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Title: The Future Society
Author: Anarchist Communist Federation
Date: 7 June 1997
Language: en
Topics: anarcho-communism, future
Source: Retrieved on October 27, 2009 from https://web.archive.org/web/20091027145714/http://www.geocities.com/knightrose.geo/futsmall.htm
Notes: Here is the text of the afternoon session of the joint Anarchist Communist Federation/Subversion discussion meeting at Sheffield Red and Black Centre on 7/6/97, presented by Claire and Mike (ACF Nottingham).

Anarchist Communist Federation

The Future Society

Introduction

During the McLibel trial it was suggested that there is nothing wrong

with raising chickens on a battery farm as long as they had been born

into such conditions. Chickens who had never seen a farm-yard, grown up

in a normal chicken family, sunbathed in the hay (chickens do,

apparently) or sheltered from the cool rain could not, as though by

definition, be stressed by missing these things. Indeed they could not

be said to suffer, because they thought their crowded shed was all that

there was to life and expected no more. This seems a fitting analogy to

the human condition under the tyrannies of capitalism and the state.

Those who lead a relaxed and enjoyable, even decadent lifestyle feel no

guilt about depriving the world’s poor and oppressed of freedom and even

the basic means of subsistence. It is as though, having never

experienced self-determination and equality, we will be happy without

them. But in truth, in the cage, it is sometimes difficult to visualise

what else the world could be like. Although we are capable of great

creativity, the state/bosses and their media feed us an obese-making,

putrefying, cannibalistic diet of ‘a fair days work for a fair day’s

wage’, ‘normal family life’ and ‘consume or die’ whose invented values

conceal the true obscenity of a life in which we are actually starving.

When we see through this we see that we are indeed battery chickens,

destined only to become golden McNuggets. But revolutionaries know that

we have the power to break out of the shed and then to create something

better than the ‘humane alternative’, the ‘right’ to move around the

farmyard and lay eggs wherever we want and even to be followed around

the farm by some of our own chicks. This afternoon we will be poking our

beady black eyes up to the key-hole of our chicken shed and glimpsing

another of many possible alternative futures in the world beyond the

walls — the egalitarian and libertarian society.

But the chicken analogy ends there, for now. The first serious point to

make is to explain the view point which Mike and I are taking in

discussing the future society. We are partially rejecting the

pseudo-Darwinistic approach which some political thinkers have taken in

describing the ‘ideal’ world. As atheistic nineteenth-century society

discovered that evolutionary laws governed the natural world, so they

tried to extend them to human society as part of that world. From this

(to condense and simplify too much) rose the view that human history was

in itself a process of unstoppable evolution towards higher and more

advanced forms of social organisation; from feudalism, through

capitalism, state socialism and finally to communism, as Marx envisaged

it. To Kropotkin it seemed that under capitalism human society was

already evolving forms of voluntary social co-operation which had not

existed before: for example farmers’ co-operatives and pan-national

trading syndicates and, better still, altruistic organisations such as

the international red-cross and the lifeboat rescue service. Because

these by-passed the state at a time when most people professed to

support government, this was proof that they would eventually and

inevitably render government redundant. This naive optimism arose from

the profound belief that human society was governed and directed by

natural, indeed ‘moral’ laws which would result in massive upheaval by

which the working class would eventually govern as their birth-right.

Such a view of inevitable and irresistible natural law ignores the fact

that, by some freak of nature, human beings and human beings alone, as

individuals and as part of society, can, to a limited extent, avoid one

‘destiny’ entirely and shape the future to suit their desire and will,

consciously and deliberately. This is not a judgement on chickens, who

accept their fate; it is simply a fact that we have evolved to the point

that we can understand our evolution in terms of biology and our history

in terms of power, politics, exploitation and so forth. Therefore, given

the opportunity, the working class can change the future. The ‘natural

law’ view also ignores the fact that those in whose interests it is to

suppress any impulse towards self- and communal-fulfilment in the

working class also act consciously to stop it. They seal up cracks in

the walls of the chicken shed so that we cannot glimpse alternative

futures. They have the power to do this. We have the power to obstruct

and destroy them. But there is nothing ‘natural’ or inevitable about

these processes.

Nor is there anything inevitable about revolution; this is why the

revolution must be built though revolutionary organisation and culture.

And there is nothing inevitable about how post-revolutionary human

society will organise itself. No natural laws govern this. Just as we

don’t believe that human beings are ‘naturally’ selfish, nor that the

‘law of the jungle’ will prevail unless that state is there to protect

the weak, neither do we believe in a ‘natural’ human impulse for

co-operation amongst equals which has been stifled by the state and the

bosses. Human society has been hierarchical, unequal, oppressive,

homophobic and patriarchal where the state and money never existed. We

believe that the exact nature of the post-revolutionary society will be

chosen and shaped by the deliberate and conscious will of those building

it. It will not ‘evolve’ nor be subject to any other ‘natural law’,

pseudo-biological or -sociological. It will be consciously chosen. When

the revolution is won, if we vent our destructive and constructive anger

in the demolition of the concrete grey architectural edifices until we

weary of the debris, it will be because we choose to, not because it is

our destiny. From there we must choose to rebuild a world fit to live

in, for ourselves and the rest of nature so vulnerable to our whims.

Finally, and most importantly, we must envisage and then choose to

create a liberated global society beyond the obvious essentials on which

all revolutionaries agree ‘no government’ and ‘no money’, ‘no

homophobia, sexism or racist bigotry’, also realising what this implies

in positive and optimistic terms; this is to say ‘creative’, ‘exciting’,

‘fulfilling’, both ‘communal’ and ‘individual’. It is surely almost

impossible to visualise not only how we will live but what we will be

like as people; we are not ‘ourselves’ under capitalism, because it

fucks up every human interaction and relationship, creating and

intensifying insecurity, greed, jealousy, the desire to dominate and the

fear of the unknown as though these were ‘natural’ conditions and

emotions for us ‘animal’ creatures to live with. A different society

would produce a different type of humanity from the minute of birth.

Today we have to try and visualise ourselves without the environmental

and sociological features which fuck us up. We must imagine a society in

which we are not too chicken-shit to learn how to fly.

Human Relations and The Individual in Society

First of all we will address how the post-revolutionary individual will

relate to the whole of society. If we were born free of the assumptions

which are thrust upon us from the beginning and into a world where the

only learned values were those born of equality and freedom, we would

assume that the world, its landscape and its people were there to be

experienced and enjoyed without there being any inherent value in this.

We would simply ‘be’ in the world. We would not fear the unknown and so

create gods, experience racist bigotry or wage war against ‘others’ for

there would be no ‘others’, only our global community. The emotion of

fear might almost disappear, for who or what would harm us. We would

describe the world in rational terms, not in terms of superstition and

hidden meanings, ever anxious to secure and better our place in it. If

no one controlled us or threatened us our most prevalent emotions would

range from calm to ecstatic, because individuals could consciously

choose what emotions they want to experience and can create the

environment likely to induce them. Or they could let life surprise them.

The infliction of great stress on an individual or a community would be

a moment of social crisis for the global community. And there may be

stress; in periods of natural disaster for example. But these could be

dealt with in a global society geared to compassion and practical aid

without repayment, for stress and pain and the fear of stress and pain

would become social enemies. Of course we cannot be happy all the time.

But when people make this criticism of ‘utopias’ they are really

attempting to justify the status quo. We aren’t striving for ‘happiness’

alone but for the necessary conditions to inspire it, or at least

tranquillity, which many people in the world have never known, and

certainly not with that knot of fear at the knowledge that peace of mind

can be taken away as quickly as it came. We will live in the ‘now’. We

won’t be striving or ambitious for personal fulfilment or success, but

instead will take pleasure in what we do, even pride, if our work makes

other people happy or healthier.

It is socially invented fear which makes life so unbearable. It isn’t

just capitalism or the state which is responsible but also early

struggling societies, when ‘society’ was first experienced and someone

decided to take power and create ‘social order’ in their interest. Some

generations after the revolution we will realise that a commitment to

each other’s happiness and our own, through the adoption of libertarian

economic and social values, frees us from the ways of behaving which we

now take to be normal. If it became normal to feel personally fulfilled

and cherished by our communities we would not seek to make ourselves

indispensable, and we would be taken for who we were not how useful or

skilful we were. We would not seek to be in an exclusive sexual

relationship for life, nor to sleep with whoever we could without

emotional content or respect because we would not be afraid of being

unwanted or on our own, nor to find an attractive and able bodied

partner in the supposed search for good genes irrespective of whether

they are fun to spend time with and to have sex with. Will we fall in

love? Isn’t this process one whereby we mystify and glorify what is a

combination of a biological urge and sociological pressure to pair off?

Maybe we will still feel such strong feelings about another person,

after all, they are some of the most pleasurable feelings we have under

capitalism. But these won’t be based on an idealised image of a loyal,

healthy and attractive partner. And we won’t feel social pressure to

stay forever in that relationship or failure and betrayal if we want to

experiment outside of it. We won’t own each other, because the element

of control will be alien. We may grow apart from a partner, but we won’t

‘leave’ them as such because, unlike under the state, we are part of

each other’s sorrow and happiness.

Philosophically minded people will be able to address the question of

exactly how the individual relates to the whole of society better than I

can. But I know what it means politically. It means the end of politics.

It means that there is no conflict between what an individual wants and

what the ‘majority’ want. The needs and wishes of an individual simply

reflect the diversity of that society. There is no ‘majority’, only

society. Where there is room and resources for everyone to pursue want

they want and need, they will. Maybe this means the break up of a

community into two new ones, but this will be seen as a process of

growth and free expression, because there will be no ‘status quo’ to

maintain and no one interested in maintaining it. Every possible way to

fulfil that individual will be employed and if, at the end of the day,

they need more resources, time or whatever than is available after

everyone else in the community has attempted to accommodate their

happiness, then, when they settle for less, far from feeling let down or

in conflict with their community they will valued and understood by it.

If they don’t feel this, then it is the job of the community to explore

why that person is unfulfilled, not of that person to keep trying to get

their own way. Conflict comes from unequal, or perceived unequal,

scarcity of resources, affection, attention and so on. We may not always

have a surplus, but what we have will be for everyone.

Related to the idea of conflicting interests is that of decision-making

in post-revolutionary society. Most anarchists and some left-communists

are really fetishistic about the need for open and

non-parliamentary/non-representative-democratic decision-making. This

stems from the correct analysis that the state is largely responsible

for our alienation from the decision-making process i.e. our

disempowerment. However, anarchists who try to claim ‘direct democracy’,

‘accountable delegates’ or more vaguely ‘real democracy’ for the

post-revolutionary society badly miss the point. What matters in the

future society is not the form of decision-making but the content. This

point is well argued in the Workers Playtinme article “What is Wildcat”

(circulated by Subversion in the preliminary reading). There it is

pointed out that those who want proper democracy “revere the moment of

decision, and class the revolution as the creation of a new

decision-making process [...] They do not understand the revolution as a

process of creating new forms of activity”. Revolutionaries are

sometimes keen to resolve perceived ‘conflict’ in a ‘fair’ way through

the community instead of resorting to the state. This implies that

‘fairness’ is more than an abstract concept which exists in context only

under the mediation of the state, even though we understand this to be

the case about ‘rights’. But ‘conflict’ and its ‘resolution’ exists in

an entirely different context once the concept of property, profit and

scarcity are removed.

On this question of property then. We have in our political vocabulary

the phrase ‘common ownership’, but ownership of any kind implies

property. ‘To own’ something only makes sense if you have it and someone

else is denied it. Under communism we will be a global community and,

until Martians come to take over the Earth and dispossess humanity, it

makes no sense to speak of ‘ownership’ of any kind. This is not just

semantics, it indicates a weakness in much revolutionary rhetoric,

showing that we are subconsciously still expressing ourselves in terms

of bourgeois property rights. This was illustrated in a recent informal

debate which we had in the ACF. Someone suggested that if she made

something, say a pot, that, as she had created it, then it was hers to

dispose of and not her community’s, even though the clay was perhaps

common ‘property’. In a sense, she ‘owned’ it. No one argued against it

and at the time it was a convincing argument that in a sense, after the

revolution there would be some kind of ownership, by individuals and

communities. It did not occur to us that the debate missed the point

entirely. It only made sense if someone would want to take the pot off

her; either because they ‘lacked’ one themselves or because hers was

more ‘attractive’, and therefore more ‘valuable’, than one that they

had. We were still assuming a society of scarcity and acquisitiveness as

an expression of wealth or affluence. The concept of property implies

that someone would want, or need, to dispossess you after the

revolution. What our debate lacked was the psychological understanding

of life without these motives. Even if we had the intuitive ability to

understand what the communist psychology will feel like, we still lack

the necessary language to express our relationship to the world. The new

global language of the post revolutionary society will lack words which

can be translated as ‘owning’, ‘loosing’, ‘keeping’ and ‘needing’ as we

currently understand those words. Just as people will not be owned in

legal or social relationships, neither will objects; they will either be

being used or enjoyed by us, or by someone else with whom we have a

common interest.

Back to democracy — once we remove the concept of ‘property’, the

concept of ‘conflict’ looks radically different. Differences of opinion,

of need, and of desire, look exciting areas to explore and to attempt to

satisfy, not to set up machinery for arbitration and accountability. To

quote from the same article , “democracy has nothing to do with the

communist revolution — it is a form of political mediation in a society

fractured by capitalist social relations where people are alienated from

their productive activity, from themselves and one another, from life

itself. The communist revolution is precisely the suppression of these

social relations and of politics as a separate ‘privileged sphere”

Once we remove or minimise the emotional and physical insecurity of life

and attempt to challenge the fearful mentality that those things gave

us, other things will also change. The need for the family will surely

also disappear. The nurturing of new individuals will surely be the job

of the community. The parent who conceived and gave birth should not

have rights of control over a child. When born, able or disabled,

planned or unexpected, a child will be a member of the community, and

the community will educate it in what it needs and what it wants to

learn until it has learnt enough to take adult decisions for itself. The

community can do this better than the nuclear family or even the

extended family (the virtue of which is a myth in any case because the

parents or patriarch usually still have the most control and the child

is a family resource allocated as wanted or needed). This doesn’t mean

that children will not be close to adults and know them only as

teachers. Nor that babies will be raised in dormitories. It means that a

child will, from an early age, forms bonds of its choosing aside from

those with its mother who gave it life, who will not pursue it when it

makes these choices because she will not be being rejected nor feel

rejected. We can choose not to be driven by biological urges — to

reproduce, to control and protect our ‘produce’ — especially as security

and happiness will give us other options in life than reproducing

idealised images of ourselves. If we are good at making children happy

and teaching them interesting things, they will flock to us. If we

aren’t interested, they will have other ‘parents’.

Technology and Education

At present the way we live is dictated by the way capitalist society is

organised. The technologies which are available to us, whether they are

the car, the internet or the microwave, have been developed to suit the

existing order. Many people are forced, whether they want to or not, to

drive to work, use electronic mail, or cook food as quickly as possible.

Whether we actually enjoy driving, talking on the net or eating

microwave porridge is irrelevant. It is the options which are not

available to us that should concern us. In the future society our

imaginations won’t be constrained by the work-ethic-ridden,

stress-laden, or competitive mentalities of capitalism. Boring work will

be reduced to a minimum as we’ll aim to do these as quickly and with as

little effort as possible, so we’ll have more time to do interesting

things in a variety of different ways, some which may take longer but be

more satisfying, some which we’ll want to do more efficiently than

capitalism will allow. To do this, we’ll want to have the appropriate

technologies.

We cannot seriously imagine the future society with none of the

inventions and discoveries which have resulted from the minds of people

under capitalism and before — turning back the clock to a world without

plastics, synthetic pharmaceuticals and fabrics, electronics?. Obviously

what is so offensive about technology is the extent to which it has been

used for useless, harmful and degrading purposes. Much of the technology

we have today is a direct result of a search for profits. A process

which produces something more quickly, calculates faster, washes whiter

is there to sell more, faster, not to improve our lives — technology

produced without regard for the effect on the environment or on the

people that have to implement it and use it. How different it will be

when we have destroyed capitalism. Then the use value of technology

together with its effect on society and the environment will be all

important. The electronics industry is a good example of the way

capitalist innovation has helped people, yet enslaves us. We have

pacemakers and hearing aids, telephones and recorded music, food mixers

and escalators, air traffic control and radar-aided sea rescue. None of

these would exist without electronics or generation of electricity. In

this case decisions will have to be made, for example, on whether we can

have computer chips made using toxic production chemicals, or powered by

fossil fuels. Do we decide we do need computers so we find an

environmentally acceptable method, or can we find an alternative to

electronics and computers in our future lives?

Much of this may be answered in a world where the pace of life and

technological progress is slower. So many of the products we are made to

consume exist only because they can be sold in volume, and to compete

with a similar product from another company. Future technology will be

based on need, and there will be more time to come up with a good

solution to a problem. It will be acceptable to create things to help

one individual or many, not just for a mass consumer market and not

because an individual is rich enough afford it.

Another problem with today’s technology is how it is kept mystified or

hidden, which suits the individual scientist seeking to preserve an

elitist position, or a company wanting to keep knowledge and profits to

itself. We need to find technologies which are accessible and more

understandable by as many people as possible. In this way we will not be

in awe of their creators/discoverers. Bakunin argues that political

liberty depends on preventing domination by academies of “the most

illustrious representatives of science”, that even the most well-meaning

of geniuses will be corrupted by the privilege that person gains by

membership of an academy. Although he is talking about science and

legislation over the organisation of society, the same applies to

technology. Once technology starts to sit in the hands of a few experts,

it is difficult to see how society does not begin to be led by their

desires, however well-intentioned. This is not to say that every

individual will have to be trained in the minutest detail of every

technology, as this is an impossibility, but we will need to identify

which technologies have the most impact on how society is run and

organised. This inevitably means a broad understanding of the

organisation of fuel production, communication etc. by everybody.

Kropotkin argues that the division of ‘brain work’ and ‘manual work’

must be avoided. Users of technology must be aware of the theory and

research which underpins it. Inventors of technology must be aware of

the social impact of putting their idea into practice. So ideally, the

user and the innovator are one and the same. Kropotkin went on to

explain how working class people are deprived of creativity, whereas the

upper classes are taught to despise manual labour (and the people doing

it), which is true to this day. He also points out the division of the

scientist from the engineer into the pure and applied fields. Though

these ideas are hardly groundbreaking nowadays, he also explains how the

divisions actually stifle creativity. How can a design be improved if

most people haven’t the faintest idea how the existing one works? Also

mentioned is the problem of how most school work seems irrelevant, and

how it is quickly forgotten once people start mind-numbing exclusively

non-creative work, or how most people are not given the time or

resources to think about and apply creative ideas, how theory feeds off

application as well as vice-versa, how the division of art from science

is to the detriment of both.

We must have a program of basic education which includes the teaching of

numeracy and literacy to all, explanation of the organisation of society

and its technologies from an early age. The vision we have of the new

society can only work if we redefine both education and work. Education

would benefit if it entailed producing something visibly useful,

entertaining or interesting to society, and would give children a sense

of being part of society, not just in the process of learning how to be

part of society. They’d be useful to that society and valued by it. They

would contribute to society from the start of their lives and thereby

learn to have opinions and new ideas about that society. But not only

for children. Free leisure time from necessary community labour can be

used resting or doing nothing, but equally to pursue interesting avenues

of art or science, alone or with others, whether playing of or some

foreseen practical purpose. This can only be to the benefit to both the

individual and society.

How will we produce and process necessary resources in the new society?

There will undoubtedly be geographical areas where certain widely-needed

resources are processed, but not in others, for logistic reasons. Take

steel production, which is at present often carried out near coal mines

as this is the fuel required for producing steel from iron ore. Assuming

that we decide we need steel and there is no other way of producing it

but from coal and iron ore, how would the future society do it? No one

should consider it sensible for the future society to produce steel in

every locality (the disastrous Maoist experiment of an iron smelter in

every village spring to mind here...). But does this mean that the

communities living close to a natural resource have to be responsible

for it? Will they become the unwitting experts of steel production just

because of where they happen to live? Far from it — instead it would be

the responsibility of some individuals from other areas to work in that

industry for a small part of their lives. The implications of this is

that the process will have to be made as simple to learn and to use as

possible — it should be highly automated thanks to technological

innovation, enabling it to be carried out with as little skill as

possible. This is in contrast to the present, where certain work has

often been maintained as a skill to protect workers interest and wages,

seeing automation (quite reasonably) as a threat to livelihoods. The

idea of de-skilling of industrial tasks may help to counter the problem

of the mystification of technology, which some primitivists would

probably argue is a strong case for the alternative de-technologising of

society. The steel-making area, rather than being a grim and isolated

industrial region as it is now, could deliberately become a thriving

cultural centre, by virtue of the many different people visiting and

working in it from different regions. Neither will people be making

steel all day long as we won’t be working the stupidly long hours we do

at the moment, and will have lots of time to do other things. This will

help offset the uncreative nature of the work itself.

How might we produce and develop a technology in the future? Taking an

example from my own experience, namely the design of a speaking computer

which is operated by moving your limbs, which would help a person with

cerebral palsy who cannot speak to communicate more easily. It uses

mass-produced home computer technology and programming software, and

special 3D motion sensors originally designed for fighter aircraft

pilots but now being used for all sorts of body measurements, for

rehabilitation and for making animations. The money needed to do the

research has to be bid for from a government body or charity, so the

funds are limited and short term. It is not in the interests of the

university to divulge the details of the design before it is finished or

at least until results have been published, nor is it in the interest of

other institutions to do likewise as all are in competition for funding.

This means collaboration is limited. The sensors are far from perfect

for the job — they should be wireless, light-weight and (in capitalist

terms) cheaply available. New 3D sensor technology is appearing which

are all these things, but only because they can also be used in

mass-produced computer games.

Now, let us assume such a device would be useful in the future society.

How would all this be done differently? Well for a start, the needs of a

disabled person would come before video game entertainment and we

wouldn’t be wasting resources developing weapons technology. The

original problem would be made widely known (that is, the problem of

communication of people with motor disabilities) then individuals with

an interest in participating in finding a solution would get together.

This would of course include people with that disability. Participation

could be local or global, depending on the level of communication

possible in the future society, and on the difficulty of the task. The

solution would not necessarily depend on existing technology so sensors

could be designed specifically for the task in hand. Results would be

The ‘Ownership’ and Distribution of Resources

The Malthusian view of human society says that, because it has few

predators, it cannot support each individual with adequate food, shelter

etc. as its population grows and grows. This view is still quite

prevalent, and justifies the inequality by which some thrive and some

struggle. Kropotkin pointed this out in his view of the future society

which, because of improved technology, could indeed support a growing

world population. He believed that each community could in fact be more

or less self-sufficient, the transportation of food being largely the

product of profit and rendered unnecessary if resources went into

collective farming without the profit motive. This is probably an

optimistic view, as was pointed out to him at the time. Since then, town

populations, i.e. ones that do not grow food on a large scale, have

grown and the population of the countryside decreased (an unproductive

trend which he raised his voice against to no avail). In addition, his

work is notable for only dealing with the northern hemisphere. In the

south, even more than in his day, land is often over-exploited. The end

of capitalist exploitation would partially remedy this, but natural

climate alone surely makes it impossible that, if self-sufficient, all

the people of the world would have available locally a diet that was

equally nutritious, let alone enjoyable.

Obviously we want to eliminate the waste of resources which currently

goes into transporting luxuries; for example perishable foods like

bananas. But the fact that they are not native to northern Europe does

not mean that we couldn’t eat them. In fact, even with the technology of

Kropotkin’s day it was possible for him to envisage that vast areas of

agriculture could be turned over to greenhouses. Imaging taking a

fraction of the glass that is currently in car windscreens and building

hot houses to grow avocados, grapes, basil, dates. And even foodstuffs

which already grow in relatively cold climates grow more easily under

glass, and are more easily protected from pests. Imagine melting down

all the cash registers, ATM machines, cars, tanks and using the metal to

installing underground heating in fields; outdoor central heating with a

closed-water system that was not wasteful, and fuelled largely by waste

products from the community whose food it grows. So much for the frozen

North and South. In areas parched or over-exploited, of course food will

have to be imported initially and local subsistence have to be

complemented by subsidy. But when we compare this to the amount of

wastage of fuel which occurs now transporting goods globally from areas

of cheap production to where they will be sold at a profit, the

transport of decent food, and even water, to where it is needed does not

seem so decadent. In the very long term, with proper planning, regions

currently desolate can be made productive.

The Shaping of Our Environment

Utopian thinkers often picture a predominantly rural society,

identifying rightly the misery of urban life under capitalism and

desiring a closer and calmer relationship with nature. But does town

life preclude this, and do we actually want a predominantly rural

environment. It is certainly desirable to have less of a division

between towns and country in technological and productive terms. We

probably should have small factories and workshops in villages. But many

people are very attached to town life and don’t feel so much alienated

by it as frustrated at the fact that what it offers is currently best

enjoyed by people with money. It will still have much to offer when its

motive is not profit, because concentrations of people can imply

cultural and architectural variety and the chance to experiment with

different lifestyles. The concentration of resources in towns which now

feel decadent and symbolise affluence will be shared out more equally

(health clubs, opera houses, elaborately decorated restaurants). Where

once were office blocks, shopping malls, factories, DSS and local

government offices and police stations we can build parks planted with

flowers and trees, inner-city herb and vegetable gardens, landscaped

ponds and open air areas for congregation with beautiful structures for

shelter, areas for performances, dances, picnics. We can adapt usefully

sized or shaped buildings such as already exist for elitist purposes,

for our own uses if they are not destroyed in the revolutionary process.

To reduce the psychological distance between town and countryside, many

major arteries of communication such as road and rail will be preserved,

although many will be destroyed, especially ringroads; these have

destroyed much irretrievable natural land but will be redundant when

lorries no longer transport goods for profit and the term ‘commuter’ is

antiquated and travellers no longer wish to avoid towns and city centres

but to experience what they have to offer. Transportation, of produce

and people, will no longer be urgent but will be pleasurable. Canals

will be reopened and waterways will cease to be accessible only to the

privileged as boats of all descriptions will be used as a communal

resource and source of leisure. Private cars will of course have long

ago been scrapped, but environmentally friendly cars of some sort will

still be pooled communally and be available for individuals and small

groups who want to get out of the city on their own, or into the city

from rural areas. Transport will of course be excellent, encouraging

people to use increased leisure time to travel and gain and share new

experiences and to finally have a choice about where and how they live,

which is in reality a choice denied to the majority under the choice

obsessed culture of capital. The destruction of poor housing and the

gradual emergence of imaginatively designed and good quality housing and

amenities will eventually eradicate the qualitative difference between

town and country living. Not only will rural slum housing never

reappear, but the ‘quaintness’ of country cottages will never be

imitated; they will be replaced by modern structures with naturally

inspired shapes, or shapes which contrast pleasingly with the natural

curve of hills, the stark crags of mountains or dead flatness of

reclaimed land on which they are built. Not only will tower blocks be

blown up, with those once forced to live in them pushing the detonator,

but the cardboard box mock-Georgian nuclear family units which pass for

affluent housing amongst the aspiring upper middle class will be

replaced by a variety of urban buildings designed with the whole town

and the chosen lifestyle of the people who will live in them; for

example, units for single people designed for a complete life, not a

room in someone else’s house or with shred facilities endured until

‘real life’ starts when they enter a relationship; units for communal

living where people share cooking and leisure and maybe even sleeping

space as the company of others becomes a pleasure rather than an

endurance; houses for several people of different ages who choose to

live together with people they care about and whose specific company

they enjoy.

Some large buildings such as already exist and are attractive will be

re-utilised, part of their enjoyment being in the ironical uses to which

we will put them. Banks will become food distribution centres. Bingo

halls will be turned back into cinemas (unless whole communities want to

play Bingo without cash prizes). Concert halls and theatres, designed

acoustically for the purpose, will resound with non-elitist music and

performance. Stately homes and huge hotels will become cultural centres,

with their reception and dining rooms being used for the purpose to

which they are most fitted — staging huge Asian food festivals; their

bedrooms hosting travellers who will tell stories and hold talks and

initiate debates about initiatives being taken to improve on the quality

of life in places they have visited. the Palaces of Kurdistan, the

Pyramids, Mosques and Medieval Cathedrals will be turned into pleasure

palaces, the end of private acquisitiveness at home will make it

possible to fill them full of couches and cushions, pools of warm water,

light and music for the enjoyment of the human body both in experiencing

and exploring the full range and diversity of an individual’s sexuality

(but without any concept of ‘normal’ or ‘divergent’) and in erotic

displays (the question of art vs. pornography having been resolved as

men lose social, economic and psychological power and women consequently

gain the power to define what turns them on and what makes them feel

vulnerable or objectified). Why not utilise these well-built but elitist

structures in this irreverent way. They were built for the enemy, but

with the lives and the skill of ordinary people — skills which we should

try to re-learn, as modern production has eradicated many of the craft

techniques our ancestors knew. We should celebrate these skills with

mocking the reclaimed buildings with egalitarian debauchery and

pleasures denied to the people who built them. We should also relearn

old skills and build beautiful new buildings whose structure, motifs and

position reflect egalitarian principals.

Finally, the natural environment. We can put right much of the damage

done as a matter of urgency. It don’t have the technical knowledge to

really address this and I’d value the input of those who have looked

into how this would work. But I know it has to be planned in a very long

term sense, for we need to create a balanced environment. For example,

we are told that the decline of the hedgerow has damaged British

wildlife, but hedgerows are unnatural and relatively recent in

ecological history themselves and don’t necessarily fit well into a

communal farming programme. Similarly, many species have suffered

because farm and village fish ponds have been drained, but they were in

themselves a form of environmental exploitation. We cannot live without

using our environment, but each community will need to acquire both lost

and recently explored technical knowledge so as to avoid

over-exploitation. And this will of course need co-ordinating globally

as we have learned to our cost the global effects of local

over-exploitation. What is certain is that we won’t undertake a sort of

primitivist existence because we will have the resources, when they are

shared, and will be all the time developing environmentally and

ecologically minded technology to live comfortably.

Culture

I have great difficulty visualising many aspects of post-revolutionary

culture. What will be the impetus for change and growth, for artistic or

cultural movements and local diversity. Look at what are the driving

features of many cultural forms which we find inspiring in this society.

Look at protest music or world music which has in many cases been made

more dynamic by a response to imperialism; look at the blues, inspired

by the poverty, ghettoisation and exploitation of Black Americans;

twentieth-century art movements which responded on a philosophical and

political level to the state, capital and the ludicrousness of life in

the industrial west; gay and lesbian and also feminist cultures which

have been given an inch and taken a mile in terms of the ‘right’ to live

certain lifestyles and make new rules enabling us to deal with life in a

sexist, homophobic and narrow minded capitalist culture; Rock and roll

music in all its diverse forms which has at its heart the expression of

tension between generations and (typically) heterosexual tension between

partners; punk rock which took all this a stage further in a violent

reaction against the political status quo. The list goes on. But what

will provoke such strong creative reactions after the revolution, when

we are living more harmoniously together?

The natural world has always inspired cultural forms; folk stories and

songs about battling for survival with the elements and dangerous

animals, the use of natural colours and shapes in decoration, of sounds

and sensuality in music, the literal portrayal of landscapes in

pictures. It may fairly be said that the privileged have made most use

of this, not least because of their increased leisure time and abundance

of resources, which after the revolution we will all share and which

will undoubtedly inspire us to communicate our reactions to it to other

people. But we can’t invent new stories about lakes, hills and daffodils

for ever, or this will be a society even more boring than one which

spends its life in front of the television.

The other great inspiration which we will experience in some form after

the revolution is love and physical desire. Much of current culture is

derived from homophobic and chauvinistic notions which are not simply

offensive but also limited in creative terms, imposing a norm on

sexuality and the nature of sexual expression which it is still takes

courage to diverge from. This of course will end, in terms of the

political, economic and social hegemony enjoyed by men and by

heterosexual couples, indeed by ‘couples’ full stop. But change will go

deeper than this. As we become increasingly social animals, aiming to be

individuals operating as part of a community rather than as part of

secure family units, the negative emotions and experiences currently

associated with love, and so emotive culturally, will also change. I am

talking about the pain of rejection and the fruitless pursuit of a

chosen ‘mate’ whose coldness is the cause of our pain. This loathing and

suspicion of the teasing object of our affection who rejects us, most

especially directed by heterosexual men against women, is the result of

a combination of sexual power and frustrated sexual expression. In the

new society mating exclusively for life will no longer a socially

invented expectation. Sex will imply experimentation, physical variety,

enjoyment and respect for each other’s feelings — but not necessarily

emotional commitment. Sex will therefore be less emotionally stressful

and more easily obtainable. But such a society will surely be hard

pressed to produce equivilants of the great works of art and culture

produced in this emotionally tortured society. I can’t see moving

operas, rock music, poetry, stories and so on being inspired by happy

people completely at one with each other, giving each other freedom and

being happy spending time alone.

We will probably still enjoy games of various sorts and also sport and

physical exertion to some degree. We will enjoy these with more of a

sense of community and less one of competition. Re-runs of the FA Cup

Final, with deep macho voices in the blue fan enclosure chanting

tunelessly against those in the red enclosure, will be one of the

highest forms of comedy. In fact, if only because men’s voices are

gratingly so much louder than women’s, partisan based community shouting

of all kinds will quickly die out; if we approve of something, we will

respond to it creatively and in a way in which all voices, male, female,

able and disabled are heard.

New cultural forms will undoubtedly occur as cultures globally retain

and invent new forms and these forms are blended in an infinite variety

of ways with other forms by people travelling to learn and perform.

Physical artistic forms, such as dance, whilst they may be skilful will

not be body fascist but include forms of expression in which everyone’s

contribution is personally fulfilling and generally appreciated, whether

they are graceful or clumsy, able-bodied or disabled. Body fascism will

dissapear as a result of the revolution. We will no longer have a

concept of judgement about each other’s bodies or each other’s physical

contribution. One of the priorities of the immediately

post-revolutionary society will be to invent artistic and technological

forms to give a cultural voice to those who the current society deems

ugly, clumsy, talentless, pitiable and useless. It will be through the

contribution which we make to each other’s happiness, not through how

much work we do, that we will evaluate each other.