Commune-ism Versus Communism

Has the Covid19 crisis re-taught us Commune-ism, while most of the world has sensibly rejected Communism?

It is, I suppose, human nature to look inwards when calamity strikes, in a protective reflex. To set aside, mostly, the petty squabbles that turn neighbours into suspicious “other”, and concentrate on beating the enemy while helping those who need help. But — helping those who are within range, within sight, within earshot, within the community — the commune. Localness rules when it comes to this, and whatever a fumbling, bumbling national government thinks it can do by trying to make us see ”the big picture”, it can never do more than impose this, restrict that, police whatever it thinks it can, when it can’t.

One of the most vital lessons from the way in which this attack has been handled (so far) is that the only way to keep the virus from spreading, or spreading too fast, is to deal with outbreaks locally. And by locally, I mean by placing the onus upon, and giving the resources to, local authorities such as county councils or their equivalent. The four “national” elements which make up the UK are much too big for their governments to be able to focus on localised outbreaks, and the inconsistencies between the “nations” has descended into farce . Even trying to tackle the problem on the basis of city or large town units is unsatisfactory — so many cities are now home to millions. In Britain, the city of Leicester (population 330,000) has just been re-locked-down, but the evidence now shows that the new outbreak is not evenly spread across the entire city. But the whole city is back in its own concentration camp. In passing, a caravan-load of people arrived at a farm close to where I live, yesterday. The mother of the caravan-borne family said, “We are so happy to be here. We are from Leicester and we just had to get away!” The farmer told them in colourful local language to, shall I say, go away, preferably back to Leicester.

Viruses do not descend upon whole countries or even whole cities as if sprayed from above like some vast cosmic mist. The disease is passed on through contact. Imagine that I have Covid, whether I know it or not. My hand to my mouth, the same hand to someone else’s hand, to their mouth, and so on. Hand-to-mouth, almost literally. This is why the only way to be sensible about controlling an infectious disease is to tackle it locality-by-locality. Commune-by-commune. The concept of commune works — because commune is by definition a local phenomenon. But how big, or how small is a commune? Probably, a neighbourhood is about right; an area where anyone can reach any part of it in a ten-minute walk. Arbitrary, and mine own arbitration, but, I think, about right. The concept of “Nanny in the Capital City Knows Best” is just simplistic nonsense. This does not mean a free-for-all without controls. It means handing control to those in charge of local communes, giving them the funding, they need, and then leaving them to it.

And — a word or three on Communism. The central problem with Communism was and is that it sought and seeks to destroy the commune. The very concept on which it is based. The central control and built-in brutality of Stalinist Communism is and was the very antithesis of the commune — one of several reasons why the dangerous nonsense of Marx, Engels and particularly Lenin has been given lengthy trials and finally seen for the inhuman anti-commune-ity at its core. China and Cuba still pretend to tinker with a form of neo-Communism, but there, too, it is slowly dying.

John Grierson

6th July 2020