The Communal Socialists
One of the persistent fallacies that continues to plague us in this country is the assumption that communism and or socialism is a Russian product or possibly a European or even an Asiatic product, that it is an import and that it has been somehow brought to us from abroad.
In actual fact, I suppose you could say everything in our society has come from abroad, since
ours is a transplanted culture from Europe. But it is important to realize that theories
relating to communism and socialism, anti-date Marx by hundreds of years. Marx didn't invent
them, and the current movements in China and Russia and elsewhere have not been responsible
for bringing those ideas to these shores. On the contrary, we have had some of those ideas
and developed them here long before they appeared in their present forms in Europe and Asia.
The concept of anarchy, which really got underway in the latter half of the 18th century,
is not the first evidence of practical socialism that we've had in the country. Anarchy came
into being as other 18th century socialism came into being as a well-organized body of socialist
thought. But prior to the organizing of a body of thought, we had actually began in this country
to pioneer socialist experimentations, and communal socialists were among the very first
in this country to experiment in this area. For instance, Jamestown, a colony founded
in Virginia in 1607 during the reign of James I of England, was a commune. It was set up that way
deliberately because it was believed that that was the most expeditious way of getting a colony
The Plymouth Colony, founded in 1620 in Massachusetts, was another case in point. If you would like
to read a very good account of what happened at Plymouth Colony, may I recommend the diary
of Governor Bradford, who explained how they had set everything up based upon Plato's ideas, and the
idea that everyone should have according to his need, and everyone should work for the general
store, and so on. And of course, the whole idea was an impractical one, and the colony went through
a very, very severe eighteen, nineteen, or twenty months, at which time the governor went back on
The Massachusetts Bay Colony, another colony established in the New World, was likewise
a commune at the outset. These are not anarchistic communes or communistic communes per se because
The founders of anarchy as a social theory and the founders of communism as social theory
had not yet been born, but nonetheless these are practicing communes in which the ideas
of private ownership of property are removed, and the general thought is that everybody
is there working for the social whole and everybody receives as he needs something,
that converts all his ability to the common good, whatever that may mean.
Those are only some of the beginnings.
We had other communal socialist groups getting started in the early colonial days, and even
immediately thereafter we had the same type of commune getting started, but here is one
One of the characteristics we find in all of the communal socialists. These are experimenters
primarily. They are not social theorists so much as they are practically trying to put
the pieces together on a small scale. The theorists wanted to remake the world. Anarchists,
Socialists and Socialists generally want to change the face of the earth.
The communal Socialists wanted to create a little commune wherein everything would be
peace and light and joy and beauty and never mind the rest of the world.
And this you will find as the dominant characteristic of the communal Socialists who began in this
country from the very first colonies and who continue to flourish right up to the present
and Time. We have a number such colonies still in existence in these United States. I'd like
to mention a few of those that have attained to some degree of prominence and some degree
of notoriety down through the years beyond our first founding colonies. For instance,
During the 19th century, Robert Owen, a British textile mill owner, founded a movement which
took his name. His followers were called Owenites. He picked up some ideas from Proudhon relating
to profit sharing. He finally founded a colony in New Harmony, Indiana, which was supposed
The New Harmony Colony also influenced a great many people, such as Josiah Warren, who was
One of America's earliest anarchists and helped to convince him both that communal living was a good
and then, when New Harmony failed, that communal living was not a good. But in any case, New
Harmony, Indiana, was one of the great communes that we had in this country and it was founded
at a very early time and it had several efforts to make it into a collectivized communal type of
of Society. All of them failed, and it ultimately converted to the more or less standard semi-private
property, private capitalism that you'll find is standard in the country.
There was a very famous commune that got started in New England called Brook Farm. This was
founded by a group of transcendentalists. It's a religious group in a sense. That is,
It advocates new thought in religious theory, and a number of the people who became active
with Brook Farm were some of America's leading intellectuals. Theoretically, Brook Farm was
supposed to be a place where all these intellectuals would go so that they could have endless hours
Another colony in upstate New York that got founded along communal socialist lines was
the Oneida colony.
This was put together by a group of atheists, nonetheless they were very good workers, and
They were silversmiths and they specialized in working.
And of course, this is one of the key factors of anything.
If people will work at it, sometimes it works out.
And the Oneida Colony was a success, but it ultimately converted to capitalism because
the colony made so much money that the members of it had nothing.
And so realizing that they had created the wealth, why they ultimately converted to capitalism.
And as a matter of fact, that's where our Oneida silver comes from today. It's from
the spin-off from the earlier Oneida colony. Another colony of similar origins was the
famous Amana colony near Cedar Rapids in Iowa. This one was started about, well, nearly two
In the book of Acts, it is described how after the crucifixion
of Jesus, the early Christians got together and lived communally waiting for the second coming,
and they thought that this is what they should do, and they are very, very fine, highly moral,
peaceful people, and it also worked out that they were very productive. They got about 25,000 acres
of the best farmland in Iowa, and it became a very successful colony, not on the basis of their
Beliefs but on the basis of their efforts. And it lasted as a commune for better than
100 years, about 130 years, I believe. And then it converted to a co-op, and a little
later it converted to full stock capitalism. And I think only a short while ago, possibly
In 1967 or 68, maybe 66, the Amana colony was sold to Raytheon, and of course this is
the place where you get your Amana freezers and Amana blankets and Amana furniture.
It was originally made by these communal socialists living there, but it is now made by a stock
company that is a private enterprise company.
Another very interesting group of communal socialists would be the Hutterites.
These are religious people, devoutly Christian, who have colonies in both North and South
Dakota, but primarily in Canada and elsewhere along the Canadian border on this side of
the line.
The Hutterites are totally communal to this day.
They have been in existence as a colony, not in this country, but as a group, I should
say.
They have been in existence for better than 400 years, and they are continuing to operate
much as they did 400 years ago.
No one in the commune owns anything at all.
The women live in their barracks, the men in their own, and they are very devout.
They pray at intervals all during the day, and we never hear of the Hutterites getting
Human Action, Man Economy and State, The Theory of Money and Credit
to the Hutterites would be the Dukhobors. This is a Russian group that occupies much
the same part of the United States and Canada. Their colonies would be in the same general
area. And although they haven't been around quite as long as the Hutterites, they have
tended to make an even more dramatic impact on society because they seem to have an economic
Practice that has gotten them no end of notoriety. They are all producers, these people. These
are farming communes where the people believe in hand labor. They don't use modern tools
or modern equipment such as tractors. They use pitchforks and spades and hoes and things
of this sort, and they work directly with the soil. And again, we have a very devout
Group in the Doukhobors. Characteristically, the Doukhobors do not bother with English
or French, although they are primarily in Canada and could use either language. They
insist on speaking Russian, and they are Russian Christians who fled Russia a long time ago.
Some of them are doubtless still in Russia, in rural areas, but they practice their Christianity
and they practice this kind of hand labor on the farm even today, and they do very well.
and the other producers of potatoes will be angry with them because they will be cutting
the market price. Conversely, when the Doukhobors wish to buy something—and keep in mind now
that they buy not as individuals and they don't sell as individuals, this is the whole
colony acting—when the Doukhobors wish to buy land or whatever else they want to buy,
they find out what the going price is. Let's suppose that land is selling at $40 an acre.
Well, they may pay $45 an acre. When they go to the market, they pay a little more than
the going price. The consequence is that everyone who has anything to sell is very anxious to
see if he can't sell it to the Doukhobors. And the result of this is, of course, that
the local business people are constantly distressed with the Doukhobors because the Doukhobors
get the best of everything, and once in a while they decide to pass laws to prohibit
People from Dealing with Them.
When this happens, and here's how the Doukhobors have gotten their reputation, when there's
a public meeting where the Doukhobors are going to be discussed, these people from this
commune will attend and sit there in stolid, stony silence.
They don't understand the language anyway, but there is an interpreter who is more or
less the manager of the group, and he is capable of hearing what is going on.
But they all listen, and when their leader gives them a sign indicating that a motion
has been carried against them or some such thing, they have a distinct way of protesting.
They simply stand up and divest themselves of all their garments, right then and there,
and stand forth in the public meeting in the nude.
The second step of their protest is to go outside and have a parade while they are still
in the Nude, and I might point out that this has happened in 20° below zero weather in
the midst of a snowstorm. You can find the Doukvores marching down Main Street without
a stitch on. They seem to have the courage of their convictions, although I dare say
their convictions cause cold chills in others, even if it doesn't in them.
And then there's a third step to their protest, having publicly shown their lack of respect
for the action taken. They then go back and they burn out their own farms. They set fire
to their houses and their crops and they burn in the whole thing and leave a scorched earth
behind them and move on. I think one time they inadvertently burned some property not
not their own, and they were very happy to make recompense there, I understand.
Their intent is not to harm anyone, but simply to show their disdain and their disapproval
when anybody passes laws against them.
And they've operated this way for a very long time.
They're very devout people, and they don't cause any problems to others except in this
economic pinch that they seem to institute.
We don't find criminals coming from their group, but this is their general nature.
Now we've had a number of other types of organizations.
We don't hear very much of this anymore, but in the 19th century we had a good number
of colonies started in this country by the Four Year Society of France.
The Greely Colorado was just such a commune established by the Four Year Society.
One of the characteristics of the Four Years is that they believe in free love and also
are quite happy to practice nudity.
There seems to be sort of an affiliation for free love and nudity coming from both the
communal socialist groups in some cases and from anarchist groups in some cases.
This is where we get some of that.
The Four-Year Society took the name Greeley Colorado in honor of Horace Greeley, who was
the publisher of the New York Tribune, which was the paper that you may recall was carrying
Karl Marx as a columnist for a couple of years. I think about the only steady employment that
Marx ever had as a columnist. There are other groups, too, that are worthy
The House of David, a very prominent commune.
The members of it were males, and they were famous for their beards and their basketball
or baseball, and apparently very fine people, religiously oriented. Another group that is
religiously oriented would be the Shakers, which was an outcropping of the Quakers. In
this case, the Shakers took the position that absolute purity must accompany all their members.
There was to be no relationship between the sexes, and the result is, of course, and these
people were quite sincere and devout, their colony has tended to die out.
The last I heard, there were two or three very, very old ladies, the last remnants of
the colony, and no one else is around, and apparently they were not able to attract very
many young people into their movement.
There is of course the tendency that many people have of listing the Mormons and the Amish
or the Mennonites as communal socialists and in a sense, but only in a sense, is that true.
These people believed in a kind of communal living and a kind of communal responsibility,
that is a sharing among themselves of community interests, but they also at the same time
I'm believed very strongly in private ownership of property.
And so they would not fall specifically into the socialist category, which invariably takes
this old idea that what should be done is the abolition of private ownership of property.
So only in a sense could you find those people to be communists or socialists.
They really aren't.
They simply believe in a very strong emphasis by individuals, and mostly on a voluntary
basis, to take the responsibility for the community at large without having the government
do it, but doing it themselves, but on a voluntary basis, and meanwhile they own property privately.
Currently, of course, we have quite a number of neo-communes springing up all over the
country.
happens all the time, but right now we're having a plethora of it on various campuses.
There are really two types of communes that now are cropping up on various campuses, and
one of them is kind of a free enterprise commune, and the other is definitely communistically
a commune.
In the former, what happens is a group of students will possibly take a lease on a large
are private enterprise operations.
And then, of course, there are the other type, the communistic communes that are set up,
where somebody often will make a gift of a lease or a piece of land or a building, often
a run-down building, to these people where they won't even have to pay any rent.
And then the people who go in there simply share and share like whatever it is they have.
One has a crack at, and they operate that way.
In addition to this, of course, we have various communes being organized off-campus.
We usually think of them as hippie communes.
Those are the successor to the old hobo jungles that used to be around in this country in
the 20s and 30s.
We now have hippie communes, the one characteristic primarily differentiating the hobo jungle
from the hippie commune would be the advent of the ladies. Very, very few hobo jungles
had any of the fair sex present, and the hippie communes are notable for having men and women
both in profusion as well as children. So you have those hippie communes and the campus
The students seem to run through a kind of phase here.
They become very enthusiastic for communal-type living, and they live this way for a while,
but most of them seem to go through this as a period, and then it phases out and they
leave.
But others come in.
In general, as we consider all of these experiments, there have been over a hundred different kinds
of socialist communes or communistic socialists organized in this country, right from the
beginning of Jamestown on to the present time. The general characteristic has been this.
There are three outcomes, one or another of these three results, ultimately overtake these
communes. First, they fail. Now, there has been a large incidence of failure among these
particular type of activities. Or, if they don't fail, a great many of them convert to
private ownership of property, like the Amanas, for instance, who found that the colony was
is very, very wealthy, and yet the members of the colony were living in abject poverty,
and ultimately they became tired of that kind of an arrangement because these people worked
very, very hard and they were getting no reward for it except the intangible reward of feeling
a kind of satisfaction that they were so engaged, and they ultimately converted to private property
and to private capitalism.
Or there is a third outcome.
In those instances where there has been a very profound religious influence, it is apparently
possible for a commune to be established and to continue almost indefinitely. Certainly
those that are the longest-lived are those that have a religious core around which the
mentalities of the members go into orbit. And that seems to be the general characteristic
of the American Communal Socialists. Don't think for a minute that these ideas were started
by Marx or have been imported from other countries. We have done a great deal of experimentation
here and have actually exported many of these ideas abroad. Thank you.