By Muqeet ul Iftikhar Drabu

In an age of hopelessness, where humanity is faced with seemingly insurmountable crises: from extractive capitalism to climate change, from pandemics to violent political polarization, it is a challenging task to engage in positive constructive thinking. To dispel the gloom over such limited conception of the world, our task with Utopia 13/13 is to identify, and pursue “concrete utopias”.

Concrete utopias, as Bernard Harcourt’s introduction to the series of seminars[1] states, are “really-existing, functioning, already-working practices, institutions, models and exemplars of a just society” which possess the ability to “burst open the possibilities of the present…” These are existing forms of social and economic organization that have the potential of leading the way towards an alternative way of living and engaging with the world. The concreteness as an idea comes from the formulation adduced by Etienne Balibar of such utopias where counter-conducts are invented through exercise of the concrete thought of difference and of an imagination.[2]

Having said that, concrete utopia is not a totalizing concept[3], and does not (and cannot) provide us with a one-stop solution to all our ailments. Our purpose is to identify, explore and develop varied forms of ‘utopic’ ideals that have been realized in these concrete utopias we consider, to figure out their possible expansion to create a path forward.

It is here that we consider Sara Horowitz’s contribution to the discourse with her book Mutualism: Building the Next Economy from the Ground Up[4]. Mutualism, per the Oxford English Dictionary, means the doctrine that mutual dependence is necessary to social well-being. Horowitz reformulates the idea by stating that in order to resolve intractable problems, we must look to others. The idea is to solve social problems through organizing ourselves into groups, drawing connections and building solidarities. The work advocates for active engagement to reformulate one’s conditions (and effectively, that of the world) through coordinated action. As per her construction, a mutualist organization could be anything where people have come together for a specified purpose, which includes a union, a religious group, a mutual aid society, a cooperative, a commune, a credit union, a kibbutz, a tontine, a fraternal society, a women’s organization, or a trade association.

Based on her experiences working in the mutualist space, Horowitz provides us with three characteristics shared by all mutualist organizations[5]:

A social purpose: to solve a social problem for a community. Rather than the purpose of the organization being profit-maximization, it is to serve the members of the community;

An independent, sustainable economic mechanism, which means ways to cover expenses and make money; and

A long-term focus: institutions that span generations with the idea of outlasting their members.

The emergence of mutualist thinking, as conceived of by Horowitz, stems from the lack of action in respect of a problem from the government and/ or market forces, thereby leading to the question: why not solve it for yourself? In doing so, Horowitz places this question in a historical setting, invoking a rich tradition of mutualist endeavors leading to positive outcomes. Her examples include Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire (from where modern insurance takes its roots), International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (advocated for better working conditions and wages for garment workers along with providing a safety net for its members), March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (benevolent burial societies and banks made by enslaved people were the building blocks of the civil rights movement), and Emilia-Romagna province in northern Italy (which has a decentralized cooperative economy that participates in the global economy, leading to one of the most equitable distributions of income in the world).

While conceiving of mutualism as conceived of by Horowitz, it helps to understand it in context of Erik Olin Wright’s “Real Utopias Project”.[6] Wright and his collaborators sought out “a clear elaboration of workable institutional principles that could inform emancipatory alternatives to the existing world.”[7] As part of the project, the question that arose was the degree of transformation required from an institutional principle for it to qualify as being sufficiently transformative. In this regard, Horowitz’s mutualism uneasily settles between two of Erik Olin Wright’s “three models of transformation”[8]: the interstitial metamorphosis and the symbiotic metamorphosis. The mutualism so conceived is not revolutionary in the sense that it does not attack the foundation of the existing system in place. The mutualist ideal as proposed by Horowitz shuffles between providing an alternative vision of a world that tries to exist outside of the statist structures while also advocating for an incrementalist approach of collaboration and adaption to move forward. As such, it teeters between anarchist separatism and an incrementalist social-democratic reform.

So, is mutualism transformative enough to qualify for a legitimate inquiry as a concrete utopia? Does it amount to an exercise of the concrete thought of difference leading to counter-conduct, as Balibar would say? In my opinion, yes, because of the power of collectivity and the spirit of solidarity. Something fundamental being referred to in Horowitz’s work, though argued from the perspective of labour politics[9], is the notion of loneliness and the need for community. Taking from this, the key insight is the idea of moving beyond oneself and reaching out to others. Horowitz refers to Alexis de Tocqueville, and his insights into the American democracy, to refer to his amazement at Americans in mid-19^th century (and since) organically organizing themselves into groups (or associations). This for me is the key insight that links all our discussions till now on concrete utopias: the acknowledgement of dependencies, the building of a network of solidarities based on care, and existing as part of the community.

Contained in mutualist thought is the core idea that we have been exploring across our seminars thus far. Balibar put it succinctly in his following observation during the first seminar:

“Ultimately, I believe that […] the key issue at stake in utopian imagination, especially the “socialist” utopias, is a quest for the retrieval or the replacement of the lost community, or the equivalent of the social relations that modern individualism based on the absolute privilege of private property has destroyed” (Emphasis supplied)

It is the intimacy Alyssa Battistoni spoke about when talking about the relationships around organizing.[10] It is the solidarity economy which fuels the autonomous zone along Mississippi, that is Cooperation Jackson.[11] It is the idea that there exists a radical alternative to the current civilization and it can be achieved when we recalibrate our priorities to acknowledge human flourishment as a goal.

As suggested by Ann Stoler and Kendall Thomas in the first seminar, we should possibly consider utopias as action, as a verb, rather than as a noun.[12] This would lead to extricating the idea of “utopia” from its spatio-temporal moorings and go back to its Greek roots of “ou” and “topos” meaning “not” “place” respectively. Thereby, the concrete utopias, or dimensions of it, that we seek to investigate, could be the social relations and experiences we create based on our solidarities. It could be collective action and a reframing of desires. It could be prioritizing culture and community life, civil rights, and cross-class solidarity. It could be intimacy and establishment of relations of care. As Joan Tronto argues, upon acknowledgment of dependencies in every aspect of one’s life, there is freedom in one’s capacity to care for others.[13]

The importance of caring and of collective engagement was front and center during the past few years of the COVID-19 pandemic. We could see that with the calamity facing humanity, grassroot action and cross-class solidarities emerged, wherein people sought connections, organized, and provided services that the state and private industry failed to provide. As Horowitz writes in the prologue to her book: “neighbors began helping neighbors, forming mutual aid societies to meet their most urgent needs: access to food, medication, masks. […] Communities helped each other assemble from scratch a new, ad hoc safety net, and the process of rebuilding began. This was the mutualist instinct at its most basic and most pure.”[14]

This collective engagement does not only benefit those that are recipients of care, but also the providers. Researchers at the London School of Economics in 2021 found that volunteering gave people a sense of purpose and pleasure, increasing their overall well-being.[15] This leads us to the theme that we discussed as part of our seminar on degrowth. The movement emphasizes the need for redistribution of resources and a shift in values. The shift in values is what mutualism also emphasizes, with the priority to be given to community over notions of profits in context of mutual insurance or cooperative housing.

My focus with this piece has been solely on the strain running through the first five seminars on Utopia 13/13: which, for me, has been the prioritization of values of community, solidarity, and dependency on others. The emancipatory potential existing in such relations is utopic, with actual possibilities of materially altering one’s corporeal and mental circumstances, which when deployed in context of communities or large collectives can result in large scale transformation of society.

I’ll conclude with another observation made by Balibar, being Rancière’s formula as a critical and foundational reflection on “concrete utopias”: “communist (or utopian) communities are communities where struggling and living are not separated”.[16] The struggle, thus, is an integral part of the process.

Notes

[1] Bernard Harcourt, Introduction to Utopia 13/13, September 20, 2022 online available at https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/utopia1313/bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-utopia-1-13/.

[2] Étienne Balibar, “Régulations, insurrections, utopies : pour un « socialisme » du xxie siècle,” in Histoire interminable (Paris : La Découverte, 2020), pages 264, 292.

[3] As discussed in the first seminar, concrete utopias need to be punctual engagements in the present and can avoid being totalizing. There is a sense of ‘partiality’ that exists in their nature. From: Bernard Harcourt, Epilogue to Utopia 1/13, October 1, 2022 available online at https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/utopia1313/bernard-e-harcourt-epilogue-to-utopia-1-13/.

[4] Sara Horowitz, Mutualism: Building the Next Economy from the Ground Up (New York: Random House, 2021).

[5] Horowitz, Mutualisms, 66-72.

[6] Erik Olin Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias (London: Verso, 2010).

[7] Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias.

[8] Bernard Harcourt, Six Questions for Utopia 13/13, September 25, 2022 available online at https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/utopia1313/bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-utopia-1-13-six-questions-for-utopia-13-13/.

[9] Horowitz argues that this is owing to a half a century of “systematic dismantling of the safety net and the atomization of the workforce to such an extent that today’s workers have nowhere to turn in periods of uncertainty”.

[10] Alyssa Battistoni, Spadework, Spring 2019, NPlusOne Mag available online at https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-34/politics/spadework/.

[11] Kali Akuno, The Jackson-Kush Plan: The Struggle for Black Self-Determination and Economic Democracy. Undated PDF available online at https://mronline.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Jackson-KushPlan.pdf.

[12] Harcourt, Epilogue to Utopia 1/13.

[13] Lynne Segal, The Utopian Pulse, Boston Review, September 8, 2022 available online at https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-utopian-pulse/.

[14] Horowitz, Mutualisms, 6-7.

[15] Lynne Segal, The Utopian Pulse, Boston Review, September 8, 2022 available online at https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-utopian-pulse/

[16] Étienne Balibar, Uncovering Lines of Escape: Towards A Concept of Concrete Utopia in the Age of Catastrophes, October 1, 2022, available online at https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/utopia1313/etienne-balibar-uncovering-lines-of-escape-towards-a-concept-of-concrete-utopia-in-the-age-of-catastrophes/