David Harvey at the World Social Forum in 2010:
Contemporary attempts to revive the communist hypothesis typically abjure state control and look to other forms of collective social organisation to displace market forces and capital accumulation as the basis for organising production and distribution. Horizontally networked as opposed to hierarchically commanded systems of co-ordination between autonomously organised and self-governing collectives of producers and consumers are envisaged as lying at the core of a new form of communism. Contemporary technologies of communication make such a system seem feasible. All manner of small-scale experiments around the world can be found in which such economic and political forms are being constructed. In this there is a convergence of some sort between the Marxist and anarchist traditions that harks back to the broadly collaborative situation between them in the 1860s in Europe.
Just happened across your blog. A very interesting connection of ideas, very much along the same lines as I’ve been working. I’m more of an historian than an architect, but my research is focused specifically on the Soviet architectural avant-garde from the 1920s-1930s, but more broadly on the so-called “international style” of European modernism that existed alongside it. As someone who’s very interested in the application of Marxist theory, and a huge fan of David Harvey, I appreciate this post.
I’m adding you to my blogroll.