Intentional Communities

[Boothe]

Greetings to all! It has been quite a while since I have been here on RevLeft, due to a general lack of time. In my personal studies in the past year, I have pondered the idea of modern "intentional communities." In my opinion personally, I feel like these worker cooperatives could act as a first stage of a general socialist revolution by exploiting the market system against itself. These would take the concept of "socialism in one country" to a relatively microscopic level, and expand as the project succeeded.

My question to the users of RevLeft is what their own personal opinion on the issue of modern day worker's communities? Are they a feasible option for like-minded leftists to develop socialism in a predominantly capitalist world? What potential problems do you see arising?

[Grenzer]

This is utopian socialism and this very idea was already tried without success in the 19th century.

[Jimmie Higgins]

While worker co-opts and communes can show that standard market practices of capitalism are not the only or even the most efficient (let alone pleasant) ways to produce and run societies, there are a number of problems with this approach when it comes to a revolutionary strategy.

The first problem is that of "start-up" capital. Either you have to have some money to set yourself up with to begin with, or you have to deal with pretty rough conditions of poverty and a lot of work just to sustain the community. Both of these limit the ability of most workers to participate. Most have no skills in farming, nor would they even have a desire for such a life even if they hate capitalism (I'd consider myself to be of that category). Beyond that it would take some money to be able to sustain a community that was part self-sufficient and part buying supplies and materials from the capitalist market. So again, either people have to be pretty wealth to begin with, or they will have to find a market-way to sell what they produce to get money to then buy needed supplies - but this, then, puts communes in basically the position of petty-bourgeois production, just with mutual self-manangement of that capitalist production. With a set of maybe moral guidelines, they might be able to resist the pressures of capitalism, but generally, all these outside pressures (debt, cost of materials on the market) begin to wear on the community and it implodes or just becomes more like a regular petty-bourgeois operation (and family farms have an equal difficulty in finding self-stability) - many 70s US communes went in these two ways.

So these things just aren't practicle for the majority of workers and besides, it takes workers away from their organic potential source of power in society, which is their fundamental position in production. So it sort of diverts class fighters to the sidelines rather than keeping them directly connected to working class struggles.

Another problem is that if these communities become sucessful, they may face direct attacks by the system. If Occupy can't feed homeless people in parks without eventually being attacked, the same goes for a sucessful network of communes or worker-managed firms.

So while I think it's an understandable desire, and if you have a chance to experience one of these communities and you have no attachements holding you back, there's nothing inherently wrong with it. But IMO it's a dead-end as far as a strategy for working class self-emancipation.

[GoddessCleoLover]

IMO the only way to overcome capitalism is to smash the institutions of bourgeois state power.

[Boothe]

Thank you all for your comments. It is much appreciated!

[robbo203]

I think one should keep an open mind on the question of intentional communities. While of course there are severe limitations on the role of ICs as has already been pointed out, they serve an important function as practical attempts to transcend the cash nexus and hence as seedbeds of communistic thinking. The growth of a communist movement needs a material underpinning of this sort to draw upon : a communistic praxis. Of course class struggle is the material basis of the movement towards communism but class struggle pe se does not necessarily lead us towards communist conclusions. Anti capitalism or more strictly speaking anti-capital is not necessarily pro-communism.

There are many myths surrounding ICs and it would be worthwhile having a look at this link which deals with some of these

http://www.ic.org/pnp/myths.php


There is a tendency on the Left to dismiss ICs as historical failures and to emphasis that the only way to progress is through the political route and through the organisation of workers into political parties and groups. This is too black-or-white as a response and it might be equally be said that while many ICs have come and gone so have many political groups and grouplets.

It would healthier to see the relationship between ICs and the communist movement in synergistic terms. Many of the difficulties currently faced by ICs might be eased as the political movement for communism expands, modifying public opinion in the process. Public opinion is important because it provides the context in which ICs are able to develop or not. A good example of this is the large Christiania commune in Copenhagen. Of course I am not holding up Christiana as some kind of flourishing example of communistic praxis but only to illustrate the point that it was the general tolerance of the Danish public towards the idea of a such an institituion in their midst that enables it to exist at all

Just as an expanding communist political movement will create more space in which ICs might be able to take root and develop so reciprocally the development of the latter will feed into and aid the growth of the former.

We should not be so stand offish in our approach to ICs but should be developing links with them to enable the interchange of ideas upon which we can all progress. There is no one magic bullet when it comes to getting rid of capitalism. When it comnes to changing minds and hearts, revolution is a multi pronged and multi faceted process

And its not just ICs. There are massive movements out there in the real world which dwarf the left in size and which engage in or promote practices that go against the grain of the cash nexus. I was astonished to learn recently of the freecycle network which in 2011 had 8,083,218 members in over 85 countries across the globe (http://www.freecycle.org) and is spreading rapidly.

We shouldnt be sneering at such developments but celebrating and encouraging them. But perhaps that is one reason why the revolutionary left is so pitifully small and insignificant. It has a tendency to think that it and it alone has the key to open the door to a communist future

[prolcon]

I agree with robbo203. It isn't that these kinds of things are meant to be the method of revolution against capitalism. It's more that they provide conditions within capitalism to nurture communistic thinking. It's much easier to achieve a goal when one can picture it, and while intentional communities are not classless or stateless, much less representative of an entire epoch of global civilization, they really do possess a kind of communistic notion of egalitarian commonwealth. I don't think it behooves us to be pessimistic about the potential of intentional communities to provide to some extent a space resistant against the influence of capital.

[robbo203]

I agree with robbo203. It isn't that these kinds of things are meant to be the method of revolution against capitalism. It's more that they provide conditions within capitalism to nurture communistic thinking. It's much easier to achieve a goal when one can picture it, and while intentional communities are not classless or stateless, much less representative of an entire epoch of global civilization, they really do possess a kind of communistic notion of egalitarian commonwealth. I don't think it behooves us to be pessimistic about the potential of intentional communities to provide to some extent a space resistant against the influence of capital.

Exactly. Well put! They have the potential to "nurture communistic thinking" and this should not be overlooked. Simply talking about a communist future may not be enough to convince one that such a future is possible

[prolcon]

It's not enough to know in our heads what will, in broad theoretical terms, happen at the advent of communism. If we're to be the vehicles of this change, we need to approach a more fundamental understanding of the experience of communistic order. I'm going to be accused of lifestylism, I'm sure, but the more intimately I know my goal, the more of a reality it becomes for me. The ultimate victory for socialism is revolutionary overthrow of the world bourgeoisie, but doesn't this emerge from the accumulation of class consciousness among the workers? The reason communism is an egalitarian movement is because the elimination of the bourgeoisie is the elimination of the last class distinction; a culture of egalitarianism and unity among working people is something worth nurturing even before world revolution. This doesn't necessarily have to be accomplished with intentional communities; other species of worker organization can accomplish the same thing.