#title Counterculture communes
#author Alex Louwsiewkee
#date 1972
#source El amor libre. Eros y anarquía, Osvaldo Baigorria. Page 91–92.
#lang en
#pubdate 2025-03-13T18:29:10
#topics manifesto, free love, child rights
#notes Article published by a member of The Diggers (a community anarchist movement that emerged in California in the 1960s) in the English fanzine OZ under the name “The Digger thing is your thing... if you are really turned on.”



Points on Freedom and Participation in Communes Based on Love:

 1. The commune based on love is an anarchic organization free from authoritarian complications. This means that there is no room for megalomaniacal impostors, bosses, masters, or charlatans pretending to be gurus.

 2. Within the limits of what is possible, all work is distributed among everyone. There is no trap like that permanent “division of labor” that inevitably leads to the division of people into different classes.

 3. All knowledge and revelations are common heritage, available and free to all. This means that there is no monopolistic professionalism. This also means that Diggers can become (and will become) versatile and even universal boys and girls with their splendid potentialities fully realized, and in this way they will be the progenitors of the fully conscious and enlightened beings of the coming Age of Aquarius. And every Digger will contribute to the commune based on love to the extent of their own ability.

 4. All material goods of the commune are distributed among the Diggers according to each person’s needs, or, when goods are abundant, they will be freely available to all.

 5. All heavy labor will be automated so that everyone has sufficient free time to pursue their own particular activities.

 6. Everyone is free to do whatever they want, provided that this does not entail the emasculation of others’ freedom.

 7. To ensure effective personal freedom, no one is treated or considered as someone else’s property; this applies to both children and adults. No one has “rights” over others, and parents have no “rights” over their children.

 8. The freedom, well-being, education, and enlightenment of children are the responsibility of the entire commune.

 9. To ensure effective sexual freedom, sexual relations within a couple, which may be brief or prolonged, according to the parties’ needs, are considered a freely stipulated reciprocal agreement. It can be freely broken at any time by either party, and both parties can enter into agreements with new partners: a normal agreement that automatically cancels the previous one. The sexual agreement is considered a matter that concerns exclusively the couple in question and is not subject to interference from a third party. All sexual problems are freely discussed and openly discussed.

 10. There are no restrictions such as laws, clauses, and regulations, nor presumptions such as respectability, self-righteous morality, and “I’m-better-than-you” attitudes. The Diggers’ way of life is always a matter of love and understanding.

If all the points mentioned above are fully fulfilled, they will elevate the practice of freedom and participation to a new level in human society.