In the 1970s, Václav Havel, the Czech playwright and cultural dissident, faced a repressive system impervious to serious change—in his case, the Czech government. When asked how he could deal with a totalizing system that is not amenable to reason or civil negotiation, Havel explained that the future lies in developing a “parallel polis.”
A parallel polis is a horizontal world of relationships and provisioning that functions as a working alternative. It’s about people building convivial relationships and constructive projects with one another, which over time can ripen into a prefigurative new order. A parallel polis offers spaces in which people can mutually support each other and directly produce what they need. People can think independently, debunk official propaganda, and expand their imaginations about what’s possible. They can speak the truth, cultivate wholesome ambitions, and muster the courage to do what is needed.
The point of a parallel polis is not to withdraw from politics and culture into utopian fantasies, but rather to build a world that has its own integrity and working capabilities outside of the dominant system. Building a parallel polis amounts to choosing different strategies for moving forward. The first priority is not to bang at the door of governments and political parties to seek change. That may be necessary in some measure. But that path is doomed to disappoint so long as the structures and norms of the current market/state system remain intact. As recent history shows, even in places like Greece and Bolivia where left-wing parties took over the state, the results have been problematic, chiefly because international capital can continue to bully and co-opt the state and social movements.
By contrast, even a small but functional parallel polis of working commons, if properly insulated from these forces, can exert great leverage. We saw this in the early days of GNU/ Linux and open source software and in the ways that local food movements forced changes on Big Ag. We see this in the power of local solidarity when it’s organized, as demonstrated by Gandhi’s spinning wheel, right-to-roam protests, complementary currencies, mutual credit systems, and much else.
I believe the future of the commons amounts to building a kind of parallel polis that is outside of the market/state system but nonetheless attentive to the possibilities and fissures in that space. I am optimistic in a sense because a robust Republic of Commoners already exists. Can it develop the strategies to expand and normalize its social vision and practice? That is the focus of Part III.
David Bollier at david /at/ bollier.org | New Society Publishers