Commons’ movements and ‘progressive’ governments as dual power: The potential for social transformation in Europe

Abstract

In the neoliberal era, social counter-power emerges as the main resurgent force to contend the capital–state complex, whether in the form of labour struggles or direct democratic movements or in the form of struggles for the preservation/diffusion of the commons. Political forces within these societies in motion do not play the role of revolutionary vanguards, instead they protect and facilitate the process of the social revolution by political or military means. At the negative pole of the duality, the failure to sustain social reproduction under extreme conditions of inequality and corruption gives rise either to ‘failed states’ or to progressive governments, which start building their hegemony in complex interrelation to grassroots movements. In this context, we are in need of subversive politics that weaken the bourgeois state by facilitating the emancipation of society.