Communes (Re: "post-leftism")

JCWisc at aol.com JCWisc at aol.com
Wed Aug 21 18:15:52 PDT 2002


In a message dated 08/21/2002 12:07:37 PM Central Daylight Time, gcf at panix.com writes:


> what are we to make of "écrasez
> l'infâme"? It's something a recently-mentioned, rather
> unpleasant Asian politician might well have said

He might have if he were quoting Voltaire, but Doug tells us that he was more interested in Mallarmé.


> if you're interested, which you probably
> aren't if you're willing to accept the mass-media line that
> they all died out after the '60s.

Actually I'm fascinated by this stuff. There's a pretty thorough survey by Timothy Miller called _The 60s Communes_ from Syracuse University Press, which I started reading and have set aside for the moment, but will come back to soon. He makes it clear that they didn't _all_ die out, but that most of them did. Hell, Oneida Colony back in the 19th century lasted 30 years at least. The Shakers were very successful in their day. John Humphrey Noyes, the founder of Oneida, admired them a great deal, as he makes clear in his classic survey of the 19th century utopian colonies, _The History of American Socialisms_ (1876). (Their policy of celibacy was obviously not conducive to their long-term survival, but I think there are 5 or so Shakers left). The Noyes book, as well as Charles Nordhoff's 1875 _The Communistic Societies of the United States_ used to be available as a Dover reprint, and perhaps still is.

There's nothing stopping anyone who wants to from founding a utopian colony today, is there?

Jacob Conrad



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