The problem with communes is: they work exactly as they were expected to work

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

bluestateguy (40,799 posts)

Is there a left-wing equivalent of the sovereign citizen movement?

If so, what is it? What would it look like?

Cayenne (179 posts)

1. Anarchists?

HereSince1628 (28,913 posts)

12. Anarchism is quite literally the domain of Koch's Libertarianism
 
The Koch brothers, sometimes individually and sometimes collectively, have repeatedly written and sponsored extreme political writers to promote anarchism which is the end point of ending ALL taxation.

Warpy (79,007 posts)

4. There was a movement in the early 70s to go off the grid

buy some land, build a shack, and farm sustainably but not for profit, following the Nearings. Unfortunately, they found out that farming even at a subsistence level was 1000X harder than they thought it would be. Most sold off part or most of the land and all the animals and took crappy jobs, supplementing crap wages with what they could can every year out of a kitchen garden.

They all wanted to be the Helen and Scott Nearing. Unfortunately most of them lacked the cachet of a former quasi Marxist professor and none had troops of scruffy college kids spending the summer in teepees helping with the grunt work for their daily bread and vegetable soup. What they ended up with is a patchwork of rural jobs that paid rural wages and a massive sense of failure. It was too bad, they were some of the best movement people out there, and at least they didn't all repeat Jim Jones and his bunch's mistakes. They ended up alive but crushed.

Does anybody get the impression that, if not for the mass suicide, war-pee would have been a Jim Jones supporter?

jwirr (24,959 posts)

16. This is what I was thinking. I and my daughter's family tried this for a while. Unfortunately it was
 
not the hard work that ended our attempts. It was the fact that you need money to start something like that up. We left and moved into a small community and got jobs. Today most of us still have jobs, some good, some not so good. But we have never given up totally as the small farm we live on today has much of what we would have put on the other farm. Food barring plants, small animals, alternative energy projects and conservation ideas.

Back then the idea was to refuse to support a government that was at war by paying as little taxes as we could. Today the idea is more one of survival in a harsh world. Help with the grocery bill, careful use of natural resources and more modern needs. The work is still hard. But we consider it worth the while. Especially when we can our excess garden produce and see the energy bill go down.

I don't think we consider ourselves a bundy type protester.

JDPriestly (45,607 posts)

5. How do you define left-wing?
 
I think of left-wing as those of us who believe in democratic government and respect for each person within a society that works together to form government by the people, for the people and of the people. In my view, that is utterly incompatible with the idea of a sovereign citizen movement. So I would have to say that as I personally define "left-wing," no there can be no sovereign citizen or anti-democratic government movement within the left wing.

HereSince1628 (28,913 posts)

15. Yes, on the left individuality exists but doesn't trump being 'in it together'
 
Collectives, moshavism, communes, kibbutz are all features of the far left, and are at least in principle the antithesis of the antisocialism of the right's radical notion of yeomanism.

*presses 1 for English*

muriel_volestrangler (73,706 posts)

8. Equivalent in what way?
 
With idiotic ideas of which laws do and don't apply to them? To believe in a half-baked notion of society from previous centuries which ignores huge swathes of reality, both from those centuries and from the present? With a tendency to arm themselves and plot, and sometimes carry out, murderous attacks on the police? Those are the defining characteristics of people who call themselves 'sovereign citizens' to me.

No, I can't really think of a left wing equivalent.

Lee-Lee (1,459 posts)

14. The Moorish Nation

Is essentially an African-American sovereign citizen movement.

The members do the same foolish crap about forming thier own government, issuing their own drivers licenses, filing false legal paperwork, claiming laws don't apply to them, etc.

They often squat in vacant home claiming ownership and filing all sorts of false deeds and legal paperwork causing the real owners massive problems and expenses.

http://moorishamericangov.org

Edited to add an SPLC link that explains them well:

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2011/fall/-sovereigns-in-black

The Proglodyte is describing Occu-pie. Squatting was something the Proglodytes cheered.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025651173

[BattleHymn]

I love hearing my parents describe how life went for my two aunts when they both ran off to join up with hippie communes back in the sixties and seventies. 

Being that they were women types, they did almost all of the hard backbreaking work, while the "men" sat around, had sex, and smoked whatever they could get their grubby fingers on.

A few years of that, and they came running back to modern civilized life. 

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

I love hearing my parents describe how life went for my two aunts when they both ran off to join up with hippie communes back in the sixties and seventies. 

Being that they were women types, they did almost all of the hard backbreaking work, while the "men" sat around, had sex, and smoked whatever they could get their grubby fingers on.

A few years of that, and they came running back to modern civilized life.

At least the men were able to break from the patriarchy enforced gender roles of being warrior-hunters.

[BattleHymn]

At least the men were able to break from the patriarchy enforced gender roles of being warrior-hunters.

    

[JohnnyReb]

Communes: Where everything is shared equally.....except the work. Ain't that the same as communism?

[Delmar]

Response to muriel_volestrangler (Reply #8)Sat Oct 11, 2014, 10:01 AM
Star Member Warpy (79,010 posts)
10. Going off the grid and back to the land

and being purely subsistence farmers who used barter instead of cash was the hippie way of not paying taxes and defunding wars of corporate convenience.

The right wing wants to earn the big bucks and use the infrastructure without paying for any of it.

Although not so far off the grid that the government can't figure out where to send the welfare or disability check.

[freedumb2003b]

The right wing wants to earn the big bucks and use the infrastructure without paying for any of it.

I have a 5-figure tax bill that says otherwise.

[DumbAss Tanker]

Communes: Where everything is shared equally.....except the work. Ain't that the same as communism?

Perfect.

 

[Undies]

Leftist are forever looking out over the heads of the crowd, but not a one of them will look an individual in the eye.  That is the foundation of their "collectivism" and the reason why it has been and always will be a complete and total failure.  The reality of individual human nature is never part of their equations.

[Vagabond]

You know, it's funny listening to them whine about how hard it is to get things to grow.  I moved again here recently and have been busy setting up for next year's growing season.  I am looking forward to having a garden again, and the hard work and dirt that goes with it.  Sure I'll make a huge dent in my grocery bill, but I'll also have a pretty good job.  I guess being realistic is not a leftist trait either.

[Wineslob]

The new stupidity is the same as the old stupidity:

http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2012/04/29/meet-the-new-farm-same-as-the-old-farm/


As always, the DUmmies never learn.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

The new stupidity is the same as the old stupidity:

http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2012/04/29/meet-the-new-farm-same-as-the-old-farm/


As always, the DUmmies never learn.

I remember that.

Good addition to the thread.

[JohnnyReb]

The new stupidity is the same as the old stupidity:

http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2012/04/29/meet-the-new-farm-same-as-the-old-farm/


As always, the DUmmies never learn.

That is some funny stupid right there.

I'm glad saner people are growing my food that I don't grow myself.

[Chris_]

The new stupidity is the same as the old stupidity:

http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2012/04/29/meet-the-new-farm-same-as-the-old-farm/


As always, the DUmmies never learn.

That's the funniest damn thing I've read all day.

[Wineslob]

That is some funny stupid right there.

I'm glad saner people are growing my food that I don't grow myself.

Ya, we'd all starve, actually the DUmmies would.