While Communalism acts as its own distinct philosophy, it takes inspiration from both the traditions of Marxism and Anarchism. From Marxism, it draws from the construction of an analysis of history, philosophy, politics and economics through a rational and scientific approach. From Anarchism, it takes from the critique of hierarchy and advocacy of confederation in opposition to the state.

The term Communalism itself comes from the historic Paris Commune, which lasted from March 18th – May 28th 1871. While the Commune itself was organized into a representative government, the people living within the Commune organized their communities under principles of direct democracy. One such example of this was the “Vigilance Committees” organized by radical Parisians associated with the International Workingmens Association. Sadly, the Commune would eventually be crushed under the might of the French army. Even still, the Commune has acted as a source of inspiration for revolutionaries, Anarchist, Communist and Socialist alike.

While Communalism does draw inspiration from both Anarchism and Marxism, it does diverge from them, as well as providing criticisms. Marxism approaches history through the analysis of “Historical Materialism” in which developments and changes within human society are ultimately effected by our material conditions. History itself was divided into a number of stages, that being primitive communism, slave states, capitalism and then eventually socialism with the end result being a communist society. Capitalism, being a necessary and beneficial stage in so far as it organized the workers and allowed them the material conditions under which socialism can possibly be implemented. Once society has reached this important stage of technological development under capitalism, once the workers have been organized by factory life, can the workers even begin to organize themselves as revolutionaries.

However these workers can only achieve revolution if the discipline, unity and organization that they gained through their factory life is guided under the leadership of a revolutionary vanguard party. This vanguard, populated by the most revolutionary and educated among the working class, organizes the workers in order to facilitate the seizure of political power under the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. This seizure of political power, whether gained through revolutionary or elected means, takes the form of a state bureaucracy in which the political and economic power is centralized into the hands of the state. The idea being, that once political power has been centralized into the hands of a revolutionary state, along side state control over the land and its resources, would create the conditions under which socialism and ultimately communism, could be developed.

Here we have an internal contradiction within the framework of Marxian thought. While the end goal is to ultimately facilitate the groundwork for a stateless, classless, and money free society under communism, the foundation of a centralized state apparatus in which to organize political and economic life in preparation for communism inherently prevents its own evolution as such. Spoken of is the “withering away” of the state, a vague and often ill defined concept with no real basis in reality. States in and of themselves are self perpetuating institutions, in which those who hold power within the state naturally seek to defend and secure their power by any means necessary, even if it means betraying their supposed revolutionary ideals. The idea of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” is an obfuscation of the nature of politics and power. It assumes the idea of the workers themselves being in power when in reality power has been concentrated into the hands of a new political and financial elite under the guise of a “workers state”.

Mikhail Bakunin, a member of the International Workingmens Association along with Karl Marx, was quite critical of the authoritarian methods being purposed by Marx and their followers. While Bakunin was a supporter of science and scientific understanding, they were quite weary about the possibility of science becoming a new “faith” in which rather than having faith in god and the church, one would put their faith in science and the intellectuals whom have the privilege to study and understand it. The people, rather than relying on their own capacity to be rational and ethical, becomes dependent on the knowledge and guidance of this new intellectual bureaucracy. To quote Bakunin:

“Suppose a learned academy, composed of the most illustrious representatives of science; suppose this academy charged with legislation for and the organization of society, and that, inspired only by the purest love of truth, it frames none but the laws but the laws in absolute harmony with the latest discoveries of science. Well, I maintain, for my part, that such legislation and such organization would be a monstrosity, for two reasons: first, that human science is always and necessarily imperfect, and that, comparing what it has discovered with what remains to be discovered, we may say that it is still in its cradle. So that were we to try to force the practical life of men, collective as well as individual, into strict and exclusive conformity with the latest data of science, we should condemn society as well as individuals to suffer martyrdom on a bed of Procrustes, which would soon end by dislocating and stifling them, life ever remaining an infinitely greater thing than science.

The second reason is this: a society which should obey legislation emanating from a scientific academy, not because it understood itself the rational character of this legislation (in which case the existence of the academy would become useless), but because this legislation, emanating from the academy, was imposed in the name of a science which it venerated without comprehending — such a society would be a society, not of men, but of brutes.”i

It would be dishonest of me, however, to purport that all Marxists necessarily support a vanguard party and by extension, a centralized state. Some variants of Marxism, for example, advocate the creation of workers councils under the direct, democratic control of the workers themselves, organizing with other councils through the use of mandated delegates. Even still, this Council Communist approach limits itself to a particular outlook centering revolutionary potential into that of the worker. In the modern age of automation and the increasing precariousness of the position of workers as such today, I find the focus of the worker, specifically, as the focus of revolutionary potential to be unrealistic. It is argued that capitalism organizes, disciplines and unifies the workers and while I do not necessarily disagree with this assessment, I do challenge the benefits of such social and mental structuring. Factory life did organize the workers, but it did so in a way that socialized the worker into the social and economic structures of capitalism, internalizing it into their own ideology and way of being. Hardly preparing the way for socialism, capitalism merely served to foster the social, political and economic capacities necessary to perpetuate its own existence. The socialization of the worker, the very idea of a human being defining themselves as a worker, was a necessary step on the developmental road of capitalism and continues to nurture it to this day.

Anarchism differentiates itself from Marxism by, rather than necessarily focusing on the material conditions of our society, focuses on the hierarchies within our society that perpetuate exploitation and domination, whether they be social, economic or political. This isn’t to say that Anarchism rejects an understanding of material conditions, far from it. Since the inception of Anarchism as a distinct philosophy it has retained a critique and analysis of capitalism and the conditions of those exploited under it. However, Anarchism extends its criticisms to not just capitalism, but political hierarchy such as the state and social hierarchies such as white supremacy, patriarchy, etc.

Historically Anarchists have been quite active in attempting to forge new and radical social relationships within our society, going as far back as the mid-late 19th century. Attempts at creating an Anarchistic society spring up in events such as the Free Territory of the Ukraine (1917-1921) and Anarchist Catalonia(1936-1939), along side many other numerous Anarchist uprisings and radical social experiments. Most, if not all of these radical experiments fell for one reason or another. These past historical failures are worth studying, but requiring too much detail to go into at this particular moment.

However, there is one important critique that can be drawn from our past and applied to the problems of the Anarchist movement today. Anarchists, while being critical of and in opposition to hierarchy and domination, have forgotten the positive, reconstructive theoretical philosophy within Anarchist thought in favor of reactive, cathartic forms of organizing. It has become common among Anarchists to become purely confrontational and defensive. This is most prevalent within the idea of Anti-Fascist work. Do not misunderstand me, I consider myself an Anti-Fascist and I consider it important in regards to protecting our communities from Fascist violence. However, Anti-Fascism is not in and of itself revolutionary. Not at least if it isn’t tied to a larger revolutionary ideal, it becomes simple defensive reaction on one hand and catharsis on the other.

This has become most prevalent in the fetishism of the Black Bloc tactic. As a tactic, Black Bloc allows individuals to anonymously unite in defense, or opposition, to threats facing their communities. The idea being that those comprising the Black Bloc all wear similar, black clothing and masks in order to protect their, and by extension the Blocs, identity. This anonymity allows the Bloc to fight back in a way that they may be under risk for doing if they lacked the protection provided by the Black Bloc tactic. However, the tactic does limit itself in a number of ways. Often times the Black Bloc is a reactive tactic, the most common usage of it today being deployed against Fascists whenever they try to hold space or organize. While it has certainly shown itself to be highly effective at exorcising immediate physical threats to our communities, it does not necessarily do so with the intention of building support beyond the confrontation.

Essentially, these sort of tactics are ultimately politically charged street fighting, which can be quite cathartic for the participants and fulfilling when a Fascist threat is prevented. The issue lies in that such tactics do not wish to create a dialogue between radicals and their communities, with the radicals often being satisfied that the threat has been dealt with, dispersing without any real attempt to build solidarity with the community outside of the particular conflict. This does not so much serve the community per say, so much as it strokes the individual egos of those participating in “combat catharsis”:

“combat catharsis puts real-world action front and center…It takes the adrenaline-filled moment of street confrontation and substitutes that for revolutionary politics itself. Mass work…gets derided or ignored. Small affinity groups replace participatory-democratic institutions.”ii

These sort of insular, reactive actions do not serve to build any sort of revolutionary social movement. They serve only those whom are already versed in its politics and language, deafening them to those outside of their political sub-culture. What we need, more now than ever, is a revolutionary politics that ultimately has our communities at its heart, putting their social, political, ecological, and economic needs front and center.

Communalism, as a political philosophy, seeks to put power back into our communities through the creation of directly democratic assemblies within towns and villages, as well as cities. The city, historically, acts as the social expression of humanity beyond that of its simple biological nature. It allows for the fulfillment of our potentialities as creative, rational, self-aware beings whom are able to shape and actively manipulate their local environment to suit our needs. This is not to say this history is not riddled with conquest, degradation and domination generally, but that the city has, and can again, be a center for dialogue, debate, discussion, creativity, and democracy.

Communalism seeks to reassert the original political life as defined by the ancient Greeks, in which the community is a self-conscious, rational and creative entity that is capable of responding to and resolving the issues and concerns of its people. Our reliance on a political elite for governance has caused us to become dull to our own decision making capabilities and our ability to be rational as such. Unlike the ancient Greeks however, Communalism seeks to see the whole body of society organized into principles of self governance through directly democratic political institutions. With directly democratic community assemblies acting as the basis for decision making, these communities would communicate and coordinate with one another through the use of a larger federal council comprised of re-callable delegates, whose purpose is not so much to make decisions as it is to facilitate the administration of the communities, ultimately leaving the decision making powers with the community assemblies themselves.

Such a society could provide the means, both materially and socially, for the creation of an egalitarian, non-hierarchical society in which the autonomy of the individual and the community are fulfilled by the active participation of the community within their own, directly democratic assemblies. Such assemblies, even today, can provide the nuclei for a new revolutionary movement based in reclaiming politics from the hands of the political and financial elite, back into the hands of the communities themselves. Rather than focusing on singular, binary issues, such a movement would be intersectional, supporting and organizing with each other in our different issues and conflicts. Patriarchy, White Supremacy, Capitalism and the state all intersect and support each other in multifaceted, complex ways that without the active solidarity and support of our communities for each other, regardless of our differences, we will never be able to address them.

It is my hope that we, as rational, creative, self-aware beings are able to understand not only the great power that we hold, but also the immense responsibility. If we are to not only survive on this planet, but to thrive as well, we must address the impossible to ignore destruction that our society, in its current form, continues to reap across the planet. Humanity is at a crossroads. We have the potentiality to continue on as we are, dominating and destroying each other for resources, or to build a society in which all of humanity and the biosphere live in support of one another. What matters then, from this point forward, is how we choose to act.