Commune or Catastrophe
Communism in the 21st Century
Morning Comrades.
I recently left both the British and German Communist Party for their awful and brutally reactionary stance on what they consider trans-rights. Truthfully, their respective statements were the spark that ignited a reaction that should have happened a decade ago considering both parties are run by deeply unserious, chauvinistic, white boomers and yet I still adhered to the idea that being a part of the communist movement inherently demanded party membership. To a point that still remains true but actions speak louder than words and when the actions no longer reflect ones own interpretation of an idea, you leave and stop your support. The positive aspect of this was and remains that it forces me to critically put down in words what the revolutionary liberation means, in other words, what is it that I actually work for?
To be clear, this will not be a “how to”. It is increasingly irresponsible to put a very clear “how” on to the Internet, especially when one’s name and address is openly available to those forces that stand in opposition to those ideas. For the internet, purity fetishists out there, here’s a little anecdote: 8 years ago, my ex.wife took me to court and sued me on the grounds of being a radical and violent communist and thus should have no custody or visitation rights to our son. Now, this was entirely based on the merch I was making that merely hinted at a HOW, and the courts took that seriously. It took well over 6 months and nearly 15K of my savings to win that one. So before anyone starts frothing at the mouth for providing a WHAT without a HOW on the internet, take a breath, think about the material reality we all live in and how little it serves anyone to put yourself in the direct line of fire of the capitalist state. That little reality doesn’t even get into the amount of time spent in jail cells doing what I cannot even put into words here. Again, breath. Purity fetishes help no one.
With that out of the way, a few core ideas of what it is I am working for. Much, if not all of what follows is based on my idea that any but especially our revolutionary liberation has to be about food, care and shelter in a non-transactional world. Additionally, much of the cultural ideas that form nuclei of our understanding of reality are heavily influenced by Engel’s seminal work “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State”.
What we require is not reform, but revolution—a total transformation of social life.
The principal aim of this revolution is not abstract equality or utopian slogans. It is concrete: to create a world in which food, shelter, and care are guaranteed, abundant, and non-transactional. This is the guiding purpose of any truly communist movement: the abolition of need through communal provision, the destruction of markets that force people to earn the right to live, and the construction of a world in which human life is sacred, not commodified.
To build such a world, we must reject the failed programs of Western chauvinist parties and root ourselves in historical materialism, drawing inspiration from Engels, the Black Radical Tradition, Indigenous revolutionaries, feminist communists, and contemporary thinkers from the Global South. The communist horizon is not about ownership—it is about abolishing the logic of transaction itself, and replacing it with the logic of need, care, and dignity.
The Revolution Begins with the Abolition of Transactional Life
A truly communist society begins not with slogans, but with material transformation. The abolition of private property in the means of production is not a moral claim—it is a structural one. As long as food, shelter, medicine, and rest are bought and sold, humanity remains enslaved by need.
As Engels (1884) explained, the capitalist state exists solely to protect property, not people. It must be destroyed, not reformed. In its place, a radically democratic system of workers’ councils, popular assemblies, and communal federations must govern production and distribution on the basis of collective need, not private profit. This new state, rooted in proletarian power, must have one central purpose: to guarantee the unconditional provision of life's necessities—not as welfare, but as a birthright.
This is the first task of communism: eliminate the transaction as the foundation of life. End rent. End wage labour. End food deserts and homelessness. In their place: housing as a human right, communal food systems, free and universal health care. Without this rupture, communism is impossible.
Rebuilding Care and Kinship: Engels, Feminist Communism, and the End of the Family
Engels identified the patriarchal family as capitalism’s hidden engine of reproduction: the site where women’s labour is exploited without wage, where inheritance and private property are transmitted, and where care is privatised into isolated domestic units. For communists, the current concept and establishment of a family must be dismantled and reimagined.
The goal is not to destroy love or intimacy, but to liberate care from coercion and economic dependency. Inspired by Silvia Federici and Maya Gonzalez, we demand the collectivisation of reproductive labour: communal childcare, shared kitchens, cooperative elder care, and liberated spaces for chosen families and kinship. A truly egalitarian world must guarantee care as a public, communal good, not a privatised burden on women and the poor.
Gender liberation requires abolishing not just the binary, but the gendered organisation of labour, space, and time. In a non-transactional world, no one earns the right to be cared for—we care for all, because all are worthy.
Food, Shelter, and Health: The Material Basis of Human Freedom
Communist revolution must begin by asking: Who eats? Who sleeps safely? Who heals? And it must answer: Everyone. Without exception. Without payment. Without condition.
Food is grown, cooked, and distributed collectively—not for sale, but for sustenance. Housing is socialised and expanded—no more landlords, no more eviction. Health care is decommodified, with medicine produced for human need, not pharmaceutical profits.
Inspired by the Red Deal (The Red Nation 2021), these systems are built sustainably, collectively, and equitably—with ecological restoration and Indigenous land sovereignty at the core. The goal is not charity, but solidarity, not dependency but shared abundance.
In this world, care is the organising principle, not profit. The nurse, the cook, the elder, the farmer, the disabled comrade, the child—each is honoured and protected. This is the foundation of real freedom: freedom from fear, from hunger, from commodified life.
Decolonization and the End of the Settler World
A communist future in the West must be, by definition, a decolonized world. Land was stolen and soaked in blood to build Western capitalist wealth. Communism without Land Back, Indigenous sovereignty, and the destruction of settler institutions is nothing but leftist colonialism.
As Glen Coulthard argues, decolonisation is not symbolic—it is material. It means the return of territory, the abolition of extractive economies, and the end of the white supremacist carceral state. It means communal control of land, water, and energy by the people who have historically stewarded them.
A communist world is not simply classless—it is also post-racial, post-colonial, and anti-fascist.
A Culture of Life, Not Death
Capitalist culture celebrates violence, domination, and accumulation. A communist culture must elevate life, beauty, and solidarity. As Amílcar Cabral wrote, culture is not decoration—it is resistance.
Education becomes a communal, joyful practice—not standardised or hierarchical, but liberatory. Art becomes collaborative, not commodified. Music, literature, street murals, and oral histories replace corporate media with people’s imagination.
Culture under communism is not a luxury—it is an expression of freedom, emerging once survival is no longer bought and sold.
Internationalism and the Ecological Commune: Building a Net-Positive Planetary Future
A Western communist society cannot be built on the ecological and economic ruins of the Global South. True internationalist communism is rooted in anti-imperialism, ecological justice, and planetary stewardship. It must dismantle not only capitalist class relations, but also the imperialist world-system and the ecological destruction it demands.
Communist internationalism requires:
The immediate dismantling of imperial military infrastructure (NATO bases, AFRICOM, etc.), which function as enforcement arms of global extraction and pollution;
Debt cancellation and climate reparations paid to the Global South, not as charity, but as the return of stolen labour and land;
A global redistribution of resources and technology to enable sustainable development based on collective need, not corporate profit.
But this revolution is not just political—it is ecological. A modern communist world must not simply mitigate environmental destruction. It must become actively regenerative, rebuilding ecosystems while reorganising society around non-exploitative, non-extractive, and non-transactional life ways.
Ecological restoration becomes a mass social project. Fossil fuel corporations are seized and decommissioned. Millions of workers are retrained in reforestation, agro-ecology, wetland recovery, clean energy, and ecosystem repair. Production is reoriented around healing the land, restoring biodiversity, and replenishing the earth’s capacity to sustain life.
Agriculture is no longer industrialised monoculture, but localised and communal: food forests, urban gardens, land trusts, and cooperative farms replace agribusiness. Animals are integrated ethically into permacultural systems. All food is grown for people, not profit.
Degrowth in the global North is essential—not as sacrifice, but as liberation from capitalist waste. Urban highways become food corridors. Vacant offices become homes and gardens. Mobility is public, electrified, and free. Rewilding zones surround cities and water sources, with local ecological councils guiding bioregional decisions.
This is not austerity—it is abundance without extraction. Eco-communism is not just sustainable—it is net-positive, ensuring that human life enhances the ecosystem rather than depleting it. As The Red Nation (2021) writes, “healing people means healing the land,” and vice versa.
The Commune Is the Survival of the Species
The principal goal of communism is not metaphysical—it is profoundly material: to build a world in which no one must buy the right to eat, sleep, or be cared for. Food, shelter, and care must be made non-transactional. That is the first and central act of revolution, and all else flows from it.
A modern communist world is not a mirror of past experiments—it is a new synthesis of egalitarianism, decolonization, care, and collective survival. We must dismantle not only the state and capital, but the very logic of transactional life.
The choice is not between utopia and realism—it is between the commune or catastrophe.
Each according to their ability for each according to their needs.
Yours,
V.
Bibliography
Cabral, Amílcar. 1970. “National Liberation and Culture.” In Return to the Source: Selected Speeches, edited by Africa Information Service. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Coulthard, Glen Sean. 2014. Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Engels, Friedrich. 1884. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. London: Penguin Classics, 2010.
Federici, Silvia. 2004. Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. New York: Autonomedia.
Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. 2022. Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation. New York: Verso.
Gonzalez, Maya. 2012. “Communization and the Abolition of Gender.” Endnotes, no. 3.
https://endnotes.org.uk/issues/3/en/endnotes-communization-and-the-abolition-of-gender
Moten, Fred, and Stefano Harney. 2013. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study. Wivenhoe: Minor Compositions.
The Red Nation. 2021. The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth. Brooklyn: Common Notions.