So What Does It Mean to be Anti-capitalist? Conversations with Activists from Urban Social Centres

Abstract

This paper is about autonomous urban social centres and attempts to show how the everyday lives, values and practices of participants within them give shape and meaning to the idea of anti-capitalism. This is done by reference to five areas: a politics of place, where local space constitutes anti-capitalist practice; political identities based on impure, messy identities; social relationships which prioritise emotions and collective working; organisational practices based on self-management and experimentation; and political strategies which stress the need to cross boundaries beyond the activist ghetto. Overall, social centre participants demonstrate that anti-capitalist practice is not just ‘anti-’, but also ‘post-’ and ‘despite-’ capitalist; simultaneously against, after and within. Just like capitalist social relations, its antithesis anti-capitalism is constituted through ordinary everyday practices. It is this reconceptualisation of anti-capitalist practice as experimental, messy, open, everyday, collective and grounded politics which has the potential to make this kind of contentious urban politics more legible and feasible—in times when we need it most.