The Commune Form: The Transformation of Everyday Life

by Kristin Ross

When the state recedes, the commune-form flourishes. This was as true in Paris in 1871 as it is now whenever ordinary people begin to manage their daily lives collectively.

Contemporary struggles over land – from the zad at Notre-Dame-des-Landes to Cop City in Atlanta, from the pipeline battles in Canada to Soulèvements de la terre – have reinvented practices of appropriating lived space and time. This transforms dramatically our perception of the recent past.

Rural struggles of the 1960s and 70s, like the “Nantes Commune,” the Larzac, and Sanrizuka in Japan, appear now as the defining battles of our era. In the defense of threatened territories against all manners of privatization, hoarding, and infrastructures of disaster, new ways of producing and inhabiting are devised that side-step the state and that give rise to unprecedented kinds of solidarity built on pleasurable, fruitful collaborations.

These are the crucial elements in the present-day reworking of an archaic form: the commune-form that Marx once called “the political form of social emancipation,” and that Kropotkin deemed “the necessary setting for revolution and the means of bringing it about.”

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, Philosophy, Society

144 pages, Paperback

Published September 24, 2024

About the author

Kristin Ross is a professor of comparative literature at New York University. She is the author of numerous books, including Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture and May '68 and its Afterlives.

Reviews

[Donald]

Quick read about rural ecological movements as a vanguard of contemporary communards. Reminded me of Arundhati Roy describing the forests of India as the "Maoists versus the MOUists": Local rebellions against the Memorandums of Understanding in resource megaprojects. An essay directed against the often-Marxist "sack of potatoes" prejudice against rural people, inverting the typical story of communes as urban revolutions. Some beautiful moments on location. I think I agree with the idea that contemporary communism is about a culture of control, of taking over spaces and making them your own in action with others, but the "farmers feed cities" angle of it seems like an overcorrection. But it is true, they do.

[Kai · Rating 3 out of 5]

i find kristin ross helpful in many ways - particularly in the asides where she again describes how present developments change how we ask questions of historic moments. This pamphlet about peasant struggle in ZAD and elsewhere is compelling and charming at times and naive at others. i ultimately couldn't shake the kind of latent 90s/00s anti-marxism / anti-communism that pops up every once in a while. i also felt that the principle and obvious criticisms of farmer's movements in the global north in 2024 weren't really addressed (that they have no lever on power, are a miniscule part of the population, and are subject to such intense competition from large-scale agribusiness that their margins provide almost no room for experimentation let alone full ecological care). worth reading tho.

[Bohmee · Rating 5 out of 5]

3.5 stars standalone but 5 stars for the experience of book club that cultivated a “supple openness” in me

[Toby Crime · Rating 3 out of 5]

Years ago while studying the Paris Commune at uni, I came across Kristin Ross's Communal Luxury- an interesting exploration of the titular concept within the 1871 Commune. At the time, my reading was frictionless, her anarchist tendancies chiming well with my own.

Coming back to Ross's writing nearly a decade later, having moved decidedly away from this 'libertarian' bent, I still find her an interesting thinking who engaged well covering specific situations and is mostly lucid with her analysis. The majority of my points of disagreement have been clarifying rather than simply frustrating, which is always a treat.

As is the consistent theme across her writing (that I've engaged in), Ross focuses on the commune as a point of political exploration and power. In this, her writing in genuinely interesting on the opportunities for human experience within environments which are micro-breaks from capitalist political economy. There's a real value in this exploration, which can be shunned or underemphasized within a communist politics more dedicated to capturing state power. However, her 'libertarian communist' inclinations facilitate Ross drawing the links between these prefigurative political forms, and the possibilities for the state to wither away as a core structure in the intimate parts of our life.

That being said, I think the insufficiencies of this focus are highlighted when looking at a book like 'Building the Commune', which I see as an excellent case of balancing between commune's autonomy and left contesting of state structures. It feels as if Ross's thinking is insufficient for a task like this, so it's not surprising she doesn't try to approach it.

[Roberto · Rating 5 out of 5]

I get it now

[Ruairí]

Not sure about this one but it does work well as an extension of the communal luxury book. Sure the land question is important, but i’m not convinced that rural life is as prelapsarian as its made out to be here. Surely the small farmers of Europe are a product of EU subsidy as much as communal subsistence living? The ZAD is definitely interesting in terms of its composition but I think the stick gets bent too far the other way - against party AND class? Not sure. These defensive ecological movements are powerful but surely if you are forwarding diversity of tactics and broad based composition the urban and proletarian is just as important a dimension as the rural and paysan? The argument would be stronger if the movements weren’t presented as the natural successor of the Paris Commune so much as the other side of the coin.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting book and contains some good ideas, such as tying alienation to to the loss of connection to the land. But this is certainly not a new idea, even Marx said as much. Also I'm far from convinced "paysan non-productivism" (in other words peasant subsistence farming) scales. I would even go as far as to say, as much as I want to see it, it's unrealistic. Ross seems only willing to lightly paper over the contradictions in the paysan position she is representing here, and that's only of the small handful she admits.

Heck, Ross doesn't even admit the clearest and most obvious translation of paysan is peasant (both even derive from the Old French paisant), opting for "non-corporate farmer" instead. She probably had her reasons for it, but I must say I don't find such positions helpful, particularly when they aren't even articulated.

[Gautam Bhatia · Rating 4 out of 5]

In The Commune Form, Ross examines a series of commune-like forms of social organisation in the second half of the 20th century (primarily focused on rural France), their forms and structures, and the ways in which they have resisted subsumption within the capitalist political economy. At times, Ross links these mid-20th century forms with the original Paris Commune of 1871, as well as placing them in the context of the May ‘68 movement; thus we have something of a reverse "Yesterday’s Tomorrow", where past moments of supposed failure appear in a new light because of the future events that they have informed.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

“We cannot declare or decree the end of private property or wait for it to happen in some complete way. It does not await us at the end of the long train ride.”

An examination of a select few ‘embryos of communal power’ that help show a path towards life not dominated by the state or finance.

The commune is the revolution, in continual ever-changing practice, through the transformation of everyday life.

[Tom Fielden · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the commune formations discussed are very interesting and the book does cover some interesting ground it end up bogged down in a theoretical discussion. It's interesting as it is noted at the end that learning from praxis will overcome any theoretical discussion.

It's only half way through I discovered the author had spent time in one of these spaces. Hearing more about this and the everyday functions would have added a lot of value.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a subject I have any expertise in, and yet, for an academic essay, I found this to be incredibly accessible. While I'm sure some of the nuances were lost on me, I nonetheless walked away with a much deeper understanding of the underlying tenets of the commune-form and its relation to the concept of appropriation of lived space and time.

[Kyrill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although the focus of the book is apparently on the present and future reality of the commune, this is still a reality in which we take turns to milk the cow. The book amounts to a Romanticisation of farmers and the importance of “defence” against the outside world.

[Katie MacLaren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book for the way it identifies and describes the ways various movements for change both dismantle and prefigure through the commune as direct action. I took a star off for how much some segments get lost in zombie nouns and jargon though.