Communal Utopia Quest

Nyvis

Active member
Living the New American Dream

You are living the American Dream. No, not the old individualist American Dream of the self made captain of industry, or even the older American Dream of the yeoman farmer. No, you’re living the New American Dream. The Communal Utopia.

The 21th century is coming to a close, and it has been a rough one for the United States of America. Never ending political deadlock, rolling economic crises and international isolation has lost America it's status of world power while the rest of the planet moved forward and up to space. American politics have grown more fractious and a breeding ground for competing ideologies seeking to address the country’s crisis. The federal government still exists, but its ability to enforce what few decrees it manages to agree on is close to nonexistent. Some state governments have stepped into this vaccuum, but they lack the means to replace it entirely. This is where the communes comes in.

Communalism is one of the new ideologies that emerged out of the global disruption of the 21th century. It is built around the idea of local communes taking care of their own people and cooperating with each other to find solutions to any issues too large for them alone. This makes the USA and its often deadlocked and ineffective government the perfect breeding ground for new communes offering local solutions to people’s problems.

American communalists aren’t alone either, as the ideology has had large successes in countries that suffered directly from the 21th century’s disasters. The Revolutionary Communalist Confederation span across Brazil and central Africa, and has brought stable growth to the bereleagued territories it covers after toppling their corrupt states. In Catalonia, the more moderate Communalist Confederal Republic has abided by its deal with the European Union, stopping the spread of its revolution brought by the 50s economic crisis, but maintaining the rights to have its own economic and political system. And of course, there’s Mars. Abandoned by its colonizers and starved for supplies during the 80s crisis, Mars rebelled to establish its own confederation of communes and organize relief across the red planet. All of those successes worldwide have inspired your movement at home.

Communalists are a fractious bunch, and any commune will have to bring together the various tendencies, from revolutionaries and reformists to the very American exceptionalist municipalists. More minor communalist tendencies have also added to the movement over time. Their standing within the wider Federation of American Communes can vary greatly, from well regarded groups standing for minority interests to wacky ideologues only tolerated because of their insignifiant numbers, but they usually cooperate with larger caucuses to get some of their agenda integrated into their programs.

Choose which major tendencies have been influential in electing your first representatives to the communal council in charge of daily affairs. Candidates can run on a fusion ticket in the multi member elections to the council, and ideological groupings will thus often endorse the same person.

Feel free to choose multiples as each set of of votes will result in a candidate to the council.

[] Revolutionary communalists
Revolutionary communalists see communalist organization as a prelude to destroying the existing state structures and replacing them with a confederation of communes. They are inspired by the successes of revolutions on Mars, in Brazil and central Africa. They tend to avoid involving themselves in electoralism, especially beyond the local level. They believe participation in elections strengthen the state’s legitimacy and warp movements around politicians’ campaigns to the detriment of their work building communalist structure on the ground.

[] Reform communalists
Reform communalists see the communes as the bedrock for a grassroot movement able to reshape the country they operate in by acting both as building blocks for a better organization of it and as organizing grounds for electoral action. They tend to favour electing communalist or sympathizing politicians who will make it easier for communes to operate and encourage their formation. They tend to abide by an analysis of the liberal democratic state that is still antagonistic, but believe that by choosing the right politicians to support and ensuring they’re dependent their grassroot movement, they can steer policy towards favouring the communes rather than strengthening the state. They’re especially involved in local government, where they believe the gap between existing and desired institutions is lesser.

[] Municipalists
Municipalists are a homegrown movement that embrace communalist principles while integrating them in an American exceptionalist conception. They believe the communal construction to be the way to realize the true American dream of endless opportunities. But despite their idiosyncrasies, they’re often also the movement closest to communalism’s anarchist roots, stressing institutions built through voluntary participation. Their appeal to American ideals tend to resonate more with people who haven’t been slighted by it as much, and the movement is quick to leverage that privilege to ease its communes’ lives. On the other hand, its commitment to voluntary association is honest, and communes attempting to use municipalism as an excuse to avoid supporting less privileged comrades are shamed by the caucus as a whole.

In addition, minor communalist organizations can support candidates, adding to the fusion ballot. They rarely determine the election, but often get to influence the proceedings by association. Most of those groups are quite obscure beyond the labels they use, so exactly how they'll behave once they integrate into your commune's system is left to be seen. Expect at least half of them to turn out to be bad apples when they get on the big stage, but as always, that's a learning experience, so don't be afraid of it, you won't be penalized by your picks.

Feel free to choose multiple groups to back your candidate.

[] National communalist society
[] Christian communal church
[] Liberated Catholic church
[] Queer liberation caucus
[] National liberation caucus
[] Intersectional association
[] Transhuman communalist association
[] Marxist Communalist caucus
[] Maoist Communalist Party
[] Thomas Paine society
[] Martian cooperation association
[] International Revolutionary group
[] Rational communalist community
[] Human Ecology caucus
[] Rewilding society

It’s now time to find and build your newly founded commune, starting with localizing it on the map of America. Choose which area your commune is situated in. Your position will impact the popularity of the various communalist tendencies, but also influence the opportunities open to you as you construct your commune.


[] North Eastern coast: the old heart of the united states has been decaying along with the USA’s standing in the world, the country’s slipping dominance proving a deadly blow to its finance sector. The region’s numerous fractious state governments attempted to provide a cohesive answer to the lack of federal authority but the economic decline caused an implosion of the coalition they had built. Old DC lies at the edge of the North Eastern region, holding the bickering and ineffectual US federal government. Its attract has shrunk as no funding can be agreed on for most of the country's bureaucracy, but for a lot of its people, they have nowhere else to go. This authority vacuum has been a breeding ground for a large variety of radical groups, amplified by its existing diversity. This means any North Eastern commune is likely to be ideologically diverse and have the opportunity to cooperate with non communalists of various kinds.

[] South Eastern coast: for the rising states of the south eastern coast, the American decline was a brutal backslide. For the more disfavoured states of the region, though, it was nothing unexpected. The south remain a hotbed of racial tensions and untreated economic issues to this day. This proves to be both a boon and a challenge to communalists, as recruits to be radicalized are common, but keeping tensions from boiling over into internal conflict require a lot of careful balancing. Revolutionary communalists tend to be successful with the oppressed here, while reformists are faring poorly and municipalists' appeal to American ideals ring hollow and alienate the minorities who often flock to the communalist banner.

[] Western coast: the west coast fared better than the rest of the country, as state authority seamlessly substituted itself to failing federal power, spearheaded by California. The economic shocks hit just as hard, but active leadership managed to plan recovery. On the other hand, income disparity, gentrification and economic exploitation have kept building up as the west coast maintained its modern capitalist model. Glaring issues with urban planning also plague the coast's megacities. The state government has been slow, ineffective and often unwilling to go against business interests in addressing those problems. But the old machine politics are breaking down under pressure, and the west coast democratic institutions are still quite robust. This opens up the door to reformists seeking to build a coalition capable of improving the region. It has also been an opportunity for municipalists' more idealistic campaigning against the dysfunctional state of the coast's cities.

[] Great lakes: the great lakes are the old, decaying industrial heart of America. Ironically, as America's fortune declined, its industry's competitivity rose. Imports fell along with confidence in American currency and domestic production stepped up to the task again. The rust belt's desperate population provides cheap labor, keeping automation in check for. American industry is far from the cutting edge of the modern world, but it chugs along with its equally backward domestic market. This recovery has been a shaky road, as government often failed to provide the needed infrastructure and oversight, building up resentment. Communalist activity in the great lakes is divided between reformists seeking to distribute the benefits of this production focused economy while protecting their workers, and revolutionaries who see the often corrupt state governments as impossible to work with and hope to seize direct control of factories. In any case, cooperation with syndicalists and trade unionists is likely to be necessary.

[] South Central US: the southern interior has been devastated by climate change induced desertification. Denver has survived the worst of it and is the rallying beacon for the southern plains states, but it has still been hit harshly, and most smaller communities through the region have withered away. But of course, the biggest prize is Texas. The lone star state's size and single government should have enabled large scale solutions to the issue. But large scale political opposition to direct intervention still dominates its politics. Instead, it relies heavily on corrupt private-public partnership and favouring of companies displaying the right support for its ruling politicians. It has also extended its reach into the rest of the south central states through its corporations extending into them. Meanwhile, Arizona's cities and Las Vegas are vast ghost towns where remaining inhabitants compete for what little water is available. Where population is still concentrated and across minority communities, revolution is the name of the game, as the system offer little incentive to participate in it. Municipalists are also popular with more insular communities still clinging to the ideals of America but are entirely disillusioned by its institutions.

[] North Central US: climate change is also at the heart of the north's problems. Change in ecosystems and a dry/wet seasonal cycle leave its agricultural land to the mercy of the elements. Mostly a region of farmers and resource extraction, the area has suffered badly. Break down in federal power means less farming subsidies and a poorer country require less of the region's produces. Accordingly, the people who remain are either self reliant towns that see to themselves and export what little profitable surplus they can find to import enough to continue operationg, or dedicated corporate exploitations ruthlessly pushing down costs as much as possible to still turn a profit. People here believe strongly in American self reliance, and rural municipalists are the only communalists to make significant inroads with the local population.
 
[X] Revolutionary communalists
[X] Intersectional association
[X] Marxist Communalist caucus
[X] Maoist Communalist Party
[X] Martian cooperation association
[X] International Revolutionary group
[X] South Eastern coast
 
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Nyvis

Active member
By the way feel free if you have questions about the setting, and especially the situation in America.
 

Strigix

Verified Xeno
Administrator
[X] Municipalists
[X] Queer liberation caucus
[X] Human Ecology caucus
[X] Rewilding society
[X] South Central US

Consider: Relentlessly hyperqueer ecologists, living in desert communes on the outskirts of society, the badlands which have been abandoned by Capital and the State, and rebuilding a new world for themselves from the ashes.
 
Pronouns
he/him
[X] Revolutionary communalists
[X] Marxist Communalist caucus
[X] Intersectional association
[X] International Revolutionary group
[X] Rewilding society
[X] South Eastern coast
 

veteranMortal

New member
Pronouns
she/her
[X] Revolutionary communalists
[X] Queer liberation caucus
[X] Intersectional association
[X] International Revolutionary group
[X] South Eastern Coast
[X] Great Lakes

Can't decide if I'd prefer to be building on the old union culture and the like from the Great Lakes or from the marginalised people in the South. They're both very intriguing concepts to me.

Fully Internationalist Luxury Intersectional Queer Communalism
 

Rise Comics

Site Artist
Pronouns
She/Her
X] Revolutionary communalists
[X] Queer liberation caucus
[X] South Eastern Coast
[] Western coast
[X] Great Lakes
[] Intersectional association
[] International Revolutionary group
 

Regency

New member
Pronouns
He/Him
[X] Revolutionary communalists

[X] Intersectional association
[X] Queer liberation caucus
[X] Marxist Communalist caucus
[X] Maoist Communalist Party
[X] Martian cooperation association
[X] International Revolutionary group
[X] Rewilding society

[X] South Eastern Coast
 

Nyvis

Active member
[] Thomas Paine society
[] Rational communalist community
[] Human Ecology caucus
[] Rewilding society

@Nyvis Pardon but could you elaborate a bit on these 4 groups?

The Thomas Paine society is a small group that likes to delve into America's (and liberalism in general) more radical inspirations to claim communalism is the real American ideal. They're mostly a bunch of academics circlejerking about how the less shitty founders would have disapproved of modern America. They host field trips where they debate people who still care about the concept of America to sway them to communalism. Kinda inoffensive even if more radical people kinda frown at the borderline historical revisionism.

The Rational Communalist Community is a bunch of nerds trying to justify their communalism in rationalist terms. A lot of it is pseudoscience, but they're not as much of a grift as our current rationalists and once in a while, they'll convince someone who would be reactionary otherwise by bombarding them with facts about humans' gregarious nature.

The human ecology caucus are ecologists who consider Earth is way too deep in the anthropocene to go back without killing most of us and seek to adapt both the world and human communes for optimal confort with a focus on what it does for humans.

The rewilding society is their rivals and ideological opposite in the ecological movement, believing strongly that nature free of human interference has a worth of its own. They usually try to set aside land for rewilding projects.
 

Strigix

Verified Xeno
Administrator
For what it's worth, typically IRL rewilding types and human ecology types don't necessarily come into conflict that often.

The goal of 'human ecology' is to integrate the 'human' ecosystem- cities, food production, etc- into the ecosystem as a whole. So, for example, they would push for self sustaining communities which manage their local ecosystems in such a way as to secure their own continued existence. This approach would lead to a fairly diverse set of approaches based on the local ecosystem of the given commune, and their particular needs- one group of 'human ecologists' might have eco-friendly farms and food forests to support a semi dense city, while another might be more along the line of pastoral caravans of herders and hunters.

Rewilding types, on the other hand, tend to be more focused on bringing back a semi-mythologized 'wildness'- bringing ecosystems back into their original states of equilibrium, and defending that equilibrium, whenever and wherever they can. They tend to believe that nature, and the wild, is a self balancing system- and that the proper route is to remove outside interference (IE, humans) as much as possible.

While the two groups are ostensibly opposed in a lot of ways, they share a common ground in that both want to preserve the ecosystem and both oppose environmentally destructive industries, technologies, and practices which will lead to unsustainable damages to the ecosystem- and since greens are relatively low in number, both factions tend to form uneasy alliances against opposition and crises due to being outnumbered enough that they can't be picky about the help they get.
 

Nyvis

Active member
For what it's worth, typically IRL rewilding types and human ecology types don't necessarily come into conflict that often.

The goal of 'human ecology' is to integrate the 'human' ecosystem- cities, food production, etc- into the ecosystem as a whole. So, for example, they would push for self sustaining communities which manage their local ecosystems in such a way as to secure their own continued existence. This approach would lead to a fairly diverse set of approaches based on the local ecosystem of the given commune, and their particular needs- one group of 'human ecologists' might have eco-friendly farms and food forests to support a semi dense city, while another might be more along the line of pastoral caravans of herders and hunters.

Rewilding types, on the other hand, tend to be more focused on bringing back a semi-mythologized 'wildness'- bringing ecosystems back into their original states of equilibrium, and defending that equilibrium, whenever and wherever they can. They tend to believe that nature, and the wild, is a self balancing system- and that the proper route is to remove outside interference (IE, humans) as much as possible.

While the two groups are ostensibly opposed in a lot of ways, they share a common ground in that both want to preserve the ecosystem and both oppose environmentally destructive industries, technologies, and practices which will lead to unsustainable damages to the ecosystem- and since greens are relatively low in number, both factions tend to form uneasy alliances against opposition and crises due to being outnumbered enough that they can't be picky about the help they get.

Pretty much every communalist is ecologist to some degree. So this has the usual circular firing squad effect of disagreeing very loudly on small details because there isn't much else to argue about. Rewilding and human ecology tend to feud more on philosophy than anything, which is usually the case with those smaller organizations anyway.
 

Nyvis

Active member
The size will come with the location. But no, expect bigger than that. You've just taken over a significant municipality.

Anyway, closing the vote.

You have 6 elected councilors: 5 revolutionary communalists and one municipalist. You are located in the South East of the United States. A large number of small groups have shown up for your candidates too, including queer activists, ecologists, Marxists, intersectionalists and internationalists.

For practicality's sake, your council is currently rounded out by the municipality's mayor, for all you dislike the legal institutions around it, because a lot of the power still flow through the office. They're a nondenominational member of the Federation of American Communes who joined after burning out of political activism in traditional parties and returning to their home town. The name recognition has helped you break through so even the revolutionaries in the commune find it an a tolerable concession.

I'll get back to you soon with both the next step and a recap of where your commune stands with the results of votes.
 

Nyvis

Active member
Status of the Commune

The council

The commune maintains a permanent council in charge of daily affairs. Each councillor represents a caucus of commune members, and is recallable by that part of the population, who is also in charge of reviewing their actions. Councillors tend to be people who already have experience of running parts of the communal effort and have experience with it but only serve a single term in the council to avoid entrenchment.

Because of compromise pertaining to the foundation of your commune and takeover of the existing municipal institutions, the council also seats the elected mayor, who serves 4 year terms and is elected by the whole municipality rather than merely those showing up to communal assemblies. The mayor thus tend to represent your non communalist allies in the council.

Current council composition:
Revolutionary communalists - 5
Municipalists - 1
Nondenominational - 1

Councilor 1 (invariably_stupefied)
[X] Revolutionary communalists
[X] Intersectional association
[X] Marxist Communalist caucus
[X] Maoist Communalist Party
[X] Martian cooperation association
[X] International Revolutionary group
[X] South Eastern coast

Councilor 2 (Strigix)
[X] Municipalists
[X] Queer liberation caucus
[X] Human Ecology caucus
[X] Rewilding society

Councilor 3 (GiantMonkeyMan)
[X] Revolutionary communalists
[X] Marxist Communalist caucus
[X] Intersectional association
[X] International Revolutionary group
[X] Rewilding society
[X] South Eastern coast

Councilor 4 (veteranMortal)
[X] Revolutionary communalists
[X] Queer liberation caucus
[X] Intersectional association
[X] International Revolutionary group
[X] South Eastern Coast
[X] Great Lakes

Ruby (Rise Comics)
[X] Revolutionary communalists
[X] Queer liberation caucus
[X] Intersectional association
[X] International Revolutionary group

Councilor 6 (Regency)
[X] Revolutionary communalists
[X] Intersectional association
[X] Queer liberation caucus
[X] Marxist Communalist caucus
[X] Maoist Communalist Party
[X] Martian cooperation association
[X] International Revolutionary group
[X] Rewilding society

Mayor (tbd)
[X] Nondenominational communalist

The population
Of course, the most important part of the commune is all the people who take part in it and give it life. But within the municipality you are now in charge of, there’s also plenty of people who only have casual interactions with communal organization, or even reject its validity. If support for the communal model fall too far, you’ll lose mayoral elections and have to cut a deal with other political forces or go into opposition. If active participation fall too low, you’ll become a weirdly flavoured liberal party as the will to maintain independent and participatory communal institutions fade. Ideological balance represent the distribution of communalist tendencies among your active militants, with the potential for internal conflict if it grows too polarized.

Support for the communal model: 60%
Active participation: 5%

Communalist ideological balance:
Nondenominational: 60%
Revolutionary: 35%
Municipalist: 5%

AN: this will serve as a recap post for all the data about your commune. I'll add to it as I flesh out the system.
 
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Nyvis

Active member
If you want to flesh out your councilors by giving them a name and a bit of background, feel free, I'll integrate it to the commune if it fits.

I'm working on a set of stats to reflect your political status among the population and a new round of choices to shape your commune.

Edit: added basic political tracking stats.
 
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Strigix

Verified Xeno
Administrator
I'll hold off on names for now, I'm not entirely sure how I want the character to go yet
 

Nyvis

Active member
Settling down in Dixie

N7lVjG1.png


The American South is a vast place, a land of contrasts. Some of its cities have done well for themselves and their new cosmopolitan elites have pushed out their poor and minorities to the margin. Others are still the glorified ghettos they coalesced as. Meanwhile, the countryside is often still dominated by white majority counties and any minority inhabitant has to suffer their rule. Of course, you’re here to change all of that.

But where would consciousness be high enough for such a project to succeed? That’s for you to figure out!

As usual, you can vote for more than one choice per option.

Choose a state:
[] Arkansas
[] Louisiana
[] Mississippi
[] Alabama
[] Florida
[] Georgia
[] Tennessee
[] South Carolina
[] North Carolina
[] Virginia
[] DC metro

Choose the nature of the area you seized:
[] Urban core
[] Suburbs
[] Small Town
[] Countryside

Choose how well off the area you took over is:
[] Rich
[] Average
[] Poor
 
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