You are drunk, yes, but you know you’re not that drunk. You just know you want to move to this place immediately, especially when you learn its name: Home.
–Revolution, Ferdinand Freiligrath, 1850, as quoted by the anarchist Hugo Kalmar in The Iceman Cometh, Eugene O’Neill, 1946
Step 1:
You are sitting in a shitty bar, in San Francisco, and your life also happens to be shitty. Most of the people around you are actual pieces of shit, and the few who aren’t have shitty lives similar to yours.
Why is your life so shitty? In part, it’s because you don’t even live in San Francisco, you just work here because this is the walled castle-city where all the money is, and over half of the people who seem to actually live in this dystopian hell-hole are miserable, dog-shit tech zombies.
Sometimes you talk with them, but mostly both of you are too depressed to say anything meaningful. However, on this particular night, they hand you a newspaper and say it seems interesting. The title of the newspaper is The New Era.
It grows hot, O Babylon! ‘Tis cool beneath thy willow trees!
How To Start An Anarchist Commune (In 5 Easy Steps!)
Instead of look at the piece-of-shit totalitarian surveillance device (ie: smartphone) sitting by your half-empty alcoholic beverage, you instead read The New Era.
Almost immediately, you begin to realize this paper is something you’ve never seen before.
In the first article, you find this sentence: The columns of this paper will be open to the discussion of any topic that tends to better humankind’s conditions, and to give them the absolute freedom that is theirs by right, and that no generation, of the past, present, or future, may in any manner abridge.
The language is a bit odd, but you generally approve.
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In the next article, you realize this New Era was printed as a way to bring people north to an anarchist commune in Washington State, about a 13 hour drive away.
They have formed something called the Mutual Home Association, and its only objective is to assist its members in obtaining and building homes for themselves and to aid in establishing better social and moral conditions.
In plain words, they state that any person over the age of 16 years may become a member of this association by paying into the treasury a sum equal to the value of the land he or she may select… a sum equal to the taxes assessed against the tract of land he or she may hold and his or her share of the common expenses of construction.
The moment some doubt about this whole scheme creeps into your thoughts, it instantly disappears when you learn that all money received from membership shall be used only for the purchase of land.
The real estate of this association shall never be sold, mortgaged, or disposed of. A unanimous vote of all members of the association shall be required to alter the article of incorporation. All certificates of membership shall be for life.
As far as you can tell, this commune is all about creating places to live for its members, cheaply, and with all its resources.
You read the next article, trying to figure out if this is actually just the front for some weird cult, but then you read this: we believe that all natural opportunities should be absolutely free, and that land is the most essential to the maintenance of life and happiness of human beings.
We have formulated a plan, whereby those interested in making a home for themselves with good surroundings and at the same time place a small area of land outside the realms of speculation and its evil effects can do so.
We propose to do this by incorporating as an association, so that all land may be deeded direct to the association, thereby putting it out of the power of any one individual, to sell, mortgage of dispose of the land, as might be done were there individual deeds.
This seems pretty reassuring, even if you are drunk, and you’re even more enthusiastic when you see this very anti-cult sentiment printed in the columns: a group of socialists here can have their officers, by-laws, rules, and any regulations they may choose, but they can not force their ideas upon others who think and act differently.
And so, knowing this is probably not a cult, but a bunch of people tired of paying rent, you happily read the final sentence of this article: the more restriction you place upon the movements and desires of human beings, the greater the unhappiness of the people, and the more they will resent it.
As far as you can tell, for around $2,000, not even half of your life-savings, you can secure the right to build a house on two acres of land, which will be yours for life, and what’s even crazier, these New Era folks will help you, given they have a saw-mill, meaning you won’t need to buy lumber from Home Depot.
It sounds fake for just one more moment, but then you see the prominent ad on the back page:
These people don’t write so good, which makes you trust them even more, and as luck would have it, you are in fact a gardener, or cultivator, given your job is at a high-end nursery where piece-of-shit tech-yuppies can buy expensive novelty plants for their luxury apartments.
You are drunk, yes, you hate this fucking place, but you know you’re not that drunk. You just know you want to move to this place immediately, especially when you learn its name: Home.
Step 2:
Unfortunately, the anarchist commune described above no longer exists, at least in its anarchist incarnation.
It still exists as an unincorporated community called Home, Washington, its population over 1,000 as of 2023. At its height as an anarchist commune, Home housed nearly 1,000 anarchists, spreading to both sides of a small inlet of the Salish Sea.—
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continue reading HERE..How To Start An Anarchist Commune (In 5 Easy Steps
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