New Article: Breaking the Mould: Economic Utopias as Pathway to Peace

Extensive research shows how neoliberal economic policies, enforced through international peacebuilding interventions, exacerbate inequality and undermine their intended goal of fostering peace. Yet, the same body of literature makes no concerted effort to develop alternative economic policies. In response, this article develops an anarchist utopian epistemology and presents one exemplary historical anarchist economic utopia. Highlighting three key elements of this economic utopia, namely workers’ self-management, abandonment of private property, and council federalization, as possible alternatives to neoliberal peacebuilding. By employing utopia, scholarship can develop a repository of possibilities, pluralizing options for post-conflict communities to design policy outside hegemonic capitalist orders.