ERASURE OF THE COMMON: FROM POLISH ANTI-COMMUNISM TO UNIVERSAL ANTI-CAPITALISM
ERASURE OF THE COMMON: FROM POLISH ANTI-COMMUNISM TO UNIVERSAL ANTI-CAPITALISM

Summary/Abstract: The subject of the article is the recent rise in significance of anti-communist discourses on the example of Polish anti-communism. The aim of the article is twofold. Firstly, to test the limits of usefulness of the theory of hegemony in the critique of anti-communism. I claim that it remains operative as an analytic tool to track practical uses of anti-communism in political rivalry, but it is unable to conceptualize more systemic and non-apparent operations of anti-communist logics in the machinery of contemporary capitalism. I propose an alternative interpretation of anti-communism, drawing mostly on post-operaist Marxism of the common and acknowledging its theoretical assumptions with recent research on the Polish popular classes and their bottom-up social practices. Secondly, I present a hypothesis, according to which proper understanding of the particular example of Polish anti-communism could be helpful to understand the functioning of universal anti-communism as a reaction to the struggles to institute the common.

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