The Challenge of the Commons in the Post-Socialist Era

Abstract

Since the neo-liberal turn of the 1970s and the consequent failure of the state socialist experiment, the functioning of the Eastern European states has increasingly been governed by the rationality of markets. This logic has led to an erosion of the concept of the commons and, by extension, universality. The notion of then alternative but now mainstream culture creates and serves particular class interests under the banner of ’independence’ and ’freedom’, which aims not to transcend the status quo but to preserve it and the property relations on which it is based. My thesis is written as a first step to reclaim the idea of the commons, pointing to the capitalist genesis of the forms in our contemporary culture.