Can you create a COmmunist/ Socialist/ Anarchist commune within a Capitalist State?

[Viet Minh]

Do Communes work? For example Christiania in Denmark? Can they be a tool for non-violent revolution? ABove all, can they be used to prove the validity of leftist ideology?

[hatzel]

These places generally aren't entirely socialist, because they still rely on the existing system, particularly as they remain isolated. I mean, they still have to sell their surplus on the capitalist market to pay for electricity, fuel, tools, food that they don't grow themselves, clothes that they don't make themselves etc. Of course technology is playing into their hands, though...in some areas, for instance, it might be suitable to have a small solar power generator, so that they will no longer have to rely on the existing regime, and capitalist companies, for electricity. It may also come to pass, as there are more of them, that more and more goods and services might be provided through a mutual exchange system within the network of socialist communes, lessening the reliance on the capitalist system, perhaps having them approach pure socialism. But it's not enough to just sit there with your commune and do nothing else, as many have. Pure socialism cannot exist as long as the state still exists to threaten the commune, or to limit its free development by, for instance, controlling the flow of metal (which is somewhat unlikely to be provided by a socialist commune at the moment :laugh:) and other resources. Those who join communes have to continue the fight against capitalism and the state if their commune isn't going to degrade into a bit of an internal back-slapping operation :)

The establishment of communes, by the way, is a vital part of my ideology / path to socialism, so I could talk at length about this :lol: I won't bother, though, because I'm boring...:bored:

[Tim Finnegan]

I think that, as with anything, the potential of the commune depends upon their individual productive capabilities, which cannot be generalised. However, I will say that most communes in the modern Western world tend to engage in very little commodity production, either producing primarily for internal consumption, as in most agricultural communes, or engaging in very little collective production at all, as in most urban communes. I think that this tends to lead to the atomisation of communes, so that, while the inhabitants of the commune are certainly more strongly connected, they are no more connected to those outside of the commune, and may arguably be less strongly connected because they have a diminished experience of working class life. (This is particularity true of agricultural communes, whose inhabitants often end up living as a sort of "liberated peasantry", rather than as proletarians, becoming isolated and introverted .) I would go so far as to say that each such commune starts to act as a single, self-employed worker, rather than as the seed of class solidarity, and so is a model of only limited progressiveness.

As such, I tend to favour cooperatives and other less total models of collective ownership, as this both allows the individual worker multiple avenues of association (worker's cooperative at work, residents cooperative at home, etc.) and means that she still lives alongside the broader proletariat and so shares their experiences. It allows the worker to directly confront the economic dominance of the bourgeoisie, rather than, as the typical form of the commune seem to suggest, retreating from it.

[Ele'ill]

Can they be a tool for non-violent revolution?

I don't believe an exclusively non-violent revolution is possible but autonomous spaces, communes, cafes, cooperative neighborhood networking etc can all be used as, inherently but not intentionally, non-violent resources.



ABove all, can they be used to prove the validity of leftist ideology?

I don't believe you can have leftist ideological systems operating within capitalism and within the borders of a country but you can have these resources contribute to movement building for sure.