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The Pyramid and the Common
Social Reproduction, Value Praxis, and Transformation
The Pyramid and the Common
Social Reproduction, Value Praxis, and Transformation
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Description
How do we change the world? How do we break free from social arrangements that shape our everyday lives yet leave many of us exhausted, stressed, and diminished? These are systems that deepen inequality, fuel armed conflict, damage the environment, and increasingly threaten the conditions of life itself.
In this book, Massimo De Angelis explores the system of social cooperation we live in and reproduce every day, capitalism. Rather than analysing it from a distance, De Angelis examines it from the perspective of how people actually live, work, and care for one another, showing how our lives are organised through interconnected domains of value that structure power, labour, and social relations.
Crucially, De Angelis argues that change can emerge from within these conditions. By focusing on social reproduction, the everyday practices that sustain life, he identifies a space where collective organisation, struggle, and alternative ways of living can take shape.
Drawing on political economy, systems theory, cybernetics, and commons theory, this book offers both a clear diagnosis of our present crisis and a grounded vision for transforming how we live together.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Part I The common as condition
Introduction
1 Changing the common
2 Reproductions and the measures of things
3 Reproductions as social forces
Part II The making of the common
4 Daily life, social change, and enactment
5 The subject
6 Subjectification and the subject-holon
7 Value praxis or the coupling of the subjects with their exteriority
Appendix to chapter 7: Circuits of capital and the procommons
8 Domains of value praxis
Part III The pyramid of capital and beyond
9 The pyramid of capital
10 The level of Gaia: foundation and horizon
11 The level of the procommons
12 The meso-level
13 The meta-level
14 The mega-level
15 A brief history of capitalist command since post–second world war
16 The autopoiesis of the common: from affective capture to systemic recomposition
Notes
References
Index
Product details
| Published | 17 Sep 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (PDF) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 320 |
| ISBN | 9781350541450 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Series | In Common |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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'In this ambitious and deeply necessary book, Massimo De Angelis shows that the struggle against capitalism cannot be understood apart from the struggle over social reproduction and the commons. By mapping the pyramid of command as a totalizing system and commoning as a transformative force rooted in the reproduction of life, he gives us a powerful political language for our times.'
Silvia Federici, Hofstra University, USA
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'Massimo De Angelis takes readers on a fascinating tour, working on “hybrid theoretical terrains” to shed light on the totality of capitalism and what constitutively exceeds it: everyday practices, tensions, and struggles embodying the living power of the common and the potentiality of another world. The Pyramid and the Common is an amazing work of scholarship and a political manifesto for our times.'
Sandro Mezzadra, University of Bologna, Italy
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'This is an important book. It centres on the only question that still matters: How do we get out of here? Hope lies in the fact that capitalism, although dominant, is not the only form of social reproduction that exists: the reproduction of life also depends on the present existence of a communism, the everyday practice of sharing-and-caring on the basis of mutual recognition. How can this communism become the hegemonic form of social reproduction? Massimo's book is an original, ambitious, stimulating, challenging and impressive contribution that will no doubt have a major impact on future discussions'.
John Holloway, Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades in the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Mexico
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'What an intricate and inventive trajectory towards emancipatory hopes! Massimo De Angelis tirelessly explores the possibilities of social change as they are produced within the systemic and autopoietic structure of capitalism. And he locates the transformative power of the commons not in an imaginary outside but in the autopoietic potentialities of the practices that challenge capitalist reproduction. Mapping a very complex terrain of opposing forces with the use of knowledges and aspirations developed in different fields of critical thinking De Angelis offers us nothing less than a brilliant cartography of emancipatory hopes in devastating times'.
Stavros Stavrides, The National Technical University of Athens, Greece

























