I understand what you mean
I understand what you mean when you talk of communes. However, what I am proposing is not a commune. It is a group of otherwise regular people living perhaps as ordinarily as they might have done previously, however, with an extra facet to their lives in so far as that they are apportioning a part of their daily/weekly/monthly energy output into helping to produce food for their own consumption and others. While I agree that declining material conditions will ultimately force people to look for revolution, there is always the danger that they will perhaps unwittingly get behind some other group or ideology, lead by a small leadership that seek to materialise their own ambition. It would be better, instead, to show to people through their own participation that another world is possible through their own work. Not necessarily a whole new world, compeletely alien to them-which many think socialism is due NK, China, SU etc.-but one where they can be directly in control of how things are done. While this idea may never overthrow capitalism completely, it is perhaps an aid to answering the consistent question of “well, socialism’s a nice idea, but, it’ll never work in practice”. If people can show by their own effort that they can usurp huge corporations by providing for themselves something so basic and simple as food then they may well just come to the realisation that they can actually have power over their own lives by taking real, democratic control over every aspect of their lives. This happening alongside the declining material conditions of a great many people in the UK can act as a real world example of casting-off the restriction of business, the state and capitalism to even a comparatively small extent where they can then develop their understanding and promote their consciousness to socialism. I’m not saying that it definitely will work, I’m saying it could work and we won’t know unless we try something. Just because some people attempted and failed with “communes” in the past, does not mean that there is no reason for trying to try something new now. Afterall, we say a similar thing when we correct others when they refer to Cuba, N.Kore, China etc as socialist and that previous “attempts” at socialist revolutions failed because of such and such. When they reply, “well socialism had its chance” we don’t all reply, “yeah, fair enough, you’re right, let’s not bother”. I’m aware there would be restrictions placed upon the group by capitalism such as how the party is with its payments for rent, tax and so on but we don’t call for it to be abolished because it cannot suddenly escape capitalism’s chains.