This commune proposes that we can and must make revolutionary change, now, by changing patterns of everyday life and popular participation rather than waiting to take state power and then transform society. State-centered revolutionary change has always reproduced hierarchies of control and oppression. We can avoid this if communities use the tools for democratic transformation that they already have within their hands.
Instances where communities escaped state and capitalist control and created forms of autonomous participatory governance include the Zapatistas in Mexico and Rojava in Syria. Yet urban communities can also appropriate institutions within the system, starting at the municipal level, to resist the state system and transform it.
Overview: Some Research Questions
- What are positive examples of attempts to establish democratic communities? What are positive examples of attempts to create democratic practices in everyday life?
- How central is women’s freedom to the success of democratic confederalism and prefiguration?
- What factors encourage or limit mass participation and mutual aid? What factors lead to the re-emergence of hierarchies of control; how can they be avoided?
- How do communities protect their democratic institutions and practices against the state?
- How do you solve problems of scale, to connect communities and their experiences, to move from local democracy to regional and global democracy?
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