What follows is a discussion of the terminology I have chosen to use in outlining a notion of how we might want to live. That is, I faced a naming problem. What are we to call our social creations? It has become something of a dilemma as to what to call the overall social order as well as the specific social bodies within it. I have made the following choices:

      (a) Household is a pretty good term, although in contemporary American usage it refers to a much smaller unit, namely the nuclear family. But historically, households have been larger. My usage, for a residential complex housing 100-200 people, is a reversion to and an expansion of the historical meaning

      (b) Home Assembly is new, but I like it. Other possibilities were town meeting, community assembly, town meeting, community assembly, general assembly, core assembly, base assembly, neighborhood assembly, parliament, plenum, congregation, conference, senate, convention — none of which seem to fit, except perhaps neighborhood assembly. One problem with the term is that 'home' tends to be associated with household rather than neighborhood. But perhaps this confusion will decline as we get used to it. I like the term Home Assembly because it gives us an identity linked to the Assembly (and Meeting Hall) where we participate in community decisions to govern our social lives. Everyone will be a member of an assembly somewhere. Where we participate in decision making is where our home is. Thus the neighborhood assembly is elevated over kinship or work relations (reproduction or production relations). The primacy of decision-making relations will characterize the new civilization and set it apart from all previous forms of social organization.

      (c) Peer Circle is strange, but I don’t like any of the alternatives I’ve come across. The traditional term among radicals is ‘council’, but this term has no general usage elsewhere in our culture and actually has other connotations in popular language. The other possibilities are caucus, bee, peer group, meeting (as in a Friends meeting), or peer meeting.

      (d) Project is a good name for the activities we undertake together to accomplish something. We certainly can’t call them businesses, enterprises, organizations, or institutions. I’m quite happy with the term Project.

      (e) In the original draft of this essay, I had inadvertently used the term community to refer to the 2000 people constituting a Home Assembly. Community is a very good term, but it obviously cannot be restricted to mean just one 2000 member body. So I had to switch to the term neighborhood, which sounds limited but is more accurate. At least it makes clear that our basic social unit is a small neighborhood face-to-face decision-making assembly. All larger associations are based on this core social entity.

      (f) At one point, in order to make the text consistent throughout in relation to the projected gift giving and mutual aid, I had to search through it for the words ‘trade’ and ‘exchange’ and change them to other, usually more cumbersome expressions, using words like distribute, circulate, transfer, and interchange. Trade and exchange are almost exclusively associated with a money economy.

      (g) As for what to call the overall social order, none of the usual terms any longer has any clear meaning — democracy, socialism, anarchism, communism. Until a new name emerges I’ve simply been describing it as “An Association of Democratic Autonomous Neighborhoods.” I should add though that I mean direct democracy, not representative democracy, and by direct democracy I do not mean tele-polling or referendums, but face-to-face assemblies. I should also add that the association is based on treaty negotiation among equals, not federation (assuming federated structures to be hierarchical). I must add further that autonomous merely means self-governing and not complete self-sufficiency in the material sense (there will still be interchanging of goods back and forth, through swaps, gifts, etc.). In other words, the phrase is meaningless without further definition. Better to focus then on the concrete social relations themselves, and get them shaped the way we want them, than to waste time defining abstract concepts.

      (h) There is also the problem of what to call the strategy itself. I'm sorry to say that I have not been able to invent a good name for it.

      While we’re on the question of terminology, I must warn the reader not to be turned off too quickly by the words I use. I choose words with care. It is not by accident or through carelessness that I say “ruling class”, for example. I do it deliberately. I believe this is the clearest way to talk about our situation. If you do not believe there is a ruling class perhaps you have been watching too much television or have taken too many sociology courses. Similarly with other words I use — murderers, thieves, invasion, oppression, exploitation, working class, wage-slavery, empire, lackeys, capitalists. These are not the concepts of a fanatic, although they might sound that way to some who are steeped in the language of the owners of the world. They are powerful and accurate terms which illuminate our situation. It has taken years to rid myself of the mystifying language of the exploiting class.