Bruno Astarian

In this short essay written in 2009, Bruno Astarian defines “communization” as the direct establishment of communism, and denies the need for a “transitional” regime: first, he says, the proletariat will launch insurrectionary expropriations “to assure its own survival” in response to the crisis; then after the crisis has been overcome by the free distribution of stored goods, production will resume in the form of “production without productivity” (without accounting) and “consumption without necessity” (without the fear of scarcity or poverty), in a new society where “free distribution … breaks with all separations” in the form of “a single unified free activity”.

Through the lens of recent struggles in Greece and Bangladesh, Bruno Astarian examines what distinguishes proletarian activity in times of insurrection from that of everyday class struggle, how this could lead to a process of communisation, and what such a process might involve.