The Founding Principles of the Commonwealth

Comrades, welcome to the Academy. Before we speak of councils and courts, we must speak of the ideas that hold them up. Every institution of the Commonwealth exists to serve a principle, and a citizen who knows the principle will never be lost among the rules.

How the Commonwealth came to be

The full history of our land is still being written, and the Chronicle grows with every plan period. What the Academy may say with certainty is this: the Commonwealth was founded by working people who chose to hold the land and its riches in common, to plan their work together and to settle their affairs in the open. The rest of the story (the first settlements, the neighbours beyond our borders, the hard winters) belongs to the Chronicler and to the pages the game master writes on the World page of the website. Where this lecture and the World page disagree, the World page is right.

The first principle: common property

The Constitution opens with it. The land, its resources, the means of production and the common stores belong to the Commonwealth as a whole (Article 1). No one lives from the labour of another.

This does not mean that nothing is yours. Your dwelling, your tools and your belongings for your own use are personal property, and the Constitution protects them. What you may not do is use them to deprive others. A citizen who keeps more goods than personal use requires, while the plan or other comrades lack them, is hoarding, and the Laws (section 1.3) ask for the surplus to be returned to the common stores.

In practice: what you mine, farm and build for the plan belongs to all. Deliver it to the common stores with /cw deliver, and draw from the stores through the Distribution Office, never by helping yourself.

The second principle: the council decides

The Council of all citizens is the highest authority of the Commonwealth (Article 2). Every citizen may table a motion, speak in the debate and cast one vote on each motion. The vote is secret; the tally is public. A motion needs a quorum of half the active citizens, abstentions included, and more votes for than against.

The council stands above every institution. It may overturn any decision of the People's Court, the Planning Commission or the Distribution Office. This is why every decision of an institution can be appealed: power flows upward from the working people, never downward from an office.

The third principle: the plan

Production is directed by a plan, made for periods of three weeks (Article 3). The plan sets targets: so many ingots, so much bread, a bridge, a school. Targets are set, changed and dropped only by plan changes that the council adopts and the game master confirms.

The plan is not a burden laid on us from above. It is how a free people decides together what it needs, instead of leaving it to chance or to the richest. Every citizen contributes according to their ability, and reports honestly what they have done.

The fourth principle: public reasons

The institutions carry out the work of the Commonwealth between sessions of the council (Article 4). Each acts within its charter and a fixed list of actions, and gives public reasons for every decision. You can read every case and every decision on the Institutions page of the website.

Small decisions take effect at once and may be appealed to the council. Large decisions (those that take property from a citizen or exclude one from the server) wait for the game master's confirmation.

The fifth principle: rights come with duties

Every citizen has the right to be heard before the institutions, to see their reasoning and to appeal to the council (Article 5). A citizen brought before the People's Court has the right to reply before the court decides.

And every citizen has duties: to care for common property, to take part in the work of the plan, and to treat fellow citizens with respect.

Socialist legality

No citizen is punished except for a breach of the laws, and never more harshly than the harm requires (Article 6). The aim of justice in the Commonwealth is to repair harm and restore the community, not to take revenge. A first breach usually brings a warning; restitution follows real loss; exclusion is kept for deliberate, serious or repeated harm, and lasts at most 30 days.

What to read next

Take my second lecture, on the institutions and how to take part in them: /cw lecture history 2. The Constitution and the Laws themselves can be borrowed from the Librarian (/cw library constitution, /cw library laws) or read on the website.