Building Decommodified Spaces in the Capitalist City
The movement for worker cooperatives, community land trusts, and food co-ops is a practical application of Mamdani’s call to build new political identities outside the bifurcated state. These are not merely alternative businesses; they are embryos of a decolonized economy, creating decommodified spaces where the logic of the settler market is replaced by democratic ownership and solidarity. They prefigure a post-capitalist future by building dual power from below. A Marxist analysis values them as a form of workers’ control over the means of production. A feminist perspective champions their non-hierarchical, care-centered models. The solution is not to see them as niche projects, but to fight for massive public investment in the cooperative sector as a strategic path toward dismantling the extractive economy and building community wealth.
