Starting/Joining a Commune

[Shotgun Opera]

I've been thinking about abandoning the stand-up wageslave life for the life of a commune and I was wondering if anyone would be willing to share their wisdom in this department.

I've toyed with the idea of starting one but I must confess that's a complete unknown area for me.

I also dont really know where to go to FIND these places, save for the very large and/or well known ones.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

As far as starting one, you're going to have to come up with the money to purchase a large piece of land. This averages about $1500-2000 per acre in rural areas, but is known to go lower. Obviously purchased in bulk. A rough idea for mortgage payments ... 30-year fixed rate loan, take the number of thousands of dollars and multiply it by the interest rate.

Say, 30 years fixed at 5% interest. The land is 75 acres for $150,000. You bid $130,000 and they accept.

130*5=$650/mo for 30 years.

A way of paying off mortgages quickly without breaking your budget is to divide the monthly payment in half, then pay that amount every two weeks. So for a $650/mo mortgage, pay $325 every two weeks. This fits in an extra mortgage payment, but smoothed out over the year. There are 13 four-week periods in a year.

Then you're going to have to come up with a way to pay property taxes. I'm not sure how insurance would work out, or what's required if there are multiple households on the land, etc.

http://www.ic.org/ has a database of already-existing ones. A lot of them are religious.

[Q]

Please also follow this thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/creating-commune-t167111/index.html).

[TheGodlessUtopian]

This website may help you...

http://www.ic.org/

[The Old Man from Scene 24]

To me, the biggest problem to starting a commune is finding mass land.

Usually, the most that I can find is 100 acres. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places (In terms of websites)

[Prometeo liberado]

I would love to live in a commune. Actually did a little research on it but could not find a place on the west coast.:crying:

[PC LOAD LETTER]

I would love to live in a commune. Actually did a little research on it but could not find a place on the west coast.:crying:
http://directory.ic.org/intentional_communities_in_California

251 listed for California on IC.

http://directory.ic.org/intentional_communities_in_Oregon

83 in Oregon

http://directory.ic.org/intentional_communities_in_Washington

119 in Washington

Granted, those are probably not all communes ... they include, say, housing cooperatives.

[getfiscal]

You could look into the kibbutz movement. You could move to Israel and live on a collective farming community there. Or even a settlement in the West Bank. You could carry around a rifle and rough up locals.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

You could look into the kibbutz movement. You could move to Israel and live on a collective farming community there. Or even a settlement in the West Bank. You could carry around a rifle and rough up locals.
Are you really suggesting someone move to the West Bank ... carry around a rifle ... and harass Palestinians .... :blink:

[getfiscal]

Are you really suggesting someone move to the West Bank ... carry around a rifle ... and harass Palestinians .... :blink:
No. I oppose doing that. The thread's poster might want to, though. Different strokes for different folks.

[Red Noob]

I've been very interested in the same idea, OP.

The hardest part would be assembling the people and finding the land to do it. I've been ruminating on the idea of starting an community of leftists who are interested in doing this. Maybe an online forum where we back and forth ideas and plan ahead, figure out how we're going to take care of things, thoroughly plan it out, you know? Maybe have threads where people discuss "how will we feed everyone?" or "what will housing be like?" and they'll get stickied and every thing will be democratically decided on - online.

I mean this would be important. You don't want to just buy a plot of land and start off like it's nothing. Take a few years to plan things out, make blueprints for infrastructure and such so everything is done right. And it also gives some people time to save up money or to take care of things before they make a major lifestyle decision.

Like aiming for self-sufficiency and a means of income would be a challenge as well. People would probably have to have jobs on the side. Land isn't cheap, but if you get enough people to go even on the payments and such it would be possible. I've read and looked into basic livestock care and farming and such. Stuff isn't too hard. I've also looked into what it would take to make a multi-story structure that could house multiple people. If you had the money and the man power, and a plan, this stuff would be easy.

Sorry if I'm coming off as too excited or what ever. I'm a tad bit buzzed.

[The Old Man from Scene 24]

I've been very interested in the same idea, OP.

The hardest part would be assembling the people and finding the land to do it. I've been ruminating on the idea of starting an community of leftists who are interested in doing this. Maybe an online forum where we back and forth ideas and plan ahead, figure out how we're going to take care of things, thoroughly plan it out, you know? Maybe have threads where people discuss "how will we feed everyone?" or "what will housing be like?" and they'll get stickied and every thing will be democratically decided on - online.

I've had similar thoughts. I think something like that would need to start out with 5 - 10 - 20 people, and then invite more. If we only start out with 2-3 people it probably would go downhill due to a lack of action and ideas.



I mean this would be important. You don't want to just buy a plot of land and start off like it's nothing. Take a few years to plan things out, make blueprints for infrastructure and such so everything is done right. And it also gives some people time to save up money or to take care of things before they make a major lifestyle decision.

To add to that, depending on the size of the land, population would need to be considered. Say someone wanted to buy 5,000 acres for 5 million. In order to make that affordable for ordinary people (maybe a budget of $10,000 each), one would need about 500 people to fill the commune with.



Sorry if I'm coming off as too excited or what ever. I'm a tad bit buzzed.

Nah, I've had ideas even more "wild".

[PC LOAD LETTER]

I've had similar thoughts. I think something like that would need to start out with 5 - 10 - 20 people, and then invite more. If we only start out with 2-3 people it probably would go downhill due to a lack of action and ideas.



To add to that, depending on the size of the land, population would need to be considered. Say someone wanted to buy 5,000 acres for 5 million. In order to make that affordable for ordinary people (maybe a budget of $10,000 each), one would need about 500 people to fill the commune with.



Nah, I've had ideas even more "wild".
640 acres is 1 square mile ... are you sure you need almost 8 square miles? Unless you plan on having livestock (and a LOT) ... That's probably too much land for most people to coordinate a commune.

Also, don't forget the kind of equipment you'd need to efficiently till and maintain the land and the crops in that large of an area ... include the property taxes of land being used as a primary residence .... between those two categories, expenses can easily tip past what the average person can afford.

[getfiscal]

I've read and looked into basic livestock care and farming and such. Stuff isn't too hard. I've also looked into what it would take to make a multi-story structure that could house multiple people. If you had the money and the man power, and a plan, this stuff would be easy.I, for one, would like to suggest that farming and the construction of buildings involve difficult work and many complex skills.

edit:
If you had the money and the man power, and a plan, this stuff would be easy.If you had a space shuttle, and trained astronauts, and a space agency behind you, going to space would be easy.

[Red Noob]

I, for one, would like to suggest that farming and the construction of buildings involve difficult work and many complex skills.

No one ever said it would be easy. Hard work pays off.

Complex? Yea. If you want something done, it takes learning and research. Learning new skills is possible, especially if the work load is distributed to several people.


edit:If you had a space shuttle, and trained astronauts, and a space agency behind you, going to space would be easy.

...and people manage to pull these things off if they're determined enough too.

edit:
This isn't directed at the poster above me, I'm just saying this aloud: The way I see it, brushing the idea off of starting a commune because it's too hard or there are too many details to be worked out is hypocritical for someone who supports a massive revolution and the overthrow of capitalism.

[Ocean Seal]

Seriously bro, don't do it. Life on a commune sounds pretty fucking romanticized, and it doesn't accomplish anything to bring about world communism. You have to work on a farm and do a ton of manual labor just to sustain yourself, chances are you probably don't have great electricity, and you certainly won't have internet. Do you really want a life of austerity just so that you can say that you did it in the name of equality? Try joining an organization or perhaps try reading some Marx/Engels

Start with this

http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm

[getfiscal]

No one ever said it would be easy.

Your previous post to this in this thread said "this stuff would be easy."

So you said that.

People should start communes if they want to. That's fine. I might start one myself.

[Q]

I again point to my critique right here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/creating-commune-t167111/index.html?p=2343734#post2343734) where I explain what a reactionary and dead end road communes really are.

Our goal should be about organizing our class as a global entity, not running away from society and setup a primitivist alternative to it.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Communism has little if nothing to do with starting something one labels a "commune" but in reality is merely an attempt to recreate some petit-bourgeois 60s fantasy. The history of these type of "communes" was one of futility and if anything it is less likely to succeed now that back in the 60s.

[DaringMehring]

I am part of an urban collective that encompasses anarchists and Marxists of various shades. It is pretty small and we're a relatively young group. However, so far, I can recommend the experience. We're a fighting group; not isolationists -- socialism in one country was bad enough, and socialism in one apartment block would be much worse!

We'll put up a web-site soon enough.

By the way, when the CPUSA was a mass working class party in the 30s, before the degeneration was decisive, many small collectives like ours appeared among the members. There is a pretty good documentary on them in NYC; forget the title.

[GoddessCleoLover]

An urban collective is far more likely to succeed than a commune. Having grown up in the late 60s and early 70s I have a historical notion of a commune as being rural based and an attempt to entirely opt out of the existing economy. Hence my negative appraisal of the commune notion.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

Communism has little if nothing to do with starting something one labels a "commune" but in reality is merely an attempt to recreate some petit-bourgeois 60s fantasy. The history of these type of "communes" was one of futility and if anything it is less likely to succeed now that back in the 60s.
While I tend to agree with sentiments such as this, I do suggest, if you become financially able, purchasing a small amount of land (30 to 100 acres) and placing a mobile home or a small cabin on it instead of paying $150-200,000 for a home in a cookie-cutter subdivision. Especially if the land is already on a power grid, has connections to water, and you can put a septic tank in. You'll spend the same, or often less, as you would buying a house in a subdivision. Plus, you'll have a royal shit-ton of privacy, and plenty of room to start a vegetable garden, plant some fruit-bearing trees, go hunting, put in solar panels, put together a rainwater collection-filtration system, whatever you would do in a communal situation.

Thing is, most people can afford to buy a small piece of land like this ... they just don't realize it. Using the calculation I posted earlier in the thread, it's about the same as renting an apartment. The only difficult part is getting a loan. Just stick to a fixed-rate loan ... variable-rate loans are predatory

I'm working on doing just this.

[getfiscal]

I do suggest, if you become financially able, purchasing a small amount of land (30 to 100 acres) and placing a mobile home or a small cabin on it instead of paying $150-200,000 for a home in a cookie-cutter subdivision.
I agree that this is a cool option but I don't think it is open to most people. Besides which, for a lot of professional jobs you have to present as a sort of normal person, and living in a trailer in the woods seems more Unabomberish than yuppie.

[GoddessCleoLover]

What you have outlined seems to be more like a small farm than a commune. Not being in the farming business I have no idea whether or not such an enterprise is likely to succeed. What arouses my skepticism is the notion that a group could communally administer a small farm in the current economic climate without possessing any particular expertise. If you get into something like you have described, I hope that you possess sufficient expertise to make it work and that if you have partners they too have expertise and that roles are delineated according to the various partners' fields of knowledge as opposed to vague "communal" responsibilities.

[Ravachol]

Seriously bro, don't do it. Life on a commune sounds pretty fucking romanticized, and it doesn't accomplish anything to bring about world communism. You have to work on a farm and do a ton of manual labor just to sustain yourself


As opposed to the life of leisure and non-alienation that comes with wage-labour, rent, utility bills, expensive commodities,etc. :rolleyes:



chances are you probably don't have great electricity, and you certainly won't have internet. Do you really want a life of austerity just so that you can say that you did it in the name of equality?


A commune doesn't have to be self-sufficient. A commune is a social relationship where all participants engage in a communal form of life, share the expenses and benefits and, where possible, provide for themselves. Non-alienated labour, a basic degree of self-reliance and shared expenses are a great way to both increase the quality of life under Capitalism and free up time for explicit political activity, something that's impossible to achieve in the 9-5 tredmill.



Try joining an organization or perhaps try reading some Marx/Engels


Yeah, cause that's the stuff revolutions are made of, joining organizations and reading Marx.

Nobody here is advocating joining a commune as the be-all, end-all of revolutionary strategy, the OP is just asking how to, for whatever reason and in my eyes it's preferable in all aspects over the isolated, alienated atomization of rent-appartments, full dependance on wage-labour and forced participation in the rat-race. Living in a commune doesn't put one outside of capitalism but it can sure make life a hell of a lot more enjoyable.

[black magick hustla]

As opposed to the life of leisure and non-alienation that comes with wage-labour, rent, utility bills, expensive commodities,etc. :rolleyes:



lol you can't escape alienation in capitalism just because you fuck off to the middle of nowhere and raise goats

[PC LOAD LETTER]

I agree that this is a cool option but I don't think it is open to most people. Besides which, for a lot of professional jobs you have to present as a sort of normal person, and living in a trailer in the woods seems more Unabomberish than yuppie.
I've never been denied or granted a job based on where I live-

Wait, yes I have. "Ohh, you live in [poor area]? I thought you meant [rich area right next to poor area]! No, that's too far away. Too much trouble to worry about getting here. We'll keep you in mind for future positions, though."

Illegal reason to not hire someone, but there's no real legal recourse unless you record the interview. "I didn't say that! I felt he was unqualified!" etc.

But really, I wouldn't consider a mobile home or a decent cabin to be 'unabomber chic'. He lived in a shack with no water, plumbing, or electricity.

[ellipsis]

Seriously bro, don't do it. Life on a commune sounds pretty fucking romanticized, and it doesn't accomplish anything to bring about world communism. You have to work on a farm and do a ton of manual labor just to sustain yourself, chances are you probably don't have great electricity, and you certainly won't have internet. Do you really want a life of austerity just so that you can say that you did it in the name of equality? Try joining an organization or perhaps try reading some Marx/Engels

Start with this

http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm

lol, u have a very narrow idea of what communes/collectivized living situations are like. I know collective squats with free gas, water and electric.
Collectives and communes can look like any number of things, performing any number of functions, not just rural farming.

[Ravachol]

lol you can't escape alienation in capitalism just because you fuck off to the middle of nowhere and raise goats

Nah but I didn't claim that. I simply said that living in a commune (though I dislike the free use of that word since it implies certain social relations between people which aren't present on most living formations which are classified as 'communes') has benefits as compared to the regular form of life within capitalism, one of these being a small degree of control over one's own food source, a certain closeness to one's own daily life, having to worry less about rent or utilities and the joy of shared living. None of this fully escapes alienation or exploitation but imo it's still far preferable to the grey monotonic drudgery one experiences taking the regular route. Tastes may vary though.

[black magick hustla]

None of this fully escapes alienation or exploitation but imo it's still far preferable to the grey monotonic drudgery one experiences taking the regular route. Tastes may vary though.

exactly. i would hate agricultural communal style of living. i rather be a wage slave in the city than raise goats and pull off some tarnac shit, and exchange urban misery for the drudgery of sameness. anyway, i can see the benefits of urban collective living,

[Red Noob]

I again point to my critique right here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/creating-commune-t167111/index.html?p=2343734#post2343734) where I explain what a reactionary and dead end road communes really are.

Our goal should be about organizing our class as a global entity, not running away from society and setup a primitivist alternative to it.

That's some idealist's vision of a new society. You're not explaining how a commune is reactionary or a dead end road.

And who said communes have to be some primitivist hippies with goats, chickens and LSD? Here's something to wrap your head around: people start a commune, therefore they are organizing themselves. A commune can consist of class conscious workers.

[Q]

That's some idealist's vision of a new society. You're not explaining how a commune is reactionary or a dead end road.

And who said communes have to be some primitivist hippies with goats, chickens and LSD? Here's something to wrap your head around: people start a commune, therefore they are organizing themselves. A commune can consist of class conscious workers.

I, like other users, do not mind urban collectives or collectives that at the very least do not secede from society as a whole in an Amish way. It is this isolationist road that I attack.

[Ravachol]

I, like other users, do not mind urban collectives or collectives that at the very least do not secede from society as a whole in an Amish way. It is this isolationist road that I attack.

Why, because 'keeping things together' for Capitalism is so important? Because there must be no 'secession from empire'? The logic of 'nobody shall leave this cage!' belongs to the social managers of Capital, not to Communists.

'Seceding' (whatever that may mean, since Capital has no outside in this day and age, though it could be argued it's porous at some places) isn't a revolutionary strategy but nobody claims it is. Saying 'we must keep in connection with the masses!' (even though in regular life we barely talk to our neighbours, our fellow commuters on the train and are as disconnect from eachother as those who live on the edges of remote forests), 'We must spread the revolutionary catechism!' is all great and well for those who seek to adopt the niche-role of professional revolutionaries but forcing it on everybody for the sake of it makes no sense at all.

Revolution is necessarily a connect, mass-process and in order to interact with that connection with the rest of society is required, yes. But that has nothing to do with how one lives, it isn't like the regular, unpoliticized plumber joe has such a great connection to everybody and everything. Alienation, atomization and the general implosion of the social sphere are shared by everybody, regardless of how and where they live within Capitalism.

[Q]

Why, because 'keeping things together' for Capitalism is so important? Because there must be no 'secession from empire'? The logic of 'nobody shall leave this cage!' belongs to the social managers of Capital, not to Communists.
Uhm, ok bro, nice strawmen.

I was more going on about basic positions such as "together we stand strong", "our class is a global class" and "we can only positively transcend capital on this global scale". But hey, may be rocketscience for some, I guess.


'Seceding' (whatever that may mean, since Capital has no outside in this day and age, though it could be argued it's porous at some places) isn't a revolutionary strategy but nobody claims it is. Saying 'we must keep in connection with the masses!' (even though in regular life we barely talk to our neighbours, our fellow commuters on the train and are as disconnect from eachother as those who live on the edges of remote forests), 'We must spread the revolutionary catechism!' is all great and well for those who seek to adopt the niche-role of professional revolutionaries but forcing it on everybody for the sake of it makes no sense at all.
Again, I have zero issue with urban collectives, on the contrary, they might be very helpful in overcoming social alienation you talk about.

In this topic and in the topic I wrote my critique in, there is however talk about buying up some land and build your own autarkic society in it. As I argued in the other thread, this can only lead either to restoring capitalist relations or, if one really insists on staying autarkic, falling back on much lower living standards, hence me using words like "primitivist" and "Amish-like".

Again, this is not rocketscience.


Revolution is necessarily a connect, mass-process and in order to interact with that connection with the rest of society is required, yes. But that has nothing to do with how one lives, it isn't like the regular, unpoliticized plumber joe has such a great connection to everybody and everything. Alienation, atomization and the general implosion of the social sphere are shared by everybody, regardless of how and where they live within Capitalism.

Yes and it is this that needs to be overcome if we ever want to leave capitalism behind us.

[Ballyfornia]

I imagine everyone who goes of into the wild, into these commune's are a bunch of utopians and smelly hippies.

[Ravachol]

Uhm, ok bro, nice strawmen.

I was more going on about basic positions such as "together we stand strong", "our class is a global class" and "we can only positively transcend capital on this global scale". But hey, may be rocketscience for some, I guess.


What I mean to say is that it's nonsense saying people running of to the woods are somehow more disconnected than people who don't. There's little more 'connection' in the everyday lives of regular wage-workers in a rent apartment than in the lives of those who live in a rural commune.

The everyday activity regularly undertaken under capitalism is conductive to capitalism, simply because people interact in some fashion doesn't mean it constitutes themselves as a class-for-itself, let alone as a class for it's own abolition. When people interact, they usually do so on the terms of and because of Capital's machinations.

Even mass factory floors barely exist anymore in the West, largely replaced by offices conductive to immaterial labor where workers are seperated by the plastic walls of cubicles, only meeting up a few times a day at the water cooler. If you enter a commuter train, everybody takes a private seat, puts in their earplugs and reads or works on their laptops. If you stand in line at the supermarket, everybody either checks their mobile phone or stares blankly in front of themselves.

The point i'm making is that the ideal many pro-revolutionaries hold of 'society' as a big-get-together where everybody shares some connection amongst themselves simply isn't true. If there is a connection conductive to class consciousness (let alone conductive to a form of gemeinwesen), it's usually despite of participation in the regular interactions within capitalism, not because of it.

So yes, retreating to the woods (which is, as you've stated correctly, not necessarily an intrinsic feature of communes) isn't going to facilitate the process of reconstructing collective social relationships on a mass-scale, but neither is drudging along as usual, there's not really all that much of a difference. The establishment of different qualitative social relationships grows out of acts which are conductive to these relationships, moments of rupture such as collective moments of struggle (strikes, riots, sabotage,etc.) or collective moments of living.

Arguing strongly in favor of participating in 'regular capitalist life' makes as much sense as railing against every nerd who doesn't get out of his bedroom and doesn't "Talk to the people!" because he's "Isolating himself". There's no reason why those who live in communes (rural and remote or urban and connected) cannot participate in events and social interactions which are conductive to forming collective relationships.

If the criterium for 'being present in the class-struggle' is having a job and relying on wage-labour for basic subsistence the jobless would already disqualify themselves. A rural commune, as you correctly observed, cannot be fully autarkic unless it severly falls back in technological living standards (which is something different from 'primitivism'). As such, there are wider social interactions, whether it's selling surplus eggs or crops on a local market, running a bookstore or simply participating in surrounding social life. Nothing forbids them from participating in political work, or engaging with local issues.

So hammering on about 'not isolating yourselves' doesn't make any more sense when directed at those living communal lives than at those participating in regular social life and only paints a stereotypical picture of reclusive hippie hermits on LSD milking chickens and gathering cow eggs.