The Rainbow Lesson: Building Commons Beyond the Market

One of the things missing from conversations about rebuilding radical networks is that we look first at the technology. The #OMN question is different – What are the social systems that allow alternatives to survive? A useful example comes from the history of the Rainbow Gatherings. To an outsider, the strangest thing about a Rainbow Gathering is the absence of money. Thousands of people gather in forests, share food, organise care, create culture and then disappear again – without tickets, vendors or commercial stages. It can look like a quirky tradition, but there is a lesson – the absence of commerce was never just a rule, it was the point. The idea was simple – If you want to show that another society is possible, you cannot only argue against the existing system, you have to create a working alternative. The non-commercial path was the message, a living example of another logic. The early Rainbow organisers came out of the antiwar counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s.…