A scholarly paper titled “Commons Movements & ‘Progressive’ Governments as Dual Power: The Potential for Social Transformation in Europe” and authored by Antonis Broumas will appear soon at Capital & Class. The abstract is following:
“In the neoliberal era, social counter-power emerges as the main resurgent force to contend the capital-state complex, whether in the form of labour struggles or direct democratic movements or in the form of struggles for the preservation / diffusion of the commons. Political forces within these societies in motion do not play the role of revolutionary vanguards, instead they protect and facilitate the process of the social revolution by political or military means. At the negative pole of the duality, the failure to sustain social reproduction under extreme conditions of inequality and corruption gives rise either to “failed states” or to progressive governments, which start building their hegemony in complex interrelation to grassroots movements. In this context, we are in need of subversive politics that weaken the bourgeois state by facilitating the emancipation of society.”
Of particular interest is Antonis’s argumentation against the notion of a partner state approach:
“…In this sense, there can be no partner state to the commons and social counter – power in the ashes of the disintegrating post-war welfare state, no matter how noble the intentions of its theorists are (Bauwens & Kostakis 2014, P2P Foundation 2015). In fact, such a term is a contradiction in itself, a platonian conception that shall always reside in the society of ideas, but will never materialize in social praxis apart from the impact on the grassroots struggles due to the disillusions it nourishes. States will never build what will be their own undoing…”.
Here you may have access to the final draft.