A political system where the foundational and sovereign institution is the popular assembly—a regular, face-to-face gathering of all citizens in a given area for the purpose of debate, legislation, and administration. This society scales through nested assemblies, where local assemblies send recallable delegates to regional or thematic councils with strictly limited, imperative mandates. It is direct democracy made infrastructural, demanding high participation and thriving on small-scale, decentralized organization. The assembly is the literal and figurative town square where society is continuously made and remade.
Example: Historical Ancient Athens, for its citizen male population, was an Assembly-Based Society with its Ecclesia. A modern speculative vision is found in the Cantonalist movement during the Spanish Civil War, where towns and cities in Aragon and Catalonia were run by worker and neighborhood assemblies, attempting to build a society from the assembly hall outward before being crushed.
by Dumu The Void February 5, 2026
Get the Assembly-Based Society mug.A group of usually anything-goes dirtbag adverturers. Money is usually only a priority to only get somewhere or do something, otherwise, it's the trip that matters. Because they're usually young and dumb, they usually do pretty hazardous activities for fun like skiing or rock climbing or mountain biking, etc. A hazard assembly is a group of them.
A hazard assembly formed of about a dozen mountain bikers in the middle of fucking nowhere. I had no idea where they were actually going...
by Hundalair March 13, 2009
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Get the creative assembly mug.Direct, face-to-face democratic institutions where residents of a local area (a neighborhood, block, or housing complex) gather to make binding decisions on matters affecting their immediate community. A Neighborhood Assembly is the general deliberative body—the town hall for local issues. A Neighborhood Commune is the more radical form where this assembly assumes direct political and economic control, managing shared resources (gardens, tools, childcare), security, and dispute resolution, often operating on principles of consensus and mutual aid. They are laboratories of hyper-local self-governance, bypassing traditional municipal bureaucracy.
Example: After the city repeatedly fails to repair a dangerous intersection, residents of the Oak Street block form a Neighborhood Assembly. They meet monthly in a garage. They vote to install a community-funded traffic calming plan. This evolves into a Neighborhood Commune: they pool money to buy tools for a communal garden in a vacant lot, organize a rotating schedule for elderly care, and run a local security patrol. They've created a micro-polity based on direct participation, making the city government largely irrelevant for their daily lives. Neighborhood Assemblies and Neighborhood Communes.
by Dumuabzu January 25, 2026
Get the Neighborhood Assemblies and Neighborhood Communes mug.Scaled-up versions of neighborhood systems, encompassing a larger district like a village, town, or city ward. Local Assemblies are the sovereign decision-making bodies for that territory, potentially federating with other assemblies. Local Communes are the implementation of communist or anarchist principles at this scale, where the assembly collectively owns and manages major local resources (housing, utilities, workshops), abolishes private property in favor of usership, and organizes production for local need. They represent a vision of politics as a daily, participatory activity rather than a spectacle every few years.
Example: In a small de-industrialized town, the city council is corrupt and powerless. Citizens form a Local Assembly in the old union hall, open to all residents. It becomes the real governing body. They transition to a Local Commune by taking over a shuttered factory to run it co-operatively, converting empty homes into communal housing based on need, and creating a local currency for trade with other communes. The police are replaced by community peacekeepers accountable to the assembly. The commune becomes a self-sufficient, directly democratic cell. Local Assemblies and Local Communes.
by Dumuabzu January 25, 2026
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