I recently attended an ecosocialist conference in Vermont, organized by Cooperation Jackson and hosted by the Institute for Social Ecology. There were multiple different radical groups present, coming from several schools of thought, and I was encouraged to see and participate in a good deal of lively debate.
A particularly encouraging aspect of the conference was unity of the disparate groups present along a couple of basic points:
Agreement that the 21st century is currently undergoing ecological collapse on a global scale
That the modern nation-state and capitalism are not up to the challenge of addressing the crisis (indeed, they created it), and will only continue to make it worse
That in response, the left must organize into local organizations-cooperatives, communes, mutual aid organizations, etc.-which operate on a decentralized, direct democratic framework, and which must confederate with one another for interregional cooperation.
The goal of these organizations must both be to promote and incubate their own political forms for wider implementation, but also to establish ways of life which are responsive to and interactive with the local ecology.
The conference left me with many thoughts, which I’d like to explain and expand on here. First and foremost, the future of the left ought to be a decidedly communalist project, and it is communalist in direct response both to collapse, and to similar but crucially incompatible communitarian tendencies on the right. By its nature, this is a very broad discussion, and so I’m forced here to speak in very general terms, so forgive the tendency in what follows to sweeping generalization. Bear in mind, I do recognize that every situation is unique, and nothing can be truly set in stone.
The communalist framework is critical not just as a repudiation of the right and of the status quo, but also due to its unabashed and clearly stated opposition to certain tendencies on the left-particularly statism, postmodernism, mysticism, individualism, essentialism, and the half-measures of social democracy.
There are also compelling practical reasons: in a society which can be expected to become increasingly less wealthy, the social ties which have gradually disintegrated over the course of the globalized era will have to be re-forged. People will genuinely need each other again, and the most successful will be those with the most friends. As this transition occurs, it is incumbent on the communalist left to offer resources in the form of mutual aid and genuine compassion, but also institutional forms of direct democracy which are not improvised or slapped together haphazardly, and a corresponding culture to those looking for a place to go.
We will need it, because if we don’t build it, somebody else will. As the scope of the crisis becomes more obvious, people will despair (as if they aren’t already), and despair will lead them to seek answers. Many will find their way to religious dogma, and reactionary politics, to explain and offer refuge from their circumstances. As James Pogue demonstrated in his viral Vanity Fair piece on the National Conservatism Conference, many have already flocked to an ideologically diverse right, which has tapped into commonly held frustrations with the state of capitalism, the neoliberal project, and the woke narrative embraced and co-opted into the dominant order. Suddenly, a substantial group exists which is ideologically adrift, so adrift that ideas which once seemed relegated to the dustbin of history in the west (like theocracy and even monarchism) suddenly have cultural capital. This is a direct consequence of the left’s failure to offer a full-throated critique to its own most pernicious and anti-intellectual tendencies.
Communalism offers an alternative in that it retains the best of the liberal tradition-a true commitment to freedom, and particularly free expression, as a critical part of a democratic society. It emphasizes the need for the political education of ordinary people, and incorporates civic life as a basic virtue of the individual. Like the communitarian right, it recognizes the unique virtues of early American political life as they were described by Alexis de Tocqueville, without using them as a gateway drug to religious fundamentalism and authoritarian moral policing.
Concretely, the process is relatively straightforward: individuals must form groups of like-minded people, whom they genuinely trust and want to work with, and form communes-whether as cooperatives, co-housing initiatives, mutual aid projects, and ideally all the above-and use them as a basis for taking an active role in the local community as such. Such organizations must be prefigurative insofar as they live and organize in accord with their virtues, but they also must advance a political agenda and work to achieve it, always with the primary goal being to concretely improve the lives of their broader community members, and use those relationships as a platform for political education. Long-term provisions must be made for the realities of life under economic and ecological collapse, hence the term collapse communalism. The goal is to be rational, realistic, and practical, and as such, it is always beneficial for participants to be concerned with some practical craft or science-carpenters, plumbers, engineers, medical personnel, farmers, mechanics, and the like all offer invaluable skills, as well as connections to their respective industries.
Frankly, however, no less important are sympathetic individuals who are doing well in the current economy, as the primary impediment to any such project is access to capital, which is typically secured through the public sector or through allowing oneself to become co-opted by some elite philanthropic initiative. These are not viable options in the long term, nor is it wise to expect the fall of the current economic system dependent on the US dollar, however much economic mayhem may occur. Thus, members should expect to continue working normal jobs and building liquidity within the organization, ideally using the economy of scale inherent to communal life to reduce the individual cost of living significantly. Without a doubt, the ability to have direct and unvarnished conversations about difficult subjects will be particularly crucial when the subject of money comes up, and financial education (something the left has been historically allergic to) would not be an unwise investment.
As a source of a set of concrete ethics, members of communes should be encouraged to adopt a dialectical naturalist framework (though tolerance of disagreement, within reasonable bounds, is both necessary and a good in and of itself). Through creative interpretation of nature, and of the broader philosophical traditions which have attempted to understand it in the past, discussion should be conducted to arrive at a clear idea of what a good life looks like. While this process should be conducted in group discussion and debate, the conclusions are by their nature an individual process. It is precisely the responsibility of taking part in political life in a direct democracy which should serve as an impetus to each participant to give serious consideration to what they believe about the nature of right and wrong, and should be a point of departure for education which can be conducted individually, as well as in study groups. This should not be seen as the role merely of academics-to whatever degree and whatever level people are willing to engage, efforts should be made to introduce them to intellectual life, and this should certainly be a crucial aspect of the education of children.
While discussion of educating children is always controversial and evokes the scary concept of indoctrination, we must recognize a crucial difference between indoctrination and education. Some coherent account of the world must be offered to a child, but the difference between an educator and an indoctrinator is not the one who offers only one account as true, but rather one who offers any other account as false, and/or bad. The fact is this: if the account of reality given to a child is incorrect, it should be corrected through discussion, analysis, and debate. To give no account at all is the worst thing an educator can do.
Discussion of all these aspects of life has the feel of larping, and to be frank, at this point that’s more or less what it is (though many real projects of this sort do exist), but it is the necessary consequence of discussing a way of life in which the political sphere is brought back within the control of the local community, forcing the group to decide what is in their own best collective interest. By its very nature, this is a complex discussion, and the history of communes proves nothing if not that they are most easily destroyed by inflexibility and a compulsion to stick to theory when it flies in the face of reality. What this essay serves as is not only a call to action, but also a call to give serious consideration to how unfolding realities in politics, ecology, economics, and culture will influence such a project. The left needs to get out of a longstanding rut of magical thinking, aversion to data, or to realities which don’t fit neatly into its ideological narratives.
Anyone who has had the experience of being deprived of food for more than a day or two knows how quickly such such pretensions fall into a heap. A robust future for the left must be clear-headed in its analysis. An element that has been largely missing from the discussion is the other major crises which seem to be inevitable, namely the crisis of both demographic collapse and deglobalization, topics which don’t generally fit in the left’s wheelhouse, but to which it will nonetheless have to adapt. There is plenty of reason to hope, and I do believe that as bleak as things look, there is potential for a more just, decent, and rational society as the end of a very, very long tunnel.