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Friends in Common: Radical Friendship and Everyday Solidarities
Friendship is full of revolutionary potential in the face of a profoundly anti-social capitalist system. Friends in Common explores friendship as a radical practice, capable of upending hierarchies and producing social change.
Friendship can transcend social boundaries and political borders. It is vital in building communities and underpinning solidarity. But its transformative potency ensures that it is heavily policed and restrained by the state. Understanding the radical possibilities of friendship can help us rethink our approach to family, work and politics, and show us new routes to resistance and ways to open up spaces of solidarity and escape.
The dissonance created by comparing societal expectations around friendship and a lonely reality, especially in the wake of an isolating global pandemic, is deeply alienating. Friends in Common shows that friendship as a political practice is foundational to strengthening revolutionary ideas and projects, and is the antidote to capitalist despair.
Friendship can transcend social boundaries and political borders. It is vital in building communities and underpinning solidarity. But its transformative potency ensures that it is heavily policed and restrained by the state. Understanding the radical possibilities of friendship can help us rethink our approach to family, work and politics, and show us new routes to resistance and ways to open up spaces of solidarity and escape.
The dissonance created by comparing societal expectations around friendship and a lonely reality, especially in the wake of an isolating global pandemic, is deeply alienating. Friends in Common shows that friendship as a political practice is foundational to strengthening revolutionary ideas and projects, and is the antidote to capitalist despair.
280 pages, Paperback
Published June 20, 2025
13 people are currently reading
327 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 1, 2025
gorgeous gorgeous book! solidarity, anti-capitalist work, recognition of grief, despair and joy all oscillating in friendships. the chapters were absolutely fantastic on boss friendships and trade unions, family abolition, historic movements and groups that moved through friends-of-friends in an activist context as well as the brunchification of friendships !
"the central question of this book is about the degree to which we can shift our interpersonal politics into something that moves us away from cycles of capitalism, violence and oppression"
"the central question of this book is about the degree to which we can shift our interpersonal politics into something that moves us away from cycles of capitalism, violence and oppression"
December 24, 2025
This is a discussion of friendship largely grounded in the history of socialist and leftist communities in the UK, Europe more broadly, and the US. I got bogged down in the more historical sections but slogged through them because I don't often see analytical books on friendship. The most compelling parts were chapters on "work friends" (the ways that capitalist employment structures concepts of leisure and friendship) and "old friends" (the value of inter-generational friendship).
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews