Charles Nordhoff studied and visited the communes of his day. Writing before the end of the 19th century, his description of the social aspects of communal life was widely known. He found that those communes were often better organized than individual farms in the overall economy, with a more complete division of labor and a more thorough work plan. Nordhoff expressed surprise at the business and mechanical skill extant in every commune, and the ease and certainty with which the brains came to the top. His significant conclusion was that the fundamental principle of communal life was that individuals must subordinate their will to the general interest: practically, that requires unquestioning obedience by the members toward the leaders of the society.
In Nordhoff’s view, the character of the communal leaders affects the development of the society over which they preside. The leader’s force and ability form the habits and even the thought of his followers. The communes of Nordhoff’s era were usually “quite democratic” with no member playing the role of a servant. Often, practicing managers were elected to be in charge of business dealings.
On occasion he saw the democratic aspect of the communes as a liability. Nordhoff referred to the community members as “communists,” for the word had not yet taken on the implications it assumed when communist parties were organized in Europe. He found his communists clean and tidy, if not fashionable. As neighbors, they were honest, reliable and good workers. As one would expect, they were as humane and charitable as their generally religious orientation suggested. Their animals were better cared for than those of many of their neighbors. Communal members enjoyed good longevity, eating well, retiring early, and refraining from alcohol (only Germans used wine and beer). When they were ill or grew old, they were tenderly cared for. They often lived to eighty or ninety years and remained robust and active. Communal life provided greater variety for daily labor, enhancing their versatility and abilities. They enjoyed a wider range of wholesome entertainments and leisure time activities with greater restraints against “debasing pleasures.” Nordhoff praised that life because it gave the participants independence, inculcating prudence and frugality. Self-sacrifice generally restrained selfishness and greed; increasing the happiness which comes from the moral side of human nature. Participants were shielded from the dread of misfortune or exposure in old age.
Nordhoff found the cultural interests and opportunities in the communes unnecessarily restrictive. Communes should own the best books, have music, eloquent lecturers, pleasant landscapes and fine architecture on their grounds. Too many were puritanically sparse with cultural refinements. Nevertheless, he concluded that the communist life was much freer from care and risk, easier, and much better in all material aspects. He sincerely wished the communitarian life would enjoy further development in the United States.
Another important scholar of communitarian life, Arthur Bestor, pointed out that the communitarians themselves, even the religious ones, liked to describe their proposals in terms of experimentation. He cites the view on experimentation of William Maclure, colleague of Robert Owen at New Harmony. According to Maclure, each township might experiment on everything that could enhance their happiness and comfort, so long as it did not interfere with the interests of their neighbors. Thus this great diversity of political, moral, and religious experiments could add to the facility and utility of their manufactures and useful arts. Any failed experiment could only hurt the designers and implementers of the speculation, nullifying their mistakes and eliminating their errors.
The Marxists also pointed out this distinction, writing about it unfavorably, of course. They contrasted it to their own revolutionary approach, which they saw as superior. Thus Friedrich Engels wrote that the utopians attempted to wrest the solution of social problems arising from economic conditions from the human brain. For Marxists, it seemed necessary to discover a new and more perfect system of social order and to impose this upon society from without by propaganda. Bestor concludes that the communitarian’s faith in social harmony (as opposed to the Marxian class warfare) was obviously the preference of Americans in general. Communitarian emphasis on voluntary action corresponds exactly to the American conception of freedom. The experimental aspect of communitarianism had great appeal for a nation of experimenters, which viewed even itself as an experiment. And sensing no class warfare, American communitarians could fit into organizations with which they could identify with little difficulty.
We must recognize, of course, that successful, small scale experimentation may not transfer seamlessly to success at the national level. The small communal institutions may supply some inspiration, and even some instruction, but would successful leadership at the communal level have the same characteristics as national leadership in a socialistic country? Would the membership, work force, and voting-level citizenry in a successful commune have the same characteristics as those in a socialist nation? Are the financial, social and political characteristics of a successful communal organization identical to those of the socialist state? We sense after a review of the communal utopias of the past that we are better equipped to think about socialism at the national level; we know a lot more than we would have known if the utopias had never existed at all. The major issue remains, of course, the voluntarism of the commune as opposed to the governmental enforcement of national-level socialism. There is certainly a place for experimentation in governance questions.
Some of the experiments began with strong advantages: charismatic leadership, devoted and diligent followers, cultural, ethnic, and lingual unity, and the compelling and uniting force of faith in a benevolent Deity. But the united effort produced initially was difficult to sustain. Experiments without these benefits were difficult even to get started. Thus, the utopias did not
prove to be a means for the reshaping of the world or of bringing about a society that might supplant the market system. If that is so and if the task of building a social system is difficult on a small scale, we are constrained to ask how a huge society’s economic experiment with socialism can be perceived to be as simple a task as winning an election and calling the party faithful to action. Asking an entire nation to work to sustain a system that requires huge taxes and sacrifice for one large segment of the social fabric and offers entitlements that ostensibly allow the cessation of personal labor, sacrifice and taxation for another large segment of the population may not be as simple as implementing legislative chicanery to pass a healthcare law.
Conclusions
The United States are a huge country of very diverse population; its religious points of view are divergent, its social unity shattered by the exploitation and magnification of ethnic differences by the very politicians who abhor unity while decrying its absence. Let us conclude by noting some of the more significant differences between local and national socialism, the former being some variant of the communitarian organizations we have been discussing.
First, socialism of the communitarian type is chosen by the participant, who can opt out. Socialism of the national type is chosen by the voters or the leader of the revolution and imposed on all other citizens. Individual communitarians
are permitted to abandon a communal organization, but citizen socialists would have to flee the hosting nation to do so. Second, communitarianism is financed by the participants. If practiced today, the communitarians must pay for their own community, not to mention the taxes paid to fund the financial projects and activities of state and federal governments as well. That is to say that state socialism would be expected to “crowd out” attempts to participate in communitarianism, which is local socialism. Third, communitarians desire to demonstrate a better way for a society to live. Socialists are convinced that they already know the better way and wish to impose it upon their fellow citizens. Fourth, communitarians generally expect to contribute to their living by participating in some kind of work. Socialism has eliminated work requirements for citizens; those citizens who work very productively however, will be heavily taxed in the American model. This contrasts with the Scandinavian model of social welfare capitalism, which holds that all citizens should share in bearing the burden of taxation. Fifth, communitarians may opt for a purely secular lifestyle or a more religious lifestyle, depending on the particular organization they choose to join. Citizens of a socialist nation may only choose to be a part of a secular community. At this juncture, they may still choose to associate with a private religious group of their choice.