The Zapatista’s aren’t exactly communist, but they have an interesting system of federation, rotating “leadership” (I think people are randomly selected for most leadership roles), collective decision-making/consensus building, community justice, etc. I think a lot of communes have systems to avoid hierarchy as well. From what I’ve seen, they have their own, different problems, but many have been around for long time, so they “work,” in a sense.
Small communes definitely make sense to me in what they look like and how they work, but it is hard for me to understand how they could scale to nation/global proportions. Unless the idea is that everyone is part of their own small, separate communes… I also don’t see this as feasible because globalism exists and is real, yet doesn’t fit into that model (ironically globalism is most often propagandized as some kind of communist plot when the reality is that it is the epitome of colonialism/imperialism/capitalism, at least the way I see it… maybe that’s only because globalism has been implemented by capitalist empires).
I think the Achilles heel of small communes is healthcare. Everything is fine and good, until someone needs serious hospital care, which is effectively infeasible to provide at small scale from small communities. I think that’s only possible with large institutions but that’s debatable.
The Zapatista territory is pretty large and has a population of somewhere around 300k. It’s a network of autonomous municipalities, so it kind of like a bunch of communes. They have their own schools, doctors, and hospitals; but they are quite poor (they’re mostly indigenous farmers).
The Zapatista’s aren’t exactly communist, but they have an interesting system of federation, rotating “leadership” (I think people are randomly selected for most leadership roles), collective decision-making/consensus building, community justice, etc. I think a lot of communes have systems to avoid hierarchy as well. From what I’ve seen, they have their own, different problems, but many have been around for long time, so they “work,” in a sense.
Small communes definitely make sense to me in what they look like and how they work, but it is hard for me to understand how they could scale to nation/global proportions. Unless the idea is that everyone is part of their own small, separate communes… I also don’t see this as feasible because globalism exists and is real, yet doesn’t fit into that model (ironically globalism is most often propagandized as some kind of communist plot when the reality is that it is the epitome of colonialism/imperialism/capitalism, at least the way I see it… maybe that’s only because globalism has been implemented by capitalist empires).
I think the Achilles heel of small communes is healthcare. Everything is fine and good, until someone needs serious hospital care, which is effectively infeasible to provide at small scale from small communities. I think that’s only possible with large institutions but that’s debatable.
The Zapatista territory is pretty large and has a population of somewhere around 300k. It’s a network of autonomous municipalities, so it kind of like a bunch of communes. They have their own schools, doctors, and hospitals; but they are quite poor (they’re mostly indigenous farmers).