Communization at its most simple level is the production of what one needs without entering into exchange or commodity production. Getting a little more knotty, communization as an act or set of actions is either the establishment of social relations that are outside of capitalist organization or the set of activities that destroy capitalism itself by establishing communism here and now.
Communization is also connected to a heterodox body of theories generally referred to as communization theory. One of the most important theorist in this area is Gilles Dauve. There are also a number of journals that roughly adher to one or another theoretical position and/or experiments in living communization: Endnotes, Tiqqun, sic, Theorie Communiste. Alain Badiou's book Ethics can also loosely be said to be in this field of thought. Since I am not particularly well versed in these perspectives I will simply leave these names here so that people can track down pertinent information for themselves.
Communization theory (CT) is distinct from conventional marxist theories and organizational forms in a few ways. ONE, CT is non-dogmatic. Conventional marxist approaches adher to particular organizational forms and need a revolutionary agent (the party, the workers, new social movements, the multitude). CT maintains a degree of humility in saying that revolution is not a science that we cannot say with certainty who or what will be capable of causing a rupture large enough to unseat capital. So CT lacks the prescriptive, dogmatic, totalitarian baggage that is so deeply a part of marxist practice generally.
TWO, CT does away with the evolutionary schema of stages of history and the necessity of mediating forms of social organization. Conventional marxism calls for all sorts of totalitarian schemes to consolidate order after a succesful revolution: dictatorship of the proletariat, one party rule, the rapid industrialization of the means of production, and so on. It also disciplines its desired masses into obedient hordes waiting for something called the “Ideal Conditions”. CT does away with the call for transitional states and instead values immediacy. The idea is that, in CT, communizing acts are not dependent upon a party or dogma to mediate ones actions. Furthermore, there is no need to wait for anything or anyone else to act. Do not wait for the so-called ideal conditions, act now. CT is an explicitly anti-statist approach within marxism.
THREE, CT looks for the possibilities for communization within the moment of any revolt. There is an optimism, absent in dogmatic or formalized variations of marxism, that any outburst or revolt can organize spontaneously organize and exceed its original cause leading to a rupture that the professionals of revolution could neither predict nor bring into it's fold. A friend of mine said that communization theory is an intentional forgetting of the 20th century. What distinguishes CT from conventional marxism is that it is a non-strategic theory – it is a theory of tactics. It asks the question, “What is the tactic(s) that are capable of or generates the rupture that overthrows capitalism and its social relations?”
But all that being said, it worth mentioning that communization and CT are marxian perspectives, not an anrachist ones.
