Series IV — The World the Framework Missed

The first three series build their argument from thinkers close to capitalism's centers. This series relocates the analysis.

Seen from the colony, the plantation, the dam project, the occupied territory — the commons looks different, the struggle for it is more costly, and it's further advanced.

The people capitalism classified as outside the human built the most durable commons traditions we have. Built them under conditions explicitly designed to prevent that. Built them anyway.

  1. 19
    The Outside Was Always People

    Cedric Robinson: capitalism wasn't color-blind and then stained by racism. Race was baked in from day one.
  2. 20
    Underdevelopment Is a Verb

    Walter Rodney: Africa was not underdeveloped. It was developed — into poverty. Deliberately, systematically.
  3. 21
    The Alibi Was Also a Mirror

    Frantz Fanon: colonialism produces a particular kind of human being — and requires that person's cooperation in their own subjection.
  4. 22
    Who Gets to Die

    Achille Mbembe: not the power to manage life, but the power to decide who is exposed to death.
  5. 23
    The Commons They Never Stopped Building

    Arundhati Roy reports from the enclosures while they're happening — and the communities building commons anyway, under eviction orders.
  6. 24
    Build the Commune Without the State

    Öcalan from Kurdistan, Bookchin from Vermont, arriving at the same conclusion: the future is communal and decentralized or it won't exist.