The communes were the model for the modern idea of the self organising, non-hierarchical network which you now see in internet utopianism. What I show in the film is that what’s been wiped out of the memory of the communes is that most collapsed within three years. The more powerful system used the system and everybody else was defenceless because you were not allowed to make alliances with other people.
On Adam Curtis | Bryan Appleyard. “The message of All Watched Over is that the dominant ideologies of our time – machine theory, system thinking, managerialism, consumerism, vulgar libertarianism – are all saying the same thing. They are saying we are powerless to work for a better world and all we can hope to do is organise this one. This, of course, will hand inevitably power to the organised elites, the hippies who know how to fix the communes.”
