Metehan Cömert, MECİ: Toplumsal Bir Hareket ve Anti-Kapitalist İhtimaller, Istanbul: NotaBene Yayınları, 2023, 112 pp. ISBN: 978-605-260-407-6.
Metehan Cömert’s MECİ: Toplumsal Bir Hareket ve Anti-Kapitalist İhtimaller is a study that examines, through the case of the Fındıklı district of Rize, how the long-standing culture of meci in the Eastern Black Sea region, based on voluntary collective work without expectation of return, is being reinterpreted today and what social and political possibilities it contains. Drawing on field research conducted in Fındıklı, Cömert does not treat meci merely as a tradition of mutual aid inherited from the past; instead, particularly in light of the new political content it acquired following the 2019 local elections, he uses it to discuss the possibilities of collective life and a different form of sociality.
The book explores the relationship between the historical transformation of meci and its contemporary forms in Fındıklı, showing how a traditional practice can acquire new meanings under changing economic and social conditions. The fundamental characteristics of meci—working collectively without expectation of return, voluntarism, and solidarity—are understood not simply as forms of mutual assistance between individuals, but as elements of collectively meeting shared needs. The contemporary experience in Fındıklı is examined in terms of how this culture, by combining with local government, public activities, and social participation, has become part of a search for new forms of political and social organization.
At the theoretical core of the study are the relationships between meci and the commons, the gift, reciprocity, solidarity, and voluntarism. Cömert approaches meci not merely as a collection of tasks performed collectively, but as a practice through which social relations and a shared existence are reproduced. Drawing on debates around the commons and the gift, he examines how relations that cannot be reduced to market exchange and calculations of individual interest can be established within everyday life. Meci is thus conceptualized not simply as a local cultural heritage to be preserved, but as a practice with contemporary significance in terms of commoning and collective sociality.
The book extends this discussion toward the possibility of alternative social relations in the face of the social hopelessness generated by capitalism and the belief that another way of life is impossible. Forms of solidarity and collective activity that persist within everyday life are regarded as concrete points of departure for establishing different kinds of relations outside capitalist relations or within their cracks. Cömert’s inquiry therefore seeks not so much to propose a ready-made and comprehensive model of an alternative society as to make visible the social possibilities capable of producing a “common hope” through practices that already exist within everyday life.
This inquiry also extends to a discussion of the limits of state-centred understandings of social transformation and the possibilities of autonomous organization. In the book’s sections “Beyond the State Against Capitalism” and “Searching for the ‘Autonomous’ in the Cracks of Everyday Life,” meci is considered not only in opposition to market relations, but also beyond approaches that make social change entirely dependent on state intervention. In this context, the Fındıklı experience is examined as a space where local government and social participation intersect, yet where collective capacity is not reduced solely to institutional governance. By connecting everyday life, the commons, and autonomy, Cömert thus asks how anti-capitalist possibilities can emerge from within existing social relations.
In this respect, MECİ is a study that makes it possible to think about collective labour, solidarity, and democratic participation within a broader search for social self-management. Although the book does not directly address workers’ control or workplace self-management, it has important points of contact with debates on workers’ control and self-management insofar as it examines how people mobilize their collective capacities to meet shared needs and organize social life, while exploring possibilities beyond hierarchical, market-centred, and exclusively state-centred forms of organization. Cömert’s approach through meci opens up a discussion of the potential of practices of collective organization embedded in everyday life in relation to the commons, autonomy, and anti-capitalist social transformation.