming demographic challenge by directing substantial research funding towards robotic assistance for the aging. Notably Japan Science and Technology Agency in 2019 announced an ambitious research and development programme “Moonshot” that is funding numerous robotics programs from 2020–2050.

At present we are faced with three pressing challenges in the development of social robots: 1. Insufficient focus on the experience of people; 2. Insufficient understanding of how people respond to robots; and 3. Sustaining human interest and engagement in long-term human-robot interaction.

As we are now entering a different phase in social HRI, it is essential to concentrate on the human experience in order to create and sustain engagement with robots. The greatest challenge in human-robot interaction research is to understand the human component, since people are far more complex than any technological system.

Designing social robots involves not only the conceptualisation and realisation of robots that can interact with people but demands a focus on the experience of those people as they encounter and interact with a robot. This focus on interactant experience requires an understanding of the context of the interaction and the culture within which it takes place, underscoring the importance of the social sciences and creative arts to social robotics; disciplines that have a long history of studying people and their relationships to the spaces that they inhabit. A multidisciplinary approach that takes into account the human experience when developing new robotic forms is not only complementary, but essential.

The human responses to robots that we currently perceive as engagement are often a result of novelty factor. Very little is known about how human interest and engagement can be sustained when the initial excitement of the robot has worn off and a person has to co-exist and collaborate with the robot from days and weeks to months and years. The next generation of social robots should be developed using creative principles in an approach that favors experiential design, embedding creativity in every area of AI robot application – Moving towards technological systems that do not displace but complement and enhance the human experience.

Professor Mari Velonaki’s research is situated in the multi-disciplinary field of Social Robotics. She holds a PhD in Experimental Interface Design (UNSW 2003). Velonaki began working as a media artist/researcher in the field of responsive environments and interactive interface design in 1997. She pioneered experimental interfaces that incorporate movement, speech, touch, breath, electrostatic charge, artificial vision and robotics, allowing for the development of haptic and immersive relationships between participants and interactive agents. In 2014 she was voted by Robohub – a large robotics community of researchers, educators and business- as one of the world’s 25 women in robotics you need to know about.

She is the founder and director of the Creative Robotics Lab (Art & Design UNSW) and the founder and director of the National Facility for Human Robot Interaction Research (UNSW, USYD, UTS, St Vincent’s Hospital). Mari is a Research Leader at the UNSW Ageing Futures Institute.

Mari’s contributions in the areas of Social Robotics, Responsive Systems and Human-Machine Interface Design include:

• Created novel interfaces between a human and a robot that include the modalities of movement as body language, touch as an encoder of human emotion.

•          Created interactive robots that are of human scale and have substantial presence in the physical world. Most of the experimental studies in Social Robotics to date have utilised ‘toy-sized robots’ such as the Nao, or even images on a computer screen, to evaluate appearance and public acceptance.

• Introduced open experimentation whereby robots are placed in public spaces and not tested only in laboratory settings. 

• Velonaki has assembled two of the world’s largest datasets (over 690,000 recorded interactions in 13 countries) in human-robot interaction (HRI) studies that provide valuable information on the qualitative dimensions of human-machine relations.

She is the recipient of several competitive grants, including Australia Research Council Discovery, Linkage, ARC LIEF, an ARC Fellowship, an Australia Council of the Arts Fellowship, NICTA, Australia-Japan Foundation, U.S. Airforce, Fuji Xerox Innovation (Japan), DST (Army).

Mari’s robots and responsive agents have been exhibited worldwide, including: Victoria & Albert Museum, London; National Art Museum Beijing; Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Korea; Aros Aarhus Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; Wood Street Galleries, Pittsburgh; Millennium Museum – Beijing Biennale of Electronic Arts; Ars Electronica, Linz; European Media Arts Festival, Osnabruck; ZENDAI Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai; Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Arts, Sydney; Conde Duque Museum, Madrid; Azkuna Zentroa, Bilbao.

Her vision is to innovate by creating technological systems that complement and enhance the human experience.

Skip to content