Commune (model of government)

The commune, as a model of government, is generally advocated by some communists, revolutionary socialists, and anarchists. Communes are an organizational community with social cohesion derived from a shared culture. As a governing community, a commune often entails some degree of local governance, communal ownership, and cultural cohesion. However, models that do not include all three aspects may still be described as communes. At its core, a commune is just an organization which creates social conditions that prioritize the primacy of the collective over the individual.
Many different forms of commune-based governments are possible, such as a local and sovereign community which is both a microstate and a nation-state, a federated commune which lacks a degree of sovereignty under the rule of a larger state, or a larger national community which focuses more on aspects of communal ownership rather than communal governance.
Introduction
Marx and Engels, Bakunin, and later Lenin and Trotsky gained theoretical lessons (in particular as regards the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and the "withering away of the state") from the limited experience of the Paris Commune. Kropotkin criticized modern representative democracy as merely being an instrument for the ruling class, and argued that a new society would have to be organized on entirely different principles which involved every individual more directly.
Within Marxism
Karl Marx, in his pamphlet The Civil War in France (1871), written during the Commune, advocated the Commune's achievements, and described it as the prototype for a revolutionary government of the future, 'the form at last discovered' for the emancipation of the proletariat.
Thus in Marxist theory, the commune is a form of political organization adopted during the first (or lower) phase of communism, socialism. Communes are proposed as the proletarian counterpart to bourgeois political forms such as parliaments. In his pamphlet, Marx explains the purpose and function of the commune during the period that he termed the dictatorship of the proletariat:
Marx based these ideas on the example of the Paris Commune, which he described in The Civil War in France:
The autonomous commune is furthermore based upon the complete liberty of the individual and dedicated to its realization. Bakunin's anarchist commune is not organized into a dictatorship of the proletariat but a loose, yet cohesive federation that attempts to achieve the aims of the actively revolutionary class as a whole.
The function of mini-communes
Jeff Shantz points out in his book Constructive Anarchy: Building Infrastructures of Resistance, in hopes of mass communes one day being a reality, that "Mini-communes and squats exist all over the world, but comprise only a marginal pattern of social organization in relation to society at large. However, many of them provide a self-conscious example of how a socialist society would function, even if only on a microsociological level. As they are, socialist mini-communes are, along with , the germs for the development of mass, socially complex communist communes." This hypothetical is an example of what organizations like workers-organizations could lead to if brought to sufficient scale. In the case that this gradual progression is true, it would have implications both on the way that workers-organizations and their like are perceived both by those who hope for mass communes to be a reality and those who do not. For those who support communes, it would motivate them at a policy-level to encourage workers-organizations, for those who oppose communes, it would encourage them to abolish workers-organizations at every opportunity. The idea that workers-organizations gradually progress into communes, thus brings into question whether or not workers-organizations are fundamentally healthy or destructive in their long-term function. It is important to note at this point, that some do believe that workers-organizations are part of an inevitable progress towards mass-communes.
Contemporary political movements organized around the idea of the commune
*Zone to Defend
*Abahlali baseMjondolo
*Homeless Workers' Movement
*Landless Workers' Movement
*Occupy Oakland
*Zapatista Army of National Liberation
*Kurdistan Communities Union

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