Challenges and strategies for anti-capitalist community design (part 3)
This is the final part in a three-part series on intentional communities and capitalism by Sky Blue. Read the first and second parts.
We have lots of completely legitimate needs, but the options capitalism gives us to meet them mostly revolve around individual financial independence. Some of our needs related to economics are autonomy, privacy, and security. These are not antithetical to community, but how we meet them can be.
If we are clear about the underlying needs, as well as our ideals and principles, while recognizing where we may need to compromise, particularly in the short term, we can work creatively with the models and resources available to meet our needs while undermining the dominance of and dependence on capitalism.
Economies of scale
Living in an intentional community (IC) should be cheaper than in mainstream situations with a comparable standard of living. If it isn’t, it is probably because you’re not sharing enough. And more intensive resource sharing is more practical in larger groups.
A problem with many ICs is similar to a problem with many small businesses. They’re too small. This isn’t necessarily a problem in itself. It’s because capitalism, beyond its focus on the individual, rewards scale because scale maximizes profit.
Food, transportation, and renewable energy are important parts of our lives that cost a lot but get cheaper at scale. Scale can also mitigate the inconveniences of sharing. For example, it’s much easier for 25 people to share five cars than it is for five people to share one car, and bulk food purchasing and community makes it cheaper and more efficient to meet a diversity of dietary needs.
It may not be practical for an IC to expand its population, but in many cases, it is possible to extend resource-sharing systems beyond the people who live on the property. While it’s up to each group to decide what’s right for them, it’s also important to remember that the interconnected set of social, economic, and ecological benefits are greater the more you share.
Privacy and control
People frequently say, “I want to live in community, but I want my own place.” This isn’t necessarily bad. Regardless of the reason, some people just need to have a living situation where they can eat, sleep, and go to the bathroom without needing to interact or negotiate with others if they’re going to live well in community. People also tend to have different needs at different points in their lives. Families in particular often need different living spaces than single people. But the attachment to having our own place makes us gloss over an analysis of how well our designs align with our values or the culture we want.
Tiny houses certainly have their place, but the enthusiasm for tiny houses, which has evolved into its own small movement, seems suspiciously like a green-washed version of American hyper-individualism. In general, five free-standing, one-person structures are going to cost more to build and maintain, and use more energy, than one five-person structure. Individual dwellings, particularly if they are individually owned, are the obvious way to meet our needs for privacy and autonomy. But they are less financially accessible, ecologically friendly, or conducive to connection
For many, the need for privacy can be met by designing larger residences with rooms or apartments that have outside entrances and really good sound insulation. And while privacy is important, the more we replicate the isolation of mainstream architecture, the less opportunity we give ourselves to develop our comfort in being close.
There is also an assumption that I need to own my home to have control over what I can do with it and who comes into it. This isn’t necessarily true.
For example, in a housing cooperative, you don’t own your residence, even in co-ops where the residences are apartments, townhouses, or even free-standing. Rather, you own a member share, the value of which may or may not be based on the value of the residence. Owning a member share grants exclusive use of your residence within certain membership and use agreements.
Privacy often tends to be more of a cultural question anyway. Some people are happy to have their friends walk into their homes unannounced regardless of whether they own or rent. And even in a typical Homeowners Association (HOA), where people own their homes, there are still limits to what people can do to its exterior.
In other words, ownership is not required for privacy and control. An IC is free to make whatever agreements it wants.
Equity and decision-making power
Models with multiple owners revolve around making investments that confer equity: A proportional share of ownership, the value of which goes up or down depending on the value of the property. This is core to the concept of private property ownership that drives the speculative real estate market, which is a core driver of capitalism. It carries an assumption that the property could be sold at some point and dictates how any profit would be divided.
This is based on a view of land as a commodity, and usually translates into benefits regarding profit generated on the land and decision-making power. It is focused on maximizing benefit and minimizing risk for the individual, and inclines us to focus on our individual perspectives. Interpersonally and culturally, this has real implications for how we relate to each other, to the community, and to the land. Governance, or decision-making power, in an IC can be based on other things, like the degree of responsibility and accountability a person is willing to take on, regardless of their financial investment.
From a justice perspective, individual ownership of property is a privilege that fewer and fewer have access to. If buying-in is a requirement for an IC, it favors people with more privilege. Even if it isn’t, but being an owner confers certain decision-making powers, that also favors people with privilege and is likely to lead to power dynamics that create tension and alienation. Ownership as a strategy for wealth building within the speculative real estate market is also a major driver of the lack of affordable housing.
Mobility and long-term care
We have a need to feel reasonably confident that we will be cared for when we can’t care for ourselves, particularly at the end of our lives. Whether or not there is an inherent need for mobility related to our need for autonomy, mainstream culture instills a very strong desire for it.
The main options available to meet these needs in capitalism are personal retirement savings and property ownership. Owning property has arguably been the best place for people to park their money so that it will increase in value (though that is less of a guarantee these days), and if you own it you can sell it and move somewhere else if you want to.
But attaining this level of financial security in capitalism is an illusion for most people. The amount of money needed to comfortably retire is upwards of $1.5M. The average person approaching retirement age has about $400K in savings. If you’re fortunate to have even that much, as long as you have enough passive income from a pension or social security, you might be able to get by as long as you remain relatively healthy until you die and die quickly.
And yet, even with little hope of actually achieving this level of individual security, we will still try and set things up to allow for it. This is largely because we are afraid of being stuck in a particular place with particular people, or perceive the risks associated with collective security to be too great.
The benefits of collective ownership
There are models for community property ownership where investment does not need to confer individual ownership, and that remove property from the speculative real estate market, allowing for collective stewardship for community benefit in perpetuity. Instead of creating an equity stake, investments in property (either upfront or to make improvements) can be treated as repayable loans, managed with capital accounts. If the IC can generate enough income, something like a profit-sharing agreement can be added to this.
This can support people in being able to leave if they want to, help them generate a nest egg, and support them in dealing with situations outside of the community, like caring for an aging parent. If the IC owns itself, it can have more flexibility in setting its financial requirements for membership and is more conducive to democratic decision-making that focuses on the good of the entire community.
For those considering different models, it’s worth noting that you can still have home ownership in ICs where the land is owned by the community. Creating an internal housing market addresses some of the problems of being embedded in the mainstream real estate market, but it can also recreate some of those problems and should be approached thoughtfully.
Purpose and relationships
Most ICs are based on individual ownership models and do not have community businesses. Individuals are required to have their own income sources or be independently wealthy, in order to live there. For those with easy access to income or wealth, this is certainly the less risky way to go. Many people with the resources to help start or buy into ICs also want to maintain their own careers, in part to maintain individual security.
I’m in no way saying all ICs should have community businesses and no one should work outside of them. That is neither practical nor desirable in many cases. But the more focused the members are on their own spaces, their own financial situations, and other individual strategies to get their needs met, the less time and money will be available for community endeavors, and the less opportunity there is for solidarity and mutual aid.
Lots of groups make lofty vision and mission statements and talk about wanting to be a model to impact society. Even for less idealistic groups, creating an IC is usually driven by a desire for greater closeness. However, most groups don’t design their economic systems such that there is enough capacity to fulfill this, which can lead to conflict. Many find that there is not as much of a sense of community as they wanted. And trying to do even relatively simple things together, like putting solar panels on the common house or carpooling, let alone more complicated things, like creating affordable housing and increasing diversity, are virtually impossible.
Intertwined with all of this is how we relate to each other. Privacy is core to capitalism, which it perpetuates to keep us isolated so that we don’t organize in a way that would challenge it. We struggle in capitalism, but we think it’s our own fault, we keep to ourselves, and don’t talk about what’s really going on for us. We don’t trust each other, we’re scared of commitment, and we keep relying on capitalist solutions.
When we withhold from sharing about the challenges we’re experiencing, including our challenges with each other, it perpetuates isolation and leaves us with a scarcity of economic and emotional resources. This keeps us from learning how to relate to each other and creating systems that would get us out of that trap.
By being vulnerable with each other, being there for each other, and being willing to say and hear hard things, we’re challenging the socialization that keeps us from becoming more economically intertwined. By being more involved in each other’s lives, we create more opportunities for us to work things out and learn how to get along. But the more we continue to avoid intimacy and conflict, as well as economic involvement, the more the social side will feel hollow, the economic side will be more fraught, and we will fall back to capitalist practices and culture.
I’m not saying it’s easy. There’s usually a major hump a group needs to get over to effect meaningful change, and it can be challenging to stay motivated. Exploring and experiencing existing models is key. We need to believe that things can be different to feel like it’s worth putting the work in.
Beyond the property line
Even if they aren’t based on individual property ownership, ICs tend to become insular. The state of the world is calling us to do something different.
Global warming, climate change, natural disasters, and mass extinction are going to increase. Large-scale, particularly global, economic systems will become less and less tenable. People will be increasingly reliant on local and regional systems. But at this point, most do not have the capacity to accommodate that shift. As is already happening, people will come together for mutual aid. But this is mostly happening on very small scales that would be overwhelmed and fail in the event of significant systems collapse.
ICs by themselves, as we currently conceive of them based on existing models, are too small to be sustainable. We need scales of human organization that allow all people in a region to meet their basic needs equitably, maintain a degree of comfort afforded by modern technology, and sustainably integrate human habitat and activity into the natural world.
ICs can play a role in that, but we need to be thoughtful about what that is. People talk about making a “totally self-sufficient community” or “growing 100% of our own food.” This is not realistic, and even if possible, it would mean a degree of isolation that can be dangerous.
The ability of local and regional systems to respond effectively for the mutual benefit of all people and the ecosystems they live in will depend on their governance, economics, and culture being cooperative, equitable, and regenerative. And this is what needs to happen even if things don’t get much worse because things already suck for a lot of people.
Through direct participation with and support of other kinds of cooperative groups as well as local government, ICs can be an active player in helping their local communities move in this direction.
Risk and sacrifice
Being part of a community that we can count on to care for us may be our ideal, but can seem impractical or unattainable, and feel terrifying. What if I end up hating it and want to leave? What if I get kicked out? What if things fall apart and I lose everything?
Being part of any IC is going to involve some level of risk and sacrifice. This is part of sharing, which is where the benefits of living in ICs come from. The more you’re willing to risk and sacrifice, the more you’re willing to prioritize collective solutions to meet individual needs, and the more potential for benefit you’ll have.
The design of a community is strongly influenced by the priorities of the individuals involved. Capitalism socializes us to prioritize ourselves and, sometimes, our families. We can see living in an IC as expanding our notion of family, or the set of people with whom we choose to engage in mutual aid. This can happen within an IC, and can also happen between ICs and beyond.
Prioritizing collective solutions does not necessarily mean sacrificing individual needs. If a group of people hold their individual needs as collective needs, because the individuals are integral to the collective, then the question becomes how to reasonably meet individual needs within the context of collective solutions that support the larger goals of the IC.
ICs are places where we can support each other as we inquire into our choices and practices, see the discomfort as being worth it, and nudge ourselves towards greater sharing. Key to this is having courageous and vulnerable conversations about our backgrounds, beliefs, experiences, and ideologies, as well as being transparent about our financial situations and addressing tensions that will come up around any wealth disparities that exist in the community. We need to be willing to work together to uncover what drives us and generate the empathy and compassion necessary to explore collective alternatives.
