Featured illustrations by Mirko Rastić.

The idea of the commune has animated the radical imagination of rebels and revolutionaries for centuries. Examples of pre-capitalist societies characterized by communal ways of living were studied by radical theorists like Marx and Kropotkin, who did not necessarily consider these societies to be revolutionary—lacking the necessary emancipatory impetus—but who did approach these historical examples as a source of inspiration.

In the years since the Communards of Paris took over control of their city in 1871, many intentional communities and communal experiments have sprung up across the globe: from the Tolstoyan Life and Labor communes to la ZAD in northern France; from the 1919 Bavarian Republic to the Comunidad del Sur in 1950s Uruguay, from pirates in the 17th century to peasants in the 20th. What they all had in common was an ambition to create a new world in the shell of the old.

The aspiration of the participants in these communal experiments was not to set themselves apart from society, but rather to take their destiny in their own hands and build a new life in common. The countless examples of communal movements across space and time confirm that the commune-form is by no means a fringe, countercultural creation. On the contrary, the revolutionary ideas that propelled people to man the barricades in Paris, Barcelona and Kurdistan have been echoed in various ways by millions of protesters from Tahrir to Taksim, Syntagma to Zucotti Park.

Each and every commune in history has faced the reactionary forces of the state, and some have been more successful than others in defending themselves. The challenge ahead is to bundle these formerly isolated outbursts of energy, hope and power, and create an confederated web of communes. Such an international confederation would not only be able to withstand the destructive powers unleashed upon it by its antagonists; it would also be ready to warrant its long-term growth and survival.

Indigenous and Maroon Communes

Russian peasant communes

In his final years, Karl Marx dedicated himself in part to the study of Russian peasant communes, the obshchina, in whose practice of common land ownership he recognized a “starting point for a communist development.” In the Russian countryside, the common land was divided among the different households of a village community. This centuries-old tradition came to an end with the state-driven collectivization of land under Stalin in the 1930s.

For anarchist thinkers like Kropotkin and Bakunin, the obshchina were an important source of inspiration too. In Mutual Aid, Kropotkin reflects positively on the advantages of community organization at the local level as opposed to centralized state authority.

In olden times, when a king sent his vogt to a village, the peasants received him with flowers in one hand and arms in the other, and asked him which law he intended to apply: the one he found in the village, or the one he brought with him? — Peter Kropotkin

Iroquois League

In the mid-12th century, a handful of indigenous nations in the American northwest entered into a confederation that has since become known as the Iroquois League. The Haudenosaunee society was characterized by a federative structure, with councils being the key decision-making organ at the longhouse, village, national and league levels. In the 17th century Francois le Mercier, a French Jesuit, described how deputies from each nation would hold a general assembly every year “to make their complaints and receive the necessary satisfaction in mutual gifts.”

The communal economic life of the five nations played an important role in their ability to live in peace; a metaphor often used for the federation was bringing everyone to live together in the same longhouse and eat from the same bowl. — Peter Gelderloos

Men and women were considered equal, and there was a clear division of labor based on gender that allowed for a fluctuating balance of power depending on the issue at hand. Each level of society would have both women’s and men’s councils, and even though men would make the decisions at the “national level” regarding issues of war and peace, the women still held a veto power. The confederacy preserved the peace between the different Native American nations for many centuries.

Traditional African societies

Many traditional African societies were founded on a form of communalism. Some of the most important features of African communalism are the absence of classes and exploitative social relations; equality at the level of distribution of social produce; and strong family and kinship ties as the basis of social life.

In the words of Sam Mbah and I.E. Igariwey: “Under communalism, by virtue of being a member of a family or community, every African was (is) assured of sufficient land to meet his or her own needs.” Disputes were often settled by conciliation and mutual compromise, whereas decisions in many traditional societies were often made through consensus.

The political organization in many traditional societies was horizontal in nature, with the leadership centered around elders who often shared the work with the rest of the community. Leadership was seldom imposed, coerced or centralized, but rather formed in response to the needs of the community, having the interest of the group as an indivisible unit at heart.

Zomia Highlands

The highlands of Zomia, a series of interconnected mountainous regions that stretch from Vietnam to India, are considered by some to constitute “one of the largest remaining non-state spaces in the world.” The communal form of social organization of the peoples inhabiting these regions was famously studied by the American anthropologist and political scientist James C. Scott.

He argues that, contrary to the general perception, the Hill Peoples were not the “primitive” ancestors of the more “civilized” communities living in the valleys, but rather were “runaway, fugitive, maroon communities who have, over the course of two millennia, been fleeing the oppressions of state-making projects in the valleys.”

Maroon communities

Along with the introduction of chattel slavery to the Western hemisphere by European colonists, a new phenomenon was born: Maroon communities. After escaping from the plantations, many former African slaves started organizing themselves in autonomous communities in the inaccessible interior of Caribbean islands and coastal colonies.

Their political organization was often modeled on traditional African societies, with land held in common by kinship groups and communal meetings functioning as popular assemblies. An entirely new culture of resistance, formed out of the eclectic mix of the different ethnic and religious backgrounds of its individual members, developed as part of the collective struggle for freedom.

To this day, many Maroon communities—like the ones in Jamaica and Suriname—remain to a large decree autonomous from the centralized governments of the contemporary states of which they have since become a part, and they carry on the traditions of self-governance their ancestors have fought for for hundreds of years.

Communalist revolts in old Europe

Revolt of the Ciompi in Florence, 1378

Strip all of us naked, you will see that we are alike; dress us in their clothes and them in ours, and without a doubt, we shall appear noble and they ignoble, for only poverty and riches make us unequal.

In his reflections on the Ciompi revolt in late 14th century Florence, Machiavelli attributed these words to an anonymous leader of the popular uprising. He considered the revolt an exemplary struggle between two groups of people, where one party — the wool carders, or ciompi — fought for freedom, while the other — the patrician oligarchy — was determined to abolish it.

After rising up to their social superiors, the unrepresented textile workers of Florence managed to establish a revolutionary commune that governed the city for a month between July and August, in what historians recognize as one of the first workers’ revolts in European history.

Revolt of the Comuneros, 1520-’21

In February 1520, the unpopular Holy Roman Emperor Charles V left Spain for Germany, leaving the country in the hands of a Dutch bishop. Soon, anti-government riots broke out in Toledo; local Comuneros kicked out the mayor and declared the city an independent community. Cities like Valladolid, Tordesillas followed suit, where city councils known as Comunidades ousted local rulers and seized power in a similar fashion.

Over the course of one year the rebellion expanded horizontally. Its anti-feudal character and the promotion of ideas of freedom and democracy appealed not only to the urban populations, but also to the peasantry. The latter sided with the Comuneros in an attempt to break the power of the rural nobility. The inclusion of the peasantry turned the rebellion into a mass uprising that can be seen as one of the first modern revolutions.

Anabaptist commune of Münster, 1534-’35

As a radical sect that emerged out of the Protestant Reformation, the Anabaptists attracted a large following among oppressed peasants and the urban poor. In 1534 militant Anabaptists took control over the town of Münster. While under siege from the Bishop’s troops for months, they abolished private property and canceled all debts. The introduction of polygamy, the Anabaptists’ religious intolerance and an emerging leadership cult centered around the self-declared “King of Münster” all played their part in the eventual defeat of the commune.