Ca Favale

**Ca Favale** was an anarcho-communist ecovillage that existed in rural Italy from 2000 to 2012.

## Description

According to Peter Gelderloos, who stayed there for several nights in 2005, Ca Favale was:

> Ca Favale was a little village in the mountains east of Genova. It was abandoned thirty years ago, and now going on five years a group of anarchists lived here, restoring the crumbling buildings of stacked stone. The village sat on about fifteen acres of land. There was a quartet of chickens, two beehives, dogs, a wriggling pile of newborn puppies, a hillside of olive trees, grapevines, a couple orange and lemon trees built into a microclimate on the south side of a stone wall, terraced gardens, and about eight residents; though the number climbs as high as twenty in the summer. Most of them are Italians and German-speaking Swiss in their twenties or fifties. One of the older people there had been in the struggle for decades. At the end of the ’70s, early ’80s, her partner was locked up for belonging to an armed anarchist group. He died in prison, when their son was four.
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> There were an indeterminate number of buildings in Ca Favale, with perhaps twenty rooms between them, though half of these were under renovation, and some even lacked roofs and floors. The architecture bespoke an organic collectivity, with a common kitchen, one compost toilet, many bedrooms, and buildings built very much into one another. The ambiguity between passageways, halls, and courtyards even tested the separation between inside and outside.
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> The people of Ca Favale were mostly involved with construction and renovation, building roofs and the like. My first full day we hauled thirty years worth of mud from the spring-fed pond that served as their reservoir, then rebuilt the little dam and reinstalled the pipes that carried water down the hill. Others were also expanding the gardens. This work took up most of their typical day. Afterwards they would gather for a hearty meal and long, involved conversations, emptying a two-gallon jug of wine in the course of the evening.
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> Here they countenanced no dichotomy between destroying capitalism and building a replacement. Though the work of the village kept them busy, they tried to stay involved in the struggles in the cities, and their idyllic situation was no doubt a summer haven for city activists. Several of them also translated anarchist books into Italian.
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> My second full day there, 20 Marzo, was a day for lying in bed with a book or a lover listening to the wind howl. Fortunately I had a book, *Notes of a Native Son*, another gift from a friend, but outside of the sleeping bag my hands got too cold to enjoy the arrangement. After having my fill of lying around I went out to turn soil for a new garden on a terrace below the houses, along with two others. The rain began to freeze and bounce off us in white balls, but this too felt good in a way, so we worked until it was too dark to see. I asked “What is the difference between work, labor, and play?” We laughed at the primitivists who said that agriculture was inherently alienated; that farming was necessarily work in the negative sense. We were enjoying ourselves there on the mountaintop terrace — the exertion, the assault of the cold wind, the sense of accomplishment, the anticipation of watching the growth of delicious vegetables. Then I got a blister and said: “if I turn one more shovel-full it will become labor,” so we stopped and went inside for supper.
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> At Ca Favale I felt they had really created libertarian communism. There was plenty of work to do, and some days it was exhausting, but you invented the curious tendency to do it willingly and happily. You could sit around all day if you wanted — if you were feeling sick or low it was encouraged — but before too long you felt moved to get up and participate in an act of creation. There was no separation between work and leisure, and the pace of activity, whether resting or working, was relaxed and self-guided. Certain days brought a burst of energy to finish some project, and those involved worked fast and hard, but the next day would happen to be a rainy day and we would do nothing but talk and cook or nap under warm blankets. There was no system of inducements, no rewards and punishments, and if you had a problem working with someone else you talked about it as a group, argued a little, laughed and resolved it. Or, I heard, personal dramas would grow and deepen, and maybe they would go away in time, or maybe somebody would leave. This wasn’t paradise. Some of the folks in the collective got sick of one another, and they often had to work hard to communicate well or find common ground. But it was great to see in practice how people need no wage or fear of punishment as long as they are living for themselves, not working for someone else.
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> Martedi, 21 Marzo was a glorious sunny day in the mountains. Three of us turned more soil, preparing gardens for planting, talking in capering Italiano or the knock-kneed singsong of Schwitz-Dutch. Later we split wood. Around noon I sat on sun-warmed slate and wrote a letter to L, the puppies napping around my feet or nibbling my toes. Only then did I realize it was the first day of spring. This would be a good year, I decided. I sensed there was some tribulation waiting in the wings; not an easy year, but a good one nonetheless.
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## Disbanding

In 2012, members of the ecovillage collectively agreed to disband the community. In their own words:

> After many years, we came to the conclusion that ecovillages, as much as we know them, aim mainly to settle into “civil society” and are actively seeking no confrontation with the world surrounding them. Different from the perspective of fighting domination and exploitation and achieving mutual support, these places act as “access concentrators”. Traffic goes in, but seldom comes out – if you understand the difference. As a matter of fact they represent the evolution of old society, in a greener civil society. But war, science, economics, (or, in just a word – power) are not questioned. When you visit an ecovillage you will generally pay per stay. In some of them you won’t be able to even cook for yourself. In some others, you won’t be able to simply put your tent. Paid services will be present for everything you can imagine. In some places you will have to pay just to hear some guru speak. They represent the opposite of what free people are looking for.
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## References

1. ↑ Peter Gelderloos (2010) To Get to the Other Side: a journey through Europe and its anarchist movements
2. ↑ https://ecovillage.org/project/anarres-ca-favale/