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  • From: venaurafarm <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Communalism
  • Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2013 17:40:09 -0500


On 1/18/2013 11:39 PM, venaurafarm wrote:
<>
I still like my usual communalism, grass roots rant with a plug for
real food coops:

And I mean the real, member originated, run, served traditional food
coop, often very informal but adequate for most members; they get their
chosen food products cheaper.

I personally think that socialism, communalism and cooperatives have their place and represent real solutions to real issues; especially as applied to any grassroots agro-perma-enviro movement that affects people's lives, well being and livelihoods. I prefer to think of these concepts as tools for survival, used particularly by agrarian societies the world over.

I found this interesting page on the Web:
<>
http://crossculturalcollaboration.pbworks.com/w/page/16658958/Collectivist%20and%20Individualistic%20Community%20Orientation

"Collectivist and Individualistic Community Orientation
Page history last edited by n.schadewitz@... 4 years ago

Communities and societies may differ in Collective or Individual values
orientations. While Individual Community cultures act based on their
individual needs, Collective Community cultures consider the needs of
others as much or more than personal needs. Collectivism also employs a
face mechanism to defend oneself or others against losing face by means
of saving or giving self-esteem and respect. Individualist cultures
usually employ low face mechanism.

Some researcher distinguish relational (relational networks among
individual persons i.e. kin) and group (person is part of larger social
group as a whole) collectivism (Brewer and Chen, 2007)."
<>

Interesting description of communalism in the Wikipedia, brings in radical ecology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communalism

Communalism[1] is a term with three distinct meanings according to the Random House Unabridged Dictionary.[2] These include (1) "a theory of government or a system of government in which independent communes participate in a federation". (2) "the principles and practice of communal ownership". There is no indication whether communalism (sense 2) would apply in the "independent" communes described in the definition of communalism (sense 1). However, in practice, many experiments in utopian socialism did implement internal rules of communalist property ownership in the context of federated communalism. It is at least theoretically possible for a federation of communes to include communes which do not practice communalist rules of property, which is to say, that the overall national government may be a federation of communes, but that private property rather than communalist property is the order within each such commune.

Political theory
Main article: Communalism (political philosophy)

Communalism as a political philosophy was first coined by the well-known libertarian socialist author and activist Murray Bookchin as a political system to complement his environmental philosophy of social ecology.

While originally conceived as a form of social anarchism, he later developed Communalism into a separate ideology which incorporates what he saw as the most beneficial elements of left anarchism, Marxism, syndicalism, and radical ecology. Politically, Communalists advocate a stateless, classless, decentralized society consisting of a network of directly democratic citizens' assemblies in individual communities/cities organized in a confederal fashion.

This primary method used to achieve this is called libertarian municipalism which involves the establishment of face-to-face democratic institutions which are to grow and expand confederally with the goal of eventually replacing the nation-state. Unlike anarchists, Communalists are not opposed in principle to taking part in parliamentary politics -especially municipal elections- as long as candidates are libertarian socialist and anti-statist in policy.






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