Donald E. Pitzer’s chapter for Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Yakov Oved, and Menahem Topel,

editors, The Communal Idea in the 21st Century, Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic

Publishers, 2013.

Developmental Communalism into the Twenty-first Centuryby

Donald E. Pitzer

Professor Emeritus of History

Director Emeritus, Center for Communal Studies

University of Southern Indiana

Evansville, Indiana, USA

The early twenty-first century is witnessing an ultimate stage of developmental

communalism — a time when progressive ideas, ideals, and innovations from the small,

voluntary communal social laboratories of a preceding era become integrated into the

general society. The nineteenth century experiments in universal education, democratic

governance, and equal rights attempted communally by utopians like the Owenites,

Fourierists, and Icarians helped realize these reforms in the twentieth century. Today, it

is increasingly apparent that experiments from two waves of intentional communities in

the second half of the twentieth century are helping to shape major features of world

culture in the twenty-first century. The first wave arose from the counterculture and

other reform movements of the 1960s. It produced youth and hippie communes, some of

which went well beyond their popular image of sex, drugs, and rock and roll to make

solid contributions to society. Together with Jesus communes and ashrams, they

pioneered changes in eating habits and health care and made commitments to tolerance

and spirituality, equality and justice, peace and love that have helped move the world

toward multiculturalism, gender equality, interfaith dialogue, and peace initiatives. The

second communal wave came in the 1980s and 1990s. It was produced by the desire for

economical and neighborly housing in the expensive and impersonal urban age and from

concern for the natural environment because of global warming and the need for

alternative sources of energy as fossil fuels inevitably are exhausted. Cohousing projects

1

began offering a communal housing solution for people from the general public and

college students to retirees and the elderly. Ecovillages arose to employ and demonstrate

eco-responsible communities and new forms of energy. These communal efforts are

helping to make friendly and safe neighborhoods, sustainable lifestyles, green

technology, and alternative energy systems the norm in our time.

The theory of developmental communalism was proposed in the 1980s from my

study and on-site observation of the process by which reform movements often adopt the

communal method of social organization in an early stage for security, solidarity, and

survival.1 Developmental communalism considers communal living a generic social

mechanism available to all peoples, governments, and movements. But it focuses mainly

on social, religious, and political movements, the communal societies they found, and the

process through which they and their communities develop, adjust, and endure or

disappear. Communal societies have gone by many names depending on their time,

place, and economic arrangements — from ashrams, monasteries, convents, and

kibbutzim to communes, cooperatives, collectives, intentional communities, cohousing,

and ecovillages, All can be broadly defined as small, voluntary social units partly

isolated and insolated from the general society.2 Their members usually share an

ideology, an economic union, and a lifestyle. Most attempt to create living models of

their ideal social, economic, governmental, religious, philosophical, ecological, and

1On developmental communalism, see Donald Pitzer, “Developmental Communalism: Beyond Success and Failure,” unpublished paper given at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, April 6, 1986. All papers and publications cited here are in the Communal Studies Collection, Special Collections Department, Rice Library, University of Southern Indiana, Evansville, Indiana. Donald Pitzer, “Developmental Communalism: An Alternative Approach to Communal Studies,” in Utopian Thought and Communal Experience, eds. Dennis Hardy and Lorna Davidson (Middlesex, England: Middlesex Polytechnic, 1989), 68-76; reprinted in The Guide to Communal Living: Diggers and Dreamers (Redfield Community, Winslow, Buckinghamshire, England: Communes Network, 1993/1994), 85-92. Donald Pitzer, ed. America’s Communal Utopias (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). Donald Pitzer, “New Harmony’s Harmonists and Owenites: Two Approaches to Utopia and Developmental Communalism,” unpublished paper given at the Communal Studies Association/International Communal Studies Association meeting in New Harmony, Indiana, October 14, 1993. Donald Pitzer, “Developmental Communalism: The Double-Jeopardy Threat to Communal Longevity,” unpublished paper given at the International Communal Studies Association meeting in Efal, Israel, May 30, 1995. Donald Pitzer, “Response to Lockyer’s ‘From Developmental Communalism to Transformative Utopianism,’” in Communal Societies: Journal of the Communal Studies Association, 29 no. 1 (2009): 15-21.

2For a discussion of various definitions see Timothy Miller, “A Matter of Definition: Just What is an Intentional Community,” Communal Societies: Journal of the Communal Studies Association 30, no. 1 (2010): 1-15.

2

sustainable systems. The utopians among them hope that their dreams will come true

worldwide by human endeavor or divine intervention.3

Thus, developmental communalism sees communal living mostly as a means to

an end rather than an end in itself, although it recognizes that many movements view the

merits of living communally as essential to their organizations, lives, and relationships, or

even the principle focus of their existence. Regardless of whether they practice their

communalism as a means or an end, the theory suggests that to remain vital movements

must adjust their communal method of organization and often other early practices to

meet changing realities and reach old and new objectives. This may include developing

beyond a communal stage altogether. First century Jewish Christians in Jerusalem saw

the practices not only of their community of goods, but also circumcision and blood

sacrifice, abandoned or spiritualized in order for the movement to expand into the Gentile

world.

Developmental communalism also finds that movements’ communal societies

face a disturbing “double-jeopardy threat” to their longevity — whether or not the

founding movements adjust their practices and organizational structure. Movements

flexible enough may develop beyond their communal stage, a stage that involves the

complex difficulties and disciplines required to build and maintain entire communities.

In that case, the movement may thrive but lose its communes like the Owenites of Robert

Owen. On the other hand, movements may fossilize in their communal form and

practices. In this case, they often kill the movement itself as well as its communes like

the celibate Harmony Society of George Rapp. Communal societies that defy the double-

jeopardy threat to endure, even flourish, over extended periods of time usually evidence

recognizable characteristics. Like the Shakers, they may require members to commit to

the beliefs and disciplines of a religious or spiritual ideology. If celibate, like Catholic

3The developmental communalism approach to communal studies has become a basis for further promising theorizing about the global social phenomenon of communal living. Anthropology professor Joshua Lockyer recently put forward “transformational utopianism” as an extended view. Lockyer‘s work explores evidence of how the utopian ideas and practices of communities of one time are adopted and adapted by communities of the next. See Joshua Lockyer, “From Developmental Communalism to Transformative Utopianism: An Imagined Conversation with Donald Pitzer,” Communal Societies: Journal of the Communal Studies Association 29, no. 1 (2009): 1-14. Dialogue in this and other enlightening directions are welcomed by communal scholars and communitarians alike. More attention also needs to be given to gathering additional direct empirical evidence of the actual influence of communal societies on the larger society past and present.

3

orders, the group must acquire new members from the outside society, often the children

of adherents to their larger religious faith. Or, like the Hutterites, they may encourage

members themselves to have large families.

Some movements that employ communal societies to reach an objective other

than living communally for its own sake find their communes extraneous once they have

reached that goal. This may come in an ultimate stage of developmental communalism

when the outside world has adopted enough of the reform characteristics of the

movement’s communal utopias to make their separate existence seem unnecessary. Or it

may come when the founding movement achieves a single prime objective. As the

Zionist Movement reached its goal of an independent Jewish state when Israel was

established on May 14, 1948, the kibbutzim, Jewish settlements Zionists had supported in

Palestine for decades, fell into jeopardy. That they have endured for more than six

decades since that date is testimony to the kibbutzniks’ commitment to their socialistic

ideals and communitarian lifestyle with and without government assistance and despite

economic downturns.

Developmental Communalism: Contributions of the 20th Century Counterculture

Movement Integrate into 21st Century World Culture

Perhaps at no time in history before the 1960s had such an array of reform

movements and earth-shaking events converged to induce the formation of communes,

both to escape the ills of the world and to build model utopias. Frustration with the

Vietnam War prompted young people to insist: “Make love not war.” Racial, gender, age

prejudice, and injustice produced countering movements for civil rights, feminism, and

egalitarianism. Before being shot down in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of

creating “the beloved community” of racial equality. Feminist Gloria Steinem co-

founded Ms. Magazine. Lesbians, as well as gay men, were emboldened to found

exclusive intentional communities. As the world careened toward a seemingly inevitable

atomic Armageddon during the Cold War, the Jesus Movement offered the hope of the

millennium, the imminent second coming of Christ which would usher in a utopian

kingdom of God on earth. The Shiloh Youth Revival movement that originated in

Eugene, Oregon in 1969 set up dozens of communal centers for “Jesus freaks” in cities

across America. Young idealists formed a network of North American communal groups

4

called The Federation of Egalitarian Communities that still promotes equality around the

globe. John Lennon penned the radical lyrics for his song “Imagine” that became the

utopian theme song for the secular youth movement. Tom Hayden stirred the blood of

activist protesters in his Students for a Democratic Society to fight for campus rights,

agitate for a volunteer army, and demand votes for eighteen-year-olds. While the birth

control pill created a revolution of sexual freedom, marijuana and LSD guru Timothy

Leary called on would-be utopians to “tune in, turn on, drop out.”

The age-old communal method of immediate escape and reform by creating

small, partly isolated communities stood ready for an unexpected but massive revival that

took not only the general public but communal scholars by surprise. Timothy Miller, the

leading scholar of the communes of the 1960s and 1970s, discovered that hundreds of

thousands of young people responded almost instinctively to the challenges of their time

by creating tens of thousands of youth, hippy, Jesus and other communes.4 They were

members of a rising youth class of the best educated generation in history. Miller noted:

American communal history turned a major corner on May

3, 1965, when three persons recently out of college

purchased six acres of scraggly goat pasture outside

Trinidad, Colorado, and proclaimed the establishment of

Drop City. Drop City brought together most of the themes

that had been developing in other recent communities —

anarchy, pacifism, sexual freedom, rural isolation, interest

in drugs, art — and wrapped them flamboyantly into a

commune not quite like any that had gone before.5

Inspired by a lecture of Buckminster Fuller on his revolutionary “geodesic domes,” the

Droppers led the way into the architecture of the new age by building colorful dome

dwellings from junk car hoods. When they sent him dome pictures, Bucky proclaimed

Drop City the winner of his 1966 Dymaxion Award for “poetically economic

architecture” and sent them a check for five hundred dollars.6 Now Bucky’s domes are

4Timothy Miller, The 60s Commune: Hippies and Beyond (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1999) 237.

5Ibid., 31-32.6Ibid., 33-35.

5

seen everywhere, gracing EPCOT at Disney World and protecting people at the South

Pole.

The Beatles’s George Harrison espoused the transcendental meditation panacea of

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who set up his ideal communal settlement at Fairfield, Iowa.

Ashrams of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISHCON) offered the

Asian spirituality of the Hare Krishna movement to countries of the western world.

American-born Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati established the interfaith Kashi Ashram at

Sebastian, Florida to care for HIV/AIDS victims and to promote peace and healing

worldwide. In 1971, San Francisco State College faculty member and spiritual teacher

Stephen Gaskin led hundreds of his hippy students and disciples in school buses to settle

The Farm community near Summertown, Tennessee. There they became famous for

their humanitarian charity projects, midwifery program, ecovillage training center, and

vegetarian and peace initiatives. Others joined communal houses and farms of the radical

Catholic Worker movement to assist the poor, resist war, and call for social justice.

Young spiritual zealots also spun off innovative communes from established Protestant

denominations like the pacifistic Mennonite Reba Place Fellowship in Evanston, Illinois.

This unexpected sunburst of intentional communities totally eclipsed previous communal

societies in numbers of groups and adherents, especially if we add in the second

communal wave of cohousing projects and ecovillages that were founded in the later

twentieth century.

It is increasingly clear that pioneering concepts and practices from this explosion

of communal social laboratories have been integrated into world culture. A

developmental process has occurred in which the truly valid innovations from the

counterculture and its communes have been adopted by the larger society. This is what

marks the early twenty-first century unmistakably as the age of an ultimate stage of

developmental communalism. Evidence from Timothy Miller’s 60s Communes Project

conducted from the University of Kansas is particularly revealing. From interviews with

individuals who lived communally in that era, Miller found that many believe their way

of life made a lasting impact on society.7 These communal utopians were eating natural

7Miller, The 60s Communes, 238.

6

foods, practicing alternative medical treatments, and seeking the high ideals of peace and

love.

Miller found that one of the most obvious areas of communal influence is in

eating habits. Whole and natural foods were hardly known in modern nations in 1960.

Now natural food stores abound and supermarkets offer what was once the fare of hippies

— yogurt, tofu, whole-grain bread, and high-fiber vegetables. The Puget Sound Co-Op,

once the largest natural food cooperative in the Seattle area, was founded by John

Affolter at his intentional community, the May Valley Cooperative.8 The observations

of Omni Mountainskyrainbow, a communitarian (not a part of Miller’s study) now living

in the communal Mothership Sanctuary near Eugene, Oregon, are germane on eating

habits and other influences that confirm and expand Miller’s examples. On natural foods,

Omni comments:

Examples of how communities led the way . . . include the

whole ‘natural’ aesthetic. ‘Back to the land’ we went, to

try organic farming. Now there is a massive network of og

(organically grown) farms, farmers’ markets and og

products. Even the Walmarts and Safeways are pretending

to be green. Natural food is the ONLY growth sector of the

food industry for the last 20 years. Even very unnatural

products shout ‘green’ and ‘natural’ on their labels.

Natural medicine now gets one of every two out of pocket

dollars spent on health care in the US. Natural is how we

all want to look, act, and feel. This theme pervades our

whole culture now.9

Vedic City, Iowa, the town Maharishis Mahish Yogi incorporated in 2001, banned

the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers in 2005, making it the first all-organic city in

America. But well before this, the communal Shiloh Family, founded on Christian

8Ibid.9Omni Mountainskyrainbow, “From the Personal to the Planetary: How the 70s Communities Set

Out to Save the World,” unpublished essay, 2011. A copy is in the Communal Studies Collection, Special Collections Department, Rice Library, University of Southern Indiana, Evansville, Indiana, USA. Hereafter cited as Mountainskyrainbow essay. Omni’s essay evolved from her interview with anthropologist and communal scholar Donald Janzen at her community, Mothership Sanctuary, Eugene, Oregon, November 4, 2010.

7

principles in 1942 in Sherman, New York, pioneered organic agriculture and the

marketing of natural foods across the United States. A basic tenant of this community

was a diet of unrefined foods grown in fertile soil without synthetic fertilizers. This

philosophy was incorporated into their main industry, a bakery that produced organic

breads and other baked products. As the demand for their bread increased nationwide,

the community eventually produced over a million loaves a year. As explained by

Donald Janzen who researched Shiloh Family history:

One of the early problems that existed in the organic food

industry was linking the producers with the customers. The

public was demanding more organically grown foods while

the organic farmers were reluctant to produce more without

guaranteed markets. To resolve this problem, Shiloh

purchased two semi-tractors (one refrigerated) and began

hauling organic foods nationwide. Under their

specifications, outside companies produced organic foods

that were sold under the name Shiloh Farms. To insure

their high standards, all food was tested in the Shiloh

laboratory so it could be certified as organic. By 1967, the

two Shiloh trucks were logging 9,000 miles a month

shipping such products as fish from the North Atlantic,

honey from Israel, maple syrup from Vermont, potatoes

from Ohio, cheese from Wisconsin, and pinto beans from

Colorado. As the demand for Shiloh Farms products

increased, the community moved to Sulphur Springs,

Arkansas to give them a more central shipping location.

Eventually the community sold the name Shiloh Farms, and

as the number of members decreased it closed the bakery.

There is no doubt that Shiloh is among the pioneers to

introduce organic foods to the general public and deserves

some credit for the popularity it enjoys today.10

10Donald Janzen email to Donald Pitzer, August 6, 2011.

8

Taking advantage of that popularity, the town of Hardwick, Vermont literally

resurrected itself during the last decade by turning to organic farming. Because of its

emphasis on local food production, Hardwick now claims to have more organic farms per

capita within ten miles of the town than anywhere else in the world. This has produced a

thriving local grocery co-op, busy farmers’ market, and a restaurant where almost

everything served either grew or grazed on nearby land.11

Health care is another example of the community movement’s influence cited by

Timothy Miller. He points out that the public has largely embraced holistic health and

the alternative therapies of chiropractic, naturopathy and aromatherapy. Ina May Gaskin,

who has become widely known and respected as the innovative leader of the midwifery

program at The Farm, told Miller that interest in home birth in the counterculture, and

especially in its communes, has led to much more humane hospital birthing centers.12 It

is not unusual now to experience a home-like atmosphere in hospitals for the birthing

process. The People’s Free Clinic in Vermont grew out of a health collective that

traveled from commune to commune.13 Many young people joined communities of the

Camphill movement that practices the spiritual anthroposophy of Rudolph Steiner and

now assists people with mental illnesses and learning disabilities at more than one

hundred sites around the world.14 In 1971, Patch Adams and a group of twenty friends,

including two other medical doctors, began the Gesundheit! Institute, a free hospital

operating 24 hours a day seven days a week in a six-bedroom house in rural West

Virginia. After the Robin Williams film “Patch Adams” appeared in 1998, Gesundheit!

became famous. Using humor as a universal medium, Patch has lectured at medical and

nursing schools in over sixty-five countries on five continents. Gesundheit! now draws

more than 1300 people each year as health-care volunteers or to attend health care system

design intensives and health justice gatherings. Its dream is to build a model forty-bed

communal hospital with more than sixty beds for its staff and their families and to

11Dan Charles, “Vermont Town’s Food Focus Still A Growing Concept,” http://www.npr.org/2011/07/15/137499585/vermont-towns-food-focus-still-a-growing-con (accessed July 15, 2011).

12Miller, The 60s Communes, 238, 315. 13Ibid., 238.14Communities Directory (Rutledge, Missouri: The Fellowship for Intentional Community, 2010),

150-152.

9

operate at ten percent of the expense of commercial hospitals.15 More than a decade into

the twenty-first century, health care can be counted as one of the reforms from 60s era

communes that gained a foothold in the larger society but for which the ultimate

developmental stage is far from complete. Free clinics and affordable health treatment

are still desperately needed in both inner city and rural areas.

Education is another area in which communal societies have anticipated later

trends in the general society. Communal groups have been early adopters of progressive

teaching methods, including those of Joseph Lancaster, Johann Pestalozzi, and Maria

Montessori. At New Harmony, Indiana alone two communal groups in the early

nineteenth century preceded state tax-supported public education by decades. The

Harmonists of George Rapp educated both boys and girls in basic academic subjects,

music, and the arts, and gave them an apprenticeship, while their parents had access to a

library and museum. The children of Robert Owen’s community of equality attended

America’s first infant school, Pestalozzian classes of learning by doing, and one of the

first schools of industry for learning a trade. Teachers and natural scientists from

Philadelphia, who came to New Harmony on a famous “boatload of knowledge,” taught

children and adults alike in an atmosphere of free inquiry and open dialogue.16

Communitarians who set up their own internal academic systems also fully

understand the advantages of indoctrinating their children in their social, religious, and

political values. In the 1960s, counterculture communal education appeared radical and

inadequate and sometimes drew punitive action from the state. When Cold War fear of

Communism led Johnny Bob Harrell to found a community near Louisville, Illinois in the

early 60s —

removing the children on the Harrell estate from public

schools was strongly condemned by Louisville

authorities. . . . In true communal spirit, [Harrell] believed

that he could provide a better education — one that allowed

the students to honor the Bible, the flag, and great patriots

like ‘George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and the late 15Patch Adams, Gesundheit! Institute, www.patchadams.org/phases (accessed August 7, 2011).16Donald Pitzer, “Education in Utopia: The New Harmony Experience,” in Indiana Historical

Society Lectures 1976-1977: The History of Education in the Middle West (Indianapolis, Indiana: Indiana Historical Society, 1978), 74-101.

10

Senator Joseph McCarthy.’ . . . This private school became

a test case for the new state compulsory education law

which stated that children under age sixteen must attend a

public school or one of equal standards. . . . The case

attracted national attention when interviews were taped for

airing on NBC’s Dave Garroway Show.

Whether the compound school would have been

adequate cannot be determined because of the immediate

and persistent legal challenges leveled against it. [But] the

criticism of their methods must be examined within the

context of the time. Techniques related to homeschooling

that might be called innovative now were called

irresponsible then. What was criticized then — none of the

teachers were certified, and only Dr. Curtis [a Grayville,

Illinois dentist] had a college degree — might be accepted

now in cases where the parent is not formally trained as a

teacher. One of the teachers was a seventeen-year-old

resident of the compound. Her work with the younger

students could be compared to the interaction found among

siblings in homeschooling.17

This is also like British educator Joseph Lancaster's Monitoral System used by the

Shakers in which older students teach younger students — “Each one teach one.”18

Modern communalists have been in the vanguard of home schooling. Omni

observes that “Alternative schooling methods pioneered in the 70s experiments are now

in wide use and no longer considered ‘alternative;’ charter schools are popping up

everywhere to push beyond those.” She notes that when her own children grew to school

17Dain Garrett, “The Johnny Bob Harrell Compound: Church, Commune, or Cult?” (Master’s thesis, California State University Dominguez Hills, Dominguez Hills, California, 2004), 35-37.

18Ibid.; Donald Pitzer, “Patterns in Education in American Communal Societies,” in Communal Life: An International Perspective, eds. Yosef Gorni, Yaacov Oved, and Idit Paz (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Books, 1987), 276-277.

11

age their town “already had a public school that was organized around all of the learning

styles and techniques we saw only in the most radical ‘free’ schools in the 70s.”19

Education and communication are being influenced by another element from the

counterculture communes — networking. Omni reminds us, “In the old days, when a

number of our cohorts began calling themselves ‘networkers,’ we shared news and ideas

in periodicals called underground newspapers.” She concludes, “This is now known as

‘the internet.’ With the explosion of the information revolution, like-minded people can

find each other, coordinate, and perhaps most importantly, just know that they are not

alone. ‘We are everywhere.’”20

Indeed, social-networking and communities of interest in cyberspace are now

taken for granted, products of the revolution in electronic technology.21 Providers like

Facebook, LinkedIn, Zynga, Gropon, Twitter, Zillow, and Pandora connect people for

every purpose from matchmaking to terrorism. America Online (AOL) welcomes new

members into its “community.” We may need to expand the very definition of

intentional community itself to recognize that actually meeting in or occupying a physical

place can be partly replaced by meeting and dwelling online. However, we must be wary

not to mistake communities of interest online with traditional communal societies with

their commitment to face-to-face personal fellowship and support based on a lifestyle,

ideology, and economic union.

Like healthcare and education, other reforms suggest an urgent need for further

development. The expression of tolerance, openness, and inclusiveness exhibited in

counterculture communes is paramount in the present struggle to achieve

multiculturalism, gender equality, and religious toleration. These reforms are more about

attitudes and prejudices, and the most important is the need to pursue peace.

In a world of nearly constant warfare, communal societies have attempted

exemplary models of peace and harmony. From ancient times, they have shown the

19Mountainskyrainbow essay.20Ibid.21Carolyn R. Shafer and Kristin Anundsen, “Electronic Communities,” Creating Community

Anywhere: Finding Support and Connection in a Fragmented World (New York: Perigee Books, 1993), 131-149; Donald Pitzer and Jane Tang “The Emergence and Changing Architecture of Community in Cyberspace,” paper presented to the Communal Studies Association Conference, Oneida, New York, October 8, 1994. Copy in the Special Collections Department, Rice Library, University of Southern Indiana, Evansville, Indiana.

12

human spirit in the difficult search for peace and harmony at all levels — individual,

community, nation, and world. Many religious and secular communalists have

demonstrated the possibility of finding non-violent means of resolving disputes and have

urged governments to employ diplomatic solutions in place of bloodshed. Christian

communitarian pacifists from the first-century to the Shakers, Quakers, Hutterites,

Amish, and Mennonites of today have attempted conflict management by means of a

formula in Matthew 18:15-17, 21-22. Any offended member is to first take the issue

kindly to the offender, then take a third party, and finally to lay it before the community

for resolution. Non-sectarian communitarians in the late twentieth century evolved

“consensus decision-making” as a process for avoiding conflicts and authoritarian

control. Alpha Farm, founded in 1972 in Deadwood, Oregon, was one of the first

communes to use and teach this method. All issues of moment are brought before the

assembled membership and ideally discussed by everyone until consensus is reached.

For Alpha Farm:

Consensus, our decision-making process, is also a

metaphor for the ideal world we seek to create here—and

so help to create in the larger world. We seek to honor and

respect the spirit in all people and in nature; to nurture

harmony within ourselves, among people, and with the

Earth; and to integrate all of life into a balanced whole.22

Laird Schaub, the executive secretary of the Fellowship for Intentional Community, has

made a career of consensus facilitation since 1987. Dispute management has become a

popular topic in businesses and university business schools worldwide. Oriana Noel

Lewis, a descendant of Robert Owen who lives in a cohousing community, is a dispute

resolution professional.

The twentieth century displayed humanity at its best and worst. The bright side of

human ingenuity made it a time of marvelous scientific and technological advance while

the dark side of human nature made it the bloodiest time ever, wars killing 120,000,000

people, about half civilians. Global nuclear disaster still hangs over civilization as a

threatening legacy. Yet major initiatives for peace were launched for which communal

22Communities Directory, 2010 edition, 129.

13

societies’ nonviolent witness may claim a measure of influence, although empirical

evidence of direct communal influence on the wider world is seldom easy to indentify.

With the blessing of the government of India and UNESCO, Auroville was founded in

1968 in southern India as a semi-communal city to promote international peace and

goodwill. Based on the vision of Yogi Sri Aurobindo and his close spiritual advisor

Mirra Richard (born Alfassa, known as The Mother) its charter declared: “Auroville will

be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual Human

Unity.” Its website announces: “Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and

women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all

creeds, all politics and all nationalities.” 23 The Peace Corps celebrated its fiftieth

anniversary in 2011, with more than 200,000 young American volunteers having served

as helpers and healers in 139 countries.24 In 1984, the United States Institute of Peace, an

idea first proposed by George Washington, became a reality as an independent,

nonpartisan institution established and funded by Congress with a mandate to help

prevent, manage, and resolve international conflict without violence.25

Koinonia Farm near Americus, Georgia, provides some of the best evidence of a

communal society whose pacifism has impacted world culture. Founded amid World

War II in 1942 by Southern Baptist preacher Clarence Jordan, its commitment to

nonviolence, racial equality, and poverty relief have been felt around the globe. After

surviving drive-by shootings by the Ku Klux Klan, Koinonia began building houses for

members on the basis of interest-free loans and volunteer labor at the initiative of former

millionaire member Millard Fuller. His Habitat for Humanity International grew from

this communal start. More than 400,000 homes in over 90 countries have been built or

rehabilitated for deserving low-income people by volunteers and donations of money and

materials. Former President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn, who live in nearby

Plains, Georgia and have long admired the Koinonians’ Christian pursuit of peace and

equality, have given the hours and prestige of their labor to many Habitat home-building

projects.26 In 2005, Habitat ranked tenth in income among United States’ charities with

23Auroville, www.auroville.org/ (accessed July 31, 2011). 24Peace Corps, www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=about (accessed August 9, 2011). 25United States Institute of Peace, www.usip.org/about-us/our-history (accessed July 31, 2011). 26Through his Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia, since 1982, Jimmy Carter has become a volunteer

diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize winner. In more than 70 countries in Africa, the Middle East, Latin

14

almost one and one half billion dollars ($1,500,000,000). Since the projected cost of the

Iraq War alone is three trillion dollars ($3,000,000,000,000), it is instructive to note how

many houses Habitat could have built with that inconceivable sum. If the Iraqi

population was divided into families of four, Habitat could have built a $422,000 home

for each family in Iraq — or a $200,000 home for each such family in Iraq and

Afghanistan!27 Peace-minded communitarians may well ask, “What will it take for

humanity to awaken to the power of peace, beat their swords into plowshares, and use

their hearts, minds, and resources for construction rather than destruction?”

Developmental Communalism: Innovations of the Cohousing and Ecovillage

Movements Contribute to 21st Century World Culture

As the communes of the counterculture movement began to see some of their

contributions implemented in society, a second communal wave produced full-fledged

cohousing and ecovillage movements by the mid-1990s. Cohousing had begun during

the 1960s from the “living community” concept in Denmark.28 Promising to replace the

often solitary and alienated life of modern urban centers with the security, sharing, and

caring of communal neighborhoods, cohousing was introduced into the United States by

architects Charles Durrett and Kathryn McCamant in 1988. The Cohousing Association

of the United States has fostered the growth of the cohousing movement since 1997.

Now hundreds of cohousing communities are active in the United States and Denmark

and far beyond — from Australia, New Zealand and Canada to Sweden, Germany,

France, and Austria. Following the Association’s collaborative housing format, residents

are consciously committed to living as a community, most now containing twenty to forty

households.29 They actively participate in the design and operation of their own

neighborhoods, nearly all of which use consensus for group decision-making. The

physical environment encourages social contact while preserving privacy. Residents

America, and Asia, he has proven that creating a world at peace is possible one step at a time. His method is the same cultivation of respect for human rights and encouragement of the workings of the democratic process that are inherent in the Koinonia community. Carter Center, www.cartercenter.org/about/accomplishments/index.html.

27Donald Pitzer, “Signal Communities in Witness of Peace,” in Restoration Studies: Theology and Culture in the Community of Christ and the Latter Day Saint Movement, 10 (2009): 121-134.

28Cohousing Association of the United States, www.cohousing.org; David Wann, ed. Reinventing Community: Stories from the Walkways of Cohousing (Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Publishing, 2005); Graham Meltzer, Sustainable Community: Learning from the Cohousing Model (Victoria, British Columbia: Trafford Publishing, 2005).

29Cohousing Association, www.cohousing.org/what_is_cohousing (accessed August 9, 2011).

15

meet in courtyards, playgrounds, and a common house with a large dining room, kitchen,

laundry, lounge, and recreational facilities.30

Students have adopted forms of cohousing on many college campuses. One of

my former students recently volunteered her positive memories of living communally

with fifteen to twenty fellow students in a house in Bloomington, Indiana while attending

Indiana University. She remembered:

We shared everything, food, cleaning up after ourselves.

We never argued, we never fought. We took each other to

class, we carted one another to locations where one or all

needed to get to. We lived happily and successfully in a

communal environ. And we benefitted enormously! We

were so happy to be together, we had numerous

conversations, and with all pitching in on tedious house

chores, which I hate, we were able to live this way, take

care of each other and share in every joyous aspect of life.

So it is proof it can work, it can be done, and there is no

doubt about its wonders for all. No one argued, everyone

participated. It was the most satisfying time of [my] life

before or since. I was 19/20/21. It can work and work

fantastically.31

Both multigenerational and exclusively senior-oriented cohousing are on the

increase.32 Senior citizens are seeking the fellowship and safety of this type of communal

living, and not-for-profit and commercial retirement centers now offer facilities that

provide the basic benefits of cohousing. The age-specific cohousing model for active

elders originated in Denmark and is just now emerging significantly in the United States.

Accommodating design features include easy access for all levels of physical ability and

possibly studio residences in the common house to provide living quarters for home

health aides whose services could be shared by several residents. In 2009, Charles

Durrett wrote a justification for senior cohousing. He noted:

30Cohousing Association, www.cohousing.org/ (accessed August 2, 2011).31Elizabeth Montgomery email to Donald Pitzer, July 17, 2011.32Cohousing Association, www.cohousing.org/taxonomy/ter/105 (accessed August 2, 2011).

16

Last year Americans drove 5 billion miles caring for

seniors in their homes (Meals on Wheels, Whistle Stop

Nurses, and so on). In our small, semi-rural county in the

Sierra foothills, Telecare made 60,000 trips in massive,

lumbering, polluting vans-buses — usually carrying only

one senior at a time — schlepping a couple thousand

seniors total over hill and dale to doctor’s appointments, to

pick up medicine, or to see friends. In our cohousing

community of 21 seniors, I have never seen a single

Telecare bus in the driveway. In cohousing it happens

organically by caring neighbors: ‘Can I catch a ride with

you?’ . . . ‘Are you headed to the drug store?’ . . . And

this alternative is much more fun and inexpensive for all

involved, and much less damaging to the environment.33

Robert Owen was a visionary when he made environmentalism prominent in

communal socialism in the early nineteenth century. He placed “pure air” just second to

“Kind treatment from birth” in his list of requirements for the good health and happiness

of the human race.34 In the first decade of the twenty-first century, Communities

magazine devoted ten issues to environmentalism. Its editor, Chris Roth, wrote “ecology

is the air we breathe. We can remain unconscious about that only for a while.”35

The ecovillage movement emerged in the 1980s and 1990s to find comfortable

and sustainable living responses to global warming and to replace rapidly diminishing

fossil fuels with alternative energy systems. Robert Gilman and his wife Diane helped

popularize ecovillages with their 1991 book Eco-villages and Sustainable Communities.

The same year, Robert published a definition that became standard: Ecovillages are

“human-scale, full-featured settlements in which human activities are harmlessly

integrated into the natural world in a way that is supportive of healthy human

33Cohousing Association http://www.cohousing.org/taxonomy/term/225 (accessed August 2, 2011).

34Robert Owen, The Book of the New Moral World (New York: Augustus M. Kelley Publishers, 1970 reprint of 1842 original), Part III: 12-13.

35Chris Roth, “Note from the Editor: Ecology and Community,” Communties, Summer 2009, 15.

17

development, and which can be successfully continued into the indefinite future.”36 The

Farm in Tennessee became an early responder to environmental issues and an early

leader in the ecovillage movement. Its now-famous Ecovillage Training Center teaches

sustainable methods from strawbale construction to solar panel installation. Its director,

Albert Bates, has published books on ecology and is secretary of the Ecovillage Network

of the Americas, one of several such networks.37 Thousands of ecovillages in at least

seventy countries have joined in pioneering experiments in recycling, composing,

conservation, rain water collection and wastewater treatment. They have brought new

terms into common usage: “permaculture” (PERMAnant agriCULTURE — the design of

human living spaces around environmental principles) and “relocalization” (the revival of

local production and local consumption). Permaculture is on the increase in sustainable

lifestyles that include solar, wind, and geothermal energy, low-cost natural building

materials, organic gardening, and vegetarian diets.38 Relocalizing is appearing as street-

corner farmers’ markets selling seasonal fruits and vegetables and as advertisements from

grocery stores that proudly link their produce to local family farms.

The solutions of the ecovillage movement to the urgent environmental problems

facing today’s world are impressive. Yet these solutions can only be globally effective if

they are made increasingly more attractive — less primitive than early ecovillage models

— and more available — less expensive than offered by industry thus far. Influential

individuals, corporations, and governments must be convinced that ecovillage

achievements are practical and economical. J. T. Ross Jackson has used his Gaia Trust to

support ecovillages and green enterprises around the world. As a member of the

International Advisory Council of the Global Ecovillage Network, he believes that these

initiatives are the foundation of a viable twenty-first century civilization.39 Karen

Svensson, co-editor with Hildur Jackson of Ecovillage Living: Restoring the Earth and

36Robert Gilman, “The Eco-village Challenge,” in IN CONTEXT, A Quarterly of Human Sustainable Culture (Summer 1991). Quoted in Diana Leafe Christian, Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities, (Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishers, 2003), xvi.

37Albert Bates, The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook (Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishers, 2006). See also Jan Bang, Ecovillages: A Practical Guide to Sustainable Communities (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 2005).

38The Farm: Permaculture. www.thefarm.org/permaculture (accessed on August 7, 2011). 39J. T. Ross Jackson, And We ARE Doing It!: Building an Ecovillage Future (San Francisco:

Robert D. Reed Publishers, 2000); Gaia Trust, www.gaia.org (accessed August 7. 2011).

18

Her People believes, “Ecovillages embody a way of living. They are grounded in the

deep understanding that all things and all creatures are interconnected, and that our

thoughts and actions have an impact on our environment.”40

In a view akin to the idea of an ultimate stage of developmental communalism for

the ecovillage movement, Svensson feels that “a good way of restoring the Earth,

ourselves and other living beings is to integrate the principles of Ecovillage Living in

daily life.”41 It is undeniable that founders of ecovillages were among the first to arrive at

a consciousness of the impending environmental crises and to take decisive action to

ameliorate them. Also, it is true that we are no longer startled to see the solar panels,

wind turbines, and geothermal energy systems of the green revolution that were once

largely confined to experimental ecovillages. Although it is difficult to trace the origin of

these influences upon world culture, if the ecovillagers can someday be credited with

effecting these changes in the wider world, they will have performed a service worthy of

their own utopian dreams. Ted Trainer of the University of New South Wales, Australia

has ventured the question “Would it be an exaggeration to claim that the emergence of

the ecovillage movement is the most significant event in the 20 th century?” And he

answers bluntly, “I don’t think so.”42

Developmental Communalism: Goals of the Late 20th Century Community

Movement Merge with 21st Century World Culture

Is it possible that the values and innovations of intentional communities from the

last several decades are now being integrated so thoroughly into society that the

communities no longer need to be thought of as separate or even different from much of

today’s culture? This novel idea implies that in a broader dimension of the

developmental process we are witnessing the merger of both waves of the communal

movement of the late twentieth century into the world culture of the twenty-first century

— as the last flourish of an ultimate stage of developmental communalism. Omni

Mountainskyrainbow may not have been the first to express this interpretation, but, if not,

40Hildur Jackson and Karen Svensson, eds. Ecovillage Living: Restoring the Earth and Her People (Foxhole, Dartington, Totnes, Devon, United Kingdom: Green Books Ltd., 2002), 10.

41Ibid., 4.42Quoted in ibid., 3.

19

she has certainly expressed it well. Therefore, this treatment of the concept deserves to

carry the impact of her own words and phrases.43 As she sees it:

The goal of the communities of the 70s was to

demonstrate prototyped models of living and relating that

were different and better than the mainstream culture we

grew up in. To do that, we had to separate to some extent

from the systems in place at the time. . . . Like little Petrie

dishes, we incubated various strains of new lifestyle. Many

of the little seed-batches did very well, some didn’t.

We never thought of ourselves as separating from

each other when we went off to start communities in the

country because we grew up with a sense of being part of a

huge cohort. It was a strategic withdrawal, temporary and

dictated by necessity. We were just trying to get some

breathing room. We needed space from the oppressive

atmosphere of the then dominant paradigm, not from others

of our generation. At the time of the formation of those

Petrie dishes, the emergence of a worldwide community

was well underway, facilitated by real time media,

necessitated by global threats like the atomic bomb, and

represented by the iconic image of the whole earth from

space. Ours was the first generation in history to grow up

with these factors shaping the inborn tendency to imprint

the culture of tribe or group. So we grew up with, and

imprinted, the whole planet as our home and all people as

our tribe.

We wanted to do everything different and better.

We had, and still have, a clear overall vision. It is a

completely alternative paradigm from the mainstream

world view of the 50s USA. It is a vision of cooperation

43Unless otherwise stated the quotations below are from Mountainskyrainbow essay.

20

instead of competitive social structures, partnership instead

of dominator decision making, and sustainable grassroots

rather than depletive food and energy systems.

But hey, wow, the 50s USA was over 60 years ago!

A LOT has changed! And humanity has demonstrated that

anything we can conceive of, and decide to do, can be

accomplished. Some of those Petri dishes produced such

attractive ideas that they were adopted widely and are now

mainstream. Most of them, actually. WE ARE THE

MAINSTREAM CULTURE OF THE FUTURE! And the

future is here. All of the needs that required going off and

starting alternative systems are now established in the

greater world and available to anyone who searches.

The Petrie dishes have all burst, the purpose of their

seed developing mechanism having been fulfilled. They

have succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. The good

ideas are proliferating and being refined by being shared in

real time across all cultural and national boundaries. It is

about individual empowerment, freedom, communication

and voluntary cooperation, and local innovation and

adaptation. It is about peaceful change. It is deeply and

profoundly about love.

And in many areas, these values and ideas have

definitely taken over and flourish today, to the growing

benefit of generations that take them for granted, regarding

the old ways as barbaric. For example, women’s

empowerment, the younger generation’s acceptance of gay

relationships, and the huge growth of self actualization

techniques. Concern about the environment is no longer a

theoretical issue. Electric cars zip around, rooftops are

decorated with solar panels, the garbage collectors all take

21

recycling. What was a controversial struggle when I was in

grade school, the civil rights movement, is settled policy.

We have a black president!

Omni suggests that the communal outposts for incubating new ideas have grown

into lampposts to illuminate the cultural conversation. “The lampposts now line the

routes, the connected networks of communication. The image is like the nighttime view

of the whole earth from space with glowing spider webs connecting cities; the whole

thing is lighting up!”

. . . the 70s communes did not fail and disappear,

they became so successful that they merged, and now the

values they embodied are blooming worldwide. The need

for this is so urgent at this time of ecological crisis that it

comes just in time, if that. Not only is there no longer a

need to go off and separate from mainstream society,

indeed just the opposite is the case now! . . . all of the

functions of the isolated alternative community are now

being fulfilled in the greater global community. It is time

to consolidate and fill in the network that had been forming

lo these many decades. That is exactly what is happening.

WE ARE NOW CONSCIOUSLY TAKING

RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE WHOLE PLANET.

Developmental Communalism: Communal Living Promises Security, Solidarity,

and Survival for the 21st Century and Beyond

Frank Zappa, the iconic American rock and jazz musician and songwriter whose

lyrics reflected his radical views against established social and political processes,

structures, and movements, graphically expressed the doubt that effective humanitarian

reform could be possible by any means. In May 1993, a few months before his death, he

wrote pessimistically:

You can sit down and write a prescription for a utopia but

then what the hell? You can’t legislate humanism. You

can’t make people be nice to each other. You can’t even

22

hardly trick them into it. They’ll do it voluntarily if you

take the pressure off them but that costs money. And

who’s got the money? People who don’t give a damn.

How can you hope? You’re naïve if you hope.44

Many shared Zappa’s doubt, yet hope springs eternal in the voluntary, nonviolent

communal method of social change. Zappa’s quotation was bravely selected to head the

preface of the 1994/1995 issue of The Guide to Communal Living, a publication of the

Communes Network in Britain. That preface posed the question directly: “How can we

hope?” Then it asserted:

Widespread disillusion with conventional politics, and

political parties, as a source of hope is leading more and

more people to turn to small scale community

initiatives . . . . These initiatives are building on the

successes (and learning from the failures) of the various

experiments in community politics that started in the 1970s.

Of those experiments intentional communities – or

communes as they were called then – were perhaps some of

the higher profile experiments offering prescriptions of

utopia, due mainly to media interest in sex, drugs and

wholemeal rolls. Can the communes of the seventies (and

before) . . . be seen as harbingers of hope?45

With faith in developmental communalism as theoretical evidence for this hope, the

editors reprinted in this issue my 1988 address to the International Communal Studies

Association titled “Developmental Communalism: an Alternative Approach to

Communal Studies.”

In retrospect, the editors showed an uncanny anticipation of the adoption of 1970s

communal reforms into the worldwide culture of the twenty-first century—the ultimate,

integrative stage of developmental communalism now so evident. In fact, communal

living and developmental communalism in all their facets are still very much alive. In the

44Quoted in The Guide to Communal Living: Diggers & Dreamers 94/95 (Redfield Community, Winslow, Buckinghamshire, UK: Communes Network Publication, 1993), 5.

45Ibid.

23

broadest sense, humanity has proven cooperation an essential element in life and

civilization from early tribes to modern nations. During times of crises — hurricanes,

tsunamis, and earthquakes — we respond instinctively with relief. It is all too easy to

forget in good times that none of the roads, public schools, waste disposal, or fire and

police protection, could be possible without collective action. We are by nature

cooperative and collective as well as contrary and competitive. The small, voluntary

social units that individuals and movements periodically form serve as catalysts for

change within this larger social fabric. These become experimental laboratories for

testing different and perhaps better ways of relating, believing and doing. If they work,

the larger society may adopt the most relevant and promising of their reforms as is

happening now from the communal experimentation done in the late twentieth century.

All the security, solidarity, and survival benefits, which have been the great

appeal of communal living for millennia, are just as viable and vitally needed in the

twenty-first century. Whether it be security from loneliness or a depressed economy,

solidarity in the fellowship of trusted and like-minded friends, or survival from the threats

from a warming planet or the pollution and exhaustion of energy sources, communal

living in a multitude of forms is relevant to today’s world. In an article in the 2010

Communities Directory titled “Good News in Hard Times,” Laird Schaub, executive

secretary of the Fellowship for Intentional Community, writes that:

the promise and hope of community stands out all the

brighter in bleak times. In hard times it becomes more

readily apparent how a strong social web can also become

an economic safety net. When the normal job market is

disrupted, many people need to scramble to make ends

meet. While some of this may be accomplished with belt

tightening (or perhaps buying a new belt), there are more

creative options—all of which intentional communities are

excellent at fostering: Barter (and non-monetary local

economics), Sharing (instead of owning), Economics of

scale (buying together), Meeting more of your needs within

walking (or biking) distance, [and] Do-It-Yourself (with a

24

little help from your friends). . . . The ultimate security is

not a fat bank account (just ask those whose house equity

or retirement accounts have dropped precipitously; its

relationships. Security is the people who will be there for

you when you need help. Like right now. . . . And the

beauty of this approach is that it applies just as well when

times get better. It turns out that sharing—and figuring out

how [to] get along better with one’s neighbors—is always a

good idea.46

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