Academy of Social Science

The commune is not nostalgia for the past, or a utopian project to be created from nothing, but the very stuff of our shared humanity. It forms the basis both for social life in general, and the potential for society to re-appropriate its capacity to govern by and for itself.

The issue features contributions from Nik Matheou and the Editorial Collective, Mustafa Karasu, Mechthild Exo, Mathijs van de Sande and Gaard Kets, Abdullah Öcalan, Shahrzad Arshadi, Bengi Akbulut, Targol Mesbah, Ana Paula Morel, Munduruku Wakoborũn, Salima Tasdemir and Pat Huff.

This commune proposes that we can and must make revolutionary change, now, by changing patterns of everyday life and popular participation rather than waiting to take state power and then transform society.

Academics — at least critical academics — are increasingly engaged in writing works that sound like they are meant to change the world, in an institutional context designed to ensure there is almost no possibility they might actually do so.