Ida Susser
Over a decade ago two innovative movements mobilized in France to take on the neoliberal assaults on the commons and the public good. The Nuit Debout was an Occupy movement that began in Paris in 2016. It was followed by the Yellow Vests, an extraordinary formation that rushed into Paris from the provinces starting in 2018. Triggered by a rise in fuel taxes, the Yellow Vests rapidly articulated broader grievances over inequality, territorial neglect, and the erosion of public services. They demanded affordable transport, pensions, hospitals, and schools.
Both movements launched “commoning” programs that addressed the needs of workers abandoned by the state. They included everything from CoopCycle, an app that facilitated organization among delivery workers, to food collectives to communal housing to improvised social centers. Rather than merely seeking protection from capital, commoning actively remakes economic and social relationships with mutual aid networks, participatory governing, and cooperative production. The Yellow Vests, in particular, did not merely resist neoliberal enclosures but actively prefigured alternative institutions of solidarity and sustainability.
In 2019 I began embedding with the Yellow Vests, and I saw firsthand how these projects embodied a principle of collective self-organization that re-embeds production within shared democratic norms. With commoning, these movements not only roundly rejected the neoliberal attacks on workers and the financialization of the economy, but they built a living—if microcosmic— example of a counter-system.
The emphasis on commoning marks a shift from defensive to constructive counter-movements. The Yellow Vests challenged the very fiction of separable “economy” and “society.” This renewal of the commons represents not a nostalgia for pre-industrial life, but a practical effort to reimagine social relations beyond both market and state. As David Graeber saw it, commoning attempts to democratize economic life and anchor it in collective moral frameworks.
These movements also prized “thresholding,” the process of building alliances across class, race, and political affiliation in support of a common goal. In combining these two tactics they formed a mutually reinforcing bloc that challenged the neoliberal juggernaut that they accused of “stealing the state.” Thresholding knits together people of diverse identities and varied political persuasions. It brings together individuals who may have historically been at odds to actively work toward a common goal. It also links groups that are typically “siloed” in their political pursuits. For example, the Yellow Vests worked extensively with environmental activists and together they connected the protection of the environment with economic justice.
The Yellow Vests insisted on including and relating to individuals who might be poor, disabled, or differently identified in other ways. This was fundamental to the food collective in Saint-Denis in which many Yellow Vests participated. In addition, if a person was wearing a Yellow Vest, in principle, they were part of their community and Yellow Vests insist they will stand by and assist if necessary. I saw these principles in action at a Yellow Vests’ “Peoples House” where squatters cooperated with individuals who were transgender or non-binary or simply poor people without homes. Many working class participants might previously have ignored or disparaged such individuals, but in the spirit of thresholding they recognized their common humanity.
The Yellow Vests gathered in the many roundabouts and traffic circles of Paris. Here they built cabins where they shared barbecues, showed films and brought their children to play —spaces of conviviality and mutual aid that enacted, in miniature, the principles of commoning. These sites generated a visceral feeling of the ‘social” and sharing. They celebrated an ethic of emotional support and humanism. This contrasted with the abandonment by the government and commerce of town centers and public services on the urban periphery. It made visible a shared sense of moral injury as participants began to prioritize their common needs over their differences.
Movements such as Nuit Debout and the Yellow Vests create transformative spaces where people struggle to work out new practices and generate what Antonio Gramsci called a “concrete fantasy” of a better social order. They envision deep and meaningful democratic participation, abundance and the sharing of public resources among the general population, combined with an ethic of humanism and solidarity.
The challenges of the 21st century demand a new inclusive democratic alliance that can forge Gramsci’s concrete fantasy of a better, more equitable world. In France, major fissures still exist among the “old” working class and the “post-colonial” populations. While they may differ in character, similar cracks exist in the US and elsewhere. The process of thresholding can transform these divisions and build solidarity. I witnessed this firsthand with the Yellow Vests. Different protest groups allied and strategized to cross boundaries and build a unified movement ready to take on the powerful forces arrayed against them. The Yellow Vests used the attacks against them as opportunities for thresholding. As the police targeted them with “non-lethal” riot control guns and other weapons, a group known as “the mutilated” formed. They went on to join protests against police violence that united a diverse group of people. These alliances generate familiarity and trust, while also allowing groups to preserve their autonomy.
This does not mean that the emerging movements for social justice should ignore the unique forms of oppression visited on certain racial groups and immigrants that constitutes superexploitation. But it is clear and promising that various groups are finding their way to a truly inclusive politics that can both recognize difference and unite diverse populations. The more movements practice commoning and thresholding over time, the more they bend towards justice and democratic transformation. Of course, nothing is guaranteed. As in the US, France has seen both the left and extreme right gain steam recently. Still, the innovative organizing strategies of the Nuit Debout and the Yellow Vests show that alternatives exist. For a while the streets of Paris prefigured a new society and offered a glimpse of what is possible with real solidarity. This prepares the way for the formation of a progressive countermovement that changes common sense understandings of economic and social norms and produces a concrete fantasy that points the way to a better reality.
Ida Susser is a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author, most recently, of The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy.
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