ISRF Independent Scholar Fellow 2022-24
ISRF Independent Scholar Fellow 2022-24
Louis Thiemann studied International Politics, History and Development Studies, graduating with a PhD from the International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague. My research converses between alternative and subaltern development practices in the ‚South‘ and post-capitalist politics in the ‚North‘. Its main product is an evolving theory of non-capitalism – The Third Class.
Since 2012, a large part of my work has focused on making sense of post-socialist Cuba, and the multiple transitions taking place within in. With Claudia Mare, I write about the many forms of resistance woven into the subaltern fabric of Cubans’ everyday life and work. With Max Spoor, I follow Cuba’s staggering food import dependency into the concrete limitations faced by peasant farms. Through initiatives such as the Foro Cubano (based at Sergio Arboleda University, Bogotá) and the Food Monitor Programme (a critical food sovereignty watchdog), I participate in discussions held in Cuba’s civil society. More recently, my work has interrogated the coloniality of international academic discussions on Cuba and the lives Cubans lead, resulting in a chapter on „Greenwashing the Revolution” as part of a forthcoming book on The Mythology of the Cuban Revolution (edited by Sergio Angel & Claudia Mare).
When in Europe, my interests revolve around socio-ecological transitions, degrowth and cooperativism. In this context, my aim is to locate (and connect) existing practices, principles and discourses of non-capitalist labor, many of which tend to be overlooked. Inspired by the work of Leopold Kohr, as well as the Cuban experience of regressive power being rooted in progressive discourses, I am interested in polycentric, distributive and diverse pathways, institutions and cultures.
This research project curates a conversation among scholar-activists, social movement actors and advocates on potential epistemic bases for inter-sectoral and -national solidarity among independent workers and their movements. In contemporary diverse economies (Gibson-Graham 2008), autonomous and semi-autonomous labor abounds within and outside of capitalism, yet the concepts developed to underline its merits and potentials rarely travel across economic sectors. Here lies a significant advantage for capital in its attempts to organise and capture socio-political imaginaries vis-á-vis its alternatives. The integrative terms offered by theories of capitalism, in other words, are lacking for non-capitalism, imposing unnecessary disciplinary and representational boundaries for the rich empirical insights, organisational recipes and political tactics developed by non-exploitative labor formations everywhere.
To remedy this epistemic inequality, we need a common analytical language of non-exploitative labor. In order to provoke this discussion, I claim that self-directed workers in all sectors form part of a general class of labor – the artisanat (Thiemann 2022). As an antonym to the proletarian condition, and to dependency relations more generally, we analyse the artisan condition as the unfolding of labor processes in relative autonomy, providing livelihoods rather than jobs. Artisans aim at subsistence rather than profit or wage, and conceive of the means of production as patrimony rather than capital or assets. They form agglomerations (rather than accumulations) of property and rights, and rely on commons (rather than incorporation) to facilitate economies of scale. Shifts in class dynamics and degrees of exploitation are defined by accumulation and equilibration, respectively.
If you would like to contact any of our Fellows to discuss their ISRF-funded work, please contact Dr Lars Cornelissen (Academic Editor) in the first instance, at lars.cornelissen@isrf.org.