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Accepted Paper:
Abstracting value in and out of the commons
Oana Mateescu
(Babes-Bolyai University)
Marc Morell
(Rīgas Strādiņa Universitāte)
Is the end of capitalism the end of value? Can we take commons as the beginning of post-capitalist political economy with its own relations of value and abstraction? Introducing the panel, this paper takes a historical anthropological standpoint for a value theory of the commons.
Paper long abstract:
Is the end of capitalism the end of value? Can we take commons as the beginning of a post-capitalist political economy with its own relations of value and abstraction? Getting rid of the abstract forms the underlie value under capitalism would not wipe the social slate of the commons clean, ushering in a post-social era of transparency and immediacy. We argue that commons – particularly in their instantiation beyond capitalism – need to contend with value and its dialectic of qualitative and quantitative, equal and unequal, emancipatory and nonemancipatory.
This paper aims to work as an introduction to the panel by setting forward the generation of the idea of the commons in conjunction with and against history as constituted by capital, with a specific emphasis on the dialectical understanding the relation between value and the commons holds. It will also prepare the terrain for the discussion that will close the panel. In highlighting the need for a historical anthropological standpoint that equally acknowledges the importance of ethnography and abstraction for a reflection of a value theory of the commons, we hope to contribute to the debate and the polemics that revolve around the transformative potential of the idea and practice of the commons.