AUTONOMOUS COMMUNITIES: HOPE FOR POSTMODERN THEORISTS AND ANTI-ECONOMIC GLOBALISATION ACTIVISTS? The relationship between postmodernism and communal and 'anti-globalisation'movements. Saskia Poldervaart Introduction As someone involved in communal living and in the anti-economic globalisation movement, and as a researcher very much interested in postmodern theories, I would like to find out if there is any connection between these three phenomena. The disgust many activists feel for postmodern theories and its difficult use of language I think is a pity, because in my opinion it is these theories that present the most critical approach to contemporary neo-liberalism. Therefore I will start this article by giving an analysis of postmodernist ideas. I want to show that postmodernism is a kind of mood, a state of mind (see White, 1996: 5) that has a long history. The central issue in this part of my article is the historical connection between this 'postmodern mood' and the communal movements that are especially active in what Zablocki (1980) calls 'utopian periods'. In other words: I would like to argue that not only does the communal movement have a long history, so do most of the ideas behind the contemporary concept of postmodernism. Yet I would not like to suggest that present postmodern theories do not differ from those in the past: they do, because of their emphasis on the importance of language. At the end of the first part of my article I will try to explain why postmodern language differs from more conventional, modernist, language. In the second part of this article I will give an overview of contemporary Dutch communes, because it is these (intentional) communities I am most familiar with. I will divide the present Dutch intentional communities into three types: a) more institutionalised communities (co-housing, living groups), mostly subsidised by the Dutch government; b) religiously inspired communities, usually aimed at helping others; c) counter-cultural Do-it-Yourself communities. I will show that not all types of Dutch intentional communities are 'infected' by the 'postmodern mood' in the same manner: they are all coping with our neo-liberal times in different ways. My second central question is whether it is possible to consider all these different kinds of (intentional) communities as belonging to one social (communal) movement. In the third and final part of this piece I will try to connect the postmodern hope (as White calls it) for new social movements with the Do-it-Yourself communities and with the 'Autonomous and Self Reliant Spaces' the anti-economic globalisation activists formulate as their alternative. Here I would like to find an answer to the question: Can it be concluded that autonomous communities are the utopian alternative for postmodern theorists and anti-economic globalisation activists? I: Postmodernism, its long history and the connection with (the mood of) 'utopian periods'. Many postmodern theorists emphasise that postmodernism does not refer to a new period after modernity, but is rather a perspective from which to pose certain questions about the limitations of modernity. Modernism usually means Enlightenment thinking, based on the idea of a rational, autonomous individual who believes in objectivity and in the ideal of mastering the world by scientific progress. The concept of postmodernism was used for the first time in the cultural critique of the 1960s, when protest groups emphasised feeling, irrationality and anarchy and contrasted these with the prevalent belief in progress and the rationality of modernity (Kumar 1995: 107). But it was not until the 1980s that the phrase 'post-modern times' was coined. According to White (1996: 4) the bulk of the 'post-modern problematic' constitutes four interrelated phenomena: 1) the increasing incredulity toward meta-narratives; 2) the new awareness of the dangers of societal rationalisation; 3) the new informational technologies and 4) the new social movements. I will show that three of these manifestations of the 'postmodern problematic' are not as 'new' as White suggests. With the exception of the informational technologies, all phenomena White mentions have a long history and may be associated above all with communal movements. Starting with the increasing incredulity toward meta-narratives: by 'meta-narratives' Lyotard (1984, p. 4) means those foundational interpretative schemes that have constituted the ultimate and unquestioned sources for the justification of scientific-technological and political projects in the modern world. Such narratives, focusing on God, nature, progress and emancipation, are the anchors of modern life. One may speak, argues White (p. 5) of a resistant state of mind shared by intellectuals and ordinary [? S.P.] people alike who feel dominated by, and work to combat, the way modern meta-narratives represent reality. The most dominant contemporary meta-narrative is that of neo-liberalism. Although critiques of liberalism were hardly new, White states (p. 6) that those critiques that arose in the wake of John Rawls' A Theory of Justice generated a new level of uncertainty for that tradition. Marxism, the traditional Western answer to the failures of liberalism, never reached that level of uncertainty, because it did not cut deeply enough into the basic modern orientation of reason and the will to control everything. In Marxism the longing for mastery is merely transferred to a collective level: to the will of the proletariat to master history. The threat of the possessive individual will and the corrosive logic of capitalism was to be tamed, but the tamer became a new threat, that of the immense bureaucratic states. According to White (p. 3) Marxism ended up merely giving the screw of reason and the will to mastery a further turn. I agree with White, but it is disappointing that he only refers to Marxism as a countervoice to liberalism. As I have worked out earlier (Poldervaart 1993), one of the most important differences between Marxism and the theories and movements of the first socialists (1825-1850) is the struggle of the latter movements against mastery, and for the acceptance of uncertainty. One may consider the ideas of these first socialists (Saint-Simon, the Saint-Simonians, Fourier in France and Owen and the Owenists in England) as a fierce attack on Enlightenment thinking; these socialists tried to formulate alternatives for liberalism and tried to live their ideals in daily life by setting up communities. But they never believed that their alternatives would stand forever. The future was open, and in the historical process social movements after them would change the alternatives they had formulated. Therefore Fourier named his theory 'uncertain science' and contrasted this with the 'certain sciences' of the philosophers, the French Enlightenment thinkers. Marx and Engels on the contrary emphasised the rationality of their own theory and rejected everything to do with feelings and morality; they considered history as a determined process and thus gave later Marxists the idea that they were struggling for a certain future . Although Marxism has dominated the historiography of socialism, before and after utopian socialism there have been many (communal) movements too who tried to bring their ideals into practice without thinking these practices were the only and ever lasting truth. One may consider all these communal movements as protesting against the idea of mastery of the world. In my opinion the long history of postmodernism may be described as a struggle against certainty, stability and hierarchy (Poldervaart, 2001 c). According to Foucault contemporary postmodernism also has a long history, but he did not elaborate this thought. It was Zablocki (1980) who made the difference between two kinds of historically important social movements clear to me. There are communal and revolutionary movements and their difference lies not merely in their ideals but especially in their strategy. Members of communal movements try to apply their ideals of living together in an alternative way to daily life, while members of revolutionary movements believe that only after defeating the enemy or fighting a revolution may one begin to talk about ideals. The two movements result from the same circumstances and could, indeed, coincide, but they tend to go different ways because of the differences in strategy. Revolutionary movements want to elucidate differences between groups, stated as oppositions. Unlike communal movements, in their theories and practices there is no place for thinking about the good life in the here and now, because in so doing the revolutionary consciousness of the members would be undermined. Usually, revolutionary leaders consider the members of communal movements with disdain and call them 'utopians' (as Marx and Engels called the first socialists). Another insight Zablocki gives us is that one may distinguish different periods in history in which social movements were more active than in other periods. Concentrated on communal movements, Zablocki calls these 'utopian periods'. I don't know enough about the scientific ideas of the first two utopian periods Zablocki mentions (that is, the beginning of the Christian era, when communities of Essenes and early Christians developed, and the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which witnessed the emergence of heretical groups that sought to put into practice the utopia of the first Christian communities). But as early as the third utopian period, the sixteenth and seventeenth century, a kind of struggle may be identified that has some connection with the modernity-postmodernity controversy. Authors like Erasmus, Montaigne and Rabelais protested not so much against reason, but rather against the way science, theology and philosophy all pretended to provide absolute knowledge. They pleaded for scepticism, tolerance for different ideas, for ambiguity and pluralism (Toulmin, 1992). Seventeenth-century scientists like Descartes on the other hand looked for 'unquestionable knowledge' which was to solve the many religious wars and crises of the seventeenth century. But when the wars were over, rationalist ideals of stability and hierarchy proved to be useful (Toulmin, 1992: 33). White (1996: 2-3) also emphasises the usefulness of modern theories, starting with Descartes, that aimed at enhancing human will and controlling everything. Such a constellation of reason and will was a necessary precondition for the successful emergence of industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century, because capitalism was not just a new way of producing things, but also a logic of rationalisation that corroded all traditions. Moreover, the logic of capitalism became intertwined with the Enlightenment faith in material progress. The legitimacy of the modern world thereafter anchored itself in the promise of 'will as infinite enrichment' on the one hand, and the promise of justice for in the individual in the liberal state on the other (White, 1996, p.3). With the beginning of industrial capitalism, however, the fourth utopian period emerged, that of the first, or utopian, socialists (1825-1850). They stated that there is nothing like an abstract truth, because nothing is sure; facts are always variable (Poldervaart 1993: 89-109). They strove for better positions for working people and women. Rejecting the opposition between the sexes, they went on to question all oppositions (feeling-reason, private-public, passive-active, housework-paid work) and emphasised the importance of sexuality. It is no coincidence that when their ideas ebbed away (the revolutions of 1848 being one factor in this process), the positivist approach could emerge (Kolakowski, 1972: 90). This approach, which has been dominant until the present day, argues that social scientists have to be objective, that they should place themselves as it were 'above reality' and investigate facts with the aim to look for scientific laws, because only then can they explain phenomena, predict the future … and thus control everything. However, the fifth utopian period (1890-1920) saw the re-emergence of not only many communal movements (sometimes under new names like 'colonies' or kibbutziem) but of a fierce reaction against modernity too (Poldervaart 1993: 211-224). In science and art many questions about the traditional representation of reality were asked and uncertainty emphasised (Kumar 1995: 95). The subjectivity of the researcher was rediscovered and positivism was attacked from many sides (see Stuart Hughes). In non-Marxist social movements the most important question was 'how to live'. (Jackson, 1922). During this period for the first time members of commune-movements had to defend themselves not only against liberal capitalists but also against Marxists and social democrats. This is illustrated by the discussion between the Dutch utopian Frederic van Eeden and the social democrat Van der Goes in 1890, in which Van Eeden argued: 'Not seldom do the reformers of our time develop a tone in their theories, that can only be maintained in a mathematical frame of truth.(..) They seem to rely on the infallible Ratio, but actually they appeal to the very fallible mind' (Poldervaart 1995: 53). However, with the exception of the kibbutziem, it seemed difficult to maintain the communes or colonies economically and after 1920 philosophy fell back on the certainty of 'facts' (the Wiener Kreis)while in the social sciences neo-positivism became dominant and most social movements were declared dead. Then, just after the social scientist Bell had announced 'the end of ideology', the sixties broke through (1965-1975), which are considered the latest utopian period so far. From 1965to 1970 the many social movements that arose were anarchist-inspired and their members emphasised the importance of 'feelings' and 'love'. They protested against the products of the consumer society, the pollution of the environment and all hypocrisy, of liberals and Marxists alike, surrounding family life and sexuality. After 1970 Marxism got the upper hand in the social movements of many West-European countries, because the class struggle seemed to provide a clearer strategy than, for example, Marcuse's theory about the redefinition of needs for everybody. For some time, all criticism of totalitarian socialism, including aspects such as the politicalization of sexuality and the emergence of the consumer family, was swallowed. At the same time the Marxist student movement powerfully attacked the idea of value-free science as propagated by the Frankfurter Schule, arguing that thinking about 'facts' is determined by economic power-relations. Women's studies, which emerged by the end of 1970s, included relations between men and women in this theory. And under the influence of postmodern theories, from the mid-1980s onwards all kinds of groups belonging to 'otherness' were added: the powerless, all those that are not Western, male, white, and heterosexual. Postmodern thinking has contributed much to the contemporary awareness of the limits of Western thought, but I think that the reverse is also true: many postmodern theorists have learnt much from the activists' critique of society, from the Sixties movement, from the Marxist failure and from the questions women's studies asked about the division between private and public and about the representation of the female in science (see Hall 1992). As I have argued elsewhere, three out of four of White's interrelated manifestations of the 'postmodern problematic' are not so new: the questioning of meta-narratives, 'the new awareness of the dangers of societal rationalisation' and 'the new social movements'. According to White in this new awareness the costs of Western modernisation or rationalisation are being progressively re-estimated upward. Prominent among such re-evaluations are Foucault's analysis of 'normalisation' (White: 7). One of the problems these re-evaluations draw attention to is the growth of the welfare activities of the modern state. 'However benevolent these activities may be in intention, the institutions that emerge with them often promote a deep and progressive disempowerment of their clients' (White: 8, my emphasis). For left-wing theorists this insight signals a need for thorough self-re-examination: is there an alternative other than the Marxist one, White asks without giving an answer. White's ideas about the 'new social movements' are not so new in the context of the communal movements. According to him new sorts of groups show the emergence of 'post-materialist values'; for these groups politics is not in the first instance a matter of compensations that the welfare state can provide, but of defending and restoring endangered ways of life. These groups are different from interest groups and from Marxist groups who continually seek the social embodiment of a revolutionary subjectivity that will speak and act in the name of all disaffected groups. What stands out about new social movements is 'an irreducible pluralism and a suspicion of totalistic revolutionary programs', argues White (p. 10-11). He continues: 'Thus it is not surprising that the characteristics of such new social movements have been paid increasing attention by philosophers and social theorists who hope for a future where both the "normalising" processes of the corporate capitalist welfare state system and the repressive closure of revolutionary systems are actively resisted' (p. 11). In my opinion all communal movements may be regarded as resisting normalising processes of capitalism and the closure of revolutionary systems. So: they are the hope of postmodern theorists? When it comes to Internet, White's last manifestation of the postmodern problematic, he introduces a really new phenomenon. At the ICSA-conference (see note 1) in 1995 in Israel, Albert Bates told his audience about the society-changing potential of the Internet and how his community, 'The Farm', made use of it. White, however, emphasises the political ambivalence of Internet. On the one hand it has the potential of radically democratising political life, on the other hand it holds the danger of turning into Big Brother: who will control these technologies and what purposes they will serve? At this moment contemporary counter-cultural activists in particular, often living in Do-it-Yourself communities, use Internet for protesting against economic globalisation and the Big Brother-danger of the multinationals, while at the same time embracing the globalisation of their international resistance. By giving this short historical overview of the connection between communal movements and postmodern ideas, I do not want to suggest that the contemporary use of the concept of postmodernism is the same thing as criticising dominant Enlightenment ideas. All I would like to state is that the contemporary concept of 'postmodernism' may be viewed as a more consequent elaboration of the ideas expressed in the various utopian periods. In all these periods, and especially in that of the first socialists and after, theorists and activists have struggled against certainty, stability, hierarchy, dualistic thinking, the belief in absolute knowledge and control, and for uncertainty, emotion, morality, openness, ambiguity, pluralism and subjectivity. Yet there is a difference between contemporary postmodern theories and the ideas formulated in the utopian periods: present postmodernists make the importance of language one of their core issues, which is exactly why their language is so difficult. Based on the structural linguistics of De Saussure (who argued that the relationship between words and the objects they refer to is arbitrary, and that words can only mean something in the context of a system of 'signs') and Levi-Strauss' insight that meaning is only made possible by the existence of underlying systems of conventions, contemporary postmodernists try to break through linguistic conventions, because these concern not only reason - as modernists would claim- but also power. According to White (pp. 13-30) postmodern language is so difficult because of the radical quality of the insights generated by postmodernism. To understand postmodern language we have to leave behind our traditional 'logo-centric' thinking and also standard, foundational distinctions like rational/irrational, culture/nature, male/female, civilised/uncivilised and so forth, because it is with these foundational distinctions that we try to submerge all kinds of dissonance. Postmodernists try to foreground this dissonance, an experiment that may have an unsettling effect on our modern, deep-rooted quest for harmony and unity, for a world of problems finally solved. A quest with an inevitable cost: the exclusion of the Other, who is first constructed and than devalued, disciplined and so on, in the infinite search for a more ordered world. One might say, argued White, that postmodernists show a sense of responsibility to otherness, while modernists act from a responsibility to act, to achieve practical ends. According to postmodernists, this responsibility to act is always connected with conformation to time constraints and with meeting the expectations of others; it means inevitably closing off sources of possible insight and it treats people as if they were all alike for the purpose of making decisions, thus ignoring or 'homogenising' dimensions of difference among people. Modernist thinkers would associate this with pragmatic effectiveness, postmodern thinkers with mastery. The two kinds of responsibility mentioned here are connected with two types of language use. Modernists use language that co-ordinates action-in-the-world, while postmodernist language is world-disclosing. By doing so, postmodernists want to prevent us from shutting ourselves off to different ways of seeing the world, arguing that all normality within a world is ultimately sustained by nothing more than fictions whose fictionality has been forgotten, which leads to a denying of the otherness that is spawned by any human construct. We can only become more sensitised to otherness when we use world-disclosing language to loosen our world's hold upon us. This language has to confront us with the ways in which this world's hold is structured by unrecognised or wilfully forgotten fictions. (For example: the idea that men and women have to have different characteristics because they have different bodies, forgetting that it is us, humans, who give meaning to bodies, not a fiction like 'nature'). By quoting White, I have tried to explain why postmodernists use such difficult language. It may be clear that this kind of language cannot give one-dimensional tools. Yet, as I will show in part III of this article, postmodern thinking may be recognised in many of the ideas of contemporary anti-economic globalisation activists, even though they claim to they reject the theories as well as their particular use of language. II: Three types of Dutch (intentional) communities and the way they cope with neo-liberalism. I will concentrate on three types of contemporary Dutch communities, which are however present in most Western countries. 1. More institutionalised communities like co-housing projects and living groups (in Dutch: Centraal Wonen en 'woongroepen') Kesler (2001) and by Jansen (2001) explored this type of Dutch communities during the 1998 ICSA Conference ). Centraal Wonen (co-housing) projects are complexes of separate houses with collective facilities. From the onset these projects were meant to foster social contact between people in various socio-economic positions, life-stages and household compositions and thus to contribute to the integration of society at large. They were not meant as alternatives at a family level, but primarily at a neighbourhood level. Usually, these are large-scale projects with some dozens of participating households and various communal facilities. Woongroepen (living groups) are small co-housing clusters, mostly consisting of not more than ten members, which from the start were intended as an alternative to family life. Kesler and Jansen drew similar conclusions: the utopian aspect of contemporary co-housing and living groups has disappeared since current members are no longer driven by an ideal of changing society: Co-housing has changed from a utopian lifestyle to a daily one. The suggestion seems to be that co-housing groups have become too conventional to be of any importance any longer as an alternative for these neo-liberal times. At the same ICSA-Conference however, Meltzer, researching co-housing in North America, drew the opposite conclusion (Meltzer 2001). Exactly because co-housing is a mainstream option, it has the potential to radically influence urban growth community development and social change processes. Unlike predecessors like the nineteenth-century communities and the communes of the 1960s and 70s which always had problematic relationships with society as a whole, co-housing is not an alternative lifestyle, but one deemed appropriate for a wide majority of people. According to Meltzer 'co-housing may well be the first manifestation of communitarian endeavour with relevance for global sustainability and the linked problems of rapid urban sprawl, continued environmental degradation, excessive resource consumption and increasing social disorder'. Although I am not as optimistic about the power of co-housing projects, nor, in a Dutch context, as pessimistic about increasing social disorder, I agree with Meltzer that co-housing is now embedded within the communal tradition (Jansen in particular put this in question). In his article Meltzer mention another important characteristic of communal movements: they are in constant flux, struggling with societal versus individual rights, communal versus private territory and commonality versus diversity. Of course contemporary co-housing is in some aspects different from the communes of the seventies - times are changing - but this is not to say that they no longer belong to the same kind of movement. I disagree with Meltzer's conclusion that co-housing has stopped being an alternative lifestyle now that it has become more mainstream. Co-housing and living groups are not specifically Dutch phenomena. Typically Dutch, however, are co-housing projects for elderly people (see Kruiswijk/Van Overbeek 2001). Co-housing for the elderly arose from initiatives by elderly people themselves, but later on it was adopted by housing corporations and stimulated by the Dutch government. The latter touches a very typical Dutch phenomenon: the Dutch Poldermodel. For the background of this Poldermodel, I would like to refer to another article (Poldervaart 2001 b, forthcoming). All I want to say here that the Poldermodel is a unique form of 'consensus policy', involving endless negotiating (between government leaders, employers and trade unions, as well as leaders of minority and action groups) and subsidising minority and action groups with the aim to pacify social unrest. For a large part this policy has succeeded. The unions have been pacified (strikes are rare in the Netherlands) and so have dominant parts of environmental, women's and communal movements. The good thing about this is that all three movements now have a real impact on government policy. The drawback is that it is also an attempt to make the new social movements harmless. It is interesting that especially in the past few years, this negative aspect of the Poldermodel has been emphasised by various groups and individuals, not only by counter-cultural activists and some academics (Van der Heijden, 2000), but more strikingly also by members of institutionalised parts of the social movements. An important 'integrated' Dutch environmental movement, Milieudefensie, rhetorically asked: We have lost our course: where are the utopian thinkers? in a recent issue of its magazine (Milieudefensie, January 2001). All critics of the Poldermodel emphasise as their most important point that the consequence of the Poldermodel is that fundamental change is made impossible: the consensus model prevents thinking about alternatives. Some complaints in the Milieudefensie magazine are: 'By debating with your opponent you accept the rules laid down by the authorities' (p.15), or: 'As an "integrated" movement we are pragmatic, we want to see results, but yes: there is something lacking' (pp.15-16). The most radical is Jasper (p. 14), active in GroenFront!, an autonomous environmental group: 'We are not satisfied with crumbs; a whole new ideology has arisen, the Do-it-Yourself idea of the 1960s, in combination with new media'. (It may be clear that Jasper belongs to the third type of Dutch communities, see below). The good thing about the Poldermodel is that it subsidises and stimulates all kinds of co-housing projects and living groups in the new suburbs. Although co-housing is not such a 'common-sense' phenomenon in Holland as Meltzer seems to suggest for North-America, there is a huge number of living groups and co-housing projects in the Netherlands at this moment. There are around 75 big common co-housing projects, around 100 co-housing projects for elderly people and around 5.000 living groups. The Poldermodel provides even groups that do not have enough money to buy their own building or those who are scared to squat, with the opportunity to live in an alternative way. To organise such a government-stimulated co-housing project or living group, however, it needs a stubborn group of people, who will have to negotiate endlessly with a government-paid architect. Moreover, as Kesler has shown, it remains difficult to maintain one's original ideals in the course of daily life. I do not believe, as Jansen does, that living in co-housing is now a de-politiced thing. Co-housing offers better opportunities for caring for more people than when you live with your family alone; for paying attention to the environment; and for discussing a more equal division of household chores. And after all, caring for other people, the environment and the division of household tasks are considerable political issues. I think that one important difference with the communes of the sixties is that nowadays the attention given to feminist and environmental issues is more self-evident. While in the sixties members of communes mentioned 'changing society' as their motive for living in groups, nowadays most members motivate their choice by emphasising friendship, the more economical use of household appliances, the more honest division of household tasks, and the possibility to help each other with childcare. To conclude that living in groups is therefore no longer a political issue, as most researchers do, is too easy. I would include co-housing in the communal tradition, even though their power to present alternatives to neo-liberal capitalism could be minimal. An important point mentioned by Jansen is that there appears to be a persistent connection of communal living to new social movements. There is therefore some overlap between communal living groups and the third type of communities I will mention later. The difference is that in communities of the first type, living together comes first and being active in 'the' movement only second, while as I will show, in the third type of communities it is the other way round. 2. religiously inspired communities According to Jansen's research of 1998 (Jansen, 2001), there are nowadays just under one thousand religious communities in the Netherlands. Riphagen-Hamoen interviewed more than 300 of such Christian-inspired Dutch communities ('leefgemeenschappen') and, surprisingly, she labelled only 2 of them as 'holistic' (Riphagen-Hamoen 1995). This low number may be accounted for by the aim of Riphagen's research: she intended to give an overview of all groups of religious reflection who are not, or scarcely, subsidised and whose aim is to assist other people. For all communities described in this book, helping other people is the most important reason for existence, not convincing other people of their religious inspiration. All these groups, who live - and for the most part also work - together, show their involvement in society; with many aiming to help minorities and refugees, others psychiatric clients or drugs-addicts. Their modesty is remarkable, although this may have the disadvantage that many people do not know them. Not only in their activities do they give evidence of a critical attitude to consumptive neo-liberal capitalism, but also in the way they live: sober, often vegetarian, re-using old materials, doing voluntary work etc. Apart from their religious inspiration and their rejection of activism (although some groups work for Amnesty International), by living like this they have much in common with the third type of communities: the counter-cultural Do-it-Yourself communes. 3. Counter cultural Do-it-Yourself communities The third type of communities are embedded in 'the movement' or 'the scene' as it has been called in the Netherlands since the 1990s. Originating in the squatters' movement, 'the scene' consists of a network of squats and communally owning buildings, food coops, Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETs), radical environment and animal-rights groups, anarca-feminists, sound systems, bands, mail order companies, festivals, all kinds of direct-action groups, research groups of multinationals and alternative money-systems, groups helping 'illegalised' refugees, publishers, many 'zines, Internet providers and newsgroups, info shops, communal and mobile kitchens, and so forth. A few thousand people are active in this movement in the Netherlands today. Some of them are inspired by direct political motives, others by a desire to live life the way they want to. Many of them live together, sometimes temporarily, in living groups, in squatted houses or in legalised squats. What these people have in common is that they want to express and reach their objectives outside the main ideology of the marketplace and the state. They are not satisfied with conventional prefab lifestyles and create their own ways of life and living together. One could, indeed, say that they create their own utopias (Kallenberg 2001). It will not come as a surprise that many activists of this movement are also involved in Dutch branches of the anti-economic globalisation movement, which they consider as a kind of umbrella for all their ideas and actions. The three types of communities described here have little or no contact with each other. It could be said their worldviews differ too much. Members of the institutionalised, usually subsidised communities, do not reject society as it is totally, but want to adapt it in order to create more choice, and to bring their feminist and environmental ideas into practice. Above all, they want to live a good life for themselves. In the second type of communities, religious inspiration is the reason for living together. . All commune-members of this type show a deep involvement in people who need help. Hospitality, friendship and offering a 'home' are central values in all these communities (Riphagen-Hamoen: VII). For them, as for all heretic groups, religion is not a set of confirmations that have to be discussed, but an ideal for personal behaviour (Poldervaart, 1993: 37). By living a sober life and only asking a minimum of money for their help, they criticise consumption-directed society in an indirect way. The Do-it-Yourself communities are characterised by the most explicit rejection of neo-liberal capitalist society. They create their own, autonomous way of living together and make use their own subculture. They have many international contacts, stimulated by squatters in other countries and by their punk bands and their many, usually English-language 'zines (Schafraad, 2000). In the past few years Internet has become their main means of communication, especially in the context of the international actions against the World Bank and European Summits. In spite of their differences, I consider the three types of (Dutch) communities as belonging to one social (communal) movement. As social-movement theorists have shown, a social movement may incorporate many different organisations (Van der Heijden 2000, 29-30, quoting McCarthy and Zald 1976). The supporters of a movement may differ substantially from those of formal organisations belonging to the same movement, and the organisations themselves may differ considerably in their critique of contemporary society. Thus, as in the women's movement or the environmental movement, where fractions that negotiate with the government co-exist with fractions that are furiously against such integration, the communal movement consists of fractions too. In my opinion all these fractions belong to one and the same movement whose members try to apply their ideals of living together in an alternative way to daily life. Although the ideals of the institutionalised communities differ from those of commune-members who want to change society radically, what all people living in intentional communities have in common is their wish to live together in a more or less alternative way, in a reaction against the dominant values of neo-liberal society. As I see it, one may consider the communal movement as a continuum, with the non-autonomous, institutionalised communities on the one side and the autonomous DiY communes on the other: X----------------------------------------------X----------------------------------------------------------X Institutionalised communes religious communes DiY-communes (non-autonomous) (more autonomous) (most autonomous) III. Conclusions: the relationship between postmodern theorists, communal movements, and anti-economic globalists. I am afraid White was too optimistic in arguing that 'the characteristics of the new social movements have been paid increasing attention by philosophers and social theorists who hope for a future where both the "normalising" processes of the corporate capitalist welfare state system and the repressive closure of revolutionary systems are actively resisted'. Until recently, both communal movement and anti-economic globalisation activists were totally ignored in the Netherlands. The media and academic researchers alike are astonished when they come to realise how many institutionalised communities the country has and how big the counter-cultural DiY movement still is (and how it is extending nowadays). Riphagen-Hamoen (1995:V) finds it surprising that so little was registered about the alternative religious living groups. After the 'Battle of Seattle' (November 1999), the Dutch media branded the activists 'rioters', without even mentioning their motives and ideals and without apparently being aware of the existence of such activism in the Netherlands. Suddenly, after Genoa (July 2001), all this has changed. At the time I write this (August 2001), the Dutch media is suddenly referring to 'a new social movement' (as a phenomenon that has come from the blue). Before July 2001, the whole radical network was invisible and it was only by using primary sources and visiting their domains one could get a picture of the utopianism of the DiY communities and their ideas (but very few researchers and journalists took the trouble). How should one explain this uninterested attitude? Partly, it may be seen as a result of liberal tolerance. This kind of tolerance gives 'other people' all kinds of rights, but does not appreciate any real involvement. Liberal tolerance presents itself as neutral, but rejects responsibility. In a reaction, postmodern theorists like Jodi Dean plead for reflective solidarity: a kind of solidarity that rejects neutrality and does take responsibility (Dean, 1996: 175-182). At the same time, Dean points at the dangers of what she calls 'the risky business of reflective solidarity', stressing that extending our responsibility to other people may challenge our expectations. By entering into discussions with other groups in society, the security of one's own sense of belonging and one's own fixed, secure identity are questioned, and one has to accept plurality. According to Dean, reflective solidarity forces us to change our identity and sense of 'belonging', and tap into the identities of people with whom we want to work, life and struggle. Reflective solidarity asks us to determine one' position and to realise that only by making claims can we be involved with others with whom we disagree. In this, it differs radically from liberal tolerance. Another reason why until recently neither media nor academic researchers were interested in communal living and DiY activists is the common idea that such initiatives are no more than a relic of the sixties. As Dutch journalist Jansen van Galen wrote in one of the main left-wing magazines: 'As journalists we contribute to the picture of a society without protest. If young people are protesting against the anti-social economic unity of Europe, nobody wants to know their motives. […] The editorial staff has little patience with action groups, they have seen it all before. In the 1960s actions were blown up in the media; nowadays protests are ignored of belittled' (Jansen van Galen 1999). Tim Jordan points to another shortcoming of the media: ''[The media] only seem to notice sensational actions which ignore the social networks that make such actions possible' (Jordan, 1999: 7). While Jansen van Galen and Jordan are suspicious about the media, many Dutch researchers are not. The authors of a famous Dutch book about social movements (Duyvendak et al., 1992) counted how frequently various movements are mentioned in the papers, thus using the papers as a mirror of society. This idea has often been criticised in postmodern theories: after all, news media show representations that give meaning to society, rather than reflecting it, and researchers have to be very careful when using the media as a source of information. However, these (modernist) researchers suggested that if the papers do not write about social movements, that means they do not exist. In spite of what the Dutch media suggest, anti-economic globalisation activism has a long history. All the social networks of 'Third World' groups, which have been active from the sixties onward (and often connected with communal living), can indeed be regarded as as its precursors. So can the massive attack by radical autonomous groups on the World Bank meeting in Berlin in September 1988 (with a four days struggle and more than a thousand people from many countries being arrested, without much media-attention). Or the environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, when people realised that no actual measures were taken to save the world and environmental activists started their networking. The 'Ya Basta' manifest of the Mexican Zapatistas (January 1994), telling the world by way of the Internet that they said 'No! Enough is Enough' against NAFTA, may be considered a starting point. Or the first demonstrations against the EU in Amsterdam in 1996, followed by the protests against the IMF meeting in Montreal. The Battle of Seattle (when some 50,000 demonstrators disturbed a WTO meeting in November-December 1999 was not that new at all - only the number of protesters was. After this first 'shock' came Davos (early 2000, against the World Economic Forum), Washington (April 2000, against World Bank and IMF), Prague (September 2000, against IMF and World Bank), Nice (December 2000, against EU), Napels (March 2001, against Global Forum), Quebec (April 2001, against NAFTA), and Gotenborg (June 2001, against EU). While the WTO summit in Barcelona (planned for June 2001) was cancelled for fear of the activists, these activists were again present in Salzburg (June 2001, against the World Economic Forum), and at the world climate conference in Bonn (July 2001) and, as mentioned before, at the G-8 summit in Genoa (July 2001). Although it would be interesting and important to say more about the anti-economic globalisation movement (their various networks, how they work together), this article is not meant as an analysis of this movement. My aim here is to make clear that there is a kind of relationship between 'the mood' of postmodernism, communal living and anti-economic globalisation movements. In my opinion the importance of all these forms of protest against all the summits mentioned above is that they say 'NO' to the suggestion that 'There Is No Alternative', which is in fact the main argument used in favour of the neo-liberal globalisation of the free market. Critics of the anti-economic globalisation activists attack them because they have no coherent, binding, universal program. What they don not see is that this is in fact one of the movement's strongest points. The activists want to be pluralistic because their binding fear is that the freedom of local communities is increasingly repressed by the economic pressure of globalising organisations like WTO, IMF and the multinationals. They consider these organisations as a threat to democracy, to workers' rights, and the environment, and as a force leading to the commercialising and privatising of public spaces. Anti-economic globalists struggle for the protection of local autonomy, the freedom of local communities to live their own lives, to work out their own working conditions, to organise their own surroundings, without the economic coercion of the free market and the globalising organisations. With one coherent universal program they would repudiate their own deepest motive: to respect local autonomy, the freedom of communities to decide how they want to live without top-down coercion of any globalising organisation (Sas, 2001: 23). The anti-economic globalists emphasise their pluralism, because there is not one but many alternatives for economic globalisation. One might say that these activists have learnt from the Big Stories of communism, nationalism and liberalism and their totalitarian results, even though they are usually not familiar with the postmodern critique of 'meta-narratives'. When we consider postmodernism as a kind of mood, we can understand that there are clear connections between the postmodern theoretical critique of neo-liberalism and the ideas of the activists struggling against this dominant ideology. In his recently published book Restructuring and Resistance (March 2001) about the contemporary social movements of Western Europe, Abramsky describes the increased internationalisation of such struggles and how people are developing new ways of responding to social changes and of organising collectively. As existing structures (like trade unions, political parties, the work place) are proving increasingly unable to serve their needs, people are being forced to look for new alternatives based around self organisation outside of these existing spaces (Abramsky, 2001:19). It is here that the connection with the communal movement appears again. Reading Restructuring and Resistance one may understand why postmodern theorists put their hope on such alternatives. According to Abramsky's introduction the fundamental role of states is shifting and so is the social consensus which once formed the basis of the welfare state. This breakdown of social consensus and the fundamental changes that this implies offers new possibilities for building new collective identities and frameworks for common action. The actions mentioned above are not simply directed against the European Union, but rooted in a critique of society as a whole, based on the idea that the status quo is not inevitable, because the future is highly contested. For the last chapter of his book Abramsky asked activists from different countries to work out alternatives. In this chapter, named 'Replacing Capitalism with Free, Autonomous and Self Reliant Spaces', the various authors do not give recipes for organising such spaces , since these places can only exist through autonomy and decentralisation. All they want to do is analyse a few critical factors that could hinder the process. According to these authors the recent Global Days of Action against bodies such as the World Trade Union, IMF and World Bank, by successfully attacking their legitimacy and questioning their very existence, 'have opened up a space to think and act against capitalism that would have been inconceivable in the North just three years ago' (p. 550). These actions have caused an embarrassment to very powerful institutions and governments. The enormous appeal of the free articulation at a global level of diverse, equal, autonomous and self-determined identities and forms of action within spaces of mutual support they consider as one of the reasons of this success. The mobilisation potential of these networks has much of its roots in the conscious rejection of power structures, learnt for a part from the women's movement (p. 551). Till now, they say, we have used the potential of international decentralised and autonomous anti-capitalist networks primarily to take the streets for protests and blockades and for a limited exchange of ideas and practices. How further? For the future they plea for constructing self-sustained, non-hierarchical spaces to create non-capitalist livelihoods, 'to take back control of our own lives and realise our ideas about free and equal social relations with environmental sensitivity, exempt of economic exploitation and - and then they quote People's Global Action- "all forms and systems of domination and discrimination including, but not limited to, patriarchy, racism and religious fundamentalism of all creeds"' (p.550). The authors realise that there have been autonomous anti-capitalist spaces in Europe for a long time: excellent experiences of collective ecological lifestyles free of coercion and exploitation, social centres with space four autonomous political participation, local networks of alternative economic exchanges etc. But: 'most of them are either quite disconnected from wider processes of social change (which is especially the situation of most rural alternative communities), or have very limited possibilities to solve the everyday problems of excluded people. In general they are also rather closed spaces, counter-cultural but homogeneous retreat areas where people who do not share their ideas usually feel rather unwelcome'. According these activists the construction of self-sustained spaces could become a real alternative for many Western European people and regions with no 'use' for the system. After giving some suggestions for how to organise such spaces, they criticise existing communities for their limited connections to wider processes of social change: 'If we want to break out of the ghetto, we will have to take up the challenge of putting into practice the ideas that most of us defend about the importance of diversity, sacrificing the security, predictability and simplicity that come from relatively closed and homogeneous collective identities' (p.554, my emphasis). Because fighting for autonomy without diversity and respect for difference is a very dangerous combination, with an important authoritarian and reactionary potential. The authors understand the common desire to be involved in a real community, but state that this involvement 'time and again is reduced to playing a part in the world and corresponding to a set formula of phoney social identities' (p. 554). Like Dean's warning for 'the risky business of Reflective solidarity', the authors realise that spaces characterised by diversity are bound to foster disagreement, but they see this as positive since disagreement which nourishes creativity and change. At the same time they emphasise that collective values are indispensable. According to them, these values become a problem when they are approached in a moralistic manner, leading to homogeneity, sectarianism and isolation and often also to ugly power relations. In fact, they state, 'all we need in order to act and co-operate in a context of partial disagreement, on the basis of our own identity, is some flexibility and imagination to move between different spaces, depending on the purposes of the co-operation in question and the degree of affinity that it requires' (p.555). These writers realise that it is not easy to organise autonomous free spaces. At the end of their chapter they mention some challenges which have to be overcome. Among others: the elimination of all forms of domination within their own circles, like race and gender; and the need to remain as much in contact with the rest of society as possible without depending on the mainstream media. 'Building communities, bridging the gaps (..), dealing with our own conditioning is a very hard and unromantic task, which has no room for heroes and martyrs' (p. 563). What I would like to conclude is that the hopes of postmodern theorists regarding contemporary social movements is not in vain. The anti-economic globalisation movement resists the 'normalising' processes of the corporate capitalist state and the repressive closure of revolutionary systems. As an alternative, the movement pleads for 'free, autonomous and self-reliant spaces', and at the same time for diversity, for sacrificing the security, predictability and simplicity. I believe that many of the existing intentional (rural) communities can learn from their critical remarks about them. These critiques are in line with postmodern notions, but not easily brought into practice. Postmodern theories give little directives for how to handle, but show us most critically how our conventional ways of thinking is aimed to avoid the things we want not hear or think about. As the activists put it: we have to deal with our own conditioning and be open to others/the excluded. Because postmodernism is about otherness, it is also about ourselves and therefore, perhaps, postmodernist thinking may be considered utopian: we may never be able to reach our ideals, but in our thinking and practical behaviour we can strive towards them. And, as the anti-economic globalisation activists emphasise all the time: we have to do it ourselves! REFERENCES: - Abramsky, Kolya (ed): Restructuring and Resistance. Diverse voices of struggle in Western Europe. March 2001 (for copies and info: resresrev@yahoo.com) - Bramsted, E.K. and K.J. Melhuish (eds): Western Liberalism. 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