starting a commune /collective

If you want to prove to people your ideas can work then organise and spread your ideas. Retreating into a commune does not represent any challenge to capital, you can't remove yourself from capitalist social relations by living in a bubble and even if you could that is not the point of revolutionary ideas.

if you want to live with daily solidarity and help from other people then build your organisation, build your projects, and hey presto - the commune comes to you.

Do you really have a 'big willy' can you post pix, thanks.

Pass the bucket.

He's big as in he just turned 15. Communes are for hippy cunts and crimethincers. [/thread]

Yep, here too... christian name = first name. I don't like gregg and wish it was something else but what? If anyone says bruce I will laugh politely like this and put you on my hate list
all the best.
gregg.

Out of curiousity how would you go about setting up a commune? What exactly would having a commune entail, i mean how far are you going here.

Personally i don't share the hysterical aversion that some people seem to have to communes, if you think it gives you a better quality of life to live in a housing co-op of some sort or engage in similar activities then go for it, hell if i had enough cash later in life i'd set up a co-operative bookshop with friends and family or whatever beats working till i'm 70 for some shitty pension, At the same time i'd be hard pressed see whats particularly ''revolutionary'' about all this, hence why i'm sort of asking what this ''commune'' of yours entials. I mean how you going to afford to have housing and all those other goods and at the same time protect yourself from the old long arm of the law. I mean if your talking about squats and so on, that doesn't exactly provide you with a good sustainable quality of life and is hardly a shining beacon to us all to look up to, so the question is how would you go about aquiring just the basics of shelter?

These two articles have some advice:
http://reactor-core.org/commune-advice.html

http://libcom.org/library/suicide-for-socialism-jonestown-brinton

Avice to do what? What are you even trying to set up?
The point i just tried to make is you can't set up a commune, because nder capitalism we have a systemj of legal ownership menaing you can't just walk into a building and live in it without breaking the law, and there would also be no means of secuiing a good quality of life, since yoiur commune of 10-15 odd people at best couldn't support itself to a good standard, and you couldn't buy anything, you know being a commune and all that.

If the system just ''falls'' then yeah that is what you'd get. Its what would happen if their was a nuclear war this afternoon, the point is that anarchism isn't about the ''system falling'' its about working people taking over the economy and society and running it themselves for their own benefit. Hence why we would want to see everything from supermarkets to hospitals run on a collective basis, hence why you organise where you are to all extents and purposes economically forced to work and live. Not because its ''better'' than a commune, but because for the vast majority of people a commune is impossible.

eh, willy, yes, communes do tend to turn out as kind of an embarassment. some of the rare cases of more modern communes, which arent a total embarassment, are the kibbutzim (is that the proper plural?). but, even those are actually supported by the Israeli State (i believe i read recently that they were originally accepted in order to try to keep workers from waging class war). if *you* go off to make a commune in USA, do you honestly think the State will actually support *you*? you'd be hard pressed to get them to even *tolerate* its existence. and even if you did, barring the possibility of, say, gettingthe support of some rich backer, the commune would likely be desperately poor, unproductive, and generally wouldnt attract many people to this "optional way to live." the only people who may be attracted would be people who live in absolutely shit conditions as it is (to which i have sympathy, and if could possibly help such people, then at least it's doing something decent)... or, well... possibly kinda kooky weirdos which would, again, likely turn tons of people off (i think most people accept that they're gonna have to live with eccentrics to some degree, but would you want to live in a society absolutely filled to the brim with whackos? at least, many people dont).

you said that "sitting around here and waiting for worker solidarity isnt going to work," but if you look around on this site a bit, you'll see that nobody at all is suggesting this in the slightest. they're arguing that we have to work *within* our respective societies, our neighbourhoods, our workplaces (etc) to try to encourage more socialistic, libertarian developments, and struggle for the common good of the proletariat - both for the sake of immediate gain, and hopefully to lead to increased class consciousness, solidarity, stronger and more effective organizational methods, and finally a total changing of the society from our Liberal sort to socialism.

You need to get a band first, then get the commune second.