[SolarCross]

I been wanting to found an anarchistic commune / mutual aid society for some time and as the economic meltdown worsens day by day it seems more and more necessary as a matter of survival to start doing something sooner rather than later. Unfortunately the big experimenters in communal living are mostly leftists with all the impractical ideological baggage that goes with that. I have heard that while a few communes thrive very many fail. Twin Oaks is an example of one that is pretty successful. This lady has some interesting views on what is necessary for successful communalism. Also this bloke has some interesting views on how they fail.

Some basic ideas for my project that I have so far are these:-
- The goal is to just to have a really nice life for all the participants in a morally sound way.
- Sweet spots tend to be in the middle - just because extreme inequality of power and private property is bad and inefficient doesn't mean that extreme equality of power and private property is any better.
- Bureaucracy is overhead and should be minimised if not eliminated. What good does the material advantage of communal living do if it is it is wiped out or exceeded by bureaucratic or organisational overhead?
- Trade is good and necessary, total self-sufficiency is impossible and of dubious merit anyway.
- Altruism is nice but you can't rely on it. Incentives to self-interest are better.
- You can't let just anyone in. Screening newcomers is important.

So starting with that what can pofo-ers suggest? Right libertarians / an-caps are welcome to chip in with ideas.

[mikema63]

I would suggest looking into the ideas of this lady (pretend I can make links on iPad and look up the newest TED talk on YouTube), you could try to fit that type of peer to peer system into a commune.

I would suggest setting up an online social network and community board, you can use a LETS system and people can post things they need or can do.

You can add community ratings for various things about people that they interact with like how reliable they are, how kind, do they pay back what they owe, keep promises, or have a nasty temper. This would act as a community pressure thing, one of the main things I've heard about communes failing is the lack of a system that controls people just being jerks and taking stuff, it also promotes a community spirit.

You cold also add an edemocracy type system to the above as well.

As I think of more ill add.

[SolarCross]

Thank you Mikem, all good suggestions suitable for when the social enterprise is of sufficient size to make all that overhead useful beyond its cost. I should say that I am thinking of growing this more or less organically from just me and my little family to a few families then maybe to something as large as Twin Oaks (around 100 people) to then maybe still larger. For the time being I am mostly concerned with growing from a commune of 3 (me, my wife and child) to around about 6 to 10 individuals. I suppose the trick is how to find those initial fellow founders. I am trying to hook up with local anarchists but so far they are elusive. What is worse is that from what I gather from my online interactions with (left) anarchists on this matter they are always strangely hostile and petulant about the idea. You'd think it would be just exactly the thing they would be interested in more than most people but oddly no. Sadly the modern left-anarchist is really just a degenerate Marxist, it seems, and incapable of doing anything creative and hates to think of anyone else doing anything creative because it shows up their own inadequacies. Better would be to hook up with non-ideological working class people with some entrepreneurial potential. Ironically an-caps would be fine too, one thing I have discovered from po-fo is that an-caps are all right; they are logical, moral, creative 'can-do' types. Do you think an-caps are too individualistic to want to do something like I am proposing?

[mikema63]

That really depends on the specific commune rules but generally ancaps don't have any ideological opposition to any voluntary association.

It might be best to relax a bit on the ideological parts to find members, or you could just start it as a local LETS system and expand it with the above suggestions over time. Start a LETS with reviews, build a social network community, you will be able to find people who will be willing to enter into the next level of communalization and you will eventually be able to create a commune at the core of your LETS organization.

Of course your taxi service could be the first co-op business win the commune and you could just let ore members build other co-ops. I don't know wether surviving only on a LETS system is feasible.

[Social_Critic]

I think you need a religious angle. You could claim to have a message from G-d, that really helps, statistic show you have to design it with an angle

[Someone5]

- The goal is to just to have a really nice life for all the participants in a morally sound way.

Sure.

- Sweet spots tend to be in the middle - just because extreme inequality of power and private property is bad and inefficient doesn't mean that extreme equality of power and private property is any better.

There is equality or there isn't. It's not something where you have degrees of inequality. If B != C, then B and C are unequal by definition. In a communal environment, it would strike me that the primary rule ought to be against investing personal gains into further endeavors; if everyone is working from the communal resources, everyone has an incentive to expand that pool of resources. If some people have to work from communal resources and others get to use their own personal proceeds, then obviously the people in the latter situation are going to have a substantial advantage relative to newcomers.

Basically it seems to me that the goal of equality ought not to be to make sure that everyone has the same stuff, but rather that everyone has the same economic opportunities... and it seems like that is only achievable if people have to make use of communal economic resources rather than personal resources. OTOH, that basically necessitates some conditioning and indoctrination to break habits developed by capitalist societies.

- Bureaucracy is overhead and should be minimised if not eliminated. What good does the material advantage of communal living do if it is it is wiped out or exceeded by bureaucratic or organisational overhead?

Bureaucracies are pretty important in any sort of organization. You can't really avoid that. Rather than trying to eliminate them, maybe they ought to just be fast and entertaining to use. There's no particular reason that working with a bureaucracy has to be uncomfortable and stodgy.

- Trade is good and necessary, total self-sufficiency is impossible and of dubious merit anyway.

To some degree. Trading relationships are also power relationships and that can quickly lead to bad situations; i.e. capitalism.

- Altruism is nice but you can't rely on it. Incentives to self-interest are better.

Communes ought to recognize that lots of people have strong altruistic drives just as they have strong drives for self-interest. Most people are not all one or all the other.

- You can't let just anyone in. Screening newcomers is important.

I strongly, strongly disagree. If your system cannot support newcomers arriving in an orderly manner (I'm not saying that everyone has to come in AT THE SAME TIME), then it probably isn't going to work. If someone newly walking in the gates can't figure out the group dynamics at work in a fairly short period, there is a problem.

So starting with that what can pofo-ers suggest? Right libertarians / an-caps are welcome to chip in with ideas.

Electronic social currencies seem like they're a decent solution to most of the more common problems with communes.

[SolarCross]

Mikem - All good

Social Critic - No

Someone5 - equality is impossible and there is no merit in trying to achieve it if the results would be unfair. It is better to be fair than equal. If someone does difficult and dangerous work they should be rewarded more than someone who takes the easy nice work or doesn't work at all. There is a difficult balance to be struck between personal resources and communal resources. I think if someone uses their own resources to expand their personal capital then that is fine, if they use communal resources then the commune gets a share in the accumulation.

Bureaucracy - agreed it is unrealistic to expect to eliminate it - the larger the group gets the greater the necessity of some organisational overhead. I want to avoid overly precious democratic formalities that just don't make sense. Like voting on what's for dinner and voting for where to put the TV and that kind of thing. Maybe borrow something from the parecon model where people only vote on things that actually concern them.

Trade - If a trade is free of coercion and fraud it is never bad. If a trade features coercion or fraud then it isn't trade it is some species of theft. The commune will be in a stronger position than any individual or small family to avoid unfair trades by virtue of strength of numbers. Of course that is not necessarily true of internal trades where there is some risk of 'two wolves and a lamb voting for who's for dinner'.

Altruism - sure, I'm not saying altruism should be forbidden just that incentives really work whereas altruism tends to fade after the initial enthusiasm.

Screening - Letting anyone in just isn't an option, they have to be suitable and acceptable to those already in. Whether you see the commune as a kind of business or a kind of family, either way just like both businesses and families you can't just let anyone on in, it just isn't safe.

[Melodramatic]

Well I can give you a view of whats going on in Israel as, at very least, a supplementary view. The experiment of the kibbutz in Israel was (arguably) a failure, and as it was devoured by the capitalist wind that blows these days, so were the socialist youth movements that were (in my view) its lifeblood. they did not disappear but slowly decayed, becoming a empty social group or children's activity rather than revolutionary movements (not to mention what happened in the Nahal, the part in the army dedicated to provide a way for the moments to to be chocked by mandatory service). Today however there is a (tiny, slow) process of rebirth in these movements, one that takes form as the rising of the Urban kibbutz.

The version of this form of commune common to the youth movements, which has deep connection to libertarian socialist and anarchist thought (Martin Buber, Gustav Landauer), focuses on very small communes (10-20+) of individuals living together communally and usually focusing on a common center such as education and other things that take part in their movement. These communes are themselves part of bigger "communes of communes", usually ending in the movement as the center. While many view them as externally focused groups, focusing on helping weakened communities and such, there focus is at very least equally internal, focusing on creating a new society inside the old. They focus on things such as decentralization (and the creation of a multitude of independent centers rather than a big state) of social and economic forms, and the creation of many varied voluntary economic and social ties.

This is true on all levels, but strongest inside the individual commune which (ideally) involves a true sharing and tying of life paths, with a focus of freeing the individuals form the social depression of capitalist society (and any new depressions that can arise inside the new society). A cohesion of social (creating social ties) and voluntary (creating individuals that rule over their social ties, and not the other ways around0.

It is, of course, a from in the works, nor a ready for marketing solution, and will certainly not work for everyone, but it is the closest I've seen to the libertarian socialist communes on may dream of.

[Someone5]

Someone5 - equality is impossible and there is no merit in trying to achieve it if the results would be unfair.

Equality is a goal to be pursued, not a state that is likely to exist.

It is better to be fair than equal.

... who determines what is fair? There are plenty of periods of human history where one group of powerful people have decided that real or effective slavery is fair for another group of far less powerful people. You can't even determine what is fair and what isn't without everyone having a roughly equal say in determining that.

If someone does difficult and dangerous work they should be rewarded more than someone who takes the easy nice work or doesn't work at all.

Okay? Nothing about equality suggests that their compensation ought not be more. What equality does suggest is that the people doing difficult and dangerous work ought to work fewer hours at it but be paid more for those fewer hours. Rather than saying "this is the wage for an hour's work and everyone will be paid that much no matter what they do" society should instead say "this is a month's stipend, and depending on the difficulty of the job you might need to work between ten and fifty hours a week to account for that."

Why does everyone seem to assume that everyone would need to work the same number of hours?

There is a difficult balance to be struck between personal resources and communal resources.

Personal resources should be for personal enjoyment, communal resources ought to be the means of production. They could be treated as fundamentally separate matters.

I think if someone uses their own resources to expand their personal capital then that is fine, if they use communal resources then the commune gets a share in the accumulation.

So you're just putting capitalism back into place. All the inequities and social problems that follow will come back full circle.

[Rothbardian]

Equality is a goal to be pursued, not a state that is likely to exist.

People use impossible goals to justify actions that wouldn't otherwise be justifiable.

[Someone5]

People use impossible goals to justify actions that wouldn't otherwise be justifiable.

People also use entirely possible and reasonable goals to justify actions that wouldn't otherwise be justifiable. So what? People can just just about anything to justify actions they want justified. Are you saying people shouldn't set goals? That they shouldn't have ideals or moral principles?

[Eran]

Of course not.

Perhaps you could try and explain why you view equality as a worthy moral goal.

How do you view equality compared with the quality of life of the poorest? Do you support the Rawlsean principle that equality can be justified if it is part of a scheme aimed at improving the lot of the weakest? In other words, would you rather live in an equally-poor society, or in one in which some people are (much) wealthier than others, but in which even the poorest enjoy an adequate standard of living?

[SolarCross]

I don't know what equality could mean as a goal in practice. More sensible to me as a goal would be 'liberty and justice'. Someone5 said something about the productive worker being made to earn the same as an unproductive worker by making him do less hours. That doesn't even begin to make sense to me. Let people work as much as they like and get the reward they deserve for their efforts.

[Someone5]

Of course not.

Then his criticism is obviously nonsense.

Perhaps you could try and explain why you view equality as a worthy moral goal.

Denying a person the full use of their abilities to the best of their ability is a petty cruelty. Equality is the only route by which that might be resolved. That makes equality a valid moral principle. Certainly structural inequality will not achieve a state where people are not denied opportunities--the very definition of an inequality requires that some people have more opportunities than others, meaning that those expanded opportunities are opportunities denied to others. Given that equality is not divisible--it must be given in whole or not at all--that means equality must be a goal.

Trying to draw a distinction between equality of theoretical opportunities and equality of actual means is disingenuous; people deserve actual opportunities, not theoretical opportunities. That requires actual means.

How do you view equality compared with the quality of life of the poorest?

Not a relevant question.

Do you support the Rawlsean principle that equality can be justified if it is part of a scheme aimed at improving the lot of the weakest?

Equality is justified without reference to the material conditions of any person. The poorest could have all of their material requirements met and equality would still be a morally justifiable goal if some had more opportunities than others.

In other words, would you rather live in an equally-poor society, or in one in which some people are (much) wealthier than others, but in which even the poorest enjoy an adequate standard of living?

I think that question is a false dichotomy; and presupposing quite a lot. There is absolutely no reason that prosperity and equality cannot go hand in hand.

[KlassWar]

Start by securing its independence and practical sovereignty or the whole show will be a pointless, comedic farce.... Or at best, an exercise in traditional. economicistic mutualism/cooperativism... Only marginally useful in the best of circumstances.

[Someone5]

I don't know what equality could mean as a goal in practice.

Everyone starts from the same means; no one can use personal surpluses as inputs into further economic endeavors. Equality as a goal suggests a system whereby someone just entering the economic arena has just as much opportunity as someone who has been participating for thirty years--meritocracy rather than seniority. This frees up economic surpluses for two purposes; personal enjoyment and investment into the collectively held means of production. By requiring people to use those collective resources, it gives them a reason to balance personal enjoyment against further opportunities.

This, of course, suggests a lot of other reforms, like finding ways to make work enjoyable. That isn't as hard as people seem to think, though that usually won't do anything to increase profitability (because worker happiness doesn't really contribute to profitability).

Someone5 said something about the productive worker being made to earn the same as an unproductive worker by making him do less hours.

No. I said that people who take it upon themselves to do difficult and dangerous work out to be required to perform fewer hours of it; as a way of compensating them for choosing to undertake work that is difficult or dangerous. I said nothing about productivity. People working in jobs where they have a higher-than-average chance of dying ought to be entitled to fewer hours doing it. That is another way to increase compensation without skewing disposable income--you get the same amount of money for fewer hours of your time.

Let people work as much as they like and get the reward they deserve for their efforts.

I also didn't say anything about prohibiting people from working more than required.

[SolarCross]

Someone5 - I am sorry but I am totally unpersuaded by your argument. There is a whiff of authoritarianism when you say -

.. no one can use personal surpluses as inputs into further economic endeavors. ..
..By requiring people to use those collective resources, ..
.. I said that people who take it upon themselves to do difficult and dangerous work out to be required to perform fewer hours of it; ..

Some of it is contradictory and well.. absurd -

Equality as a goal suggests a system whereby someone just entering the economic arena has just as much opportunity as someone who has been participating for thirty years--meritocracy rather than seniority.

How is it meritocratic that the salty veteran is on the same level as raw recruit?

[Someone5]

Someone5 - I am sorry but I am totally unpersuaded by your argument. There is a whiff of authoritarianism when you say -

Economic activity in itself has a whif of authoritarianism because in some sense groups actually do have work requirements in order to proceed. That's all it is--a whif--because people would be free not to work with a group that has requirements they're unwilling to meet. There really is no way for groups to engage in collective activities without people having some level of responsibility to fulfill the obligations they take for themselves.

That's kind of a basic requirement for working as a group.

.. no one can use personal surpluses as inputs into further economic endeavors. ..
..By requiring people to use those collective resources, ..

Fine, let me amend this to avoid your confusion; personal surpluses are to be used for personal enjoyment, economic activity is to be conducted using collective resources. You can stay at home and sit on your ass if you want. I'd even point out that under the system I had in mind, you'd be entirely free to do just that, while still having food to eat, a roof over your head, etc, provided that houses were still being made and food was being grown. Because you cannot be free of authoritarian economic entanglements without having a real opportunity to do nothing instead.

I don't think that most people would actually choose to do nothing. It really is quite dull. If people actually do have a natural tendency to do nothing to the point of starvation if given a choice... well, that means that any attempt at a libertarian society is doomed to failure and fascism is the only way forward. Since the question is unresolved, I will choose to proceed under the assumption that people will choose to do something rather than nothing until proven otherwise. The alternative is to be a fascist.

.. I said that people who take it upon themselves to do difficult and dangerous work out to be required to perform fewer hours of it; ..

Certainly. The person saying "I will go mine coal; I think that society needs more coal, and I am willing to do it," ought not to have to mine coal for as long as the person pushing papers in an office in order to meet a work goal. If you choose to work in something difficult or dangerous, the thresholds for fulfilling a work obligation ought to be lower. The final payment would be the same, but the number of hours worked would be lower, meaning that compensation per hour would be higher. They would be paid in additional free time rather than extra money.

You are engaging in an equivocation fallacy here. You are misinterpreting vagaries in the English language to reinterpret a statement in an unintended manner. I will state this explicitly; if you choose to undertake a work obligation, the amount of time required to fulfill that obligation would be lower for difficult or dangerous work than for simple and safe work. You would work because you want things beyond what society would promise every individual, or work because you're tired of the shortages stemming from disinterest in a field; not because society demands that everyone work. You are severely misinterpreting the position I am taking, and I think you are doing so intentionally.

In an equal society, you would have every right to go sit on your ass in a house that society would provide for you, eating food that society would provide for you, under conditions that you could survive within (neither too cold nor too hot, with adequate lighting, breathable air, etc). Might you want something beyond that? Certainly, and that would be the impetus to choose to undertake some work obligations. And that choice would, in some ways, bind you to the completion of a task. There is no other way for work to be conducted as a group--at some level a person must take responsibility for what they have agreed to do. But that is certainly far less of an authoritarian way of convincing people to work than the capitalist approach of "work or you will starve to death on the streets," or the fascist approach of "work or we will beat you to death."

If you choose to pay some people more than others, and allow them to then invest those earnings into the means of production, you are merely setting up a situation whereby some people can exert incredible influence over other people. Under that system, the people who are able to invest into the means of production can establish themselves as the gatekeepers of labor, able to allow or deny people the right to live at a whim. This is a situation where both options restrict freedoms, but one option--personal ownership of the means of production--causes a far greater suppression of freedom in the long term. Moreover, the private ownership of the means of production does not have to be explicitly prohibited, but merely not recognized--after all, private ownership does require that a government recognize the claim and act to defend it. Society can simply refuse to recognize property claims and that would prevent people from owning the means of production; it does not require any force whatsoever. Quite the contrary, since property certainly does require force to protect.

Some of it is contradictory and well.. absurd -

It is very far outside of the current approach to compensation, yes. People don't seem to consider that as an option; we're kind of fixated on people working 40 hours a week with variations in pay per hour, rather than working for a fixed amount of money but varying how long we need to work to earn it. It's compensation adjustment from the other way around.

How is it meritocratic that the salty veteran is on the same level as raw recruit?

If the salty veteran is actually better able to perform his work than the raw recruit, then that will be demonstrable. We do not need to assume that experience equals competence, or assume that a person's prior investments in the means of production somehow magically makes him more capable.

[SolarCross]

I have no problem with someone using their own resources as they see fit, assuming they acquired them without fraud or theft and they use those resources in a manner that hurts no one. I am not going to forbid people from, for example, owning shares, freelance cutting hair with their own scissors and comb, make a business landscaping using their own mower or whatever. Being part of the commune means contributing in proportion to the benefit recieved but how you contribute is a matter largely of personal discretion. I don't mind idle people but I am not going to force productive people to subsidise them. They may of course choose to subsidise the idle if that is their wish (unlikely ).

[Someone5]

I have no problem with someone using their own resources as they see fit, assuming they acquired them without fraud or theft and they use those resources in a manner that hurts no one.

Their ownership of the means of production certainly can, in itself, harm others.

I am not going to forbid people from, for example, owning shares, freelance cutting hair with their own scissors and comb, make a business landscaping using their own mower or whatever.

It's not really ownership of the means of production until they jump from "tools they use for their own work" to "tools being used for someone else's work."

Being part of the commune means contributing in proportion to the benefit recieved but how you contribute is a matter largely of personal discretion.

Which is why communes have a problem and why virtually all of them are dependent on external capitalist societies.

I don't mind idle people but I am not going to force productive people to subsidise them.

Then you don't believe people ought to be able to make free, uncoerced decisions.