Why anti-politics may be pro-community

On Facebook yesterday, Tom idly (or perhaps not so idly) drew our attention to the following idea: to be anti-politics is not a neutral or natural state of mind.

I think the underlying thesis runs as follows. To suddenly not want to participate in party political discourse plays into the hands of those who are always going to run the world anyway - but, even so, we must stand up and do what we can. Why so? A progressive's lot is always going to be a bitter battle against injustice. Thus it is we must get used to the idea and prepare ourselves to spend the rest of our lives spouting acrimonious jets of political spume.

But there may be another way. To be anti-politics - as it is currently structured - is the obverse of that coin we might call pro-community. As pro-lifers were reborn out of anti-abortionists, so anti-politicians can re-engineer themselves as pro-communitarians. Communities are all that individuals need for their socialisation to be complete. Democratic socialists do not need a globalised world to effect their socialism. They need a responsive sense of real individuals, removed once only from their environments. One step away is all we need. Parliament is already too far. The further we move away from our homes and villages, the greater the dilution of purpose and connection. In fact, in an ideal world we may be able to represent ourselves. Technology - fairly and justly applied - could serve such a purpose.

I wonder if Web 2.0 - and all that struggles to surface around it - can eventually provide us with the tools to create the socialism we clearly hanker after.

I think I've suggested before that open source behaviours mean that modern ways of harvesting data about the productivity of our economies severely underestimate their true output. We are effectively entering an astonishingly new phase in how we exchange goods and services, how we manage to serve each other, without the traditional structures or mechanisms that money imposes. Those of us who edit Wikipedia continue to exchange our skills and wisdoms on trust when we spend an evening writing an article on a word-processor we've downloaded for free, and which, in itself, is the sum of another's good works.

This is a truly democratic socialism. A jaw-dropping sociality of common interest, where altruism kicks off the processes in question and combines with overarching - and very real - needs to weld an unstoppable juggernaut of intellectual progress.

Yes. I admit it. I am slowly - but surely - becoming an anti-politician.

But this is only because - all along - I've been pro-community.