Interstitial revolution is a theoretical means of societal transformation through progressively and strategically enlarging spaces of social empowerment. Interstitial revolution (or transformation) builds on the concept of prefigurative politics which has a long history in anti-capitalist thinking, going back nearly two hundred years in the anarchist tradition. Prefigurativism is neatly summed up by the early twentieth century Constitution of the Industrial Workers of the World which declared: "By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the old." [1]
This has classically been the approach recommended by several theorists of social anarchism, including Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Gustav Landauer, Paul Goodman, and Murray Bookchin. In recent years, prominent analytical Marxists (including John Holloway [2] and Erik Olin Wright [3] ) have called attention to the lack of strategy for greater systemic change within prefigurativism and have attempted to construct models of societal transformation utilizing interstitial devices as an alternative to the traditional Marxist theory of revolution.
Central to the concept of interstitial revolution is the perspective of seeing the state as a complex multitude of institutions organized by a dominant power structure, but not so integrated that it controls all activities within it. [4] Interstitial theorists suggest that within this system, radically democratic collectives (such as Worker owned cooperatives) have the opportunity to gain a foothold in the "cracks" of the capitalist state. [5] These egalitarian institutions, working on their own or in tandem, can then use their social and economic power along with traditional forms of struggle to outmaneuver and erode limits to their growth imposed by capitalist institutions, thereby creating more space for collective economic and political power. [6] Interstitial theorists state that over time, enough progressive struggles and victories could potentially lead to the overcoming of the capitalist state.
Erik Olin Wright points out that there may be boundaries to the growth of an interstitial movement in which the most adept strategies of collective economic and social pressure are not enough to overcome the power of capitalist hegemony. He suggests in this case it may be necessary to resort to a more traditional form of "ruptural" revolution. However, he stresses that a substantial network of democratically run organizations is a key foundation to any revolution that wishes to yield a result of deepening democracy and creating the conditions for human flourishing. [6]
Wright suggests that the first stage of an interstitial revolution could be starting a cooperative bank. A cooperative bank would function as a normal bank with the exception that it would give loans primarily to organized workers who wished to collectively purchase their employer's company in order to start a worker owned cooperative. Wright says this could be both an answer to a coming small business succession crisis and an opportunity for democratically run companies to gain a foothold in the economy. [7]
Libertarian socialism is an anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist political current that emphasises self-governance and workers' self-management. It is contrasted from other forms of socialism by its rejection of state ownership and from other forms of libertarianism by its rejection of private property. Broadly defined, it includes schools of both anarchism and Marxism, as well as other tendencies that oppose the state and capitalism.
Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes the economic, political, and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems. Social ownership can take various forms, including public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee. Traditionally, socialism is on the left wing of the political spectrum. Types of socialism vary based on the role of markets and planning in resource allocation, and the structure of management in organizations.
Anti-capitalism is a political ideology and movement encompassing a variety of attitudes and ideas that oppose capitalism. In this sense, anti-capitalists are those who wish to replace capitalism with another type of economic system, such as socialism or communism.
Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an orthodox Marxist, a revolutionary Marxist, and a Bolshevik–Leninist as well as a follower of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Karl Liebknecht, and Rosa Luxemburg. Assessing Trotsky, Lenin wrote: "Trotsky long ago said that unification is impossible. Trotsky understood this and from that time on, there has been no better Bolshevik."
Karl Marx's theory of alienation describes the estrangement of people from aspects of their human nature as a consequence of the division of labour and living in a society of stratified social classes. The alienation from the self is a consequence of being a mechanistic part of a social class, the condition of which estranges a person from their humanity.
Class analysis is research in sociology, politics and economics from the point of view of the stratification of the society into dynamic classes. It implies that there is no universal or uniform social outlook, rather that there are fundamental conflicts that exist inherent to how society is currently organized.
Labor aristocracy or labour aristocracy has at least four meanings: (1) as a term with Marxist theoretical underpinnings; (2) as a specific type of trade unionism; (3) as a shorthand description by revolutionary industrial unions for the bureaucracy of craft-based business unionism; and (4) in the 19th and early 20th centuries was also a phrase used to define better-off members of the working class.
Post-capitalism is in part a hypothetical state in which the economic systems of the world can no longer be described as forms of capitalism. Various individuals and political ideologies have speculated on what would define such a world. According to classical Marxist and social evolutionary theories, post-capitalist societies may come about as a result of spontaneous evolution as capitalism becomes obsolete. Others propose models to intentionally replace capitalism, most notably socialism, communism, anarchism, nationalism and degrowth.
Autonomism, also known as Autonomist Marxism, is an anti-capitalist social movement and Marxist-based theoretical current that first emerged in Italy in the 1960s from workerism. Later, post-Marxist and anarchist tendencies became significant after influence from the Situationists, the failure of Italian far-left movements in the 1970s, and the emergence of a number of important theorists including Antonio Negri, who had contributed to the 1969 founding of Potere Operaio as well as Mario Tronti, Paolo Virno and Franco "Bifo" Berardi.
Socialist democracy is a political system that aligns with principles of both socialism and democracy. It includes ideologies such as council communism, democratic socialism, social democracy, and soviet democracy, as well as Marxist democracy like the dictatorship of the proletariat. It was embodied in the Soviet system (1922–1991). It can also denote a system of political party organization like democratic centralism, or a form of democracy espoused by Marxist–Leninist political parties or groups that support one-party states. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1945–1992) styled itself a socialist democracy, as did the People's Republic of Bulgaria (1946–1990) and the Socialist Republic of Romania (1947–1989).
Marxian class theory asserts that an individual's position within a class hierarchy is determined by their role in the production process, and argues that political and ideological consciousness is determined by class position. A class is those who share common economic interests, are conscious of those interests, and engage in collective action which advances those interests. Within Marxian class theory, the structure of the production process forms the basis of class construction.
Marxist sociology refers to the application of Marxist epistemologies within the study of sociology. It can often be economic sociology, political sociology or cultural sociology. Marxism itself is recognised as both a political philosophy and a social theory, insofar as it attempts to remain scientific, systematic, and objective rather than purely normative and prescriptive. This approach would come to facilitate the developments of critical theory and cultural studies as loosely distinct disciplines. Marx himself has been considered a founding father of sociology.
Free association, also known as free association of producers, is a relationship among individuals where there is no state, social class, hierarchy, division of labour or private ownership of means of production. Once private property is abolished, individuals are no longer deprived of access to means of production, thus enabling them to freely associate without social constraint to produce and reproduce their own conditions of existence and fulfill their individual and creative needs and desires. The term is used by anarchists and Marxists and is often considered a defining feature of a fully developed communist society.
Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis that originates in the works of 19th century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism analyzes and critiques the development of class society and especially of capitalism as well as the role of class struggles in systemic, economic, social and political change. It frames capitalism through a paradigm of exploitation and analyzes class relations and social conflict using a materialist interpretation of historical development – materialist in the sense that the politics and ideas of an epoch are determined by the way in which material production is carried on.
The theory of historical trajectory is part of Karl Marx's historical materialism. This theory has been analyzed by Erik Olin Wright, whose work has been cited in relation to it. According to Wright, while Marx's theory of social change is often regarded as obsolete, it is nonetheless an important and likely still the "most ambitious attempt to construct a scientific theory of alternatives to capitalism". What Marx attempted was to develop a deterministic theory of "long term impossibility of capitalism". According to Marx, the very same problems that should make capitalism fail should also provide the means for the new, more democratic and egalitarian society to arise.
Erik Olin Wright was an American analytical Marxist sociologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, specializing in social stratification and in egalitarian alternative futures to capitalism. He was known for diverging from classical Marxism in his breakdown of the working class into subgroups of diversely held power and therefore varying degrees of class consciousness. Wright introduced novel concepts to adapt to this change of perspective including deep democracy and interstitial revolution.
Analytical Marxism is an academic school of Marxist theory which emerged in the late 1970s, largely prompted by G. A. Cohen's Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence (1978). In this book, Cohen drew on the Anglo–American tradition of analytic philosophy in an attempt to raise the standards of clarity and rigor within Marxist theory, which led to his distancing of Marxism from continental European philosophy. Analytical Marxism rejects much of the Hegelian and dialectical tradition associated with Marx's thought.
Social ownership is a type of property where an asset is recognized to be in the possession of society as a whole rather than individual members or groups within it. Social ownership of the means of production is the defining characteristic of a socialist economy, and can take the form of community ownership, state ownership, common ownership, employee ownership, cooperative ownership, and citizen ownership of equity. Within the context of socialist economics it refers particularly to the appropriation of the surplus product, produced by the means of production, or the wealth that comes from it, to society at large or the workers themselves. Traditionally, social ownership implied that capital and factor markets would cease to exist under the assumption that market exchanges within the production process would be made redundant if capital goods were owned and integrated by a single entity or network of entities representing society. However, the articulation of models of market socialism where factor markets are utilized for allocating capital goods between socially owned enterprises broadened the definition to include autonomous entities within a market economy.
In Marxist philosophy, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a condition in which the proletariat, or working class, holds control over state power. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the transitional phase from a capitalist to a communist economy, whereby the post-revolutionary state seizes the means of production, mandates the implementation of direct elections on behalf of and within the confines of the ruling proletarian state party, and institutes elected delegates into representative workers' councils that nationalise ownership of the means of production from private to collective ownership. During this phase, the administrative organizational structure of the party is to be largely determined by the need for it to govern firmly and wield state power to prevent counterrevolution, and to facilitate the transition to a lasting communist society.
Real utopian sociology is an emancipatory social science created and practiced by Erik Olin Wright, a utopian studies scholar. The apparent contradiction in its name is intentional: this sociology seeks to find existing utopian projects and evaluate their potential to replace systems of domination, particularly as an anti-capitalism strategy. Simply put, real utopian sociology is the study of feasible utopian models for society and pathways to achieve them.