Left theorizing (and praxis) has mostly failed to incorporate the insights and lived experience of the last 30 years of open-source development, ownership, and distribution—leaving the field largely shaped by a kind of humanist libertarianism: strong in its expression of democratic individualism, weaker on the requirements of coordinated mutualism.

This is disappointing, given that socialism itself developed in part as an attempt to reclaim, organize, and systematize the commons tradition within expanding state societies.

What might come from a deliberate and sustained attempt to bring these traditions together within the federated web—perhaps through a worldwide network within the Fediverse oriented toward global collective solidarity, mutual support, and active resistance?

Would anyone be interested in forming an online community to explore and advance such an effort?

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#TheCommunitariumProject

**Such Interesting Aunties: Queering Care**

*Joel is the only non-parental member of a queer parenting collective; Cody is a trans man who’s been mistaken for his chosen niece and nephew’s dad*

My son Joel is one of the subjects of this Substack post from Lisa Sibbett, who writes **The Auntie Bulletin**, about "practical, everyday kinship".

I'm proud of him: he is working out the practice of what, so far, I have merely theoretically gestured toward:

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject

https://theauntie.substack.com/p/such-interesting-aunties-queering-care?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=nwk0&triedRedirect=true

Many local candidates build campaigns on messaging and fundraising, but some recent successes grow from deeper involvement in community life. A “communitarium”—a community-owned, open-source civic commons—can help residents work together long before elections. It strengthens trust, aligns means with values, and gives political life a place to exist between campaigns.

#TheCommunitariumProject
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#UnderstandMamdani

https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/preparing-to-run-by-strengthening-the-ground-toward-a-more-embodied-local

Gifting with Integrity: Federated Digital Spaces for Mutual Aid Networks

When friends told me, years ago, about "Buy Nothing" -- a Facebook group that implemented an impressive mutual aid ecology, I was intrigued... but did not follow up...because Facebook.

Now, though, they are undertraking a move to the Fediverse, using @bonfire as their online framework!

#CommunitariumProject
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

https://bonfirenetworks.org/posts/gifting-with-integrity-federated-digital-spaces-for-mutual-aid-networks/

Do like me, support Framasoft !

PeerTube is crucial in the fight to erode the control of user content by centralized, commercial, exploitive interests.

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject

https://soutenir.framasoft.org

Democracy as Practice, Socialism as Counter-Community

If democracy is a practice, then it cannot be sustained by electoral ritual alone. It must be enacted in everyday life, through communities that share power, resources, and meaning.

https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/democracy-as-practice-socialism-as-counter-community

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject

Why Redefine Socialism?

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

Classical socialism—especially in its Marxist and state-centered variants—tends to treat sociality as either:

- a derivative of economic conditions, or
- something that will naturally emerge once class antagonisms are resolved.

But our project insists that sociality is not a byproduct—it is the substrate.

https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/why-redefine-socialism

#TheCommunitariumProject

Redefining Socialism

"[S]ocialism is not a set of policies. It’s a way of organizing life so that the systems we build, maintain, and inhabit serve the flourishing of people in their full, embedded, interdependent existence. That means not just changing ownership structures, but changing the terms of belonging and the terms of engagement."

#CommunitariumProject
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/redefining-socialism

How ‘The Dawn of Everything’ Speaks to the Current Moment

Graeber and Wengrow make the case that both [Hobbes' and Rousseau's] views are misguided, that there is no linear tale of human history. They argue that a closer look at the data reveals that human beings have been experimenting with models for how to live as far back as we can look.

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject

https://undark.org/2025/05/29/opinion-dawn-of-everything/

Lowering the Threshold: Socialism Begins with Shared Life, Not Just Shared Demands

What if socialism began not with political identity, but with shared life? This post explores how DSA’s strongest cultural practices could be extended outward—through low-threshold, participatory platforms we call communitaria—so more people can live socialism before they’re asked to name it.

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject
#DSA

https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/lowering-the-threshold-socialism-begins-with-shared-life-not-just-shared