Joe R. Golowka wrote:
> > The fact that almost all private property is concentrated in a small
> > elite makes it rather difficult to obtain the rescources need to get
> > started.
Brian O. Sheppard x349393:
> Communes, retreats, and other lifestyle institutions are about as easy to
> start as a new business - sometimes even harder. They aren't revolutionary
> in the least. I don't see what good they do in pressing for any kind of
> social change, in fact.
>
> Social change can only be accomplished by DIRECT ORGANIZING where the problems lay -
> not by fleeing from them. The revolutions of the past were not had by
> people copping out of society to start their own "alternative communities"
> - they were the products of confrontational organizing *at the point of
> oppression*. The ruling class has no problem with the kind of escapism
> represented by communes. They do
> have a problem with people who will not flee, but who instead choose to
> resist where capital encroaches into their lives.
I have been interested in two important social movements which succeeded and radically changed people's lives without (at first) directly confronting the established order, Christianity and capitalism. (It was only after they had largely succeeded that they turned to military force, overt and secret police, authoritarian State internal politics, and other forms of violence.) I have two reasons. One is that these movements were very effective; the other is that they avoided the use of military force, which requires the incorporation and practice of the very things anarchists are trying to get rid of.
One of the reasons these movements were effective was that they gave their participants a material, living experience of the alternative society and culture they were trying to bring about. I think this is important because when rhetoric, including theory, becomes disconnected from experience, from the physical world, and ceases to represent them in any reliable way, it loses force and direction. In the case of anarchism (and its concomitant social and economic arrangements) we are talking about a fundamentally different way of life from that which is given under capitalism, and it is obviously difficult for many people to grasp, much less believe in. (One need only read this leftist (!) list to observe that.) Therefore, it is all the more important that its theory be related to practice, to daily life, as much as possible. Furthermore, in the realm of proselytization, it is far more effective to show people something rather than tell them about it.
It seems to me that the formation of communes or cooperatives on a specifically anarchist basis could be one technique which meets the requirements I have outlined or mentioned elsewhere: non-violence, autonomy, _satyagraha_, material experience. I don't think of it as the only possible route. I know this will disappoint those who are eager to construe anarchism as forcing all to eat _The_Whole_Earth_Catalog_ in granola form at breakfast.
Another good thing about communes and cooperatives is that some people can start working on them immediately (assuming their backs are not absolutely to the wall -- and most Americans' are not). I think this is greatly preferable to waiting for the great day, "pre-revolutionary conditions", or other _dei_ex_machina_ to arrive; and when and if such conditions _do_ arrive, it's obvious that having a substantial basis community already organized would greatly assist in the revolutionary exploitation of the opportunity. I'm not saying that everyone can do it; after a certain age, most people become too set in their habits and ideas, and lack the energy anyway, to make radical, difficult changes in their lives. Rather, I think of it as one alternative among many.
I suppose one should also appreciate its utility as an object of ignorant humor, since this will serve to lighten the burdens of the culturally oppressed, while camouflaging the politics from too much hostile attention from the established order.
-- Gordon