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goldissima | 09-11-2009 10:17 AM
I am off the grid!! (with pix) 10 Attachment(s) this is a follow-up of the previous thread http://goldismoney.info/forums/showthread.php?t=404372 I am so tired that all I can do is watching alex jones and the like videos and fall asleep at 8pm... living of the grid is demanding physically, I tell you. But hopefully I will get used to this new existential pace very soon.... I do miss GIM!!! ps: my yurt is the smallest one

Ragnarok | 09-11-2009 10:21 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) More "POWER" to ya! :ok::coolbeer::adore::shine: R.

goldissima | 09-11-2009 10:23 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) 1 Attachment(s) edit: just realized that I posted the same pic twice... here is another one... more later this week

pat pat | 09-11-2009 10:35 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) good for you!!! looks very nice there.... tell some of your experinces when you get time, like "things I miss" or new adventures in learning a skill, etc you can offer some rare insight...

G-khan | 09-11-2009 10:39 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) I have missed you and hope you still find some time here on GIM.. Please tell us about this community in more detail.

Camp Bassfish | 09-11-2009 10:47 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by G-khan (Post 1915726) I have missed you and hope you still find some time here on GIM.. Please tell us about this community in more detail.
I second this!

skyvike | 09-11-2009 10:53 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) I second that second! :565::565::565:

oz in sc | 09-11-2009 11:06 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) It actually makes me happy to see you living your dream,so many talk about it(myself included) for YEARS without doing it. The place looks beautiful. Please more pics.

Curtman | 09-11-2009 11:09 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by skyvike (Post 1915759) I second that second! :565::565::565:
:shine::shine::shine:

nidor | 09-11-2009 12:51 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) The bedroom has something of an old English wattle and daub thatched cottage feel about it. There is so much to be said for walls that are not flat. Reflected light is soft. And of course the ACOUSTICS are perfect for diffuse reflections. Hard walls make for hard noises. Good on yer m8:emotions16:

RJB | 09-11-2009 01:01 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Oh man, I'm jealous-- actually I'm happy for you. You've made your dream a reality! BTW feel free to stop back to post more info of living off the grid, or even one of the famous arguments in the faith section :biggrin: Ah, but seriously, this thread really lifts my spirits. Thank you. RJ

reviver | 09-11-2009 07:39 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by RJB (Post 1915973) Ah, but seriously, this thread really lifts my spirits. Thank you. RJ
And mine, for which I also thank you. I also look forward to hearing more about your community. Please don't keep us in suspense. :36_3_12:

StackerKen | 09-11-2009 07:51 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Looks Very nice. I'm happy for you also.

Horn | 09-11-2009 07:57 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) What's the history/future of the community there? Any capitalist expansion plans?:smile:

Tn...Andy | 09-11-2009 08:47 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Looks like a nice place to hunker down compared to your former location. Best of luck in your new abode.

RealJack | 09-11-2009 09:23 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Well, you said you were gonna do it... and by golly, there you are. I'm so happy for you... and can hardly wait to hear and see more.

budfox | 09-11-2009 09:25 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) So let me get this straight.... Are you guys living in mushrooms in the shire???

Noble | 09-11-2009 10:25 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Just say no when they offer up the Kool Aid. Even a wurt dweller needs a bug out plan. Weird stuff for me, but best wishes to you.

nub | 09-11-2009 10:43 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Another chapter in the making of your life story. Chasing dreams, that's what life is all about........your livin large Goldy. Best regards .

Hi Ho | 09-11-2009 11:05 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) You may be out of the city early but you beat the rush. Good luck!

eyeofliberty | 09-12-2009 01:05 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Wow, I'm so behind the times at GIM! I don't get around here much, so I didn't know you were doing this. Very cool. Did I miss the location, or did you not say? Edit: read the other thread, and see that you're near Tucson -- I grew up there as a child, running wild and crazy in the Sonora Desert. I have a lot of good memories of that area. Kudos to you!

GoldWampum | 09-12-2009 02:06 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Good. This is very good G-Lady. :553:

InsurgentWolf | 09-13-2009 09:40 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Looks very cozy.

Tallships | 09-13-2009 12:36 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Looks like the smurf village. Beware of Gargamel aka the tax man...

RaccoonRiverRadical | 09-13-2009 02:22 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) An assumption is being made that the smurf village is paradise. Haven't any of you people ever lived in a commune, or even a large household? It is not easy to manage such a place. Who runs the place, how are decisions arrived at, who has veto power, are there factions, how much pay for field work, how are profits divided, who gets the fun jobs, who gets the scut work, etc. etc. etc. ?

goldissima | 09-13-2009 10:01 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) to answer a few questions first of, this is an eco-village with 100 ppl at this stage. and everybody is very diversified, helps at many levels. They all work their ass off because they believe actions/thinking/spirituality to shape reality, and thus are very passionate about what they are doing. The ego level is flying very, very, very low here. Tasks are non coercive since you are being asked what you are good at during the interview. Of course, they prefer diversified characters. The founders start this endeavor living in a tipi with and 3 kids 20+ years ago and today are at the head of a 165 acre ranch. They are currently constructing a new building and douche/bathroom facilities which will be able to host more than new 50 members/interns. they are a non profit org. Administratively speaking, they have their own financial and legal units. They have in-house architects and a solid IT dept. 50% of the community play a music instrument and all kids do play music instruments and sing (multi talented). 65yo and older members are fully being taken care of and each of them lives in a studio. There is a in-house physician. They all have a good grasp about the sorry state of the world and you can engage any conversation involving the NWO without being taken for a nuts. There screen hard hitting documentaries every so often. From "the century of the self" to "money as debt" and "Monsanto materials", to name a few. Sure, perfection doesnt exist... just like the yin and yang, there may be a few things that I may not fully agree with... but so far the upsides outpace the downsides by far... that is all I can/will say for now.

budfox | 09-13-2009 11:29 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by goldissima (Post 1919486) to answer a few questions first of, this is an eco-village with 100 ppl at this stage. and everybody is very diversified, helps at many levels. They all work their ass off because they believe actions/thinking/spirituality to shape reality, and thus are very passionate about what they are doing. The ego level is flying very, very, very low here. Tasks are non coercive since you are being asked what you are good at during the interview. Of course, they prefer diversified characters. The founders start this endeavor living in a tipi with and 3 kids 20+ years ago and today are at the head of a 165 acre ranch. They are currently constructing a new building and douche/bathroom facilities which will be able to host more than new 50 members/interns. they are a non profit org. Administratively speaking, they have their own financial and legal units. They have in-house architects and a solid IT dept. 50% of the community play a music instrument and all kids do play music instruments and sing (multi talented). 65yo and older members are fully being taken care of and each of them lives in a studio. There is a in-house physician. They all have a good grasp about the sorry state of the world and you can engage any conversation involving the NWO without being taken for a nuts. There screen hard hitting documentaries every so often. From "the century of the self" to "money as debt" and "Monsanto materials", to name a few. Sure, perfection doesnt exist... just like the yin and yang, there may be a few things that I may not fully agree with... but so far the upsides outpace the downsides by far... that is all I can/will say for now.
How's the sex though?

bwelkk | 09-14-2009 03:02 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Any reason it had to be Yurts? Thermodynamically superior?

goldissima | 09-14-2009 10:30 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by bwelkk (Post 1919719) Any reason it had to be Yurts? Thermodynamically superior?
Hope you didnt believe one minute that the 100ppl were sharing the 3 yurts. LOL. Actually they used to sell yurts and those are remaining samples... they are into sacred geometry (and cosmic vortexes, hence the choice of the current location 2 years ago) and understand the dome home concepts. However, there are several traditional buildings spread throughout the property.

Light | 09-14-2009 11:08 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Do you know who lives in the traditional buildings?

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TechGuy | 09-14-2009 12:27 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by Light (Post 1920045) Do you know who lives in the traditional buildings?
TPTB mts...dammit

goldissima | 09-14-2009 04:20 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by Light (Post 1920045) Do you know who lives in the traditional buildings?
opps, traditional houses... my mistake

horseshoe3 | 09-14-2009 04:41 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Is your bathroom in a seperate building from your living space? It looks like traditional construction. Do they have community bathrooms like dorms?

goldissima | 09-14-2009 09:52 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by horseshoe3 (Post 1920567) Is your bathroom in a separate building from your living space? It looks like traditional construction. Do they have community bathrooms like dorms?
singles must share bedroom space with 1 or 2 roommates... couples (with/out kids) get their own private room. there are 3 splendid bathrooms across my yurt located in a traditional construction - and which must be shared by 10 ppl or so. Its ground floor level is for their retirees which all have their studio with shower, there ppl share a huge living room and kitchen as well. They might have several bedroom configured as dorms in the new construction they are building though.

skyvike | 09-14-2009 10:05 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by goldissima (Post 1919486) to answer a few questions first of, this is an eco-village with 100 ppl at this stage. and everybody is very diversified, helps at many levels. They all work their ass off because they believe actions/thinking/spirituality to shape reality, and thus are very passionate about what they are doing. The ego level is flying very, very, very low here. Tasks are non coercive since you are being asked what you are good at during the interview. Of course, they prefer diversified characters. The founders start this endeavor living in a tipi with and 3 kids 20+ years ago and today are at the head of a 165 acre ranch. They are currently constructing a new building and douche/bathroom facilities which will be able to host more than new 50 members/interns. they are a non profit org. Administratively speaking, they have their own financial and legal units. They have in-house architects and a solid IT dept. 50% of the community play a music instrument and all kids do play music instruments and sing (multi talented). 65yo and older members are fully being taken care of and each of them lives in a studio. There is a in-house physician. They all have a good grasp about the sorry state of the world and you can engage any conversation involving the NWO without being taken for a nuts. There screen hard hitting documentaries every so often. From "the century of the self" to "money as debt" and "Monsanto materials", to name a few. Sure, perfection doesnt exist... just like the yin and yang, there may be a few things that I may not fully agree with... but so far the upsides outpace the downsides by far... that is all I can/will say for now.
Goldissima, To anyone paying attention, it is clear that wherever you go, you'll find people who are trying to improve themselves and the environment in an effort to help other improve their existence. Also, wherever you go, you'll find people who would rather take potshots at those trying something different or different than they would want/dare to do. As long as we have known you here, you have fallen into the former category. And you have earned my admiration. Illegitimus non carborundum!

TechGuy | 09-14-2009 10:10 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Looks like quite an adventure. Getting away from the workaday world, many say they want to, not many have the guts. Congrats. Would like to see some garden/agriculture pics too!

goldissima | 09-15-2009 07:41 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by skyvike (Post 1921110) Goldissima, To anyone paying attention, it is clear that wherever you go, you'll find people who are trying to improve themselves and the environment in an effort to help other improve their existence. Also, wherever you go, you'll find people who would rather take potshots at those trying something different or different than they would want/dare to do. As long as we have known you here, you have fallen into the former category. And you have earned my admiration. Illegitimus non carborundum!
thanks for the strokes... I left NY without fanfare, although many knew that I would leave at the end of Augustus, I didnt say bye-bye to anybody in particular... because the decision was a very tough and scary one. Toughness and scariness aside, this bold move was kinda depressing: I also sensed that it would be a long time before I return, or when I happened to let the gloom and doom take over, that some of them could even die from a flu for example. More rationally many were making fun of me, as they knew that I believed that the system could fall apart at any moment. Now that I am starting to get used to be here, it feels good to have less worries (how to pay the rent, staying in the city when the martial law strikes, etc)... but I know that I need a plan B just in case. I have my passport and my $tash ready. Maybe costa rica will be the final solution if everything goes to shyt. The so-called great west is finished... :confused_m: Best

goldissima | 09-15-2009 07:52 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by budfox (Post 1919567) How's the sex though?
just in case you were joking, I will nonetheless tell you that it is strictly family oriented. we signed a release form acknowledging this

Horn | 09-15-2009 09:26 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) More power to ya, Goldi... My guess is your probably correct about that system collapse soon. Ben & B.O. seem to agree on this.

budfox | 09-15-2009 09:31 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by goldissima (Post 1922941) just in case you were joking, I will nonetheless tell you that it is strictly family oriented. we signed a release form acknowledging this
You know me, just kidding Goldi. But Geeeze, I don't know if I could make it:s1:

foolsgold | 09-16-2009 09:31 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) God bless you Goldie. You made it and I am happy for you. It's a major adjustment....I know I was a city boy at one time. The stars are not on Broadway anymore they are in the sky now.:36_3_16: I'm glad we met before you moved on.

CoinHunter53562 | 09-16-2009 09:40 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Wow I had no idea you were in the process of doing this, but good for you! That's a huge step you made, but I think it's a good one. You know you have the support of your GIM family so if you start having 2nd thoughts or doubt if you made the right move, just read/post here. Congratulations! :ok:

Noble | 09-16-2009 11:38 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by skyvike (Post 1921110) Goldissima, To anyone paying attention, it is clear that wherever you go, you'll find people who are trying to improve themselves and the environment in an effort to help other improve their existence. Also, wherever you go, you'll find people who would rather take potshots at those trying something different or different than they would want/dare to do. As long as we have known you here, you have fallen into the former category. And you have earned my admiration. Illegitimus non carborundum!
There's just something about communism....

goldissima | 09-17-2009 12:31 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by Noble (Post 1925433) There's just something about communism....
an ecovillage is a communist concept? communism/fascism go along with coercion. So far it does not seem to to be the case.

skyvike | 09-17-2009 01:51 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by goldissima (Post 1925496) an ecovillage is a communist concept? communism/fascism go along with coercion. So far it does not seem to to be the case.
Yes, you're free to get up and leave, no? Try that in your communist country.

reviver | 09-17-2009 03:08 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by Noble (Post 1925433) There's just something about communism....
Perhaps a better term, if you must attach a ideological name any gathering of people into a tribe with common purpose and intent, if I may be so erudite, would be Communalism. This (very simply) is the study of Social Ecology, which emphasizes Rational Municipalism. Neighbors working together to increase and enhance the quality of life for all involved. Certainly part of the reason this is developing because there are many people out there who need to feel a little closer to life than we do in this modern world. People want to get back to their roots, and tribes. That is certainly open to, and I invite viewpoints regarding this, because it is something I have always esposed to, but never succeeded. Quote:
The Communalist International Journal for a Rational Society ISSUE # 2 | NOVEMBER 2002 The Communalist Project By Murray Bookchin Whether the twenty-first century will be the most radical of times or the most reactionary � or will simply lapse into a gray era of dismal mediocrity � will depend overwhelmingly upon the kind of social movement and program that social radicals create out of the theoretical, organizational, and political wealth that has accumulated during the past two centuries of the revolutionary era. The direction we select, from among several intersecting roads of human development, may well determine the future of our species for centuries to come. As long as this irrational society endangers us with nuclear and biological weapons, we cannot ignore the possibility that the entire human enterprise may come to a devastating end. Given the exquisitely elaborate technical plans that the military-industrial complex has devised, the self-extermination of the human species must be included in the futuristic scenarios that, at the turn of the millennium, the mass media are projecting � the end of a human future as such. Lest these remarks seem too apocalyptic, I should emphasize that we also live in an era when human creativity, technology, and imagination have the capability to produce extraordinary material achievements and to endow us with societies that allow for a degree of freedom that far and away exceeds the most dramatic and emancipatory visions projected by social theorists such as Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Karl Marx, and Peter Kropotkin. (1) Many thinkers of the postmodern age have obtusely singled out science and technology as the principal threats to human well-being, yet few disciplines have imparted to humanity such a stupendous knowledge of the innermost secrets of matter and life, or provided our species better with the ability to alter every important feature of reality and to improve the well-being of human and nonhuman life-forms. We are thus in a position either to follow a path toward a grim �end of history,� in which a banal succession of vacuous events replaces genuine progress, or to move on to a path toward the true making of history, in which humanity genuinely progresses toward a rational world. We are in a position to choose between an ignominious finale, possibly including the catastrophic nuclear oblivion of history itself, and history�s rational fulfillment in a free, materially abundant society in an aesthetically crafted environment. Notwithstanding the technological marvels that competing enterprises of the ruling class (that is, the bourgeoisie) are developing in order to achieve hegemony over one another, little of a subjective nature that exists in the existing society can redeem it. Precisely at a time when we, as a species, are capable of producing the means for amazing objective advances and improvements in the human condition and in the nonhuman natural world � advances that could make for a free and rational society � we stand almost naked morally before the onslaught of social forces that may very well lead to our physical immolation. Prognoses about the future are understandably very fragile and are easily distrusted. Pessimism has become very widespread, as capitalist social relations become more deeply entrenched in the human mind than ever before, and as culture regresses appallingly, almost to a vanishing point. To most people today, the hopeful and very radical certainties of the twenty-year period between the Russian Revolution of 1917-18 and the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939 seem almost na�ve. Yet our decision to create a better society, and our choice of the way to do it, must come from within ourselves, without the aid of a deity, still less a mystical �force of nature� or a charismatic leader. If we choose the road toward a better future, our choice must be the consequence of our ability � and ours alone � to learn from the material lessons of the past and to appreciate the real prospects of the future. We will need to have recourse, not to ghostly vagaries conjured up from the murky hell of superstition or, absurdly, from the couloirs of the academy, but to the innovative attributes that make up our very humanity and the essential features that account for natural and social development, as opposed to the social pathologies and accidental events that have sidetracked humanity from its self-fulfillment in consciousness and reason. Having brought history to a point where nearly everything is possible, at least of a material nature � and having left behind a past that was permeated ideologically by mystical and religious elements produced by the human imagination � we are faced with a new challenge, one that has never before confronted humanity. We must consciously create our own world, not according to demonic fantasies, mindless customs, and destructive prejudices, but according to the canons of reason, reflection, and discourse that uniquely belong to our own species. What factors should be decisive in making our choice? First, of great significance is the immense accumulation of social and political experience that is available to revolutionaries today, a storehouse of knowledge that, properly conceived, could be used to avoid the terrible errors that our predecessors made and to spare humanity the terrible plagues of failed revolutions in the past. Of indispensable importance is the potential for a new theoretical springboard that has been created by the history of ideas, one that provides the means to catapult an emerging radical movement beyond existing social conditions into a future that fosters humanity�s emancipation. But we must also be fully aware of the scope of the problems that we face. We must understand with complete clarity where we stand in the development of the prevailing capitalist order, and we have to grasp emergent social problems and address them in the program of a new movement. Capitalism is unquestionably the most dynamic society ever to appear in history. By definition, to be sure, it always remains a system of commodity exchange in which objects that are made for sale and profit pervade and mediate most human relations. Yet capitalism is also a highly mutable system, continually advancing the brutal maxim that whatever enterprise does not grow at the expense of its rivals must die. Hence �growth� and perpetual change become the very laws of life of capitalist existence. This means that capitalism never remains permanently in only one form; it must always transform the institutions that arise from its basic social relations. Although capitalism became a dominant society only in the past few centuries, it long existed on the periphery of earlier societies: in a largely commercial form, structured around trade between cities and empires; in a craft form throughout the European Middle Ages; in a hugely industrial form in our own time; and if we are to believe recent seers, in an informational form in the coming period. It has created not only new technologies but also a great variety of economic and social structures, such as the small shop, the factory, the huge mill, and the industrial and commercial complex. Certainly the capitalism of the Industrial Revolution has not completely disappeared, any more than the isolated peasant family and small craftsman of a still earlier period have been consigned to complete oblivion. Much of the past is always incorporated into the present; indeed, as Marx insistently warned, there is no �pure capitalism,� and none of the earlier forms of capitalism fade away until radically new social relations are established and become overwhelmingly dominant. But today capitalism, even as it coexists with and utilizes precapitalist institutions for its own ends (see Marx�s Grundrisse for this dialectic), now reaches into the suburbs and the countryside with its shopping malls and newly styled factories. Indeed, it is by no means inconceivable that one day it will reach beyond our planet. In any case, it has produced not only new commodities to create and feed new wants but new social and cultural issues, which in turn have given rise to new supporters and antagonists of the existing system. The famous first part of Marx and Engels�s Communist Manifesto, in which they celebrate capitalism�s wonders, would have to be periodically rewritten to keep pace with the achievements � as well as the horrors � produced by the bourgeoisie�s development. One of the most striking features of capitalism today is that in the Western world the highly simplified two-class structure � the bourgeoisie and the proletariat � that Marx and Engels, in The Communist Manifesto, predicted would become dominant under �mature� capitalism (and we have yet to determine what �mature,� still less �late� or �moribund� capitalism actually is) has undergone a process of reconfiguration. The conflict between wage labor and capital, while it has by no means disappeared, nonetheless lacks the all-embracing importance that it possessed in the past. Contrary to Marx�s expectations, the industrial working class is now dwindling in numbers and is steadily losing its traditional identity as a class � which by no means excludes it from a potentially broader and perhaps more extensive conflict of society as a whole against capitalist social relations. Present-day culture, social relations, cityscapes, modes of production, agriculture, and transportation have remade the traditional proletariat, upon which syndicalists and Marxists were overwhelmingly, indeed almost mystically focused, into a largely petty-bourgeois stratum whose mentality is marked by its own bourgeois utopianism of �consumption for the sake of consumption.� We can foresee a time when the proletarian, whatever the color of his or her collar or place on the assembly line, will be completely replaced by automated and even miniaturized means of production that are operated by a few white-coated manipulators of machines and by computers. By the same token, the living standards of the traditional proletariat and its material expectations (no small factor in the shaping of social consciousness!) have changed enormously, soaring within only a generation or two from near poverty to a comparatively high degree of material affluence. Among the children and grandchildren of former steel and automobile workers and coal miners, who have no proletarian class identity, a college education has replaced the high school diploma as emblematic of a new class status. In the United States once-opposing class interests have converged to a point that almost 50 percent of American households own stocks and bonds, while a huge number are proprietors of one kind or another, possessing their own homes, gardens, and rural summer retreats. Given these changes, the stern working man or woman, portrayed in radical posters of the past with a flexed, highly muscular arm holding a bone-crushing hammer, has been replaced by the genteel and well-mannered (so-called) �working middle class.� The traditional cry �Workers of the world, unite!� in its old historical sense becomes ever more meaningless. The class-consciousness of the proletariat, which Marx tried to awaken in The Communist Manifesto, has been hemorrhaging steadily and in many places has virtually disappeared. The more existential class struggle has not been eliminated, to be sure, any more than the bourgeoisie could eliminate gravity from the existing human condition, but unless radicals today become aware of the fact that it has been narrowed down largely to the individual factory or office, they will fail to see that a new, perhaps more expansive form of social consciousness can emerge in the generalized struggles that face us. Indeed, this form of social consciousness can be given a refreshingly new meaning as the concept of the rebirth of the citoyen � a concept so important to the Great Revolution of 1789 and its more broadly humanistic sentiment of sociality that it became the form of address among later revolutionaries summoned to the barricades by the heraldic crowing of the red French rooster. Seen as a whole, the social condition that capitalism has produced today stands very much at odds with the simplistic class prognoses advanced by Marx and by the revolutionary French syndicalists. After the Second World War, capitalism underwent an enormous transformation, creating broad new social issues with extraordinary rapidity, issues that went beyond traditional proletarian demands for improved wages, hours, and working conditions: notably environmental, gender, hierarchical, civic, and democratic issues. Capitalism, in effect, has generalized its threats to humanity, particularly with climatic changes that may alter the very face of the planet, oligarchical institutions of a global scope, and rampant urbanization that radically corrodes the civic life basic to grassroots politics. Hierarchy, today, is becoming as pronounced an issue as class � as witness the extent to which many social analyses have singled out managers, bureaucrats, scientists, and the like as emerging, ostensibly dominant groups. New and elaborate gradations of status and interests count today to an extent that they did not in the recent past; they blur the conflict between wage labor and capital that was once so central, clearly defined, and militantly waged by traditional socialists. Class categories are now intermingled with hierarchical categories based on race, gender, sexual preference, and certainly national or regional differences. Status differentiations, characteristic of hierarchy, tend to converge with class differentiations, and a more all-inclusive capitalistic world is emerging in which ethnic, national, and gender differences often surpass the importance of class differences in the public eye. This phenomenon is not entirely new: in the First World War countless German socialist workers cast aside their earlier commitment to the red flags of proletarian unity in favor of the national flags of their well-fed and parasitic rulers and went on to plunge bayonets into the bodies of French and Russian socialist workers � as they did, in turn, under the national flags of their own oppressors. At the same time capitalism has produced a new, perhaps paramount contradiction: the clash between an economy based on unending growth and the desiccation of the natural environment. (2) This issue and its vast ramifications can no more be minimized, let alone dismissed, than the need of human beings for food or air. At present the most promising struggles in the West, where socialism was born, seem to be waged less around income and working conditions than around nuclear power, pollution, deforestation, urban blight, education, health care, community life, and the oppression of people in underdeveloped countries � as witness the (albeit sporadic) antiglobalization upsurges, in which blue- and white-collar �workers� march in the same ranks with middle-class humanitarians and are motivated by common social concerns. Proletarian combatants become indistinguishable from middle-class ones. Burly workers, whose hallmark is a combative militancy, now march behind �bread and puppet� theater performers, often with a considerable measure of shared playfulness. Members of the working and middle classes now wear many different social hats, so to speak, challenging capitalism obliquely as well as directly on cultural as well as economic grounds. Nor can we ignore, in deciding what direction we are to follow, the fact that capitalism, if it is not checked, will in the future � and not necessarily the very distant future � differ appreciably from the system we know today. Capitalist development can be expected to vastly alter the social horizon in the years ahead. Can we suppose that factories, offices, cities, residential areas, industry, commerce, and agriculture, let alone moral values, aesthetics, media, popular desires, and the like will not change immensely before the twenty-first century is out? In the past century, capitalism, above all else, has broadened social issues � indeed, the historical social question of how a humanity, divided by classes and exploitation, will create a society based on equality, the development of authentic harmony, and freedom � to include those whose resolution was barely foreseen by the liberatory social theorists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Our age, with its endless array of �bottom lines� and �investment choices,� now threatens to turn society itself into a vast and exploitative marketplace. (3) The public with which the progressive socialist had to deal is also changing radically and will continue to do so in the coming decades. To lag in understanding behind the changes that capitalism is introducing and the new or broader contradictions it is producing would be to commit the recurringly disastrous error that led to the defeat of nearly all revolutionary upsurges in the past two centuries. Foremost among the lessons that a new revolutionary movement must learn from the past is that it must win over broad sectors of the middle class to its new populist program. No attempt to replace capitalism with socialism ever had or will have the remotest chance of success without the aid of the discontented petty bourgeoisie, whether it was the intelligentsia and peasantry-in-uniform of the Russian Revolution or the intellectuals, farmers, shopkeepers, clerks, and managers in industry and even in government in the German upheavals of 1918-21. Even during the most promising periods of past revolutionary cycles, the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, the German Social Democrats, and Russian Communists never acquired absolute majorities in their respective legislatives bodies. So-called �proletarian revolutions� were invariably minority revolutions, usually even within the proletariat itself, and those that succeeded (often briefly, before they were subdued or drifted historically out of the revolutionary movement) depended overwhelmingly on the fact that the bourgeoisie lacked active support among its own military forces or was simply socially demoralized. Given the changes that we are witnessing and those that are still taking form, social radicals can no longer oppose the predatory (as well as immensely creative) capitalist system by using the ideologies and methods that were born in the first Industrial Revolution, when a factory proletarian seemed to be the principal antagonist of a textile plant owner. (Nor can we use ideologies that were spawned by conflicts that an impoverished peasantry used to oppose feudal and semifeudal landowners.) None of the professedly anticapitalist ideologies of the past � Marxism, anarchism, syndicalism, and more generic forms of socialism � retain the same relevance that they had at an earlier stage of capitalist development and in an earlier period of technological advance. Nor can any of them hope to encompass the multitude of new issues, opportunities, problems, and interests that capitalism has repeatedly created over time. Marxism was the most comprehensive and coherent effort to produce a systematic form of socialism, emphasizing the material as well as the subjective historical preconditions of a new society. This project, in the present era of precapitalist economic decomposition and of intellectual confusion, relativism, and subjectivism, must never surrender to the new barbarians, many of whom find their home in what was once a barrier to ideological regression � the academy. We owe much to Marx�s attempt to provide us with a coherent and stimulating analysis of the commodity and commodity relations, to an activist philosophy, a systematic social theory, an objectively grounded or �scientific� concept of historical development, and a flexible political strategy. Marxist political ideas were eminently relevant to the needs of a terribly disoriented proletariat and to the particular oppressions that the industrial bourgeoisie inflicted upon it in England in the 1840s, somewhat later in France, Italy, and Germany, and very presciently in Russia in the last decade of Marx�s life. Until the rise of the populist movement in Russia (most famously, the Narodnaya Volya), Marx expected the emerging proletariat to become the great majority of the population in Europe and North America, and to inevitably engage in revolutionary class war as a result of capitalist exploitation and immiseration. And especially between 1917 and 1939, long after Marx�s death, Europe was indeed beleaguered by a mounting class war that reached the point of outright workers� insurrections. In 1917, owing to an extraordinary confluence of circumstances � particularly with the outbreak of the First World War, which rendered several quasi-feudal European social systems terribly unstable � Lenin and the Bolsheviks tried to use (but greatly altered) Marx�s writings in order to take power in an economically backward empire, whose size spanned eleven time zones across Europe and Asia. (4) But for the most part, as we have seen, Marxism�s economic insights belonged to an era of emerging factory capitalism in the nineteenth century. Brilliant as a theory of the material preconditions for socialism, it did not address the ecological, civic, and subjective forces or the efficient causes that could impel humanity into a movement for revolutionary social change. On the contrary, for nearly a century Marxism stagnated theoretically. Its theorists were often puzzled by developments that have passed it by and, since the 1960s, have mechanically appended environmentalist and feminist ideas to its formulaic ouvrierist outlook. By the same token, anarchism � which, I believe, represents in its authentic form a highly individualistic outlook that fosters a radically unfettered lifestyle, often as a substitute for mass action � is far better suited to articulate a Proudhonian single-family peasant and craft world than a modern urban and industrial environment. I myself once used this political label, but further thought has obliged me to conclude that, its often-refreshing aphorisms and insights notwithstanding, it is simply not a social theory. Its foremost theorists celebrate its seeming openness to eclecticism and the liberatory effects of �paradox� or even �contradiction,� to use Proudhonian hyperbole. Accordingly, and without prejudice to the earnestness of many anarchistic practices, a case can made that many of the ideas of social and economic reconstruction that in the past have been advanced in the name of �anarchy� were often drawn from Marxism (including my own concept of �post-scarcity,� which understandably infuriated many anarchists who read my essays on the subject). Regrettably, the use of socialistic terms has often prevented anarchists from telling us or even understanding clearly what they are: individualists whose concepts of autonomy originate in a strong commitment to personal liberty rather than to social freedom, or socialists committed to a structured, institutionalized, and responsible form of social organization. Anarchism�s idea of self-regulation (auto-nomos) led to a radical celebration of Nietzsche�s all-absorbing will. Indeed the history of this �ideology� is peppered with idiosyncratic acts of defiance that verge on the eccentric, which not surprisingly have attracted many young people and aesthetes. In fact anarchism represents the most extreme formulation of liberalism�s ideology of unfettered autonomy, culminating in a celebration of heroic acts of defiance of the state. Anarchism�s mythos of self-regulation (auto nomos) � the radical assertion of the individual over or even against society and the personalistic absence of responsibility for the collective welfare � leads to a radical affirmation of the all-powerful will so central to Nietzsche�s ideological peregrinations. Some self-professed anarchists have even denounced mass social action as futile and alien to their private concerns and made a fetish of what the Spanish anarchists called grupismo, a small-group mode of action that is highly personal rather than social. Anarchism has often been confused with revolutionary syndicalism, a highly structured and well-developed mass form of libertarian trade unionism that, unlike anarchism, was long committed to democratic procedures, (5) to discipline in action, and to organized, long-range revolutionary practice to eliminate capitalism. Its affinity with anarchism stems from its strong libertarian bias, but bitter antagonisms between anarchists and syndicalists have a long history in nearly every country in Western Europe and North America, as witness the tensions between the Spanish CNT and the anarchist groups associated with Tierra y Libertad early in the twentieth century; between the revolutionary syndicalist and anarchist groups in Russia during the 1917 revolution; and between the IWW in the United States and Sweden, to cite the more illustrative cases in the history of the libertarian labor movement. More than one American anarchist was affronted by Joe Hill�s defiant maxim on the eve of his execution in Utah: �Don�t mourn � Organize!� Alas, small groups were not quite the �organizations� that Joe Hill, or the grossly misunderstood idol of the Spanish libertarian movement, Salvador Segu�, had in mind. It was largely the shared word libertarian that made it possible for somewhat confused anarchists to coexist in the same organization with revolutionary syndicalists. It was often verbal confusion rather than ideological clarity that made possible the coexistence in Spain of the FAI, as represented by the anarchist Federica Montseny, with the syndicalists, as represented by Juan Prieto, in the CNT-FAI, a truly confused organization if ever there was one. Revolutionary syndicalism�s destiny has been tied in varying degrees to a pathology called ouvrierisme, or �workerism,� and whatever philosophy, theory of history, or political economy it possesses has been borrowed, often piecemeal and indirectly, from Marx � indeed, Georges Sorel and many other professed revolutionary syndicalists in the early twentieth century expressly regarded themselves as Marxists and even more expressly eschewed anarchism. Moreover, revolutionary syndicalism lacks a strategy for social change beyond the general strike, which revolutionary uprisings such as the famous October and November general strikes in Russia during 1905 proved to be stirring but ultimately ineffectual. Indeed, as invaluable as the general strike may be as a prelude to direct confrontation with the state, they decidedly do not have the mystical capacity that revolutionary syndicalists assigned to them as means for social change. Their limitations are striking evidence that, as episodic forms of direct action, general strikes are not equatable with revolution nor even with profound social changes, which presuppose a mass movement and require years of gestation and a clear sense of direction. Indeed, revolutionary syndicalism exudes a typical ouvrierist anti-intellectualism that disdains attempts to formulate a purposive revolutionary direction and a reverence for proletarian �spontaneity� that, at times, has led it into highly self-destructive situations. Lacking the means for an analysis of their situation, the Spanish syndicalists (and anarchists) revealed only a minimal capacity to understand the situation in which they found themselves after their victory over Franco�s forces in the summer of 1936 and no capacity to take �the next step� to institutionalize a workers� and peasants� form of government. What these observations add up to is that Marxists, revolutionary syndicalists, and authentic anarchists all have a fallacious understanding of politics, which should be conceived as the civic arena and the institutions by which people democratically and directly manage their community affairs. Indeed the Left has repeatedly mistaken statecraft for politics by its persistent failure to understand that the two are not only radically different but exist in radical tension � in fact, opposition � to each other. (6) As I have written elsewhere, historically politics did not emerge from the state � an apparatus whose professional machinery is designed to dominate and facilitate the exploitation of the citizenry in the interests of a privileged class. Rather, politics, almost by definition, is the active engagement of free citizens in the handling their municipal affairs and in their defense of its freedom. One can almost say that politics is the �embodiment� of what the French revolutionaries of the 1790s called civicisme. Quite properly, in fact, the word politics itself contains the Greek word for �city� or polis, and its use in classical Athens, together with democracy, connoted the direct governing of the city by its citizens. Centuries of civic degradation, marked particularly by the formation of classes, were necessary to produce the state and its corrosive absorption of the political realm. A defining feature of the Left is precisely the Marxist, anarchist, and revolutionary syndicalist belief that no distinction exists, in principle, between the political realm and the statist realm. By emphasizing the nation-state � including a �workers� state� � as the locus of economic as well as political power, Marx (as well as libertarians) notoriously failed to demonstrate how workers could fully and directly control such a state without the mediation of an empowered bureaucracy and essentially statist (or equivalently, in the case of libertarians, governmental) institutions. As a result, the Marxists unavoidably saw the political realm, which it designated a �workers� state,� as a repressive entity, ostensibly based on the interests of a single class, the proletariat. Revolutionary syndicalism, for its part, emphasized factory control by workers� committees and confederal economic councils as the locus of social authority, thereby simply bypassing any popular institutions that existed outside the economy. Oddly, this was economic determinism with a vengeance, which, tested by the experiences of the Spanish revolution of 1936, proved completely ineffectual. A vast domain of real governmental power, from military affairs to the administration of justice, fell to the Stalinists and the liberals of Spain, who used their authority to subvert the libertarian movement � and with it, the revolutionary achievements of the syndicalist workers in July 1936, or what was dourly called by one novelist �The Brief Summer of Spanish Anarchism.� As for anarchism, Bakunin expressed the typical view of its adherents in 1871 when he wrote that the new social order could be created �only through the development and organization of the nonpolitical or antipolitical social power of the working class in city and country,� thereby rejecting with characteristic inconsistency the very municipal politics which he sanctioned in Italy around the same year. Accordingly, anarchists have long regarded every government as a state and condemned it accordingly � a view that is a recipe for the elimination of any organized social life whatever. While the state is the instrument by which an oppressive and exploitative class regulates and coercively controls the behavior of an exploited class by a ruling class, a government � or better still, a polity � is an ensemble of institutions designed to deal with the problems of consociational life in an orderly and hopefully fair manner. Every institutionalized association that constitutes a system for handling public affairs � with or without the presence of a state � is necessarily a government. By contrast, every state, although necessarily a form of government, is a force for class repression and control. Annoying as it must seem to Marxists and anarchist alike, the cry for a constitution, for a responsible and a responsive government, and even for law or nomos has been clearly articulated � and committed to print! � by the oppressed for centuries against the capricious rule exercised by monarchs, nobles, and bureaucrats. The libertarian opposition to law, not to speak of government as such, has been as silly as the image of a snake swallowing its tail. What remains in the end is nothing but a retinal afterimage that has no existential reality. The issues raised in the preceding pages are of more than academic interest. As we enter the twenty-first century, social radicals need a socialism � libertarian and revolutionary � that is neither an extension of the peasant-craft �associationism� that lies at the core of anarchism nor the proletarianism that lies at the core of revolutionary syndicalism and Marxism. However fashionable the traditional ideologies (particularly anarchism) may be among young people today, a truly progressive socialism that is informed by libertarian as well as Marxian ideas but transcends these older ideologies must provide intellectual leadership. For political radicals today to simply resuscitate Marxism, anarchism, or revolutionary syndicalism and endow them with ideological immortality would be obstructive to the development of a relevant radical movement. A new and comprehensive revolutionary outlook is needed, one that is capable of systematically addressing the generalized issues that may potentially bring most of society into opposition to an ever-evolving and changing capitalist system. The clash between a predatory society based on indefinite expansion and nonhuman nature has given rise to an ensemble of ideas that has emerged as the explication of the present social crisis and meaningful radical change. Social ecology, a coherent vision of social development that intertwines the mutual impact of hierarchy and class on the civilizing of humanity, has for decades argued that we must reorder social relations so that humanity can live in a protective balance with the natural world. (7) Contrary to the simplistic ideology of �eco-anarchism,� social ecology maintains that an ecologically oriented society can be progressive rather than regressive, placing a strong emphasis not on primitivism, austerity, and denial but on material pleasure and ease. If a society is to be capable of making life not only vastly enjoyable for its members but also leisurely enough that they can engage in the intellectual and cultural self-cultivation that is necessary for creating civilization and a vibrant political life, it must not denigrate technics and science but bring them into accord with visions human happiness and leisure. Social ecology is an ecology not of hunger and material deprivation but of plenty; it seeks the creation of a rational society in which waste, indeed excess, will be controlled by a new system of values; and when or if shortages arise as a result of irrational behavior, popular assemblies will establish rational standards of consumption by democratic processes. In short, social ecology favors management, plans, and regulations formulated democratically by popular assemblies, not freewheeling forms of behavior that have their origin in individual eccentricities. It is my contention that Communalism is the overarching political category most suitable to encompass the fully thought out and systematic views of social ecology, including libertarian municipalism and dialectical naturalism. (8) As an ideology, Communalism draws on the best of the older Left ideologies � Marxism and anarchism, more properly the libertarian socialist tradition � while offering a wider and more relevant scope for our time. From Marxism, it draws the basic project of formulating a rationally systematic and coherent socialism that integrates philosophy, history, economics, and politics. Avowedly dialectical, it attempts to infuse theory with practice. From anarchism, it draws its commitment to antistatism and confederalism, as well as its recognition that hierarchy is a basic problem that can be overcome only by a libertarian socialist society. (9) The choice of the term Communalism to encompass the philosophical, historical, political, and organizational components of a socialism for the twenty-first century has not been a flippant one. The word originated in the Paris Commune of 1871, when the armed people of the French capital raised barricades not only to defend the city council of Paris and its administrative substructures but also to create a nationwide confederation of cities and towns to replace the republican nation-state. Communalism as an ideology is not sullied by the individualism and the often explicit antirationalism of anarchism; nor does it carry the historical burden of Marxism�s authoritarianism as embodied in Bolshevism. It does not focus on the factory as its principal social arena or on the industrial proletariat as its main historical agent; and it does not reduce the free community of the future to a fanciful medieval village. Its most important goal is clearly spelled out in a conventional dictionary definition: Communalism, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, is �a theory or system of government in which virtually autonomous local communities are loosely bound in a federation.� (10) Communalism seeks to recapture the meaning of politics in its broadest, most emancipatory sense, indeed, to fulfill the historic potential of the municipality as the developmental arena of mind and discourse. It conceptualizes the municipality, potentially at least, as a transformative development beyond organic evolution into the domain of social evolution. The city is the domain where the archaic blood-tie that was once limited to the unification of families and tribes, to the exclusion of outsiders, was � juridically, at least � dissolved. It became the domain where hierarchies based on parochial and sociobiological attributes of kinship, gender, and age could be eliminated and replaced by a free society based on a shared common humanity. Potentially, it remains the domain where the once-feared stranger can be fully absorbed into the community � initially as a protected resident of a common territory and eventually as a citizen, engaged in making policy decisions in the public arena. It is above all the domain where institutions and values have their roots not in zoology but in civil human activity. Looking beyond these historical functions, the municipality constitutes the only domain for an association based on the free exchange of ideas and a creative endeavor to bring the capacities of consciousness to the service of freedom. It is the domain where a mere animalistic adaptation to an existing and pregiven environment can be radically supplanted by proactive, rational intervention into the world � indeed, a world yet to be made and molded by reason � with a view toward ending the environmental, social, and political insults to which humanity and the biosphere have been subjected by classes and hierarchies. Freed of domination as well as material exploitation � indeed, recreated as a rational arena for human creativity in all spheres of life � the municipality becomes the ethical space for the good life. Communalism is thus no contrived product of mere fancy: it expresses an abiding concept and practice of political life, formed by a dialectic of social development and reason. As a explicitly political body of ideas, Communalism seeks to recover and advance the development of the city (or commune) in a form that accords with its greatest potentialities and historical traditions. This is not to say that Communalism accepts the municipality as it is today. Quite to the contrary, the modern municipality is infused with many statist features and often functions as an agent of the bourgeois nation-state. Today, when the nation-state still seems supreme, the rights that modern municipalities possess cannot be dismissed as the epiphenomena of more basic economic relations. Indeed, to a great degree, they are the hard-won gains of commoners, who long defended them against assaults by ruling classes over the course of history � even against the bourgeoisie itself. The concrete political dimension of Communalism is known as libertarian municipalism, about which I have previously written extensively. (11) In its libertarian municipalist program, Communalism resolutely seeks to eliminate statist municipal structures and replace them with the institutions of a libertarian polity. It seeks to radically restructure cities� governing institutions into popular democratic assemblies based on neighborhoods, towns, and villages. In these popular assemblies, citizens � including the middle classes as well as the working classes � deal with community affairs on a face-to-face basis, making policy decisions in a direct democracy, and giving reality to the ideal of a humanistic, rational society. Minimally, if we are to have the kind of free social life to which we aspire, democracy should be our form of a shared political life. To address problems and issues that transcend the boundaries of a single municipality, in turn, the democratized municipalities should join together to form a broader confederation. These assemblies and confederations, by their very existence, could then challenge the legitimacy of the state and statist forms of power. They could expressly be aimed at replacing state power and statecraft with popular power and a socially rational transformative politics. And they would become arenas where class conflicts could be played out and where classes could be eliminated. Libertarian municipalists do not delude themselves that the state will view with equanimity their attempts to replace professionalized power with popular power. They harbor no illusions that the ruling classes will indifferently allow a Communalist movement to demand rights that infringe on the state�s sovereignty over towns and cities. Historically, regions, localities, and above all towns and cities have desperately struggled to reclaim their local sovereignty from the state (albeit not always for high-minded purposes). Communalists� attempt to restore the powers of towns and cities and to knit them together into confederations can be expected to evoke increasing resistance from national institutions. That the new popular-assemblyist municipal confederations will embody a dual power against the state that becomes a source of growing political tension is obvious. Either a Communalist movement will be radicalized by this tension and will resolutely face all its consequences, or it will surely sink into a morass of compromises that absorb it back into the social order that it once sought to change. How the movement meets this challenge is a clear measure of its seriousness in seeking to change the existing political system and the social consciousness it develops as a source of public education and leadership. Communalism constitutes a critique of hierarchical and capitalist society as a whole. It seeks to alter not only the political life of society but also its economic life. On this score, its aim is not to nationalize the economy or retain private ownership of the means of production but to municipalize the economy. It seeks to integrate the means of production into the existential life of the municipality, such that every productive enterprise falls under the purview of the local assembly, which decides how it will function to meet the interests of the community as a whole. The separation between life and work, so prevalent in the modern capitalist economy, must be overcome so that citizens� desires and needs, the artful challenges of creation in the course of production, and role of production in fashioning thought and self-definition are not lost. �Humanity makes itself,� to cite the title of V. Gordon Childe�s book on the urban revolution at the end of the Neolithic age and the rise of cities, and it does so not only intellectually and esthetically, but by expanding human needs as well as the productive methods for satisfying them. We discover ourselves � our potentialities and their actualization � through creative and useful work that not only transforms the natural world but leads to our self-formation and self-definition. We must also avoid the parochialism and ultimately the desires for proprietorship that have afflicted so many self-managed enterprises, such as the �collectives� in the Russian and Spanish revolutions. Not enough has been written about the drift among many �socialistic� self-managed enterprises, even under the red and red-and-black flags, respectively, of revolutionary Russia and revolutionary Spain, toward forms of collective capitalism that ultimately led many of these concerns to compete with one another for raw materials and markets. (12) Most importantly, in Communalist political life, workers of different occupations would take their seats in popular assemblies not as workers � printers, plumbers, foundry workers and the like, with special occupational interests to advance � but as citizens, whose overriding concern should be the general interest of the society in which they live. Citizens should be freed of their particularistic identity as workers, specialists, and individuals concerned primarily with their own particularistic interests. Municipal life should become a school for the formation of citizens, both by absorbing new citizens and by educating the young, while the assemblies themselves should function not only as permanent decision-making institutions but as arenas for educating the people in handling complex civic and regional affairs. (13) In a Communalist way of life, conventional economics, with its focus on prices and scarce resources, would be replaced by ethics, with its concern for human needs and the good life. Human solidarity � or philia, as the Greeks called it � would replace material gain and egotism. Municipal assemblies would become not only vital arenas for civic life and decision-making but centers where the shadowy world of economic logistics, properly coordinated production, and civic operations would be demystified and opened to the scrutiny and participation of the citizenry as a whole. The emergence of the new citizen would mark a transcendence of the particularistic class being of traditional socialism and the formation of the �new man� which the Russian revolutionaries hoped they could eventually achieve. Humanity would now be able to rise to the universal state of consciousness and rationality that the great utopians of the nineteenth century and the Marxists hoped their efforts would create, opening the way to humanity�s fulfillment as a species that embodies reason rather than material interest and that affords material post-scarcity rather than an austere harmony enforced by a morality of scarcity and material deprivation. (14) Classical Athenian democracy of the fifth century B.C.E., the source of the Western democratic tradition, was based on face-to-face decision-making in communal assemblies of the people and confederations of those municipal assemblies. For more than two millennia, the political writings of Aristotle recurrently served to heighten our awareness of the city as the arena for the fulfillment of human potentialities for reason, self-consciousness, and the good life. Appropriately, Aristotle traced the emergence of the polis from the family or oikos � i.e., the realm of necessity, where human beings satisfied their basically animalistic needs, and where authority rested with the eldest male. But the association of several families, he observed, �aim[ed] at something more than the supply of daily needs� (15); this aim initiated the earliest political formation, the village. Aristotle famously described man (by which he meant the adult Greek male (16)) as a �political animal� (politikon zoon) who presided over family members not only to meet their material needs but as the material precondition for his participation in political life, in which discourse and reason replaced mindless deeds, custom, and violence. Thus, �[w]hen several villages are united in a single complete community (koinonan), large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing,� he continued, �the polis comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life.� (17) For Aristotle, and we may assume also for the ancient Athenians, the municipality's proper functions were thus not strictly instrumental or even economic. As the locale of human consociation, the municipality, and the social and political arrangements that people living there constructed, was humanity's telos, the arena par excellence where human beings, over the course of history, could actualize their potentiality for reason, self-consciousness, and creativity. Thus for the ancient Athenians, politics denoted not only the handling of the practical affairs of a polity but civic activities that were charged with moral obligation to one's community. All citizens of a city were expected to participate in civic activities as ethical beings. Examples of municipal democracy were not limited to ancient Athens. Quite to the contrary, long before class differentiations gave rise to the state, many relatively secular towns produced the earliest institutional structures of local democracy. Assemblies of the people may have existed in ancient Sumer, at the very beginning of the so-called �urban revolution� some seven or eight thousand years ago. They clearly appeared among the Greeks, and until the defeat of the Gracchus brothers, they were popular centers of power in republican Rome. They were nearly ubiquitous in the medieval towns of Europe and even in Russia, notably in Novgorod and Pskov, which, for a time, were among the most democratic cities in the Slavic world. The assembly, it should be emphasized, began to approximate its truly modern form in the neighborhood Parisian sections of 1793, when they became the authentic motive forces of the Great Revolution and conscious agents for the making of a new body politic. That they were never given the consideration they deserve in the literature on democracy, particularly democratic Marxist tendencies and revolutionary syndicalists, is dramatic evidence of the flaws that existed in the revolutionary tradition. These democratic municipal institutions normally existed in combative tension with grasping monarchs, feudal lords, wealthy families, and freebooting invaders until they were crushed, frequently in bloody struggles. It cannot be emphasized too strongly that every great revolution in modern history had a civic dimension that has been smothered in radical histories by an emphasis on class antagonisms, however important these antagonisms have been. Thus it is unthinkable that the English Revolution of the 1640s can be understood without singling out London as its terrain; or, by the same token, any discussions of the various French Revolutions without focusing on Paris, or the Russian Revolutions without dwelling on Petrograd, or the Spanish Revolution of 1936 without citing Barcelona as its most advanced social center. This centrality of the city is not a mere geographic fact; it is, above all, a profoundly political one, which involved the ways in which revolutionary masses aggregated and debated, the civic traditions that nourished them, and the environment that fostered their revolutionary views. Libertarian municipalism is an integral part of the Communalist framework, indeed its praxis, just as Communalism as a systematic body of revolutionary thought is meaningless without libertarian municipalism. The differences between Communalism and authentic or �pure� anarchism, let alone Marxism, are much too great to be spanned by a prefix such as anarcho-, social, neo-, or even libertarian. Any attempt to reduce Communalism to a mere variant of anarchism would be to deny the integrity of both ideas � indeed, to ignore their conflicting concepts of democracy, organization, elections, government, and the like. Gustave Lefrancais, the Paris Communard who may have coined this political term, adamantly declared that he was �a Communalist, not an anarchist.� (18) Above all, Communalism is engaged with the problem of power. (19) In marked contrast to the various kinds of communitarian enterprises favored by many self-designated anarchists, such as �people�s� garages, print shops, food coops, and backyard gardens, adherents of Communalism mobilize themselves to electorally engage in a potentially important center of power � the municipal council � and try to compel it to create legislatively potent neighborhood assemblies. These assemblies, it should be emphasized, would make every effort to delegitimate and depose the statist organs that currently control their villages, towns, or cities and thereafter act as the real engines in the exercise of power. Once a number of municipalities are democratized along communalist lines, they would methodically confederate into municipal leagues and challenge the role of the nation-state and, through popular assemblies and confederal councils, try to acquire control over economic and political life. Finally, Communalism, in contrast to anarchism, decidedly calls for decision-making by majority voting as the only equitable way for a large number of people to make decisions. Authentic anarchists claim that this principle � the �rule� of the minority by the majority � is authoritarian and propose instead to make decisions by consensus. Consensus, in which single individuals can veto majority decisions, threatens to abolish society as such. A free society is not one in which its members, like Homer�s lotus-eaters, live in a state of bliss without memory, temptation, or knowledge. Like it or not, humanity has eaten of the fruit of knowledge, and its memories are laden with history and experience. In a lived mode of freedom � contrary to mere caf� chatter � the rights of minorities to express their dissenting views will always be protected as fully as the rights of majorities. Any abridgements of those rights would be instantly corrected by the community � hopefully gently, but if unavoidable, forcefully � lest social life collapse into sheer chaos. Indeed, the views of a minority would be treasured as potential source of new insights and nascent truths that, if abridged, would deny society the sources of creativity and developmental advances � for new ideas generally emerge from inspired minorities that gradually gain the centrality they deserve at a given time and place � until, again, they too are challenged as the conventional wisdom of a period that is beginning to pass away and requires new (minority) views to replace frozen orthodoxies. It remains to ask: how are we to achieve this rational society? One anarchist writer would have it that the good society (or a true �natural� disposition of affairs, including a �natural man�) exists beneath the oppressive burdens of civilization like fertile soil beneath the snow. It follows from this mentality that all we are obliged to do to achieve the good society is to somehow eliminate the snow, which is to say capitalism, nation-states, churches, conventional schools, and other almost endless types of institutions that perversely embody domination in one form or another. Presumably an anarchist society � once state, governmental, and cultural institutions are merely removed � would emerge intact, ready to function and thrive as a free society. Such a �society,� if one can even call it such, would not require that we proactively create it: we would simply let the snow above it melt away. The process of rationally creating a free Communalist society, alas, will require substantially more thought and work than embracing a mystified concept of aboriginal innocence and bliss. A Communalist society should rest, above all, on the efforts of a new radical organization to change the world, one that has a new political vocabulary to explain its goals, and a new program and theoretical framework to make those goals coherent. It would, above all, require dedicated individuals who are willing to take on the responsibilities of education and, yes, leadership. Unless words are not to become completely mystified and obscure a reality that exists before our very eyes, it should minimally be acknowledged that leadership always exists and does not disappear because it is clouded by euphemisms such as �militants� or, as in Spain, �influential militants.� It must also be acknowledge that many individuals in earlier groups like the CNT were not just �influential militants� but outright leaders, whose views were given more consideration � and deservedly so! � than those of others because they were based on more experience, knowledge, and wisdom, as well as the psychological traits that were needed to provide effective guidance. A serious libertarian approach to leadership would indeed acknowledge the reality and crucial importance of leaders � all the more to establish the greatly needed formal structures and regulations that can effectively control and modify the activities of leaders and recall them when the membership decides their respect is being misused or when leadership becomes an exercise in the abusive exercise of power. A libertarian municipalist movement should function, not with the adherence of flippant and tentative members, but with people who have been schooled in the movement�s ideas, procedures and activities. They should, in effect, demonstrate a serious commitment to their organization � an organization whose structure is laid out explicitly in a formal constitution and appropriate bylaws. Without a democratically formulated and approved institutional framework whose members and leaders can be held accountable, clearly articulated standards of responsibility cease to exist. Indeed, it is precisely when a membership is no longer responsible to its constitutional and regulatory provisions that authoritarianism develops and eventually leads to the movement�s immolation. Freedom from authoritarianism can best be assured only by the clear, concise, and detailed allocation of power, not by pretensions that power and leadership are forms of �rule� or by libertarian metaphors that conceal their reality. It has been precisely when an organization fails to articulate these regulatory details that the conditions emerge for its degeneration and decay. Ironically, no stratum has been more insistent in demanding its freedom to exercise its will against regulation than chiefs, monarchs, nobles, and the bourgeoisie; similarly even well-meaning anarchists have seen individual autonomy as the true expression of freedom from the �artificialities� of civilization. In the realm of true freedom � that is, freedom that has been actualized as the result of consciousness, knowledge, and necessity � to know what we can and cannot do is more cleanly honest and true to reality than to avert the responsibility of knowing the limits of the lived world. Said a very wise man more than a century and a half ago: �Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please.� The need for the international Left to advance courageously beyond a Marxist, anarchist, syndicalist, or vague socialist framework toward a Communalist framework is particularly compelling today. Rarely in the history of leftist political ideas have ideologies been so wildly and irresponsibly muddled; rarely has ideology itself been so disparaged; rarely has the cry for �Unity!� on any terms been heard with such desperation. To be sure, the various tendencies that oppose capitalism should indeed unite around efforts to discredit and ultimately efface the market system. To such ends, unity is an invaluable desideratum: a united front of the entire Left is needed in order to counter the entrenched system � indeed, culture � of commodity production and exchange, and to defend the residual rights that the masses have won in earlier struggles against oppressive governments and social systems. The urgency of this need, however, does not require movement participants to abandon mutual criticism, or to stifle their criticism of the authoritarian traits present in anticapitalist organizations. Least of all does it require them to compromise the integrity and identity of their various programs. The vast majority of participants in today�s movement are inexperienced young radicals who have come of age in an era of postmodernist relativism. As a consequence, the movement is marked by a chilling eclecticism, in which tentative opinions are chaotically mismarried to ideals that should rest on soundly objective premises. (20) In a milieu where the clear expression of ideas is not valued and terms are inappropriately used, and where argumentation is disparaged as �aggressive� and, worse, �divisive,� it becomes difficult to formulate ideas in the crucible of debate. Ideas grow and mature best, in fact, not in the silence and controlled humidity of an ideological nursery, but in the tumult of dispute and mutual criticism. Following revolutionary socialist practices of the past, Communalists would try to formulate a minimum program that calls for satisfaction of the immediate concerns of the masses, such as improved wages and shelter or adequate park space and transportation. This minimum program would aim to satisfy the most elemental needs of the masses, to improve their access to the resources that make daily life tolerable. The maximum program, by contrast, would present an image of what human life could be like under libertarian socialism, at least as far as such a society is foreseeable in a world that is continually changing under the impact of seemingly unending industrial revolutions. Even more, however, Communalists would see their program and practice as a process. Indeed, a transitional program in which each new demand provides the springboard for escalating demands that lead toward more radical and eventually revolutionary demands. One of the most striking examples of a transitional demand was the programmatic call in the late nineteenth century by the Second International for a popular militia to replace a professional army. In still other cases, revolutionary socialists demanded that railroads be publicly owned (or, as revolutionary syndicalists might have demanded, be controlled by railroad workers) rather than privately owned and operated. None of these demands were in themselves revolutionary, but they opened pathways, politically, to revolutionary forms of ownership and operation � which, in turn, could be escalated to achieve the movement�s maximum program. Others might criticize such step-by-step endeavors as �reformist,� but Communalists do not contend that a Communalist society can be legislated into existence. What these demands try to achieve, in the short term, are new rules of engagement between the people and capital � rules that are all the more needed at a time when �direct action� is being confused with protests of mere events whose agenda is set entirely by the ruling classes. On the whole, Communalism is trying to rescue a realm of public action and discourse that is either disappearing or that is being be reduced to often-meaningless engagements with the police, or to street theater that, however artfully, reduces serious issues to simplistic performances that have no instructive influence. By contrast, Communalists try to build lasting organizations and institutions that can play a socially transformative role in the real world. Significantly, Communalists do not hesitate to run candidates in municipal elections who, if elected, would use what real power their offices confer to legislate popular assemblies into existence. These assemblies, in turn, would have the power ultimately to create effective forms of town-meeting government. Inasmuch as the emergence of the city � and city councils � long preceded the emergence of class society, councils based on popular assemblies are not inherently statist organs, and to participate seriously in municipal elections countervails reformist socialist attempts to elect statist delegates by offering the historic libertarian vision of municipal confederations as a practical, combative, and politically credible popular alternative to state power. Indeed, Communalist candidacies, which explicitly denounce parliamentary candidacies as opportunist, keep alive the debate over how libertarian socialism can be achieved � a debate that has been languishing for years. There should be no self-deception about the opportunities that exist as a means of transforming our existing irrational society into a rational one. Our choices on how to transform the existing society are still on the table of history and are faced with immense problems. But unless present and future generations are beaten into complete submission by a culture based on queasy calculation as well as by police with tear gas and water cannons, we cannot desist from fighting for what freedoms we have and try to expand them into a free society wherever the opportunity to do so emerges. At any rate we now know, in the light of all the weaponry and means of ecological destruction that are at hand, that the need for radical change cannot be indefinitely deferred. What is clear is that human beings are much too intelligent not to have a rational society; the most serious question we face is whether they are rational enough to achieve one. Notes 1. Many less-well-known names could be added to this list, but one that in particular I would like very much to single out is the gallant leader of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party, Maria Spiridonova, whose supporters were virtually alone in proposing a workable revolutionary program for the Russian people in 1917-18. Their failure to implement their political insights and replace the Bolsheviks (with whom they initially joined in forming the first Soviet government) not only led to their defeat but contributed to the disastrous failure of revolutionary movements in the century that followed. 2. I frankly regard this contradiction as more fundamental than the often-indiscernible tendency of the rate of profit to decline and thereby to render capitalist exchange inoperable�a contradiction to which Marxists assigned a decisive role in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 3. Contrary to Marx�s assertion that a society disappears only when it has exhausted its capacity for new technological developments, capitalism is in a state of permanent technological revolution�at times, frighteningly so. Marx erred on this score: it will take more than technological stagnation to terminate this system of social relations. As new issues challenge the validity of the entire system, the political and ecological domains will become all the more important. Alternatively, we are faced with the prospect that capitalism may pull down the entire world and leave behind little more than ashes and ruin�achieving, in short, the �capitalist barbarism� of which Rosa Luxemburg warned in her �Junius� essay. 4. I use the word extraordinary because, by Marxist standards, Europe was still objectively unprepared for a socialist revolution in 1914. Much of the continent, in fact, had yet to be colonized by the capitalist market or bourgeois social relations. The proletariat�still a very conspicuous minority of the population in a sea of peasants and small producers�had yet to mature as a class into a significant force. Despite the opprobrium that has been heaped on Plekhanov, Kautsky, Bernstein et al., they had a better understanding of the failure of Marxist socialism to embed itself in proletarian consciousness than did Lenin. Luxemburg, in any case, straddled the so-called �social-patriotic� and �internationalist� camps in her image of a Marxist party�s function, in contrast to Lenin, her principal opponent in the so-called �organizational question� in the Left of the wartime socialists, who was prepared to establish a �proletarian dictatorship� under all and any circumstances. The First World War was by no means inevitable, and it generated democratic and nationalist revolutions rather than proletarian ones. (Russia, in this respect, was no more a �workers� state� under Bolshevik rule than were the Hungarian and Bavarian �soviet� republics.) Not until 1939 was Europe placed in a position where a world war was inevitable. The revolutionary Left (to which I belonged at the time) frankly erred profoundly when it took a so-called �internationalist� position and refused to support the Allies (their imperialist pathologies notwithstanding) against the vanguard of world fascism, the Third Reich. 5. Kropotkin, for example, rejected democratic decision-making procedures: "Majority rule is as defective as any other kind of rule," he asserted. See Peter Kropotkin, �Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles,� in Kropotkin�s Revolutionary Pamphlets, edited by Roger N. Baldwin (1927; reprinted by New York: Dover, 1970), p. 68. 6. I have made the distinction between politics and statecraft in, for example, Murray Bookchin, From Urbanization to Cities: Toward a New Politics of Citizenship (1987; reprinted by London: Cassell, 1992), pp. 41-3, 59-61 7. On social ecology, see Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy (1982; reprinted by Warner, NH: Silver Brook, 2002); The Modern Crisis (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1987); and Remaking Society (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1989). The latter two books are out of print; some copies may be available from the Institute for Social Ecology in Plainfield, Vermont (ise@sover.net). 8. Several years ago, while I still identified myself as an anarchist, I attempted to formulate a distinction between �social� and �lifestyle� anarchism, and I wrote an article that identified Communalism as �the democratic dimension of anarchism� (see Left Green Perspectives, no. 31, October 1994). I no longer believe that Communalism is a mere �dimension� of anarchism, democratic or otherwise; rather, it is a distinct ideology with a revolutionary tradition that has yet to be explored. 9. To be sure, these points undergo modification in Communalism: for example, Marxism�s historical materialism, explaining the rise of class societies, is expanded by social ecology�s explanation of the anthropological and historical rise of hierarchy. Marxian dialectical materialism, in turn, is transcended by dialectical naturalism; and the anarcho-communist notion of a very loose �federation of autonomous communes� is replaced with a confederation from which its components, functioning in a democratic manner through citizens� assemblies, may withdraw only with the approval of the confederation as a whole. 10. What is so surprising about this minimalist dictionary definition is its overall accuracy: I would take issue only with its formulations �virtually autonomous� and �loosely bound,� which suggest a parochial and particularistic, even irresponsible relationship of the components of a confederation to the whole. 11. My writings on libertarian municipalism date back to the early 1970s, with �Spring Offensives and Summer Vacations,� Anarchos, no. 4 (1972). The more significant works include From Urbanization to Cities (1987; reprinted by London: Cassell, 1992), �Theses on Libertarian Municipalism,� Our Generation [Montreal], vol. 16, nos. 3-4 (Spring/Summer 1985); �Radical Politics in an Era of Advanced Capitalism,� Green Perspectives, no. 18 (Nov. 1989); �The Meaning of Confederalism,� Green Perspectives, no. 20 (November 1990); �Libertarian Municipalism: An Overview,� Green Perspectives, no. 24 (October 1991); and The Limits of the City (New York: Harper Colophon, 1974). For a concise summary, see Janet Biehl, The Politics of Social Ecology: Libertarian Municipalism (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1998). 12. For one such discussion, see Murray Bookchin, �The Ghost of Anarchosyndicalism,� Anarchist Studies, vol. 1, no. 1 (Spring 1993). 13. One of the great tragedies of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Spanish Revolution of 1936 was the failure of the masses to acquire more than the scantiest knowledge of social logistics and the complex interlinkages involved in providing for the necessities of life in a modern society. Inasmuch as those who had the expertise involved in managing productive enterprises and in making cities functional were supporters of the old regime, workers were in fact unable to actually take over the full control of factories. They were obliged instead to depend on �bourgeois specialists� to operate them, individuals who steadily made them the victims of a technocratic elite. 14. I have previously discussed this transformation of workers from mere class beings into citizens, among other places, in From Urbanization to Cities (1987; reprinted by London: Cassell, 1995), and in �Workers and the Peace Movement� (1983), published in The Modern Crisis (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1987). 15. Aristotle, Politics (1252 [b] 16), trans. Benjamin Jowett, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), vol. 2, p. 1987. 16. As a libertarian ideal for the future of humanity and a genuine domain of freedom, the Athenian polis falls far short of the city�s ultimate promise. Its population included slaves, subordinated women, and franchiseless resident aliens. Only a minority of male citizens possessed civic rights, and they ran the city without consulting a larger population. Materially, the stability of the polis depended upon the labor of its noncitizens. These are among the several monumental failings that later municipalities would have to correct. The polis is significant, however, not an example of an emancipated community but for the successful functioning of its free institutions. 17. Aristotle, Politics (1252 [b] 29-30), trans. Jowett; emphasis added. The words from the original Greek text may be found in the Loeb Classical Library edition: Aristotle, Politics, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972). 18. Lefrancais is quoted in Peter Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist (New York: Horizon Press, 1968), p. 393. I too would be obliged today to make the same statement. In the late 1950s, when anarchism in the United States was a barely discernible presence, it seemed like a sufficiently clear field in which I could develop social ecology, as well as the philosophical and political ideas that would eventually become dialectical naturalism and libertarian municipalism. I well knew that these views were not consistent with traditional anarchist ideas, least of all post-scarcity, which implied that a modern libertarian society rested on advanced material preconditions. Today I find that anarchism remains the very simplistic individualistic and antirationalist psychology it has always been. My attempt to retain anarchism under the name of �social anarchism� has largely been a failure, and I now find that the term I have used to denote my views must be replaced with Communalism, which coherently integrates and goes beyond the most viable features of the anarchist and Marxist traditions. Recent attempts to use the word anarchism as a leveler to minimize the abundant and contradictory differences that are grouped under that term and even celebrate its openness to �differences� make it a diffuse catch-all for tendencies that properly should be in sharp conflict with one another. 19. For a discussion of the very real problems created by anarchists� disdain for power during the 1936 Spanish Revolution, see the appendix to this article, �Anarchism and Power in the Spanish Revolution.� 20. I should note that by objective I do not refer merely to existential entities and events but also to potentialities that can be rationally conceived, nurtured, and in time actualized into what we would narrowly call realities. If mere substantiality were all that the term objective meant, no ideal or promise of freedom would be an objectively valid goal unless it existed under our very noses.
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reviver | 09-17-2009 03:58 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) I didn't mean to hijack your thread, Goldisima, but this stuff if fascinating, as well as pertinent IMHO to what we are celebrating here. It is so seductive... More from Murray: What is Communalism? The Democratic Dimension of Anarchism by Murray Bookchin Seldom have socially important words become more confused and divested of their historic meaning than they are at present. Two centuries ago, it is often forgotten, "democracy" was deprecated by monarchists and republicans alike as "mob rule." Today, democracy is hailed as "representative democracy," an oxymoron that refers to little more than a republican oligarchy of the chosen few who ostensibly speak for the powerless many. "Communism," for its part, once referred to a cooperative society that would be based morally on mutual respect and on an economy in which each contributed to the social labor fund according to his or her ability and received the means of life according to his or her needs. Today, "communism" is associated with the Stalinist gulag and wholly rejected as totalitarian. Its cousin, "socialism" -- which once denoted a politically free society based on various forms of collectivism and equitable material returns for labor -- is currently interchangeable with a somewhat humanistic bourgeois liberalism. During the 1980s and 1990s, as the entire social and political spectrum has shifted ideologically to the right, "anarchism" itself has not been immune to redefinition. In the Anglo-American sphere, anarchism is being divested of its social ideal by an emphasis on personal autonomy, an emphasis that is draining it of its historic vitality. A Stirnerite individualism -- marked by an advocacy of lifestyle changes, the cultivation of behavioral idiosyncrasies and even an embrace of outright mysticism -- has become increasingly prominent. This personalistic "lifestyle anarchism" is steadily eroding the socialistic core of anarchist concepts of freedom. Let me stress that in the British and American social tradition, autonomy and freedom are not equivalent terms. By insisting the need to eliminate personal domination, autonomy focuses on the individual as the formative component and locus of society. By contrast, freedom, despite its looser usages, denotes the absence of domination in society, of which the individual is part. This contrast becomes very important when individualist anarchists equate collectivism as such with the tyranny of the community over its members. Today, if an anarchist theorist like L. Susan Brown can assert that "a group is a collection of individuals, no more and no less," rooting anarchism in the abstract individual, we have reason to be concerned. Not that this view is entirely new to anarchism; various anarchist historians have described it as implicit in the libertarian outlook. Thus the individual appears ab novo, endowed with natural rights and bereft of roots in society or historical development.1 But whence does this "autonomous" individual derive? What is the basis for its "natural rights," beyond a priori premises and hazy intuitions? What role does historical development play in its formation? What social premises give birth to it, sustain it, indeed nourish it? How can a "collection of individuals" institutionalize itself such as to give rise to something more than an autonomy that consists merely in refusing to impair the "liberties" of others -- or "negative liberty," as Isaiah Berlin called it in contradistinction to "positive liberty," which is substantive freedom, in our case constructed along socialistic lines? In the history of ideas, "autonomy," referring to strictly personal "self-rule," found its ancient apogee in the imperial Roman cult of libertas. During the rule of the Julian-Claudian Caesars, the Roman citizen enjoyed a great deal of autonomy to indulge his own desires -- and lusts -- without reproval from any authority, provided that he did not interfere with the business and the needs of the state. In the more theoretically developed liberal tradition of John Locke and John Stuart Mill, autonomy acquired a more expansive sense that was opposed ideologically to excessive state authority. During the nineteenth century, if there was any single subject that gained the interest of classical liberals, it was political economy, which they often conceived not only as the study of goods and services, but also as a system of morality. Indeed, liberal thought generally reduced the social to the economic. Excessive state authority was opposed in favor of a presumed economic autonomy. Ironically, liberals often invoked the word freedom, in the sense of "autonomy," as they do to the present day.2 Despite their assertions of autonomy and distrust of state authority, however, these classical liberal thinkers did not in the last instance hold to the notion that the individual is completely free from lawful guidance. Indeed, their interpretation of autonomy actually presupposed quite definite arrangements beyond the individual -- notably, the laws of the marketplace. Individual autonomy to the contrary, these laws constitute a social organizing system in which all "collections of individuals" are held under the sway of the famous "invisible hand" of competition. Paradoxically, the laws of the marketplace override the exercise of "free will" by the same sovereign individuals who otherwise constitute the "collection of individuals." No rationally formed society can exist without institutions and if a society as a "collection of individuals, no more and no less" were ever to emerge, it would simply dissolve. Such a dissolution, to be sure, would never happen in reality. The liberals, nonetheless, can cling to the notion of a "free market" and "free competition" guided by the "inexorable laws" of political economy. Alternatively, freedom, a word that shares etymological roots with the German Freiheit (for which there is no equivalent in Romance languages), takes its point of departure not from the individual but from the community or, more broadly, from society. In the last century and early in the present one, as the great socialist theorists further sophisticated ideas of freedom, the individual and his or her development were consciously intertwined with social evolution -- specifically, the institutions that distinguish society from mere animal aggregations. What made their focus uniquely ethical was the fact that as social revolutionaries they asked the key question -- What constitutes a rational society? -- a question that abolishes the centrality of economics in a free society. Where liberal thought generally reduced the social to the economic, various socialisms (apart from Marxism), among which Kropotkin denoted anarchism the "left wing," dissolved the economic into the social.3 In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as Enlightenment thought and its derivatives brought the idea of the mutability of institutions to the foreground of social thought, the individual, too, came to be seen as mutable. To the socialistic thinkers of the period, a "collection" was a totally alien way of denoting society; they properly considered individual freedom to be congruent with social freedom and, very significantly, they defined freedom as such as an evolving, as well as a unifying, concept. In short, both society and the individual were historicized in the best sense of this term: as an ever-developing, self-generative and creative process in which each existed within and through the other. Hopefully, this historicization would be accompanied by ever-expanding new rights and duties. The slogan of the First International, in fact, was the demand, "No rights without duties, no duties without rights" -- a demand that later appeared on the mastheads of anarchosyndicalist periodicals in Spain and elsewhere well into the present century. Thus, for classical socialist thinkers, to conceive of the individual without society was as meaningless as to conceive of society without individuals. They sought to realize both in rational institutional frameworks that fostered the greatest degree of free expression in every aspect of social life. II Individualism, as conceived by classical liberalism, rested on a fiction to begin with. Its very presupposition of a social "lawfulness" maintained by marketplace competition was far removed from its myth of the totally sovereign, "autonomous" individual. With even fewer presuppositions to support itself, the woefully undertheorized work of Max Stirner shared a similar disjunction: the ideological disjunction between the ego and society. The pivotal issue that reveals this disjunction -- indeed, this contradiction -- is the question of democracy. By democracy, of course, I do not mean "representative government" in any form, but rather face-to-face democracy. With regard to its origins in classical Athens, democracy as I use it is the idea of the direct management of the polis by its citizenry in popular assemblies -- which is not to downplay the fact that Athenian democracy was scarred by patriarchy, slavery, class rule and the restriction of citizenship to males of putative Athenian birth. What I am referring to is an evolving tradition of institutional structures, not a social "model."4 Democracy generically defined, then, is the direct management of society in face-to-face assemblies -- in which policy is formulated by the resident citizenry and administration is executed by mandated and delegated councils. Libertarians commonly consider democracy, even in this sense, as a form of "rule" -- since in making decisions, a majority view prevails and thus "rules" over a minority. As such, democracy is said to be inconsistent with a truly libertarian ideal. Even so knowledgeable a historian of anarchism as Peter Marshall observes that, for anarchists, "the majority has no more right to dictate to the minority, even a minority of one, than the minority to the majority."5 Scores of libertarians have echoed this idea time and again. What is striking about assertions like Marshall's is their highly pejorative language. Majorities, it would seem, neither "decide" nor "debate": rather, they "rule," "dictate," "command," "coerce" and the like. In a free society that not only permitted, but fostered the fullest degree of dissent, whose podiums at assemblies and whose media were open to the fullest expression of all views, whose institutions were truly forums for discussion -- one may reasonably ask whether such a society would actually "dictate" to anyone when it had to arrive at a decision that concerned the public welfare. How, then, would society make dynamic collective decisions about public affairs, aside from mere individual contracts? The only collective alternative to majority voting as a means of decision-making that is commonly presented is the practice of consensus. Indeed, consensus has even been mystified by avowed "anarcho-primitivists," who consider Ice Age and contemporary "primitive" or "primal" peoples to constitute the apogee of human social and psychic attainment. I do not deny that consensus may be an appropriate form of decision-making in small groups of people who are thoroughly familiar with one another. But to examine consensus in practical terms, my own experience has shown me that when larger groups try to make decisions by consensus, it usually obliges them to arrive at the lowest common intellectual denominator in their decision-making: the least controversial or even the most mediocre decision that a sizable assembly of people can attain is adopted -- precisely because everyone must agree with it or else withdraw from voting on that issue. More disturbingly, I have found that it permits an insidious authoritarianism and gross manipulations -- even when used in the name of autonomy or freedom. To take a very striking case in point: the largest consensus-based movement (involving thousands of participants) in recent memory in the United States was the Clamshell Alliance, which was formed to oppose the Seabrook nuclear reactor in the mid-1970s in New Hampshire. In her recent study of the movement, Barbara Epstein has called the Clamshell the "first effort in American history to base a mass movement on nonviolent direct action" other than the 1960s civil rights movement. As a result of its apparent organizational success, many other regional alliances against nuclear reactors were formed throughout the United States. I can personally attest to the fact that within the Clamshell Alliance, consensus was fostered by often cynical Quakers and by members of a dubiously "anarchic" commune that was located in Montague, Massachusetts. This small, tightly knit faction, unified by its own hidden agendas, was able to manipulate many Clamshell members into subordinating their goodwill and idealistic commitments to those opportunistic agendas. The de facto leaders of the Clamshell overrode the rights and ideals of the innumerable individuals who entered it and undermined their morale and will. In order for that clique to create full consensus on a decision, minority dissenters were often subtly urged or psychologically coerced to decline to vote on a troubling issue, inasmuch as their dissent would essentially amount to a one-person veto. This practice, called "standing aside" in American consensus processes, all too often involved intimidation of the dissenters, to the point that they completely withdrew from the decision-making process, rather than make an honorable and continuing expression of their dissent by voting, even as a minority, in accordance with their views. Having withdrawn, they ceased to be political beings -- so that a "decision" could be made. More than one "decision" in the Clamshell Alliance was made by pressuring dissenters into silence and, through a chain of such intimidations, "consensus" was ultimately achieved only after dissenting members nullified themselves as participants in the process. On a more theoretical level, consensus silenced that most vital aspect of all dialogue, dissensus. The ongoing dissent, the passionate dialogue that still persists even after a minority accedes temporarily to a majority decision, was replaced in the Clamshell by dull monologues -- and the uncontroverted and deadening tone of consensus. In majority decision-making, the defeated minority can resolve to overturn a decision on which they have been defeated -- they are free to openly and persistently articulate reasoned and potentially persuasive disagreements. Consensus, for its part, honors no minorities, but mutes them in favor of the metaphysical "one" of the "consensus" group. The creative role of dissent, valuable as an ongoing democratic phenomenon, tends to fade away in the gray uniformity required by consensus. Any libertarian body of ideas that seeks to dissolve hierarchy, classes, domination and exploitation by allowing even Marshall's "minority of one" to block decision-making by the majority of a community, indeed, of regional and nationwide confederations, would essentially mutate into a Rousseauean "general will" with a nightmare world of intellectual and psychic conformity. In more gripping times, it could easily "force people to be free," as Rousseau put it -- and as the Jacobins practiced it in 1793-94. The de facto leaders of the Clamshell were able to get away with their behavior precisely because the Clamshell was not sufficiently organized and democratically structured, such that it could countervail the manipulation of a well-organized few. The de facto leaders were subject to few structures of accountability for their actions. The ease with which they cannily used consensus decision-making for their own ends has been only partly told,6 but consensus practices finally shipwrecked this large and exciting organization with its Rousseauean "republic of virtue." It was also ruined, I may add, by an organizational laxity that permitted mere passersby to participate in decision-making, thereby destructuring the organization to the point of invertebracy. It was for good reason that I and many young anarchists from Vermont who had actively participated in the Alliance for some few years came to view consensus as anathema. If consensus could be achieved without compulsion of dissenters, a process that is feasible in small groups, who could possibly oppose it as a decision-making process? But to reduce a libertarian ideal to the unconditional right of a minority -- let alone a "minority of one" -- to abort a decision by a "collection of individuals" is to stifle the dialectic of ideas that thrives on opposition, confrontation and, yes, decisions with which everyone need not agree and should not agree, lest society become an ideological cemetery. Which is not to deny dissenters every opportunity to reverse majority decisions by unimpaired discussion and advocacy. III I have dwelled on consensus at some length because it constitutes the usual individualistic alternative to democracy, so commonly counterposed as "no rule" -- or a free-floating form of personal autonomy -- against majority "rule." Inasmuch as libertarian ideas in the United States and Britain are increasingly drifting toward affirmations of personal autonomy, the chasm between individualism and antistatist collectivism is becoming unbridgeable, in my view. A personalistic anarchism has taken deep root among young people today. Moreover, they increasingly use the word "anarchy" to express not only a personalistic stance, but also an antirational, mystical, antitechnological and anticivilizational body of views that makes it impossible for anarchists who anchor their ideas in socialism to apply the word "anarchist" to themselves without a qualifying adjective. Howard Ehrlich, one of our ablest and most concerned American comrades, uses the phrase "social anarchism" as the title of his magazine, apparently to distinguish his views from an anarchism that is ideologically anchored in liberalism and possibly worse. I would like to suggest that far more than a qualifying adjective is needed if we are to elaborate our notion of freedom more expansively. It would be unfortunate indeed if libertarians today had to literally explain that they believe in a society, not a mere collection of individuals! A century ago, this belief was presupposed; today, so much has been stripped away from the collectivistic flesh of classical anarchism that it is on the verge of becoming a personal life-stage for adolescents and a fad for their middle-aged mentors, a route to "self-realization" and the seemingly "radical" equivalent of encounter groups. Today, there must be a place on the political spectrum where a body of anti-authoritarian thought that advances humanity's bitter struggle to arrive at the realization of its authentic social life -- the famous "Commune of communes" -- can be clearly articulated institutionally as well as ideologically. There must be a means by which socially concerned anti-authoritarians can develop a program and a practice for attempting to change the world, not merely their psyches. There must be an arena of struggle that can mobilize people, help them to educate themselves and develop an anti-authoritarian politics, to use this word in its classical meaning, indeed that pits a new public sphere against the State and capitalism. In short, we must recover not only the socialist dimension of anarchism but its political dimension: democracy. Bereft of its democratic dimension and its communal or municipal public sphere, anarchism may indeed denote little more than a "collection of individuals, no more and no less." Even anarcho-communism, although it is by far the most preferable of adjectival modifications of the libertarian ideal, nonetheless retains a structural vagueness that tells us nothing about the institutions necessary to expedite a communistic distribution of goods. It spells out a broad goal, a desideratum -- one, alas, terribly tarnished by the association of "communism" with Bolshevism and the state -- but its public sphere and forms of institutional association remain unclear at best and susceptible to a totalitarian onus at worst. I wish to propose that the democratic and potentially practicable dimension of the libertarian goal be expressed as Communalism, a term that, unlike political terms that once stood unequivocally for radical social change, has not been historically sullied by abuse. Even ordinary dictionary definitions of Communalism, I submit, capture to a great degree the vision of a "Commune of communes" that is being lost by current Anglo-American trends that celebrate anarchy variously as "chaos," as a mystical "oneness" with "nature," as self-fulfillment or as "ecstasy," but above all as personalistic.7 Communalism is defined as "a theory or system of government [sic!] in which virtually autonomous [sic!] local communities are loosely in a federation."8 No English dictionary is very sophisticated politically. This use of the terms "government" and "autonomous" does not commit us to an acceptance of the State and parochialism, let alone individualism. Further, federation is often synonymous with confederation, the term I regard as more consistent with the libertarian tradition. What is remarkable about this (as yet) unsullied term is its extraordinary proximity to libertarian municipalism, the political dimension of social ecology that I have advanced at length elsewhere. In Communalism, libertarians have an available word that they can enrich as much by experience as by theory. Most significantly, the word can express not only what we are against, but also what we are for, namely the democratic dimension of libertarian thought and a libertarian form of society. It is a word that is meant for a practice that can tear down the ghetto walls that are increasingly imprisoning anarchism in cultural exotica and psychological introversion. It stands in explicit opposition to the suffocating individualism that sits so comfortably side-by-side with bourgeois self-centeredness and a moral relativism that renders any social action irrelevant, indeed, institutionally meaningless. It is important to emphasize that libertarian municipalism--or Communalism, as I have called it here--is a developing outlook, a politics that seeks ultimately to achieve the "Commune of communes." As such, it tries to provide a directly democratic confederal alternative to the state and to a centralized bureaucratic society. To challenge the validity of libertarian municipalism, as many liberals and ecosocialists have, on the premise that the size of existing urban entities raises an insurmountable logistical obstacles to its successful practice is to turn it into a chess "strategy" and freeze it within the given conditions of society, then tally up debits and credits to determine its potential for "success," "effectiveness," "high levels of participation," and the like. Libertarian municipalism is not a form of social bookkeeping for conditions as they are but rather a transformative process that starts with what can be changed within present conditions as a valid point of departure for achieving what should be in a rational society. Libertarian municipalism is above all a politics, to use this word in its original Hellenic sense, that is engaged in the process of remaking what are now called "electoral constituents" or "taxpayers" into active citizens, and of remaking what are now urban conglomerations into genuine communities related to each other through confederations that would countervail and ultimately challenge the existence of the state. To see it otherwise is to reduce this multifaceted, processual development to a caricature. Nor is libertarian municipalism intended as a substitute for association as such--for the familial and economic aspects of life--without which human existence is impossible in any society.9 It is rather an outlook and a developing practice for recovering and enlarging on an unprecedented scale what is now a declining public sphere, one that the state has invaded and in many cases virtually eliminated.10 If the large size of municipal entities and the decline of the public sphere are accepted as unalterable givens, then we are left with no hope but to work with the given in every sphere of human activity--in which case, anarchists might as well join with social-democrats (as quite a few have, for all practical purposes) to work with and merely modify the state apparatus, the market, and a commodity system of relationships. Indeed, on the basis of such commonsensical reasoning, a far stronger argument could be made for preserving the state, the market, the use of money, and global corporations than could be made merely for decentralizing urban agglomerations. In fact, many urban agglomerations are already groaning physically and logistically under the burden of their size and are reconstituting themselves into satellite cities before our very eyes, even though their populations and physical jurisdictions are still grouped under the name of a single metropolis. Strangely, many life-style anarchists, who, like New Age visionaries, have a remarkable ability to imagine changing everything tend to raise strong objections when they are asked to actually change anything in the existing society--except to cultivate greater "self-expression," have more mystical reveries, and turn their anarchism into an art form, retreating into social quietism. When critics of libertarian municipalism bemoan the prohibitively large number of people who are likely to attend municipal assemblies or function as active participants in them--and question how "practical" such assemblies could be--in large cities like New York, Mexico City, and Tokyo, may I suggest that a Communalist approach raises the issue of whether we can indeed change the existing society at all and achieve the "Commune of communes." If such a Communalist approach seems terribly formidable, I can only suspect that for life-style anarchists the battle is already lost. For my part, if anarchy came to mean little more than an aesthetics of "self-cultivation," an titillating riot, spraycan graffiti, or the heroics of personalistic acts nourished by a self-indulgent "imaginary," I would have little in common with it. Theatrical personalism became too much in style when the sixties counterculture turned into the seventies New Age culture--and became a model for bourgeois fashion designers and boutiques. IV Anarchism is on the retreat today. If we fail to elaborate the democratic dimension of anarchism, we will miss the opportunity not only to form a vital movement, but to prepare people for a revolutionary social praxis in the future. Alas, we are witnessing the appalling desiccation of a great tradition, such that neo-Situationists, nihilists, primitivists, antirationalists, anticivilizationists and avowed "chaotics" are closeting themselves in their egos, reducing anything resembling public political activity to juvenile antics. None of which is to deny the importance of a libertarian culture, one that is aesthetic, playful, and broadly imaginative. The anarchists of the last century and part of the present one justifiably took pride in the fact that many innovative artists, particularly painters and novelists, aligned themselves with anarchic views of reality and morality. But behavior that verges on a mystification of criminality, asociality, intellectual incoherence, anti-intellectualism and disorder for its own sake is simply lumpen. It feeds on the dregs of capitalism itself. However much such behavior invokes the "rights" of the ego as it dissolves the political into the personal or inflates the personal into a transcendental category, it is a priori in the sense that has no origins outside the mind to even potentially support it. As Bakunin and Kropotkin argued repeatedly, individuality has never existed apart from society and the individual's own evolution has been coextensive with social evolution. To speak of "The Individual" apart from its social roots and social involvements is as meaningless as to speak of a society that contains no people or institutions. Merely to exist, institutions must have form, as I argued some thirty years ago in my essay "The Forms of Freedom," lest freedom itself -- individual as well as social -- lose its definability. Institutions must be rendered functional, not abstracted into Kantian categories that float in a rarefied academic air. They must have the tangibility of structure, however offensive a term like structure may be to individualist libertarians: concretely, they must have the means, policies and experimental praxis to arrive at decisions. Unless everyone is to be so psychologically homogeneous and society's interests so uniform in character that dissent is simply meaningless, there must be room for conflicting proposals, discussion, rational explication and majority decisions -- in short, democracy. Like it or not, such a democracy, if it is libertarian, will be Communalist and institutionalized in such a way that it is face-to-face, direct, and grassroots, a democracy that advances our ideas beyond negative liberty to positive liberty. A Communalist democracy obliges us to develop a public sphere -- and in the Athenian meaning of the term, a politics -- that grows in tension and ultimately in a decisive conflict with the State. Confederal, antihierarchical, and collectivist, based on the municipal management of the means of life rather than their control by vested interests (such as workers' control, private control, and more dangerously, State control), it may justly be regarded as the processual actualization of the libertarian ideal as a daily praxis.9 The fact that a Communalist politics entails participation in municipal elections -- based, to be sure, on an unyielding program that demands the formation of popular assemblies and their confederation -- does not mean that entry into existing village, town and city councils involves participation in state organs, any more than establishing an anarchosyndicalist union in a privately owned factory involves participation in capitalist forms of production. One need only turn to the French Revolution of 1789-94 to see how seemingly state institutions, like the municipal "districts" established under the monarchy in 1789 to expedite elections to the Estates General, were transformed four years later into largely revolutionary bodies, or "sections," that nearly gave rise to the "Commune of communes." Their movement for a sectional democracy was defeated during the insurrection of June 2, 1793 -- not at the hands of the monarchy, but by the treachery of the Jacobins. Capitalism will not generously provide us the popular democratic institutions we need. Its control over society today is ubiquitous, not only in what little remains of the public sphere, but in the minds of many self-styled radicals. A revolutionary people must either assert their control over institutions that are basic to their public lives -- which Bakunin correctly perceived to be their municipal councils -- or else they will have no choice but to withdraw into their private lives, as is already happening on an epidemic scale today.10 It would be ironic, indeed, if an individualist anarchism and its various mutations, from the academic and transcendentally moral to the chaotic and the lumpen, in the course of rejecting democracy even for "a minority of one," were to further raise the walls of dogma that are steadily growing around the libertarian ideal, and if, wittingly or not, anarchism were to turn into another narcissistic cult that snugly fits into an alienated, commodified, introverted and egocentric society. -- September 18, 1994 1 L. Susan Brown: The Politics of Individualism (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1993), p. 12. I do not question the sincerity of Brown's libertarian views; she regards herself as an anarcho-communist, as do I. But she makes no direct attempt to reconcile her individualistic views with communism in any form. Both Bakunin and Kropotkin would have strongly disagreed with her formulation of what constitutes "a group," while Margaret Thatcher, clearly for reasons of her own, might be rather pleased with it, since it is so akin to the former British prime minister's notorious statement that there is no such thing as society -- there are only individuals. Certainly Brown is not a Thatcherite, nor Thatcher an anarchist, but however different they may be in other respects, both have ideological filiations with classical liberalism that make their shared affirmations of the "autonomy" of the individual possible. I cannot ignore the fact, however, that neither Bakunin's, Kropotkin's nor my own views are treated with any depth in Brown's book (pp. 156-62), and her account of them is filled with serious inaccuracies. 2 Liberals were not always in accord with each other nor did they hold notably coherent doctrines. Mill, a free-thinking humanitarian and utilitarian, in fact exhibited a measure of sympathy for socialism. I am not singling out here any particular liberal theorist, be he Mill, Adam Smith or Friedrich Hayek. Each had or has his or her individual eccentricity or personal line of thought. I am speaking of traditional liberalism as a whole, whose general features involve a belief in the "laws" of the marketplace and "free" competition. Marx was by no means free of this influence: he, too, unrelentingly tried to discover "laws" of society, as did many socialists during the last century, including utopians like Charles Fourier. 3 See Kropotkin's "Anarchism," the famous Encyclopaedia Britannica article that became one of his most widely read works. Republished in Roger N. Baldwin, ed., Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets: A Collection of Writings by Peter Kropotkin (Vanguard Press, 1927; reprinted by Dover, 1970). 4 I have never regarded the classical Athenian democracy as a "model" or an "ideal" to be restored in a rational society. I have long cited Athens with admiration for one reason: the polis around Periclean times provides us with striking evidence that certain structures can exist -- policy-making by an assembly, rotation and limitation of public offices and defense by a nonprofessional armed citizenry. The Mediterranean world of the fifth century B.C.E. was largely based on monarchical authority and repressive custom. That all Mediterranean societies of that time required or employed patriarchy, slavery and the State (usually in an absolutist form) makes the Athenian experience all the more remarkable for what it uniquely introduced into social life, including an unprecedented degree of free expression. It would be naive to suppose that Athens could have risen above the most basic attributes of ancient society in its day, which, from a distance of 2,400 years we now have the privilege of judging as ugly and inhuman. Regrettably, no small number of people today are willing to judge the past by the present. 5 Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (London: HarperCollins, 1992), p. 22. 6 Barbara Epstein, Political Protest and Cultural Revolution: Non-Violent Direct Action in the 1970s and 1980s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), especially pp. 59, 78, 89, 94-95, 167-68, 177. Although I disagree with some of the facts and conclusions in Epstein's book -- based on my personal as well as general knowledge of the Clamshell Alliance -- she vividly portrays the failure of consensus in this movement. 7 The association of "chaos," "nomadism," and "cultural terrorism" with "ontological anarchy" (as though the bourgeoisie had not turned such antics into an "ecstasy industry" in the United States) is fully explicated in Hakim Bey's (aka Peter Lamborn Wilson) T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone (New York: Autonomedia, 1985). The Yuppie Whole Earth Review celebrates this pamphlet as the most influential and widely read "manifesto" of America's countercultural youth, noting with approval that it is happily free of conventional anarchist attacks upon capitalism. This kind of detritus from the 1960s is echoed in one form or another by most American anarchist newssheets that pander to youth who have not yet "had their fun before it is time to grow up" (a comment I heard years later from Parisian student activists of '68) and become real estate agents and accountants. For an "ecstatic experience," visitors to New York's Lower East Side (near St. Mark's Place) can dine, I am told, at Anarchy Caf�. This establishment offers fine dining from an expensive menu, a reproduction of the famous mural The Fourth Estate on the wall, perhaps to aid in digestion, and a maitre d' to greet Yuppie customers. I cannot attest to whether the writings of Guy Debord, Raoul Vaneigem, Fredy Perlman and Hakim Bey are on sale there or whether copies of Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, The Fifth Estate or Demolition Derby are available for perusal, but happily there are enough exotic bookstores nearby to buy them. 8 Quoted from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1978). 9 History provides no "model" for libertarian municipalism, be it Periclean Athens, or a tribe, village, town, or city--or a hippie commune or Buddhist ashram. Nor is the "affinity group" a model--the Spanish anarchists used this word interchangeably with "action group" to refer to an organizational unit for the FAI, not to the institutional basis for a libertarian society. 10 A detailed discussion of the differences between the social domain, which includes the ways in which we associate for personal and economic ends; the public sphere or political domain; and the state in all its phases and forms of development can be found in my book Urbanization Without Cities (1987; Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1992). 11 I should emphasize that I am not counterposing a Communalist democracy to such enterprises as cooperatives, people's clinics, communes, and the like. But there should be no illusions that such enterprises are more than exercises in popular control and ways of bringing people together in a highly atomized society. No food cooperative can replace giant retail food markets under capitalism and no clinic can replace hospital complexes, any more than a craft shop can replace factories or plants. I should observe that the Spanish anarchists, almost from their inception, took full note of the limits of the cooperativist movement in the 1880s, when such movements were in fact more feasible than they are today, and they significantly separated themselves from cooperativism programmatically. 12 For Bakunin, the people "have a healthy, practical common sense when it comes to communal affairs. They are fairly well informed and know how to select from their midst the most capable officials. This is why municipal elections always best reflect the real attitude and will of the people." Bakunin on Anarchy, Sam Dolgoff, ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972; republished by Black Rose Books: Montreal), p. 223. I have omitted the queasy interpolations that Dolgoff inserted to "modify" Bakunin's meaning. It may be well to note that anarchism in the last century was more plastic and flexible than it is today. http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist...MMNL2.MCW.html

Noble | 09-18-2009 08:08 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by goldissima (Post 1925496) an ecovillage is a communist concept? communism/fascism go along with coercion. So far it does not seem to to be the case.
Yes, I suspect the ecovillage is a communist concept. Not having read the lease/purchase agreement, covenants/ restrictions, etc. I can only go on my instincts. Your choice of words concerns me, "So far..." Please tell us you have a bug out plan for the ecovillage. As stated before, not my cup of tea but best wishes for you.

Tomsawyer | 09-19-2009 12:38 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by goldissima (Post 1922941) just in case you were joking, I will nonetheless tell you that it is strictly family oriented. we signed a release form acknowledging this
What a waste, who wants to join a commune full of hippies with no free love!?? :no_ma:

FiftySense | 09-19-2009 01:12 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by Tomsawyer (Post 1929015) What a waste, who wants to join a commune full of hippies with no free love!?? :no_ma:
Who wants to have a "Days of our lives" everyone sleep with everyone drama fest in their commune? When sexual morality is observed, the functions of society will remain intact.

johnlvs2run | 09-19-2009 02:03 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Trying to dictate how other people live their lives is not healthy. Goldissima, good for you. I like the idea of a community taking care of itself.

goldissima | 09-19-2009 10:48 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by Noble (Post 1928628) Yes, I suspect the ecovillage is a communist concept. Your choice of words concerns me, "So far..."
to jump into your bandwagon, do you know that the entire planet is in communistic mode and sustained by ppl like you perhaps that still go to work everyday and pay their taxes, go from pay check to another? although there is a main structure dictated FIRST by the potential of its individuals, such an ecovillage rather leans toward left-anarchy, if you care to stick to "labels". yes, 'so far' because no ecovillage is perfect but this one has track records as it has achieved many goals already. The planet is on the brink and when the SHTF, many will regret not to have drunk some "cool aid"... unless you are fully financially secure (and could afford to leave the country), to adpat yourself to the situation that is coming there are/will be some compromises to make, I am afraid.

Noble | 09-20-2009 12:06 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by goldissima (Post 1930151) to jump into your bandwagon, do you know that the entire planet is in communistic mode and sustained by ppl like you perhaps that still go to work everyday and pay their taxes, go from pay check to another? although there is a main structure dictated FIRST by the potential of its individuals, such an ecovillage rather leans toward left-anarchy, if you care to stick to "labels". yes, 'so far' because no ecovillage is perfect but this one has track records as it has achieved many goals already. The planet is on the brink and when the SHTF, many will regret not to have drunk some "cool aid"... unless you are fully financially secure (and could afford to leave the country), to adpat yourself to the situation that is coming there are/will be some compromises to make, I am afraid.
Communism (not a label) is not for everyone, myself included. I don't do well "following the leader". So far its working for you. I honestly think that's GREAT!! :5_1_120:

scyth | 09-20-2009 12:46 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Gee whillikers - This thread is starting to read like the Mainline sociological analytical article In the latest New York Review of Books as Filmed and presented by the producers of "Survivor." I suppose I lived in what you might call a commune first In the late sixties, in Southren Oregon. Now, just checking the reality meter here: 1.) We all had jobs, or a way of making a living. 2.) We shared costs. Funny story here - one of the dogs was a bloodhound named MacDougal. All of the bills and the Sears & Roebuck account and a couple credit cards were in the name of Michael MacDougal......... 3.) We had a massive truck garden, which put out so much that we put the surplus in boxes by the side of the driveway for friends and neighbors to pick up, as they chose, each day. The truck garden was fed with fantastically aged turkey shit from a local rancher, who couldn't wait to give it away - he raised and sold 10k turkeys/year. That's a lot of shit. 4.) I started a cabinet shop in a couple beat up sheds behind the main house. Soon we all became cabinetmakers. 5.) Didn't matter if you had long hair or short hair, smoked dope or smoked salmon. All were welcome. 6.) The whole place ran on wood heat. Every year, we would borrow the neighbor's deuce and a half and go up hiway 140, and cut and split about 10 cords. The neighbor got a couple for his loan of the truck. 7.) There were plenty of all kinds of tools, guns, chainsaws, pulaskis (the reason I mention pulaskis is we would bid on "wilderness" trail building projects every year; gas powered tools were prohibited) and we went out more than a few times in a kind of barnraising mode when somebody had a big project or an emergency. This list could go on for awhile. Anyway, it was neither a project in social or political engineering. Just a bunch of people having a very, very good time. So don't overcomplicate it. scyth

Noble | 09-20-2009 02:39 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by scyth (Post 1930294) So don't overcomplicate it.
If your arrangement was such a good gig why aren't you still there? My point is this; for better or worse, life IS complicated. Moving to a commune / communal living arrangement doesn't necessarily make the human experience less complicated, nor more fulfilling for that matter. Since Goldissima has made up her mind to be where she is, I wish her only the best. I discourage others from doing the same. The human condition being what it is eventually "the bloom falls off the rose" and "the blush wears off the bride". Many (most?) communes and cults end up harboring opression and depravity of one form or another over time, regardless of the best altruistic intentions of its members and or founders. While one could claim the same outcomes can and do occur living in 'normal" society, the problem is with cults/communes the abuses are sheltered from the larger society (by design). The checks and balances get out of whack. Access to outside help from family, police, and the law can be greatly restricted. When tensions run high, out come the firearms and cool-aid. Granted, Guyana and J. Jones is an extreme example but it illustrates how when things go bad, they can go very very bad. The upside potential for quality of life in cults/communes doesn't outweigh the downside. Life is complicated, no apologies. I'm all for people having a very, very good time.

Gaillo | 09-20-2009 02:46 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) I know where you are. Which means TPTB probably do also, if interested enough. I would suggest some circumspection - I'm glad for you, and I'm in a similar situation - though not is so much of a "communal" setting. No need to advertise too much, regardless of how proud (and you should be) you feel about your accomplishment. Discretion... will win in the end.

Noble | 09-20-2009 02:52 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by Gaillo (Post 1930391) I know where you are. Which means TPTB probably do also, if interested enough. I would suggest some circumspection - I'm glad for you, and I'm in a similar situation - though not is so much of a "communal" setting. No need to advertise too much, regardless of how proud (and you should be) you feel about your accomplishment. Discretion... will win in the end.
Obviously the OP knows she provided enough information about her whereabouts on this forum for a 12 yr old and access to Google to find out where she is. TPTB can find us all if they want to.

Gaillo | 09-20-2009 03:13 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by Noble (Post 1930402) Obviously the OP knows she provided enough information about her whereabouts on this forum for a 12 yr old and access to Google to find out where she is. TPTB can find us all if they want to.
Very true. However... no need to help them along! :biggrin: BTW, I liked your first post better... the one about the "church", the founder, and other information she deleted, before you edited it to the above one.

Noble | 09-20-2009 03:17 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by Gaillo (Post 1930414) Very true. However... no need to help them along! :biggrin:
Yeah, agreed. It wasn't you who posted the links and then deleted them. :signs14:

Gaillo | 09-20-2009 03:20 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by Noble (Post 1930417) Yeah, agreed. It wasn't you who posted the links and then deleted them. :signs14:
Nothing to be sorry about. I wish Goldisimma the very BEST in her new life... and hope she is left alone to become the best she's capable of becoming! Thus the discretion post. Freedom and self-determination - that's what it's ALL about!!!!! :s9:

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immanti | 09-20-2009 04:08 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Wish you all the best as you walk the walk, goldissima.

cigarlover | 09-20-2009 06:19 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) To be honest I think TPTB have way more important things to do than worry about where she is. Goldi your now the 2nd woman ina few months that I know of that has done something like this. ANother girl I know went out to Hi and is living with 2 other women. Apparently killed their first rabbit and ate it recently, a first for all of them but they all overcame their fears and are doing very well. Good for you for following your dreams!!! I wish you the best. It looks like a great place.

fromserpo | 09-20-2009 10:39 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Well I for one will miss your enlightening posts that always seemed to enhance the conscious experience. Helped develop a community in N.Z some years ago and it was the greatest experience as it develops self sufficiency such as gardening,looking after your transport,building and being part of a group is a good feeling. In the end every one had to have their own space which was ok as we built on land and did our own thing plus still being part of the group. Being part of a group situation is now foreign too us as everyone (nearly) has moved on in different ways,still own share in the land. The experience is a great thing and if you are from the city then this is going to be of great benefit to you,I cannot live anywhere but in the country as there is a charm that is destroyed in cities. We discovered eventually that living in the country not far from a small town with services was the best out come for us and indeed it has been. I learnt enough from this to build a wonderful mud brick house where we raised our family and still live today. You mentioned costa rica ,have you ever thought of ecuador as I know if I didnt live so far away that is where I would like to go if the situation arose. Planning at the moment somewhere in asia where a friend is living as back up plan( its closer) ,Palawan island infact, going to visit soon and buy some cheap land by a beach. What so you cant get the web where you are. Anyway all the best.:wavey:

GOLD DUCK | 09-20-2009 11:09 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) QWAK,goldissima/SMURFETT, :wink: Have you turned BLUE YET?:questionm:questionm:cry1: Doing somthing LIKE that was the original intent for what became "the DUCK NEST" -- it did NOT work out:signs14: -- too many COOKS spoil the SOUP and the full gamit of social interactions and EGO conflects made it OBVIOUS very fast that it would SNOW BALL and get very bad.:36_1_30::shine: Last April marked 20 years for ME living in virtual SOLITUDE and to be perfectly honist I am not shure I could now live in a comunal situation.:dontknow: My social skills have changed so much over time that when I do go to social settings I feel like an ALIEN from another planet just VISITING and observing the strange local customs and not understanding how the indiviguals fit in to the social fabric of what I am as an out sider observing.:confused_m::10_1_19: The search for SANITY in an INSAINE WORLD :yes::10_1_19: HUMmmmmmmm:questionm:dontknow: We live on the invisable BORDER LINE between SELF and ALL --- the AWAIRNES of this GREATER REALITY -- changes ones PERSPECTIVE of virtualy every thing and ALTERS indivigual relationship to ALL OTHERS and ALL that exists.:thinkey::yes::shine: Thanks for sharing your ADVENTURE so far :yes: I look forward to seeing and hearing how it UNFOLDS for you!:yes::congrats::thumbs up the DUCK :36_3_13::15_1_70v:

goldissima | 09-20-2009 11:40 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by Noble (Post 1930246) Communism (not a label) is not for everyone, myself included. I don't do well "following the leader". So far its working for you. I honestly think that's GREAT!! :5_1_120:
again, central banking is the 5th plank of the communist manifesto and taxation the 2nd one... deal with it... here nobody pays taxes because this is a non profit org, it's a work exchange, every penny in re-invested and trust me it shows!! here I can talk about zero point energy, the cold fusion conspiracy, economic debt slavery, etc without being taken for a fool. I doubt you'd be authorized speaking this way in a collectivist environment. The only common goal here is self-sustainability. Sure they have their spiritual beliefs which are not really my cup of tea since I rather lean toward buddhism-hinduism-taoism but maybe should I have chosen an ashram instead. But I made a search before getting decided and most of the ecovillages I was interested in are "born again christian" oriented... so I chose one that is more open-minded.

goldissima | 09-20-2009 11:58 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by GOLD DUCK (Post 1930604) QWAK,goldissima/SMURFETT, :wink: Have you turned BLUE YET?:questionm:questionm:cry1: Doing somthing LIKE that was the original intent for what became "the DUCK NEST" -- it did NOT work out:signs14: -- too many COOKS spoil the SOUP and the full gamit of social interactions and EGO conflects made it OBVIOUS very fast that it would SNOW BALL and get very bad.:36_1_30::shine: Last April marked 20 years for ME living in virtual SOLITUDE and to be perfectly honist I am not shure I could now live in a comunal situation.:dontknow: My social skills have changed so much over time that when I do go to social settings I feel like an ALIEN from another planet just VISITING and observing the strange local customs and not understanding how the indiviguals fit in to the social fabric of what I am as an out sider observing.:confused_m::10_1_19: The search for SANITY in an INSAINE WORLD :yes::10_1_19: HUMmmmmmmm:questionm:dontknow: We live on the invisable BORDER LINE between SELF and ALL --- the AWAIRNES of this GREATER REALITY -- changes ones PERSPECTIVE of virtualy every thing and ALTERS indivigual relationship to ALL OTHERS and ALL that exists.:thinkey::yes::shine: Thanks for sharing your ADVENTURE so far :yes: I look forward to seeing and hearing how it UNFOLDS for you!:yes::congrats::thumbs up the DUCK :36_3_13::15_1_70v:
my significant other and I are for sure more like you... it's the emergency to leave the city (any big city) that prompted us to take action. We are planning to stay here for 6 months/a year or more - or find another community when we have gained valuable experience in the field of farming - In no way we see this step as definite. Nonetheless the community supports the merging of sciences and spirituality, so we do not feel much antagonism to our belief system here. My main preoccupation is to find time to write my big time 400 page novel... if I can do that, I'd be happy for now.

goldissima | 09-20-2009 12:06 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by fromserpo (Post 1930577) Well I for one will miss your enlightening posts that always seemed to enhance the conscious experience. Helped develop a community in N.Z some years ago and it was the greatest experience as it develops self sufficiency such as gardening,looking after your transport,building and being part of a group is a good feeling. In the end every one had to have their own space which was ok as we built on land and did our own thing plus still being part of the group. Being part of a group situation is now foreign too us as everyone (nearly) has moved on in different ways,still own share in the land. The experience is a great thing and if you are from the city then this is going to be of great benefit to you,I cannot live anywhere but in the country as there is a charm that is destroyed in cities. We discovered eventually that living in the country not far from a small town with services was the best out come for us and indeed it has been. I learnt enough from this to build a wonderful mud brick house where we raised our family and still live today. You mentioned costa rica ,have you ever thought of ecuador as I know if I didnt live so far away that is where I would like to go if the situation arose. Planning at the moment somewhere in asia where a friend is living as back up plan( its closer) ,Palawan island infact, going to visit soon and buy some cheap land by a beach. What so you cant get the web where you are. Anyway all the best.:wavey:
there is a Darwinist conspiracy that wants ppl to believe that the fittest always survive BUT wont teach them that "cooperative individualism" is key for mankind's survival... because of this, even "cooperation" becomes a synonymous of "communism". divide to rule at its finest again. Best!

scyth | 09-20-2009 01:14 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Noble - �If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for all of Paris is a moveable feast.� Ernest Hemingway (1950) To answer your question, it was this very beautiful girl Way North in Portland........... And my life is, still, a moveable feast. scyth

Noble | 09-20-2009 01:31 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by scyth (Post 1930731) Noble - �If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for all of Paris is a moveable feast.� Ernest Hemingway (1950) To answer your question, it was this very beautiful girl Way North in Portland........... And my life is, still, a moveable feast. scyth
That reminds me of a joke. Q.Why are there so many beautiful trees lining the main streets in Paris? A. Because the German Army likes to march in the shade. :smile: I've never been to Paris but I 'd like to visit some time. Some say women rule the world. But more like your adventure -- it's the love of women that rules the world.

scyth | 09-20-2009 02:06 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Noble - Then there is that thar Spain. Paris is like Oklahoma. I've lived in Paris, but not in the big O. You Tube
You Tube
scyth

goldbug | 09-20-2009 03:37 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Hi Goldissima, I am sincerely happy for you. Your setup looks very good. congrats!

45 ACP | 09-23-2009 08:26 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Cool. Do residents arm themselves in the community?

I am me, I am free | 09-30-2009 05:06 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Glad to hear you're enjoying your new digs, goldissima. Looks like a swell place with a bunch of nice folks. I think you made a wise move, you'd definitely much better off there than NYC by a long shot - no comparison really. We just closed on our 500+ acre property in east Texas, which is also owned by a non-profit. Our property is unimproved and has only had the open areas used for hay/livestock grazing, so we're starting from scratch. We're got a couple of ponds (we call 'em tanks in east Texas) on the property and we're going to put in several more. We're going to be doing the community supported agriculture thing like your group is doing, plus we're going to engage the community at large with respect to gardening/protein production. >90% of the community will be off grid, and most likely nearly 100% of the households will be off grid. Our goal is to be 100% off grid, generating our own power with waste oil. One of our goals is to set an example for others to follow in setting up similar self-sufficient communities which support the community at large and vice versa. Any input you have regarding this based upon your experiences there where you are would be greatly appreciated. No need to re-invent the wheel. Please check your messages.

Saoirse | 11-21-2009 08:39 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) How's the winter panning out?

Unclad Lad | 11-21-2009 11:09 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
The human condition being what it is eventually "the bloom falls off the rose" and "the blush wears off the bride".
This holds true for every human situation, not just communal living. For Goldissima this may prove to be one stop on a journey; it certainly seems like a good space to recharge after leaving the megalopolis. Gaillo, worrying about TPTB is a futile exercise, since by their very nature you have no control over them. Better to focus on what is in your power to affect, like your own preps.

Raven | 11-23-2009 08:55 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Goldies situation reminds me of a sci fi book I read long ago. It may have been Ursula La Guins book although I could not say for sure. The protagonist was a woman that live in a society that had many different life style choices. Some were communal, some were more like what she describes which I'd label (if labels are necessary) neo tribal. It is a life style I would love to try at some point. You have a stated goal, certain basic rules and other than that, you are free to stay or go as you choose. I would love to hear the ongoing saga about this.:shine:

Pat | 11-23-2009 11:21 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Hats off to Goldissima ! Most places in the USSA (United Socialist States of America) one is not allowed to live as one chooses. Everything from building codes to child care is codified by local/federal entities. Few here realize that most parents/children would be subject to family break-up by bureaucratic gestapo social "services" for simply living in an alternative dwelling. +p

Tecumseh | 12-01-2009 11:01 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) I've always been a little perplexed by the goldissima worship here. This is just my opinion but I find her to be one of the most closed minded, arrogant, disingenous and maybe even hateful posters here. Truly one of the most lost souls here. There is certainly something grotesque about the American "real housewives" culture but to me this is equally grotesque to the opposite extreme. All any of us have is this moment right now - nothing more is promised. Living your life in anticipation of TEOTWAWKI just seems like not living life to me. The rat race isn't all bad. Nothing wrong with enjoying or even feeling blessed by modern conveniences. Not everyone is sheeple - some people are just family, friends, neighbors and they aren't all bad. To each his own but I'll take my suburban/semi-rural rat race life over a yurt in an extreme HOA, communalistic, borderline cult any day. That's not to say that I don't find much of what she posts interesting and I guess I even wish her well - I just don't understand the pedastool.

scyth | 12-01-2009 11:22 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Tecumseh - I find your avatar in interesting contradiction to Your comments. There is some code you subscribe to Which counters "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?" Or perhaps grades it as to exactly Who has what degree of freedom to choose their own life? Me, just out of high school, I built an 8' x16' cabin Way out in the woods of Southern Oregon. Lived there for several years. No electric, no vehicle access, little castiron wood stove. Hauled water by hand, on foot. No locks. One of the best times of my life. Oh yeah, Tecumseh. A wiki quickie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tecumseh scyth

foolsgold | 12-01-2009 11:38 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) I had the pleasure of meeting Goldissima in person. She is sweet, intelligent kind and considerate. I was only in her company for a few hours and I found her to be honest, open and real. She has a mind of her own and it plays to her strength. I find Tecumseh's comments way off base.

bjgnome | 12-01-2009 11:59 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by Noble (Post 1928628) Yes, I suspect the ecovillage is a communist concept. Not having read the lease/purchase agreement, covenants/ restrictions, etc. I can only go on my instincts.
In my mind, ecovillage is distinctly not a communist concept. The manner in which ecovillages are structured vary greatly from one community to the next. A few may have communal income sharing arrangements, but I suspect this is fairly rare. Most that I know of have a diversified economy where individuals are responsible for their own livelihood. Personal property is respected. Some places people own their homes outright, in other places the community may own the buildings. In others there would be long term leases. So you have a wide range of financial arrangements. While ideology may lean one way or another depending on the community, there is usually a strong respect for individual beliefs, be they spiritual or political. Yes, there is typically some agreement to sharing of resources for mutual benefit, but nobody holds a gun to your head. It is more about a shared commitment to sustainability as a lifestyle than a particular political or economic model.

Tecumseh | 12-02-2009 05:47 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Like I said to each his own. I'm entitled to my opinions like anyone else is - I don't agree with you.

RealJack | 12-02-2009 10:49 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by Tecumseh (Post 2054576) I've always been a little perplexed by the goldissima worship here. This is just my opinion but I find her to be one of the most closed minded, arrogant, disingenous and maybe even hateful posters here. Truly one of the most lost souls here. There is certainly something grotesque about the American "real housewives" culture but to me this is equally grotesque to the opposite extreme. All any of us have is this moment right now - nothing more is promised. Living your life in anticipation of TEOTWAWKI just seems like not living life to me. The rat race isn't all bad. Nothing wrong with enjoying or even feeling blessed by modern conveniences. Not everyone is sheeple - some people are just family, friends, neighbors and they aren't all bad. To each his own but I'll take my suburban/semi-rural rat race life over a yurt in an extreme HOA, communalistic, borderline cult any day. That's not to say that I don't find much of what she posts interesting and I guess I even wish her well - I just don't understand the pedastool. Like I said to each his own. I'm entitled to my opinions like anyone else is.
Yes, you are entitled to your opinions.... just so long as you don't attack other posters. And yes, you attacked Goldissima. I don't see where anyone is worshiping her. She just happens to have been an active, interesting and real poster for the past several years. She has shown a certain sort of bravery to share her real life experiences with us, both materially and spiritually. And since she doesn't seem to be around much these days to defend herself, I'm calling you on your bullshit. You had no right to attack her at all...:36_1_30:

Unclad Lad | 12-02-2009 03:28 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) The community Goldissima is in has some of the features commonly but mistakenly thought of as socialist/communist. The defining features of soc/com systems is top-down hierarchy. No matter how often "the power of the people" is said, orders come from the top and are handed down in a rigid hierarchy; and without exception privileges and exceptions increase the farther up the chain one stands. If Goldissima's group had an "executive counsel" or some other stratum that made binding decisions for others, then she would be in a communist (small C) village. But while there seem to be some binding pre-conditions for living there, they seem to be made only to reduce conflicts that have torn apart many other intentional communities. That it's currency is work itself isn't feasible on a larger scale, but as it does not restrict wealth or other wealth accumulating activities outside the community, it uses a standard that is as immutable as any precious metal currency. So it isn't quite Galt's Gulch, but it seems like a very agreeable model for a community. ----- Tecumseh, I have no dog in this fight; I don't know Goldissima's history and have interacted with her the same way I would with anyone else within a thread. Having said that, I have to agree that your posting comes off as a personal attack; you should apologize.

Tecumseh | 12-03-2009 08:17 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) I didn't attack anyone. I expressed an opinion. Its funny how some of you are such defenders of free thought and expression until you find an opinion that you don't agree with. I was engaged briefly on a thread with goldissima where she was arrogant and closed minded. I posted to her that she was expressing hatred and she thanked my post - which is evidence that she either agreed (and was hateful) or was disenguous as I stated. I was more intrigued that on a site that generally seems to value liberty and independence there was such apparent infatuation with cult like communal living where the community is valued more than the individual - the exact opposite of liberty. If any of you think living in a yurt under communal rules is great and makes you happy - more power to you. It is far from my definition of living free but as I said - to each his own. I'm pretty honest with my opinions - I tend to think that a person who posts thousands of post on this site is not a happy person - nor are they truly "off the grid". I thought it was funny to see a Google t-shirt on someone so determinned to "live off the grid" - maybe the irony was intentional. Some of you would be better served by taking your own advice since many of you hold "sheeple" in the same contempt that I hold Goldissima.

GOLD DUCK | 12-03-2009 08:45 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by Tecumseh (Post 2058435) I didn't attack anyone. I expressed an opinion. Its funny how some of you are such defenders of free thought and expression until you find an opinion that you don't agree with. I was engaged briefly on a thread with goldissima where she was arrogant and closed minded. I posted to her that she was expressing hatred and she thanked my post - which is evidence that she either agreed (and was hateful) or was disenguous as I stated. I was more intrigued that on a site that generally seems to value liberty and independence there was such apparent infatuation with cult like communal living where the community is valued more than the individual - the exact opposite of liberty. If any of you think living in a yurt under communal rules is great and makes you happy - more power to you. It is far from my definition of living free but as I said - to each his own. I'm pretty honest with my opinions - I tend to think that a person who posts thousands of post on this site is not a happy person - nor are they truly "off the grid". I thought it was funny to see a Google t-shirt on someone so determinned to "live off the grid" - maybe the irony was intentional. Some of you would be better served by taking your own advice since many of you hold "sheeple" in the same contempt that I hold Goldissima.
QWAK,Tecumseh --- "JUDGE not lest YEA be JUDGED!" -- :shine: It works both ways and people are seldom aware they are doing it. :thinkey::shine: Each life is about DISCOVERING SELF and how self relates to the ALL:yes:, your perspective is valid as is goldissima :thinkey:-- perhaps it was how you phrased your responce and the hard edge which you are inclined to use.:dontknow: To be totaly free one must be totaly independent :thinkey:and NO ONE actualy IS :452: she is finding her COMFORT level between group dependence and her personal INDEPENDENCE as we all are -- as are you.:yes: the DUCK :15_1_70v:

scyth | 12-03-2009 09:33 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Tecumseh - "I expressed an opinion." Sorry, but you didn't. "I find her to be one of the most closed minded, arrogant, disingenous and maybe even hateful posters here." That is an absolutely personal attack on a person you apparently Have no previous relationship with or personal knowledge of. Now, proceeding on to the word "sheeple." It is a single word expressing a derogatory opinion Of a perceived class or clade of people in a given culture. I have heard the descriptions yuppie, redneck, homeboy, cracker, Baptist, catholic, democrat, republican, proletarian, communist, White trash, trailer trash, survivalist, jewboy, liberal, gun-nut Valley girl, hippie, and several hundred more Used with the same flavor of invective. Those are not personal attacks. However, they demonstrate a fairly closed minded And usually inaccurate wholesale condemnation of A group of people generally based Upon prejudice rather than perception. Finally, I have found a remarkably high level of Mutual personal respect on this board Since I've been here And have no intention to see that degraded. Thus my comments. scyth

Tecumseh | 12-03-2009 09:35 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Fair enough Gold Duck - I'm the first to admit that I can be less than charming.

mtnman | 12-03-2009 09:45 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Well I don't have a dog in this fight but I read all the post and I do not see a personal attack by Tecumseh. I see a poster that has a strong opinion, that's all.

StackerKen | 12-03-2009 09:51 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) I don't have a dog in the race either ............. I just wanted to say that Ducks Post was a good one. Good one Duck :ok: that being said, Tecumseh, you have the right to your opinion. But sometimes opinions should be keep to one's self. Your last post was a good one too.

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Light | 12-03-2009 10:43 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) I have to agree with Tecumseh. I've never gotten the Goldissima worship either. She posts youtube videos and now she's in a yurt. Good luck!

Tallships | 12-04-2009 09:05 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Have any of you read "THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS."? While a valuable part of this forum, I do not see her being worshipped, so much as appreciated. A female member on this board putting up with all of our crap is a rare thing indeed, just like women on the moon in the aforemetioned book, She stands out because here she is one of the boys and 100% all American woman at the same time. Only unicorns and talking golden ducks are more rarely seen.

Unclad Lad | 12-04-2009 09:43 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Wait-we HAVE a talking gold duck!

I am me, I am free | 12-04-2009 10:18 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
She stands out because here she is one of the boys and 100% all American woman at the same time.
What's unique is that Goldissima has her roots in Europe and immigrated here, yet many perceive her to be 'American'. I'm very grateful for what she has contributed here at GIM (which is substantial, as opposed to her detractors lol) and wish her only the best in whatever endeavors she chooses to pursue.

MNeagle | 12-04-2009 10:45 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) This thread should be closed. Calling out members is wrong.

low_five | 12-05-2009 01:17 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) I wonder what would happen if someone wanted to have a gun and live there? would they get kicked out? would they call the police and kick you out? what if you wanted to listen to rap music real loud? Can you get voted out? It would be so nice to just lay around and relax for a few months, but I think I wouldnt be able to live there for very long after that.

I am me, I am free | 12-05-2009 03:16 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
I wonder what would happen if someone wanted to have a gun and live there? would they get kicked out?
'Alternative' intentional communities can get very weird, so imo how life is 'regulated' in an IC largely depends upon who's on the top of the food chain in the IC and what sort of 'government' they have in place (if any).

foolsgold | 12-05-2009 10:34 AM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by I am me, I am free (Post 2060498) What's unique is that Goldissima has her roots in Europe and immigrated here, yet many perceive her to be 'American'. I'm very grateful for what she has contributed here at GIM (which is substantial, as opposed to her detractors lol) and wish her only the best in whatever endeavors she chooses to pursue.
What you say is true. Having met Goldissima I am tempted to come to her aid and thus reveal information to defend her character. I won't do it out of respect her and this forum.

RaccoonRiverRadical | 12-05-2009 12:34 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Originally Posted by low_five (Post 2060699) I wonder what would happen if someone wanted to have a gun and live there? would they get kicked out? would they call the police and kick you out? what if you wanted to listen to rap music real loud? Can you get voted out? It would be so nice to just lay around and relax for a few months, but I think I wouldnt be able to live there for very long after that.
Rap music = crap music. If you are the type who thinks his right to listen to loud crap music supercedes another's right to peace and quiet then you don't belong in any sort of community.

Tallships | 12-05-2009 12:36 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Earphones should allow you to keep your music loud while not bothering others.

StackerKen | 12-05-2009 12:37 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) Quote:
Loud crap music
Is one of the reasons I moved to the hills Anyone heard from Goldie latley?

TechGuy | 12-05-2009 12:37 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) And we wonder why the females leave this board so quickly. Sad.

scyth | 12-05-2009 12:46 PM
Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix) For a while, long ago I lived in a Quaker community. They lived by consensus. Which could be a grueling process. Days and days of back and forth. But at the end you were solid. I left that community, But kept consensus with me. Use it to this day, in business, with my neighbors, With my wife and family. scyth

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