Wanna start a commune?

[exeexe]

SX2MvCnyRTo

Wanna start a commune? :D - Its all up for grabs!

[(A)]

How is it up for grabs? It looks like one man owns the whole town?
Dammit I live in B.C. and you got my hopes up.

[exeexe]

Its up for grabs. Just look at the physical facts. The nearest policestation is like 180 kms away (is there even a police station in Terrace?). They can only access this place through one road.

Now you are right, someone came first. But i assume they cant occupy the whole thing. What is not occupied is up for grabs. And as he said he didnt do it for the money.
Alternatively you can grab some tress and build your own home just right nearby.

Now the police did go to the place to tell people to get the fuck out of here, but that was against obedient workers who lived on land which at that time was owned by the company which they worked for. Now what if they had to go there 180 km away to make some people follow orders which are resisting and then to go 180 km back. Maybe they will think why even bother.

Well but since you are living nearby (as nearby as it can get under the circumstances) maybe you could pay the place a visit and see if some places are unoccupied.

Also found this
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-ghost-town-could-become-major-natural-gas-hub-1.1391052

[Tim Cornelis]

And work 48 hours a week to sustain a rural communal lifestyle (like Twin Oaks)? No thanks.

Also, just because the police station is far away doesn't mean they wont send cops immediately. "Maybe they will think why even bother" < delusional

EDIT: apparently it's 42. Still.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Also, socialism has nothing to do with communes. I just wanted to point that out. Because that's apparently what I do now.

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

I'll only start a commune if it's world wide.

[(A)]

No 870 socialism has nothing to do with communes.
But many communes have something to do with socialism.

Karl Marx, in his important pamphlet The Civil War in France (1871), written during the Commune, advocated the Commune's achievements, and described it as the prototype for a revolutionary government of the future, 'the form at last discovered' for the emancipation of the proletariat.

Thus in Marxist theory, the commune is a form of political organization adopted during the first (or lower) phase of communism, socialism. Communes are proposed as the proletarian counterpart to bourgeois political forms such as parliaments. In his pamphlet, Marx explains the purpose and function of the commune during the period that he termed the dictatorship of the proletariat:[2]

“ The Commune, was to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time...Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to represent and repress the people in parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people constituted in communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search for workers, foremen and accountants for his business. ”
Marx based these ideas on the example of the Paris Commune, which he described in The Civil War in France:[2]

“ The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at any time. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class.... The police, which until then had been the instrument of the Government, was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible, and at all times revocable, agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workmen's wages. The privileges and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of state disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves.... Having once got rid of the standing army and the police, the instruments of physical force of the old government, the Commune proceeded at once to break the instrument of spiritual suppression, the power of the priests.... The judicial functionaries lost that sham independence... they were thenceforward to be elective, responsible, and revocable. ”
In addition to local governance, the communes were to play a central role in the national government:[2]

“ In a brief sketch of national organization which the Commune had no time to develop, it states explicitly that the Commune was to be the political form of even the smallest village.... The communes were to elect the "National Delegation" in Paris. The few but important functions which would still remain for a central government were not to be suppressed, as had been deliberately mis-stated, but were to be transferred to communal, i.e., strictly responsible, officials. National unity was not to be broken, but, on the contrary, organized by the communal constitution; it was to become a reality by the destruction of state power which posed as the embodiment of that unity yet wanted to be independent of, and superior to, the nation, on whose body it was but a parasitic excrescence. While the merely repressive organs of the old governmental power were to be amputated, its legitimate functions were to be wrested from an authority claiming the right to stand above society, and restored to the responsible servants of society.”

Being a socialist does not mean you want to live in a commune; nor does living in a commune make you a socialist.

But you make it sound like one precludes the other.

I know your a revolutionary vanguardian and I respect that; but please don't shame other socialists beliefs. Especially on something so small on whether or not a commune can be socialist or not.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Uhh... the Paris commune is a little different than say, 50 odd people dropping out to grow organic hemp collectively. One was civil war, the other is just an alternative route to survive under capitalism. Living on a commune doesn't make you a bad person but the commune itself doesn't have anything to do with a project for overthrowing capitalism. I think you've misinterpreted what was said.

[(A)]

Wow that is a sadly limitied view on both communes and socialism.

[Tim Cornelis]

It's not a sadly limited view on socialism and communes, it's a realistic analysis of what socialism is.

[(A)]

I am sorry but socalism is more than what happend after 1917 and communes are more than granola munching hippies.

A commune is a intended living community. If that community intends to live a so a list life then they are socalists. Even if they are not Marxist-leninists.

[Per Levy]

I am sorry but socalism is more than what happend after 1917

indeed.


and communes are more than granola munching hippies.

wich nobody said or implied.


If that community intends to live a socialist life then they are socalists.

no, that is just wrong, socialism is global. what you just said is pretty much "socialism in one commune" wich is even worse then "socialism in one country", wich was also not socialism.


Even if they are not Marxist-leninists.

funny you say that cause no one in this thread consideres themselfs marxist-leninists/stalinists.

[Tim Cornelis]

I am sorry but socalism is more than what happend after 1917 and communes are more than granola munching hippies.

A commune is a intended living community. If that community intends to live a so a list life then they are socalists. Even if they are not Marxist-leninists.

Socialism, as a system, is synonymous with the socialist mode of production, which is based on social ownership (common property) and cooperative, associated labour -- though some pseudo-Marxists may consider that 'Proudhonism'. This means that it is incompatible with commodity production of any kind and the existence of monetary exchange. An isolated commune continues to produce commodities for the market and is therefore not socialist; and is in effect collectively operated private property.

You say 'If that community intends to live a socialist life then they are socialists', which is somewhat true. They may be socialists (though some variation of bourgeois socialists, and not communists) but the system they operate is not socialism.

[exeexe]

And work 48 hours a week to sustain a rural communal lifestyle (like Twin Oaks)? No thanks.

Yeah thats the main issue. Its gonna be hard to be sustainable at that location. And once the snow comes you are all in.

[Ele'ill]

I have to work 50 hours a week to still not afford rent / barely afford living in a van I'd rather put that time into an interesting project. I think there is legit merit to squats and building occupations and so do the majority of folks who are doing it already, who are not radicals, because they had the know-how and the desire and they did it to better their living situations. It is amusing because the criticisms the left comes up with about this type of direct participation thing is never accurate and from the other end there's often all this talk of illegalism and desertion n'stuff like its the forefront. The folks who don't give a shit about your book store/paper sales/scene squat already have 10 houses squatted up north and help each other out / got vans / a strategy.