We talk too much and do too little. This generally applies to many dynamics within the left-wing scene, but I always notice it particularly with one issue: community economies. Everyone wants them, but no one dares to. ---- Community economies, or community economies for short, are concepts for the collective organization of finances. People living in a community economy typically don't have their own money; instead, the money that comes in from the various members is pooled and belongs to everyone. The exact structure of a community economy depends largely on the wishes, needs, and requirements of its members; no two communities are exactly alike. The concept has many advantages; for example, it makes it significantly easier to weather difficult times when government benefits are cut or a boss puts someone on furlough. Community economies are an effective form of poverty prevention and counteract financial and other forms of isolation.
Understandably, this leads to many people who know about the concept wanting to be in a shared living arrangement. But almost every time I talk to people about it, I hear similar statements: "My flatmates have wanted to do this for a long time, but we've been stuck in a negotiation process for months," "We're really keen, but we want to discuss everything in detail before we try it."
And I think that's a mistake.
My story with GemÖks goes like this: two friends and I were in a difficult situation, including financial hardship. We couldn't manage on our own, paying for food, rent, and so on. So we simply pooled all our money and started a GemÖk from scratch, which has now been around for almost four years. Of course, it wasn't always easy. During the initial phase, we had frequent, lengthy plenary sessions where we reflected on how things were going with the GemÖk, discussed our relationship with money and the reasons behind it, the whole complex topic of "social capital," and our future prospects regarding the GemÖk. We talked about what we needed to feel reasonably secure, to what extent security is actually an illusion, and the extent to which our shared responsibility for each other extends beyond financial matters. It was a long process in which we constantly tried things out. We learned a lot about ourselves, our relationship with money and with each other, and how well we actually fit together as individuals. We have repeatedly made changes to the community management plan, then reflected on them after some time and either kept them, discarded them, or modified them. We have repeatedly encountered challenges, for example, regarding what to do if we suddenly need a large sum of money all at once, or what preventative measures to take in case we should part ways on bad terms.
It wasn't a simple process. The initial conditions weren't ideal. Generally speaking, emergency situations aren't the best basis for far-reaching decisions.
But I can't think of a single situation where we - given this constellation of people - could have done better. Certainly not by spending weeks and months negotiating the exact details of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).
Because the thing is - it's hard to imagine things before you've tried them. Before the Community Economist project, I didn't know what my personal relationship with money was like, and I had no idea about it. Nor did I know how much savings I actually needed to feel relatively secure. Nor did I know what influence my relationship with my family of origin had on my sense of financial security. All the things we tried out over the past four years - before we actually did them, we had no idea, at best a vague notion, of how we would feel about them. We figured out how we wanted to shape our Community Economist project by simply doing it.
So: be brave. Just do it. If your group is keen on living in a community, then start one and do the planning and negotiation at the same time. If you talk for months without actually trying anything out, you might end up with a perfect concept that collapses after the first month of implementation.
Even if you think you know each other well enough to discuss everything before practical implementation - you might be surprised at how differently people actually behave.
Even if you think you have a pragmatic relationship with money - you might be surprised how emotionally charged the topic suddenly is for you in practice.
As with other steps towards a more collective way of life - from shared living arrangements for practical reasons to functional housing, from monogamy to non-monogamy - the problems that actually arise in practice are often quite different from those discussed at length beforehand. Even if it sounds daunting, it really can be the best way to take the plunge and learn to swim together.
https://archive.org/details/DerApfelUndDerStamm/Web_2026-03-13-Zine_Gemeinschaft_barrierearm/page/n1/mode/1up
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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