I know this question will sound silly to some, but suppose a group of people in a low key third world country decide to make their own commune. They work together to build up farming and industry purely based on their own need, and slowly expand to accomodate their needs.

I understand Communes are viewed as ineffective, but a commune like this would be meant to grow, not just remain isolated. It would inspire communes in other areas, and it would aim to expand.

I see a couple of issues with this:

  • not all countries can do this. For example, Palestinians living in Palestine will suffer trying to do this. But most countries can, right?
  • it will only benefit the tiny group of people within proximity to the commune. But the commune can 1) expand and 2) inspire communes in other locations
  • some needs are hard for a small commune to make, such as computer chip manufacturing, and other things they will need to get from the non commune world

But still, I can’t see this as less than a good step forward?

  • albigu
    7·
    14 hours ago

    You’ll probably have better luck regarding history and theory of communes on hexbear’s anarchism communities.

    There have been many attempts at something like networks of self-organised communes, even before Marxism and Anarchism were coined.

    In colonial Brazil, self-sustaining and self-governed communities called Quilombos were created as an alternative to the Atlantic trade slave-society imposed by the Europeans. As far as I’ve read they often organised themselves in federations with regards to war but were self-contained with regards to their own economy. Not sure what’s a good English source, but Clovis Moura is the best Portuguese one.

    Over time, with the consolidation of colonial (and eventually Brazilian) authority, the settlements were either wiped out or relegated to the margins of society. The few that remain today are constantly under judicial and criminal attack.

    Other two more recent examples of federated autonomous communities would be the Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities in Mexico, which recently got dissolved and the Shining Path (and following splinter groups) occupation of Peruvian territories.

    Do note that all of the provided examples had to deal with the constant threat of organised violence, be it from the state or from organised crime.

    Going back to Brazil, two other examples of communes would be some of the communities defended by the Landless’s Workers Movements (which is less militant and more legalist) or the armed League of Poor Peasants (which, surprise surprise, was created as a reaction to brutal state suppression).

    Given all that, I don’t believe communes can be seen as “safer” or “more peaceful” ways of building towards socialism or fighting imperialism. They have a role to play (even under capitalism) and are objectively good in many cases, but they’re still going to be in the crosshairs of imperialism.

    Wherever alternatives to imperialism (and therefore capitalism) present themselves, they must be brutally destroyed and made an example of. This is probably paraphrasing a few dozen Marxists and also a couple Secretaries of State.

    In all its bloody triumphs over the self-sacrificing champions of a new and better society, that nefarious civilization, based upon the enslavement of labor, drowns the moans of its victims in a hue-and-cry of calumny, reverberated by a world-wide echo. The serene working men’s Paris of the Commune is suddenly changed into a pandemonium by the bloodhounds of “order.”

    And what does this tremendous change prove to the bourgeois mind of all countries? Why, that the Commune has conspired against civilization! The Paris people die enthusiastically for the Commune in numbers unequally in any battle known to history. What does that prove? Why, that the Commune was not the people’s own government but the usurpation of a handful of criminals! The women of Paris joyfully give up their lives at the barricades and on the place of execution. What does this prove? Why, that the demon of the Commune has changed them into Megaera and Hecates!

    The Civil War in France