Leftist Free State Project?

[ellipsis]

I don't know if anybody knows about the Free State project (http://www.freestateproject.org/), from their website:
"The Free State Project is an agreement among 20,000 pro-liberty activists to move to New Hampshire, where they will exert the fullest practical effort toward the creation of a society in which the maximum role of government is the protection of life, liberty, and property. The success of the Project would likely entail reductions in taxation and regulation, reforms at all levels of government, to expand individual rights and free markets, and a restoration of constitutional federalism, demonstrating the benefits of liberty to the rest of the nation and the world."

What do people think of this tactic? Would it be possible/productive from a bunch of anti-capitalist to move to one area, take over local government, and otherwise help to build a post-capitalist society?

[Q]

Socialism is necessarily an international solution. Any communal approach of building an "island in a seal of capitalism" will always result in competition with other capitalist states. Only the smallest communities, populated by zealots for the cause, might be able to survive any extent of time, like Christiania (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania). But otherwise, it is not a way out of capitalism.

[Revy]

It's silly. Even that many people moving somewhere is a drop in the bucket. Assuming 20,000 have actually moved to New Hampshire, which is doubtful, New Hampshire has a population of 1.3 million. The libertarians mainly fester around the town of Keene anyway. Nothing to be amazed by.

Revolutionary leftists should reject this kind of tactic. We are internationalists, we see our struggle as global, and a socialist enclave will not change that system. Moving socialists into one state drains the socialists out of all the others.

[rebelmouse]

it is nice that many people with the same or similar way of thinking are living in one big or small commune, but:
1) they would spend a lot of time, years, on building of infrastructure plus internal relations among them, it means they would stop fight against system for a longer period.
2) if they don't develop consciousness against system, their children will be even unhappy if they move to capitalism because they are not fit in it (education, etc). children can have different way of thinking than parents, especially if commune didn't succeed to satisfy needs of people, children can move from commune.
3) such communes are under pressure of capitalist state (economically, if they want to exchange goods) and many spies would be sent there from the beginning of creating of it

- if commune stay active, and if they are not isolated in some village than they are at the border of big city, for example, they can live together and continue to participate in fight against present society. but again, they would loose long time to build everything what they need for life there.

and I don't like christiania, it is place for drunky, pacifist people. ungdomshuset is much better, with bigger level of consciousness and much more ready to fight. christiania is like old hippies mixed with drunky population of copenhagen, and ungdomshuset are youth anarchists (mixed with punx and other youth).

p.s. is this freestateproject so called "anarcho"-capitalist project?

who is welcome to participate? .........Put in a positive way, most FSP members support policies such as abolition of all income taxes, elimination of regulatory bureaucracies, repeal of most gun control laws, repeal of most drug prohibition laws, complete free trade, decentralization of government, and widescale privatization. People of this disposition may go by many names: "classical liberals" (not the same as modern liberals at all, but followers of Thomas Jefferson and similar thinkers), libertarians, paleoconservatives, constitutionalists, voluntarists, etc., etc.

[Qayin]

I dont see anything wrong with it, atleast we would be getting off our ass and doing something besides arguing with leftist theory is better on the internet! We need a modern day Paris Commune,we need anything worth media attention to make a stand against the imperialist state, and show the 21st century that real leftism in the 1st world is alive and well.


christiania
Irreverent to a prospect of a revolutionary leftist commune


if they don't develop consciousness against system, their children will be even unhappy if they move to capitalism because they are not fit in it (education, etc). children can have different way of thinking than parents, especially if commune didn't succeed to satisfy needs of people, children can move from commune.

Then we make the commune satisfy the needs of the people, each according to his ability each according to his needs. People should have the right to come and leave, children or not.

[ComradeOm]

I dont see anything wrong with it, atleast we would be getting off our ass and doing something besides arguing with leftist theory is better on the internet! We need a modern day Paris Commune...Tell me, at which point during or before the Commune did all the revolutionaries simply get up and move to their own little village in New Hampshire?

If you really want to do something then do something productive. Don't however cut yourself off from the society that you, presumably, want to change and consider it progressive

[gorillafuck]

The libertarians mainly fester around the town of Keene anyway. Nothing to be amazed by.
The Northern areas are often quite conservative, the southern part of New Hampshire tends to be very liberal.

The GOP here is running a guy for Governor who is too insane to win in an already blue state. The guy they're running for governor is super rich businessman named Jack Kimball, who is the head of an organization called the Granite State Patriots. They're a group who once had a few of their members tell one of my friends that since she "supported terrorists", Jihad was going to come to America and cut her head off or something like that. They also used to run a website that said that they intended to show up to campuses and out leftist professors as being "Anti-American" and other stuff that was really nuts.

This Free State Project will fail hard even if these people somehow do manage to move here.

[ellipsis]

People have already begun migrating but their actions are a little silly, including open carrying handguns while picking up trash at a playground as a pro-gun statement and performing manicures on the sidewalk to protest the fact that nail salons need a permit. They have already started installing people in local government which in NH doesn't ammount to a whole lot of power. The State house of representatives has 535(?) members so even winning 10-20 races is a minor victory at best.

Even so, any revlefter who wants to move to Vermont, consider yourself invited. I know that I can find a cabin for you to squat in.:D

[Qayin]

Tell me, at which point during or before the Commune did all the revolutionaries simply get up and move to their own little village in New Hampshire?

Yeah because I meant that :mad:

[MarxSchmarx]

Organizing must be local, very local.

And we need to give credit where credit is due. Many local initiatives can help raise workers consciousnesses by making a big fuss over fighting the national status quo. They can institute reforms like living wage ordinances, free clinics and, in places like Mexico city, decriminalizing abortion.

However, most localities were run by dedicated communists/socialists with mixed effects, eg. East Bengal and I think the PCI also held strong grips on certain cities. It's worth pointing out that neither of these efforts really went anywhere. They were interesting ideas, but the capitalist machine expands only when central power expands, and these attempts at carving out local socialist successes have been largely failures in the long run.