We need to abandon the sadistic arrogance characteristic of intellectuals and admit: if someone is satisfied with capitalism, the market, corporations, a total spectacle, people have every right to all this. In the end, people call all this by other, less offensive names and accept it. And those who disagree do not have the right to forcibly take away all this beauty from people: it won’t work anyway. But those who disagree have the right to separate themselves into groups and develop a different reality within these groups. As different as you want and succeed, and not as different as some philosopher bequeathed, even the most respected one by me. “Parallel Communities” is a kind of guide to communes and autonomous settlements, from ancient times to the present day: religious communes of the ancient Essenes, heretical settlements of the Middle Ages, pirate republics, social experiments of modern times and countercultural autonomies of the twentieth century. Considering the history of voluntary segregations, the author identifies a number of typical trends and problems that have plagued the Communards for centuries.