where is The Community?
what did we want back then? we wanted to love, not in the petty, stylised sense of the word, we wanted a love to avenge god's abandonment. and we challenged each other for it. for greater descriptions and infallible definitions. we couldn't look each other in the eye and say, "i love you. let us figure that out". no, we said "what is this? what makes this not that? look at this. here. be here. with me."
The Community is here and there.
the left turns such that any war can be waged as long as it is on the side of The Community. this is worth examining. who are we fighting? precisely the ones that, by material definition, we can't fight? what is the moral consensus on fighting?
there is a boundary somewhere and i’m trying to find it.
how chosen is the family? is it not all at the mercy of our predispositions, our attractions, our disgusts, our class signifiers, our vibes, our trending moral codes? is a Community, singular, not simply an interiority? defined as much by who is outside as who is inside?
perhaps it is not on the side of The Community but in the name of community that we fight. in the name of love, again. for the sake of unity. there is no real left and right there then, is there? that's what we all want, a way to co-exist, an understanding.
we can strive for a fundamental democracy of things in love, maybe. not the theatre of it at the imagined level of a nation. but something more like, at every workplace or organisation, technical knowledge, and therefore also ideal working conditions, should be determined by those putting in the hands on work. the abolishment of project managers, of human resources, of every meddling middleman. to replace every boundary with dialogue. the proliferation of diplomacy, of translation, and mediation. to replace every contract with an understanding.
not something a party could promise us. only something we could push toward from the bottom. from wherever we are. for all the usual flip in the discourse i’d say communism is about the ideal and anarchy is more about how to get there- the method, or lack of it. only those with knowledge about a system have real, sustainable power over it. that is the meaning of trust.
the commune isn't institutionalised or constitutionalised by the state, but built by the people. every family was once the dream of a commune, muddled with either patriarchy, or some other lack of imagination. gandhi found freedom for villages in renunciation and self reliance, not simply anarchist praxis- but determinedly anti-state practice. the idea was to render the state useless at meeting our needs, as opposed to the hegemony they have on our lives by meeting our wants. but that was still theatre, to ask the white man to leave.
but also a second kind of theatre, to tell the state we don't need her. we want her. we chose her.
a freedom is not a freedom from any defined class of people, a specific administration, but to build a life where the people and the state coexist in dialogue. no ‘powers that be’, only powers that do. on the side of goods, services, and struggles. in the name of love, and real, explicit consent. we’ll find new work for the managers.
the state can focus on structural redirections to avert climate catastrophe while we dismantle the basis of exploitative reason. no heirs, no arche, only the land and its people.