The Open Ecology project has been working on a sustainable model for living by using open source methods of production to recreate the tools and systems needed for viable communities. The overall organization is based on abundance which in turns promotes a culture of democracy and empowerment. This is a very practical way to develop the backup systems that civilization will need in order to survive political, ecological, or economic collapse.

 
There is great potential in the combination of peer production and personal fabrication. As explored in science fiction, especially depicting a near future, one can see how local workshops with multipurpose tools can be the next wave of industrial manufacturing that makes use of online free blueprints and designs. It is a decentralization of the means of production alongside more democratic relationships of production, and overall it is a more sustainable form.

 
Here is a very direct chart illustrating how tax breaks for the rich directly affect public services for the poor. The current debate about the deficit is premised on the false assertion that the economic crisis is the fault of workers and the poor, and that it is only the wealthy that create value. This shows that class warfare is being waged by the rich in order to maintain power hierarchies and a control over the American democracy, when in fact any attempt to fix the economy and reduce the deficit must require elevating all participants.

 
The revolutions that spread across Europe in 1848 provided not only independent nations freed from empires but new democracies freed from authoritarian systems. Before the rise of Marx and his articulation of communism, there was a specific type of socialism that increased the democratic principle throughout the economy. This was an active attempt to establish cooperatives as the main economic unit in the national economy, avoiding direct government ownership. It was through the democratic process of the government that economic democracy was made possible.