Convivial Futures E-Book

• Herausgeber: transcript Verlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: X-Texte zu Kultur und Gesellschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 278

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

What steps are needed to make life better and more convivial? The Second Convivialist Manifesto (2020) has presented a short diagnosis of the current crises and sketches of a possible and desirable future. It has been a necessary work of theoretical synthesis, but preserving a viable world also requires passion. It is thus urgent to show what people would gain from a shift to a post-neoliberal and post-growth convivialist future. This volume includes a theoretical debate on convivialism which reflects dystopias and shows the multiple and major obstacles that convivialism will have to face. Mainly, however, the contributors to this volume create sketches of a convivial future and collect accounts of another future world which is attractive for as many as possible.

Leseprobe

X-Texts on Culture and Society

The supposed “end of history” long ago revealed itself to be much more an end to certainties. More than ever, we are not only faced with the question of “Generation X”. Beyond this kind of popular figures, academia is also challenged to make a contribution to a sophisticated analysis of the time. The series X-TEXTS takes on this task, and provides a forum for thinking with and against time. The essays gathered together here decipher our present moment, resisting simplifying formulas and oracles. They combine sensitive observations with incisive analysis, presenting both in a conveniently, readable form.

Frank Adloff, Alain Caillé (eds.)

Convivial Futures

Views from a Post-Growth Tomorrow

This publication was made available via Open Access within the framework of the funding project 16TOA002 with funds from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

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First published in 2022 by transcript Verlag, Bielefeld © 2022 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld

Cover layout: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld

Copy-editing: Oliver Vornfeld

Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar

Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-5664-0

PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-5664-4

EPUB-ISBN 978-3-7328-5664-0

https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839456644

ISSN of series: 2364-6616

eISSN of series: 2747-3775

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Contents

Convivial Futures?An Introduction

Frank Adloff, Alain Caillé

One Step Beyond

From Lived Convivialism to Convivialist TransformationsA Difficult Transition

Sérgio Costa

The First Convivialist Steps

Gustave Massiah

Feminism and Convivialism

Elena Pulcini

Convivialism Facing the Territorial Question New Spaces, New Times

Paulo Henrique Martins

Is Convivialism the Answer? Depends on the Question

Robert van Krieken, Martin Krygier

Convivializing the Economy

Imagining the Convivialist Enterprise

Thomas Coutrot

Towards a Post-Covid Economy for the Common GoodJoint Proposal of Representatives of the International Economy for the Common Good Movement from 16 Countries

International ECG Movement

Is a Post-Growth Society Possible?

Dominique Méda

Money Creation as a Foundational Tool for Convivialism

Christian Arnsperger, Solène Morvant-Roux, Jean-Michel Servet, André Tiran

Pluriversalism and Nature

Conviviality to Reanimate the World

Geneviève Azam

Convivial Conservation with Nurturing Masculinities in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest

Susan Paulson, Jonathan DeVore, Eric Hirsch

A Convivialist Solution for the Multiple Crisis of Biodiversity, Climate, and Public Health

Tanja Busse

The Post-Development AgendaPaths to a Pluriverse of Convivial Futures

Federico Demaria, Ashish Kothari

Letter to the End-of-the-World Generation

Débora Nunes

(Un-)Convivial Futures

Right Here, Right Now The Art of Living Together

Andrea Vetter, Matthias Fersterer

“2050”30 Years of Change and Yet No New Beginning

Frank Adloff

Once upon a Time ... There Will Be a Convivial DesireA Tale in Three Parts about the Possibility of Convivial Desire, Inspired (at the Beginning) by Saint Augustine’s De Trinitate

Alain Caillé

A Reflection on 200 Years of Our Youngest Bodily Organ—Convivialis Futuris

Susanne Bosch et al.

List of Contributors

Convivial Futures?An Introduction

Frank Adloff, Alain Caillé

In 2013, the first Convivialist Manifesto (English edition: 2014 [hereafter cited as FCM]) was published, initially in French and later in many translations. Since then, many of the social and political problems described in the FCM have remained with us, whereas other trajectories are new and unforeseen. This is also the starting point of the Second Convivialist Manifesto, which was published in 2020 (Convivialist International 2020 [hereafter cited as SCM]). To be a pioneering, public political philosophy, convivialism must succeed in capturing the signs of the times and developing perspectives for the future. As difficult as it is to formulate such positive outlooks, that is precisely what this volume is all about. But let us first take a look at the last few years.

1.Our Times

In recent years, we have seen a strong social and political polarization. In particular, the election of Donald Trump as US president stands out, which entailed a decline in democratic culture in the US. Globally, Trump’s presidency challenged many continuities in foreign policy, whether through his willingness to wage trade wars, compromise the importance of human rights, or withdraw from the Paris climate agreement altogether. Bruno Latour (2018) argued some time ago that Trump’s presidency represents the first genuinely ecological regime, only under the opposite sign of completely contradicting the idea. For Trump embodied the clear will to simply carry on as before despite climate change. With his fossil-fuel policy, he abandoned, as it were, the jointly shared and limited space of the Earth. Trump’s policy did not care about maintaining a “safe operating space for humanity” (Rockström 2009).

However, the unlimited consumption of resources is nothing new but merely an acceleration of Western hubris and capitalist accumulation, which for centuries has relied on nature as being at human disposal. This is contrasted with another, by now iconic figure: Greta Thunberg, the initiator of the widespread Fridays for Future protests. She has brought climate change to the attention of the public around the world like no one else. Trump’s planet knows no limits; Thunberg’s Earth trembles under the weight of human beings.

We see such polarization everywhere. While in the summer of 2015 there was still a broad sense of solidarity and a culture of welcome toward the refugees coming to Germany, the mood soon changed and the far-right political party Alternative für Deutschland (“Alternative for Germany”) was able to score points with its nationalist and racist platform. It is now represented in all federal state parliaments, and Germany as a country has moved to the right.

Despite the attention given to Fridays for Future, there is now something of a political “yellow vest” factor. Ever since the yellow vests (gilets jaunes) took to the crossroads in France in 2018–19 and staged mass demonstrations against President Macron’s plans to raise fuel taxes, politicians elsewhere have also feared that any extra spending on climate protection would be another vote for right-wing populist movements and parties. This reveals the current political dilemma: Old left-wing coalitions between parties, trade unions, and the lower classes have broken down, and as long as the additional expenditure for an ecologically ‘more sustainable’ society is to be shouldered mainly by the lower and middle classes, they can only be persuaded to protect the climate to a very limited extent and may otherwise move to the right. Majorities could only be won for socio-ecological transformation if these classes were also to benefit materially through redistribution policies from top to bottom. These social and ecological questions are closely interrelated—as not only convivialism, of course, has emphasized.

So far, however, there is hardly a country to be found that has rejected the neoliberal redistribution from the bottom to the top. Social inequalities, especially with regard to wealth distribution, continue to increase unchecked, although the voices calling for caps on wealth inequalities and arguing for wealth taxes and higher inheritance taxes are becoming more urgent. Criticism of the capitalist growth economy is also growing louder. When the FCM appeared nine years ago, the call for a post-growth economy still sounded quite exotic or almost absurd in international public discourse. In the meantime, the degrowth movement has become much stronger and more influential across Europe. Many lines of critique come together here: a feminist critique of the economy, an ecological perspective, cultural critique, as well as a critique of asymmetrical Global North–South relations, which continue to be based on (post)colonial, unequal exchange relations and the North externalizing its problems to the South.

In voicing their criticism, many of these movements aim at an extension of democracy and call for a self-imposed limitation in the name of ecology. While the boundaries between classes and citizens should be transcended, new practices of self-limitation are needed at the same time, as this is the only way to guarantee habitability on Earth. The great acceleration in the stress on the Earth system since the end of the Second World War—for example, through CO2 emissions, energy consumption, water and fertilizer use—urgently needs to be limited, which would also have obvious consequences for Western consumption and lifestyles.

However, many governments and movements are currently opposing the expansion of democracy. In the name of ‘true democracy’ and the ‘true people,’ democratic participation rights as well as opportunities for opposition and critical interventions are being massively restricted and so-called illiberal democracies such as those in Hungary, Russia, Turkey, India, and Brazil strengthened. In many countries, we now observe that civic spaces that rely on the freedoms of expression and assembly are coming under pressure and have been shrinking.

The three principles of order of the second half of the 20th century—liberal democracy, free-market capitalism, and a pluralistic and individualistic culture—are currently no longer showing any great stability or attractiveness. In this phase of change, very different paths can be taken. Right-wing populist movements, illiberal nation-states, and notions of homogeneous communities stand in contrast to movements that advocate a deepening of democracy, want to overcome the logic of growth, and seek to reconcile individualistic with communitarian principles. However, the latter can only have an impact if they are able to illustrate to broad parts of the population what more conviviality could produce in terms of positive outcomes for all, including the non-human world. Therefore, the SCM, just like the FCM, tries to develop a language that is as inclusive as possible and to build a broad common denominator for convivialist political aspirations. It goes without saying that this inclusive language has to be reinvented and expanded again and again. After all, reflexivity is at the core of the convivialist program, and this volume is an expression of that.

2.Convivialism during and after the Coronavirus Crisis

The coronavirus pandemic, which began in the spring of 2020, has shown which problematic situations were already virulent: for example, the fragility of financial capitalism, the massive digital and educational asymmetries, or the deepening of gender inequalities through the re-feminization of care work. Added to these problems are the consequences of the current crisis management: collapses in the global economy, newly indebted states, rising unemployment, and so forth. Whether the pandemic opens or closes avenues for convivial reform has yet to be decided at the time of this writing (August 2021). It seems clear that many things cannot go on like they have, but it will be important to draw the right conclusions from the crisis.

One lesson that the pandemic has taught us is that existing certainties can be shattered rapidly and that there is no firm base for eternal business as usual. Delusive certainties have been replaced by contingency awareness. On the one hand, new things now seem possible. On the other hand, it is precisely this loss of illusory security and certainty that scares people. Can this fear be socially managed or, better still, made productive?

In the meantime, it is becoming increasingly clear that the coronavirus pandemic is only the beginning. Compared to the consequences of climate change, dealing with COVID-19 is probably just a minor challenge. COVID-19 shows the different levels of temporality we are dealing with. The fact that many viruses have originated in animals, have been transmitted via zoonoses, and that the loss of biodiversity favors pandemics is increasingly becoming common knowledge. And what if the virus did instead originate in a laboratory in Wuhan, and its release is also part of the story of human hubris? Although the pandemic swept across the world in a matter of weeks, the groundwork was laid by a history of ecologically reckless globalization that spans more than a century.

The virus of neoliberalism, in turn, has been circulating for more than 40 years and has fueled the crisis through privatization and cuts in health care. This shows that the severity of the pandemic has an enormous temporal precedence and that these different temporalities overlap. Now that they overlap in this fashion, similar things will most likely happen again soon.

This is because climate change also leads to acute shocks and catastrophes, be they heavy rains with floods, droughts with water and food shortages, or migration from war and heat zones. The problem of climate change—or more generally, the rapidly changing habitability of the Earth—cannot be controlled. Rather, it will be a matter of interlinking social concepts of time with the rhythms of the warming planet. A critique of the modern separation of nature and culture has long been formulated in earth-system sciences, philosophy, and the social sciences. With COVID-19, societies are now even more aware that this separation is invalid, and the SCM itself correctly highlights that there is only one common nature, and humans do not live outside of it.

Since modernity is characterized by a sense of boundlessness and inscribed with ideas of omnipotence and hubris, COVID-19 brings with it the imposition of having demonstrated the limits of this historical path of development. Many social movements from the North and the South are calling on politicians, businesspeople, and academics to abandon the hubris of world domination that the SCM so clearly criticizes. Self-limitation and conviviality among humans and non-humans would have to be considered intrinsically valuable, and one would have to build completely new relationships of meaning that do not negate contingency and interdependence but rather affirm them.

COVID-19 has also made clear how interdependent our world is. It is more evident than ever how all beings (human as well as non-human) depend on each other—even if not symmetrically. Solidarity could grow out of this feeling of interdependence, which was the thesis of the French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1997 [1893]) as early as the end of the 19th century. He related this idea to the nation state; today, these dependencies have become visible to everyone on a global level. But it is not easy to derive a compelling new narrative of progress from this.

One question of the future will be whether fears, segregations, inequalities, and conflicts over resources of all kinds will increase or whether it will be possible not to exacerbate the fear of the future through more individualism and privatism, as has been the case so far, but to mitigate it through more solidarity and convivial solutions. Future hopes for growth, dominance, and prosperity have thus far integrated Western societies, even if these hopes are increasingly proving to be economically unrealistic, socially unjust, and ecologically fatal. Now the task must be to nevertheless develop an attractive vision of living together. Against the fear of losing out to others, new forms of conviviality must be established. It is precisely in response to this that convivialism is trying to formulate new positive answers.

3.The Way Ahead

Convivialism presents itself as a political philosophy destined to follow in the footsteps of the great ideologies of modernity—liberalism, socialism, anarchism, communism. These ideologies are no longer able to enlighten us on either the present state of the world or what it could or should look like tomorrow, if only because they have completely failed to anticipate the environmental crisis and global warming. Convivialism is therefore beginning to find some resonance. The SCM has already been translated into six languages. But so far, convivialism has suffered from a major flaw compared to its predecessors, which explains why its audience is not yet broader: It does not ‘say’ enough. It does not say enough because it does not hold out the prospect of a bright future or at least a happier one for the majority, one that is worth fighting for, or even worth making sacrifices to bring it about. This part of the narrative is what its predecessors knew how to tell. Liberalism gave hope for the rule of autonomy, the end of submission to authority or despotism. Socialism promised equality, or at least a certain degree of equality, thanks to the regulatory intervention of the state. Anarchism trumped liberalism by adding the hope of economic self-sufficiency, of self-management; and communism one-upped socialism by adding fraternity to equality. Convivialism inherits all these promises and tries to combine them by sublating them (“aufheben” in German). But this sublation is still largely a conceptual principle. It now needs to be given flesh, breath, life, and visibility. This is the thinking behind the request we sent to the authors of this issue.

Announcing a convivial world for tomorrow might seem both excessively timid and desperately ambitious—excessively timid compared to what yesterday’s secular religions such as socialism, communism, or liberal modernization promised us. All of them held out the prospect of a better and brighter tomorrow. We would end all forms of domination or exploitation of man by man. Or, at the very least, everyone would see their material living conditions assured, their health protected, their education sufficiently guaranteed, and would become fully respected citizens. These great hopes have been fading away over the last few decades. Today, for a whole range of reasons (ecological, economic, political, epidemiological, social, moral) that need not be spelled out here, it is rather despair and a dreary future that looms on the horizon. We no longer look to the future full of hope; on the contrary, the horizon of the future has closed. Claiming that tomorrow’s world could be more convivial, less violent, less unjust, more secure, more symbiotic or ecological seems desperate and almost foolish.

Nevertheless, the indication of a more convivial future also comes in the wake of the SCM. The SCM’s main idea can be summarized as follows: Despite the unprecedented progress in the fields of science and technology, the darkest predictions about our own and the warming Earth’s future have a high probability of coming true (the coronavirus pandemic does not encourage us to be more optimistic). Our only chance of escaping a dreadful fate is to create a post-neoliberal or post-growth society as soon as possible. The SCM depicts some of its possible ecological, political, social, and economic features. However, it is obvious that a convivial society has no chance of coming into existence if a global shift in public opinion in all countries is not triggered, a sort of axiological great transformation. But how can one hope, even for a second, that the power of Putin, Xi Jinping, Bolsonaro, Sissi, Modi, Trump, Wall Street, and the fossil-fuel industry will diminish? Let us remember, however, the strength of the republican ideal, which was able to overcome the absolutist monarchies, the power of socialist or communist (for better or for worse) or fascist (definitely for worse) ideals. Moreover, before these secular religions, there was the enormous energy generated by Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, or Buddhism. A comparable energy must once again be mobilized today.

One might say, however, that the rise in influence of the universal religions or quasi-secular religions has taken a long time, sometimes centuries; but now we live in times of absolute urgency. This is true, but our time is one of continuous acceleration: Ideas circulate and passions are unleashed at a speed unimaginable only a few years ago. Often for the worse—but why should it not be for the better?

The SCM has presented a brief but reasonable analysis of the situation in which we find ourselves and sketches one possible desirable future. It has been a necessary work of theoretical synthesis. Yet, it is also necessary to be able to speak to as many people as possible and awaken widespread passions for a better future. We are going to need this passion to preserve a viable world. For this, conceptual work is notoriously insufficient. The most urgent thing now is to show as many people as possible what they would gain from a shift to a post-neoliberal and post-growth convivialist future. It would be a world in which, at least in the richest countries, living better means less material wealth, with less money for the wealthy or upper middle classes, and much less exploitation of humans and non-human beings.

What steps are needed to make life better and more convivial? This volume brings together contributions that address this question and attempt to create sketches of a convivial future. This does not preclude us from having a theoretical debate on the status of convivialism or reflecting on dystopias and thus showing the multiple and major obstacles that convivialism will have to face. But the primary objective is to collect accounts of another future world, one that is attractive to an Italian worker, a Spanish peasant, a farmer in Senegal, an inhabitant of a favela in Rio or a slum in Bombay, an Egyptian employee, an Iraqi doctor, a Chinese student, but also one that a French or German company director would be happy to live in.

Whether the future will be more convivial in this sense is decided by our actions in the present, which in turn are guided by the ideas we have about the future. Our bold bet is therefore that convivialist ideas about the future can help decide which future becomes the present.

***

Some of the contributions included in this volume were previously published in French in the Revue du MAUSS semestrielle No. 57 (Demain un monde convivialiste: il ressemblerait à quoi?); others have been newly commissioned. Our thanks go to the authors for taking on our question, to Oliver Vornfeld for his precise formal and substantive editing, to Stephan Elkins and Eric J. Iannelli at SocioTrans – Social Science Translation & Editing for their English-language editing, and to Karin Werner and Michael Volkmer of the transcript publishing house for their tireless commitment to the cause of convivialism.

Literature

Convivialist International (2020): “The Second Convivialist Manifesto: Towards a Post-Neoliberal World,” in: Civic Sociology 2020 (1), pp. 1–24. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1525/001c.12721 [accessed 8/15/2021]. (= SCM)

Convivialist Manifesto: A declaration of interdependence (2014), with an introduction by Frank Adloff (= Global Dialogues 3), Duisburg: Käte Hamburger Kolleg/Centre for Global Cooperation Research (KHK/GCR21). Available from: https://www.gcr21.org/fileadmin/website/daten/pdf/Publications/Convivialist_Manifesto_2198-0403-GD-3.pdf [accessed 8/15/2021]. (= FCM)

Durkheim, Émile (1997 [1893]): The Division of Labour in Society, with an introduction by Lewis A. Coser, New York: Free Press.

Latour, Bruno (2018): Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Revue du MAUSS 57 (2021): Demain un monde convivialiste: il ressemblerait à quoi?

Rockström, Johann et al. (2009): “A safe operating space for humanity,” in: Nature 461, pp. 472–475.

One Step Beyond

From Lived Convivialism to Convivialist TransformationsA Difficult Transition

Sérgio Costa

I met Alain Caillé for the first time in February 2014, on one of those bitterly cold mornings typical of late winter in Berlin. I picked him up at a hotel on Spittelmarkt, square in Eastern Berlin. Spittelmarkt is coincidently the address that appears in the professional correspondence of Brazilian historian and sociologist Sérgio Buarque de Holanda when he lived in Berlin between 1929 and 1930 and worked on his classical book Roots of Brazil. Originally published in 1936, the book applied, probably for the first time in Latin America, the ideas of Max Weber to the study of modernization in the region.

These topographical coincidences permeated my thoughts throughout the exciting day of activities and conversations. The main reason we had invited Caillé was to participate in a lecture series on contemporary critiques of capitalism organized by a very good colleague and friend, Ina Kerner, who at that time was professor of political science at Humboldt Universität, and myself. The program combined a regular seminar, in which we discussed texts by our guests, and lectures, and attracted considerable attention; some 200 students enrolled and actively participated in the program that had been planned for no more than 40 participants.

Since Caillé had generously decided to spend a good part of the day with us before the evening lecture, we invited him to get to know initiatives in Berlin that could be identified with the ideals of convivialism. The choice was not easy: the city has numerous cooperatives, self-managed cultural centers, post-migrant and post-feminist theatres and even an anarchist party that at that time had 15 representatives in the local parliament: Die Piraten (“The Pirates”). Driven by the campaign slogan “Teilen ist das neue Haben,” which translates roughly as “sharing is the new way to have,” the party attained 8.9 percent of the votes in Berlin in 2011. Conventional politics, however, does not seem to be compatible with the utopia of absolute transparency The Pirates were aiming for. In the next elections of 2016, the party won no more than 2 percent and lost its parliamentary representation without having left any significant contribution to local politics.

We decided to visit two projects that are quite different from each other, but which are equally illustrative of the promises of convivialism: the Initiative 100% Tempelhofer Feld and the ufaFabrik. The 100% Tempelhofer Feld is a civil initiative that was established to protect an area of 360 hectare located almost in the center of West Berlin where the Tempelhof Airport had operated until 2008. UfaFabrik, in its turn, builds on the name of a legendary film studio founded in the 1920s in south Berlin. Since 1979, the site of the studio has been home to the International Cultural Center ufaFabrik, a self-managed enterprise with around 30 residents and a few hundred other people involved in its activities.

We arrived at Tempelhof field early in the morning and were met by the organization’s spokesperson who toured part of the grounds of the old airport with us, presenting the importance of preserving the area in its entirety for ecological, landscape and convivial reasons. Shortly after the airport closed, the runways and adjoining areas were transformed into a vast park. The former landing, take-off and taxiing areas are now gigantic spaces used for cycling, skating, and sailing. The ‘vehicles’ range from skateboarders hanging from enormous kites and carts powered by sails to more sophisticated constructions on wheels, similar to kite-surfing equipment. The lawns are used for barbecues, improvised football matches or simply as a green beach during sunny summer days, when they are shared peacefully by traditionally dressed Muslim families and young people in beach clothes.

At the time of our visit, the 100% Tempelhofer Feld initiative was campaigning for a cause that seemed unattainable. They were trying to stop, by means of a referendum, the Berlin government’s plan to build residential buildings on the edge of the airport site to make up for the housing shortage that has plagued the city. The 100% Tempelhofer Feld initiative, through donations and voluntary work by hundreds of residents, had managed to put together an incredible collection of data and experts’ studies, showing the advantages of preserving 100 percent of the Tempelhof field as a park and recreation area. The campaign was difficult but executed with humor and gained important supporters such as the Green Party, which at the time distributed posters with a very unfavorable photo of the then municipal mayor, Klaus Wowereit, asking: “Would you entrust a second airport to this man?” The question mocked the fact that the mayor’s main project, the construction of the Berlin-Brandenburg Airport, was promised first for October 2011 and then for June 2012, but due to numerous planning problems and construction errors, did not open until October 2020 and at a cost far higher than originally planned.

The referendum took place on 25 May 2014, together with the election to the European parliament. A large majority of Berlin voters across the city and not just in the areas surrounding the Tempelhof field decided that the park should be kept as it is, with no use of the land for housing construction. However, at the time of our visit, three months before the referendum, the spokesperson who received us seemed to be in a campaign mood. He professionally recited the script he had prepared to explain all the risks associated with the project to slice up the park. Caillé managed to ask a few questions and clarify his doubts while Ina and I just listened. Even so, in the end, if we had not become more excited about the initiative, it was because of the cold wind that pierced our several layers of clothes, prickling our skin and discouraging enthusiastic comments. From a purely argumentative point of view, we were fully convinced of the merits of the claim not to alter the current use of the Tempelhof field as a park. It is worth mentioning that, after our visit and the referendum that decided to keep the former airport as a recreational area, the 100% Tempelhofer Feld movement remained active, seeking to participate in all processes involving the use of the area. Particularly important in the recent history of the site has been the use of the former airport as an emergency shelter for refugees during and after the so-called European refugee crisis of 2015. In this context, new initiatives have emerged and the 100% Tempelhofer Feld movement is now part of a network of civil associations and groups called Wir sind THF! (“We are THF!”) and which understands that citizen participation in defining the use of the Tempelhof field is part of a broader project to shape the future. In the words of the network:

“In the future, the quality of life of all people will crucially depend on how we deal with the challenges of our time. It can only be preserved if climate goals are achieved and democratic and solidarity-based structures are strengthened. This includes measures against discrimination against minorities as well as the successful and responsible integration of refugees and newcomers. Many citizens are concerned with the question of how we can achieve these goals in cities like Berlin and make them sustainable, people-friendly and resource-efficient: How do we make cities liveable places for all people?” (Christiani/Saddei/Hanske 2019; my translation)

While driving from the Tempelhof field to the ufaFabrik we exchanged our impressions on the initiative we had just visited. Ina and I also took the opportunity to try to resolve doubts that had arisen in our discussions on convivialism. The first and most obvious concerned the differences between convivialism and other emancipatory concepts such as communicative reason or even radical democracy. In a direct and convincing way, Alain Caillé showed us that convivialism shuns artificial divisions of work and interaction or system and lifeworld. To the contrary: because it permeates across all spheres of social life, convivialism does not recognize artificial cleavages between spaces of coexistence. According to Alain Caillé, a division between certain spaces where instrumental relations prevail, and other social spaces codified by a search for understanding would represent an unacceptable concession to utilitarianism.

Other issues that we briefly mentioned during our drive were more complicated and could not be resolved in the short trip of no more than 20 minutes between the Tempelhof field and the ufaFabrik, even if I, trying to gain more time for discussion, drove the car at the minimum speed allowed along the route. I am referring here, above all, to our doubts about the critical character of convivialism. We were not sure, for example, if convivialism and the anti-utilitarian theoretical matrix that inspires it offer instruments for a consistent critique of capitalism or even for an analysis of power asymmetries in terms of gender, ethnicity, or North–South disparities.

A bit reluctantly, but overwhelmed by the constraints of the agenda, we got out of car at the ufaFabrik’s car park, postponing the instigating discussions until Caillé’s evening lecture.

It was worth interrupting the theoretical conversation to observe the practical lesson in convivialism at the ufaFabrik. We were welcomed by one of the founders of the project, who since 1979, when the land was occupied, has been following every step of the successful initiative. Without too many adjectives or dramatic affirmations, the founder told us how the group of young people, half adventurers and half artists, who had previously worked together on various cultural initiatives in the district of Schöneberg, gradually settled in and adapted the old film studio to their needs. A permanent outdoor photo exhibition, installed at the entrance to the culture factory, documents and highlights colorful details that the founder, vigorously but in a discreet way, avoided in her account.

At first the members of the project combined all of their incomes. Everything they earned—from shows they staged, from the café, the wholegrain bread factory and, later, from the cinema, theatre, and workshops—were placed in a common fund that was distributed among the participants equally, regardless of the qualification or degree of sophistication of the work done. Even before internal conflicts could undermine the socialist utopias of the commune members, the municipal tax agency intervened. It demanded, in accordance with its Prussian convictions, clear criteria for taxation: if they did not say who did exactly what and how much they received per hour or per month for the specific work done, it would consider everyone to be tax evaders.