bolo`bolo is a book about an anarchist utopia, the name of the utopia itself and the plural of that utopia's organizational unit - the bolo. The book's author, P.M., is more-or-less anonymous although he is a member of the Midnight Notes(http://www.midnightnotes.org) collective. An abridged version of the book is available online here: http://www.bolo-bolo.org/english.htm. Possibly, it is not fiction.

Bolo`bolo is also a plan for a transformation from our current state, the planetary work-machine, to another social organization mode based on local organization and a microclimate of cultures that form the unit of social cohesion. The "planetary-work machine" is the deal we currently have, the buy-in/sell-out we've made in order to survive. Even apparent revolutionary movements get co-opted by the machine - turned into entertainment on CNN, twisted to monitor, control and channel creative energies into the machine's own self-replication or just used as a way to occupy us until we succumb. Bolo'bolo, on the other hand is life as the thing-in-itself, intentional in its pursuit of love and pleasure but naive of fear and domination.

This utopia's organizational unit is the bolo - a collection of 300-500 individuals bound together by a mini-culture that provides the material basis for survival as an after-effect of its organization. 300-500 is an interesting number that replicates itself in human culture as if we were a bunch of bees in a hive - size of Congress, a town meeting, a tribe, a school that's small enough for everyone to be familiar with each other. P.M. gives sets of guidelines for living in bolos, called sila in his asa`pili or world-language. It's not so much a set of rules as a sort of pidgin for navigating in a world without money to give or take or police to avoid or rely on.

The core of a bolo is its culture and these can vary without restriction. There will be bolos centered around charismatic leaders whose manipulative behaviors entrance and enslave the membership, others that gleefully self-flagellate themselves to satisfy their drive for ecstasy and yet others that serve as havens for refugees. More generally, there will be milder variants: "francophiles of Omaha", " we eat the lotus only on Sunday", "the Baptist beekeepers", etc. Hospitality is one of the tenets of sila, so life is often like a vacation; you can have that croissant or ride in the swing with the hole cut out in the bottom as long as you don't appear to be a total drone or lead weight to your host.


What is there left to say? The book is entertaining and comical in its portrayal of the human condition and the above is only a pale introduction. P.M. suggests that bolo`bolo starts in those interstices in the planetary work-machine that still work through voluntary exchange and work against the grain of that machine: guard surreptitiously leaves the lock off the apartment door so that squatter friends can occupy, people taking their vacation to build houses in far-off places & getting to experience their real culture rather than the Disney facade outside of the airport, executive who is lovers with a reporter leaking the nasty industrial secret. Perhaps somewhere on here, there is some bolo`bolo?