The “Aazariyeh Commune”: A Demo for a “Resistant” Cooperative Society

This paper unravels the poorly documented “Aazariyeh Commune”, a student-led initiative established by the General Students' Union (GSU) inside the renowned Aazariyeh Building located in the heart of Beirut, which hosted displaced people during the September war in Lebanon waged by the Colonial Zionist forces. By navigating the theoretical framework of prefigurative politics and alternative economies, in addition to shedding lights on the previous experiences of cooperatives in Lebanon, the research asserts how the concerned project presents itself as distinguishable from other cooperative initiatives, and can embody a “minimized/proto version of a society built on relations of cooperation”, and further deals with the question of how the resistant aspect of this proto cooperative society challenges dominant capitalist relations of production, humanitarian dependency, and therefore how it serves as a form of alternative resistance in the context of continuous aggression waged by the Colonial Zionist forces and the threat of a foreseeable colonial invasion and war. Thus, by interviewing members who were actively part of this initiative, the findings affirmed this hypothesis by revealing how the commune contributed to a shift in the social fabric amongst the displaced, especially by enabling displaced individuals to transition from passive aid recipients to active producers. For instance, they shifted from being in the position of “people who were waiting for clothes from outside” and became “people who were making their own clothes with their own hands”. This practical application of popular resistance allowed the Aazariyeh building to function as a self-reliant entity, materially limiting the reach of monopoly traders and market mechanisms that further exacerbate the subjugation of the society during war. Therefore, the GSU promoted “alternative relations of production"” that latently challenged “hegemonic capitalist and individualistic relations”. This drive for gradual accumulative change could be visualized by the Krast-like mechanism of erosion and affirmation from within, a concept evoked by Monticelli. The analysis further distinguishes the Commune from mainstream Lebanese cooperatives by its rejection of the dominant NGO models and structures, and by promoting “Scientific Knowledge Production” through “building tools of production and resources, or developing a mechanism for extracting resources and employing them for the benefit of humanity”. Ultimately, the paper concludes that prefigurative cooperatives in Lebanon are crucial for building socio-economic autonomy and organic resilience in the face of the dominant capitalist and colonial setting, and incentivizes us to reimagine a post-capitalist order beyond the limitations of the dominant hegemonic system in Lebanon.