The circular horizon of municipal movements: Democracy, capital and radical politics

The circular horizon of municipal movements:

Democracy, capital and radical politics

//Alessio Kolioulis, Rahel Sophia Süß

Looking at the history of the radical left, the twentieth century was marked by two opposite political strategies: the vertical strategy of party structures and the horizontal strategies ofsocial movements. We argue in this article that the new strategic horizon is circular. 1

In the last two decades, we have witnessed a steady rise ofgrowing distrust ofpolitical parties and representatives and a growth ofanti-system rhetoric and political extremism. Faced with these challenges, contemporary democracies appear vulnerable and unable to defend themselves. At the same time, new democratic movements in the cities have raised. They strive to back control, influence politics directly and change the conditions under which politics operate. How can the new municipal movements be studied and analysed? What key principles constitute their practices and how can their strategies be distinguished from previous struggles?

1 This is an edited version of an article that appeared on OpenDemocracy. Alessio Kolioulis and Rahel Sophia Suess, ‘Circularity. A New Strategic Horizon’, OpenDemocracy (blog), 15 January 2018, https://www.opendemocracy.net/rahel-sophia-s-alessio-kolioulis/circularity-new-strategic-horizon.

The idea of social movements has been exhausted

Historically, new streams of theory and political activis m have constantly overturned many assumptions underlying concepts such as power, agencyand democracy. Vertical and horizontal principles have been deployed in the past to differentiate political practices and theories. This opposition underpinned debates around key concepts such as hegemony, post-hegemony, exodus, autonomy, representation and spontaneity. Neither ofthese categories can be linked in a definitive way to one particular movement or political strategy. However, an attempt to simplify political tactics and strategies under the umbrella terms of verticality and horizontalism could bring clarity to the old question: “what is to be done?”

There are a set ofprinciples we would like to highlight in order to define these two broader tendencies. Following David Harvey’s readingofthe Capital’s structure in Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason, it is possible to distinguish three economic and political paradigms, which also correspond to the three volumes of the Capital

and the historical development of capitalism. The first paradigm hinges on mass production and large factories. It is the era when socialist and communist parties were shaped against the verticality ofproduction lines, mobilising the masses to confront capitalists with a workers’ vanguard.

The second paradigm is characterised by the increasing importance of the sphere of reproduction for the expansion ofmarket economies. The struggles move outside the factory and in favour of horizontal alliances. Movements and autonomous formations fight for a new set ofobjectives such as against racism, patriarchy, heterosexism, the destruction of the environment and colonialism.

The third paradigm invoked by Harvey is based on financial capital and the redistribution of realised value in the second paradigm. Struggles are over the extraction of the commons, rent, wages and borders. The extraction of the commons, because the cooperative production of subjectivities creates economic value. Rent, because gentrification denies the demands for social housing. Wages, because the job market is transformed by new technologies. Borders, because new forms of colonialism and climate change are displacing large parts ofthe global population.

Given the current circumstances, how can we respond to these transformations? Many contemporary initiatives are driven by a strategy that escapes both the verticality of “early socialism” and the horizontality of autonomous movements emerging around the struggles of the long 1968. These political horizons cannot longer be understood within the existingframework, and it is for this reason that the idea of social movements has been exhausted.

Vertical strategies and horizontal strategies

What is behind the shift from the opposite political strategies that marked the division between party structures and social movements? While the vertical movements strictly adhered with the Marxist tradition, favouring party lines linked to state-based models ofsocial change that reduced antagonism to class struggle, horizontal movements followed a community-based model for social change. People took back control oftheir own lives through constant struggles, moving away from the objective of a revolutionary event. Previously, the strategy ofvertical movements and unions was primarily or ex-

Radical Cities

clusively class-based, addressing ideal concepts, while the revolutionary force was represented by the political party. The ends ofsocial change were seen as priorto the means: strikes, the destruction of machinery and the activities of revolutionary intellectuals were the only viable way forward to achieve a communist revolution.

Horizontal movements, on the contrary, were quick in capturing and implementing autonomous strategies, organizing without leaders in a non-hierarchical and decentralized fashion. This was a type of organisation in line with the democratic principle ofself-realization. The strategies focused particularly on anti-representation, the politics of everyday life, individual transformation and on a non-authoritarian society. They engaged in a variety of protests and did not focus solely on class as the fundamental axis ofoppression but addressed a wider range of adversaries. In horizontalist struggles, the ends of social change had to be consistent with the means.

In today’s circumstances, however, vertical forms of organizations and horizontal movements do face important challenges. Isolated strategies, the incorporation into the conventional scripts of the state and the balance of power between the movement and the political party are serious challenges for those who want to bring about radical change. Even when these movements manage to take power, this does not guarantee effectiveness or radicality, as the cases of Syriza and Podemos demonstrated. Too often those who take power ended up engaging with the practices ofthose from whom theytake power. It is from this strategic and theoretical perspective that the municipal movements’ right to the city should be analysed. The new wave of municipal movements can be seen as a result ofthe experiences ofthe left and more specifically ofprevious forms ofprotest in the context ofthe 2008 financial crisis, the struggles against austerity politics, and the experiments with Podemos and Syriza. With this in mind, we suggest a call for a new circular horizon.

A call for a new circular horizon

The new circular horizon highlights the shift from vertical and horizontal strategies towards practices which go beyond the dichotomies of hegemony/autonomy or representation/spontaneity as they change the underlying assumptions ofdemocracy, power and social change. For instance, the newmunicipal movements challenge the traditional notion ofdemocracy as a form ofgovernance and competing political parties.

Theycall forademocracywhich identifies social relations, everyday praxis and democratic experiences as a characteristic core of democracy. Moreover, these movements do not subscribe to traditional notions of power, as they see it as the capacity to bring about continuous change and adjust to new circumstances and experiences. And yet, they challenge the notion of social change that confines the achievement of radical transformation either to self-transformation or the ‘occupation ofinstitutions’. Rather than looking at these strategies as isolated principles they regard both as part ofwhat makes meaningful change possible.

The strategies of the new municipal movements are shaped by constitutive practices, self-transformation, long-term visions and responses to social emergency. They are questioning the leaderless strategies that guided social movements and replacing them by combining elements ofnon-hierarchical strategies and tactical leadership. As advocated by Hardt and Negri in their recent book Assembly, tactical leadership is limited to short-term action and tied to specific occasions, whereby movements are responsible for constructing the strategy appropriate to newdemands. In more concrete terms, what we suggest calling circular strategies can be defined across five keydimensions: radicality, pragmatism, plurality, openness and experimentalism.

Circular strategies are radical insofar as they aim to deepen the democratic principles of liberty, equality and solidarity to increasing number of social spheres. It is about expending the democratic horizon by a simultaneous inclusion ofexcluded people, groups and ideas and the attempt to keep them autonomous. Circular strategies are pragmatic in the sense that they aim at solving concrete

problems and respond to social emergencies by providing access to housing, healthcare, food, water, education, and data sovereignty.

Circularstrategies are plural because they connect a plurality of agencies in a circulation of struggles following the idea of co-producing, co-management, co-ownership. The fluid relationship between new alliances of activists, citizens and politicians allow for multiple levels oforganised conflicts, coordination and continuous learning, without having to pass through a rigid central leadership.

Circular strategies are open and experimental as power is circulating and moves out of the centre as the circle becomes biggerand bigger. These practices aim to continuously test and modify democratic principles, procedures and policies by critically reflecting on their practical consequences for the improvement of democratic experiences. For instance, the ends and means ofradical social change are continuously adjusted in order to test how social freedom and equality can best be implemented under specific circumstances. Finally, a call for a new strategic direction intervenes in the critique of the relationship between democracy and capitalism. Away from old and new separations between economics and politics, we reject both social democratic temptations and the autonomy of radical political experiences.

Coming up: a circular democracy?

The new municipal movement can be seen as a prefiguration of a circular democracy to come. In a circular democracy, socialrelations are becomingthe ends andnotthe means ofdemocratic politics. Bymaintainingarelevant anchorage in the everydaypractices ofpeople, the function of political institutions changes. Theyimprove both the qualityofsocial relations anddemocratic experience byallowing conflicts to appear and involving people in the decisions that affect them. By doing so, a circular democracy moves from a democracy ofbureaucracy towards a democracy of concrete problem solving. It responds to social emergency by providing access to public services, by solidarity-networks, reduction of costs and removal of bureaucratic barriers. Looking at the networked shape of so-called platform capitalism or the gig economy, circularity represents a tactical horizon that can confront the re-appearance of institutionalised racism and the precarization of life in the spaces where they appear.

With a circular democracy, the gate-keeper democracy gets replaced with a democratic ‘co-production’ based on the idea of the commons. Plural practices move beyond the idea ofstate sovereignty towards a sovereignty of proximitythat can co-manage basic needs such as energy, water, food, housing, education and digital sovereignty.

Ifthe extractive nature offinancial capitalism is able to exploit the cooperation from below ofautonomous subjects, the challenge of horizontal and democratic movements is to rethink the construction of institutions able to confront the macro transformations that impact them. Methods for including collective intelligence inspire and inform new democratic practices and institutions that foster lasting structures ofdiscussions and decision-making: What should be our future investments? How do we want to produce? To conclude, the coming circular democracy is open and experimental: democratic principles, procedures and policies are tested in short intervals and adjust to newcircumstances byreflectingcriticallyon their practical consequences for the improvement of social relations and democratic experiences.

Mapping Radical Cities