Democratic regeneration through commons-based populism

This chapter suggests that a powerful counter-hegemonic intervention should build on the complementarities of commons and progressive populism to advance democratic regeneration in our times. Discussion lays out how late social movements – the Spanish 15M, the ‘Greek squares’ and Occupy in 2011-2012, along with environmental movements in the Americas and ‘new municipalism’ since 2015 – have cultivated a politics of ‘common populism’ or ‘populist commons’ which is localised, open, pluralist, bottom-up, and empowers popular democracy. In this confluence, inclusionary populism contributes a strategy for aggregating forces around an antagonistic political project and the political dynamics of broad-based pluralist mobilization. The commons furnish territorial anchorages, horizontalist participation, and activity focused around everyday needs and goods. Localised commons cultivate thus a democratic ‘placeism’ of direct political involvement, care for embodied communities and pursuit of the common good in particular localities. Moreover, insofar as they pivot around specific activities, they construct practical collective identities rather than abstract-ideological ones which typically inform nationalism. Hence, place-based commons can both nurture inclusionary-pluralist populism and ground populism in real collective power countering top-down personalism.