The Communal Cult
The Communal Cult
One of the things we have to understand clearly is that authoritarian socialism is not the same thing as liberation, and the existence of social programs under an authoritarian state does not automatically make that state socialist in the emancipatory sense. This matters because people often point to achievements such as universal healthcare or mass education as though those things […]
The liberatory society is the society organized around the idea that people should have real power over their own lives, rather than being dominated by governments, employers, landlords, corporations, patriarchal institutions, racial hierarchies, or any other structure that treats some people as rulers and others as subjects. When we talk about the liberatory society, we are talking about one broader […]
We have to reject one of the most poisonous confusions in revolutionary politics: the belief that a willingness to kill proves seriousness. Too many self-described revolutionaries, especially in the United States, have absorbed the deepest assumptions of American gun culture while imagining themselves to be opposing it. They reject the flag, the police, the Republican Party, the militia movement, and […]
A lot of people are attracted to Marxism-Leninism because authoritarian systems can look effective from the outside. They can build quickly, move resources quickly, reorganize cities quickly, punish corruption quickly, and carry out enormous projects without spending years asking whether everybody affected agrees. That speed can be mistaken for liberation. But there is a huge difference between getting something done […]
From my perspective, Marxism-Leninism is not truly anti-capitalist because it does not actually abolish the social relationship that makes capitalism what it is: a small group controlling production while everybody else works underneath them and has little real power over the economy. It changes who owns and manages capital, but it does not fundamentally change the structure of domination. Instead […]
I do not really consider myself a leftist, and I do not consider myself a Marxist either. I am a socialist, but my socialism does not come primarily through Marx. It comes much more from utopian socialism, religious socialism, older communal traditions, Indigenous and BIPOC forms of communal life, reciprocity, mutual obligation, shared stewardship, and the idea that human beings […]
A lot of people get stuck arguing over anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, council communism, communization theory, and all of these earlier revolutionary traditions as if one of them has to be the final answer. I do not think that is the most useful way to look at them. At their best, all of them are attempts to move away from domination and […]
I have been thinking a lot about how genuinely social-revolutionary communalism, libertarian municipalism, and democratic confederalism actually are. They do not just ask for a kinder version of the present world. They ask us to imagine a society that exists after capitalism, after domination, after the centralized state, after hierarchy has stopped being treated as the natural structure of human […]
Entryism is a political strategy where activists or members of a movement join a larger, more mainstream party or organization to influence it from within, using its structure, visibility, and access to build power for their own goals. In the U.S., that often means socialists and progressives working within the Democratic Party, not because they believe it can be “saved,” […]
Social liberals often endorse incremental reforms that leave the deeper architecture of exploitation intact. They champion diversity initiatives in corporate boardrooms without questioning capitalism itself; they support modest police oversight while rejecting demands to radically shrink or abolish carceral systems. Their solutions treat symptoms, not causes. Closely tied to this is a liberal fetishization of civility and “both sides” dialogue. […]
Among contemporary left-wing movements, one of the most persistent yet troubling trends is what is often called “tankie” socialism (or colloquially, “tankheism”). This term broadly refers to an uncritical, authoritarian strand of socialism that romanticizes historical regimes such as the Soviet Union under Stalin, Maoist China, or other state socialist projects — regardless of their well-documented abuses. It often defends […]
The true path forward for human liberation and ecological survival does not lie in authoritarian state socialism, nor in an unchecked libertarian individualism. It lies in building deeply democratic, cooperative, ecological communities—a vision best embodied in communalism, as advanced by Murray Bookchin. This is the most radical and genuinely progressive form of leftism, because it centers people, community, and the […]
It’s time to say something that a lot of people in leftist spaces already know, but don’t always feel safe enough to say out loud: a lot of socialists aren’t actually progressive. That might sound strange at first. After all, socialism is supposed to be about justice, equality, and liberation. But in practice, many self-identified socialists are only focused on […]
