Discussion in NYC about the “Contours of the World Commune”

New York friends! I’m reposting below a notice from the Ridgewood-based Woodbine collective. Readers of this blog will likely remember a couple events I’ve organized there in the past: a talk on class struggles in China by the late great Loren Goldner of Insurgent Notes, and a discussion of the war in Ukraine featuring Sander from Internationalist Perspective, John Garvey from Insurgent Notes, and the Ukrainian communist Andrew. They do lots of great community organizing, along with reading groups and Sunday dinners. Follow them on Twitter and Instagram for more info. The address is 585 Woodward Ave Ridgewood, NY 11385.

My comrade, with whom I met up last summer while vacationing in Berlin, is in town this month. He’s a member of the Friends of the Classless Society, which publishes an occasional journal called Kosmoprolet along with other Germanophone groups scattered throughout Europe. Their reformulation of “class consciousness” in their 28 theses remains one of my favorites: “Class consciousness does not consist in the recognition of being a class, but rather in the knowledge of no longer having to be one. Revolution does not consist in the victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, but rather in the self-abolition of the proletariat.”

Please join our Research Group this Sunday at 5pm for a discussion with a friend visiting from Berlin’s Friends of the Classless Society. We will be looking at their 2019 text from Endnotes #5, “Contours of the World Commune.” Links to readings below.

One way of reading the current situation is that the existing order persists not so much due to enthusiastic mass support as thanks to the fact that another society seems hard to imagine today. Capital has materialized itself in technology and logistics, in the organization of space, in the fabric of everyday life. If we do not believe in escaping to cozy communes in the countryside, how can we envision a new classless society starting from these circumstances? How could billions of people around the world coordinate their activities without resorting to market mechanisms or state centralism? What could the transformation (not “abolition”) of labor look like?

These are some of the questions we could discuss in reference to “Contours of the World Commune,” from Endnotes No. 5. Founded in 2003, the Berlin-based circle “Friends of the Classless Society” occasionally publish the journal Kosmoprolet together with similar tiny groups.