Alternative society

Contents

1 The Philosophy

1.1 Alternative alternatives

2 The Underground Press

3 Environmentalism

4 Building alternative services

5 Religious and pseudo-religious groups

6 International Situationism

7 The end of an era

8 See also:

The Philosophy

The phrase alternative society may have been in usage since the 19th century when Karl Marx and Proudhon represented two factions for alternative visions of social change.

Philosophers who suggested alternative models for society included: Charles Fourier (1772-1837), Robert Owen (1771-1858), Louis Blanc (1811-1882), Louis-Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881) and Withelm Weitling (1808-1871).

The phrase and variations of it appear throughout the progressive political and social writings of the 20th century. Mahatma Gandhi and his followers such as Satish Kumar advocated, as an alternative to violent revolution, the creation of alternative social services, alternative transportation systems, alternative food and clothing production, alternative housing, alternative medicine, alternative arts and alternative communications media including an alternative press. By recreating every facet of society and providing better services than the official ones the plan was that the people would flock to the alternative society and desert the establishment. Then the leaders of the establishment would follow. Thus change would be accomplished without violence.

Alternative alternatives

Other usages of Alternative Society turn up in the writings and discussions of anarchists, pacifists, libertarian socialists, occultists and others and all of these movements, collectively, struggling away throughout the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950's, are influences upon the hippy/new age usage of Alternative Society in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Underground Press

The Underground Press printed articles about various alternative societies and societies of alternatives. Underground press, in this sense, is a very elastic term. It refers to everything from a nationally or internationally distributed newspaper to a small local Zine or Samizdat. Some of the publications had particular areas of special interest. Oz magazine leaned toward sex, drugs, rock'n'roll. Country Bizarre was more concerned with radical environmental philosophy and practical information for organic gardening.

Environmentalism

Environmentalists discussed reshaping the relationships and bonds at the roots of society to create an alternative system which would respect our resources, both human and elemental. Various models of sustainability were put forward and tried.

Building alternative services

As a result of the interest, throughout the underground subculture, in theories of alternative societies movements began all around the world attempting to provide alternative housing by such means as organised squatting, tipi making, house sharing and a system called, in hippy jargon, Crash pad networks. This latter involved keeping a list of participants' addresses on file at an alternative information centre and then, when someone was travelling and wanted a place to sleep (crash) when they arrived in a different city they would go to the information centre and get an address. Upon arriving at the address they would get free accommodation (maybe a bed, maybe a floor - it was potluck) and, in exchange, when they were in their own home (pad), they would offer similar accommodation to another traveller.

Travelling was similarly arranged by car sharing networks or simply by hitching. Alternative soup kitchens were arranged, free bookshops, shops where everything was free or for swap and free festivals sprang into existence. Between the mid-sixties and the late seventies the beginnings of a free society began to flourish. People were searching for tools and methods to take control of their own lives and reclaim power from the establishment. Depending on your point of view, drugs were either what held it together or what destroyed it. Perhaps there's some truth in both views.

Examples of Alternative Information Centres in the seventies include bit (which was named after the binary information transfer in computers) in London, England and Manchester Alternative General Information Centre (M.A.G.I.C.) in the north. The style of these information centres varied according to location. The style of the ones in London reflected urban social concerns while the one in Glastonbury was mostly concerned with introducing travellers to the local legends and mysticism.

Religious and pseudo-religious groups

The alternative society was often characterised as a society of alternatives and this included a great interest in alternative, speculative and disputed theories such as pagan religion, alternative science and romantic mystical speculations. Religious and pseudo-religious groups were on the alternative society's mental map of the world and the existence of ashrams, kibbutzim, Buddhist monasteries, Hare Krishna free food distributions and various churches and gurus' meeting places around the world provided an existing framework upon which the alternative society could grow. The relationship was symbiotic. The religions and pseudo-religious cults gained lots of new members from the alternative society scene. Therefore, if the left wing of politics can be broadly said to empower the public sector and if the right wing can be broadly said to empower the private sector, then the alternative society could be considered as the political empowerment of the voluntary sector.

The relationship with religious groups also generated deep concerns amongst politicised travellers wary of becoming brainwashed by some cult or other.

International Situationism

There was a very active anarchist group in the Netherlands, known as the Kabouters, (translated as dwarves or trolls). The underground press in Britain would attempt to keep everyone in touch with everyone else, publishing news of what other groups in different countries were doing. When the Kabouters advocated the Provos' white bicycle plan as a free community resource (painting some bicycles white and leaving them around the city where anybody could use them for free and then abandon them again until the next user would find them) the underground press in Britain passed the news on in hopes of getting a similar thing going. There was always a strong situationist theatrical element to the alternative society.

One theatre group which had a significant role in the development of the alternative society was the Diggers in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco. They were named after the nickname of the True levellers movement in 17th century England.

The end of an era

From the late seventies onward there was less fervour and less organisation and the energy took other forms such as the New age movement, Punk rock and the Green party. The legacy of the alternative society period can be seen in the continued usage of the word "alternative" in all three of these. The concept of alternative currencies is still alive and kicking (See LETS).