Ken Hanley wrote:
>Well, this list strikes me as rather insular. Louis talks about Co-ops in
>the same breath with utopian socialism. On the prairies co-ops, credit
>unions, etc. are all
>around us. They are not failing.
One of the things that must not be neglected is the very real value of such
experiments that brought tangible improvements to the lives of working
people. The problem is not that they didn't work, but rather that they were
not answers to the real problem which is who rules the state and therefore
has the ability to direct the economy as a whole.
St. Petersburg Times, February 13, 1994, Sunday, City Edition
WITHOUT SIN: The Life and Death of the Oneida Community
By Spencer Klaw
Viking, $ 25
UTOPIAN EPISODES: Daily Life in Experimental Colonies Dedicated to Changing
the World
By Seymour R. Kesten
Syracuse University Press, $ 39.95
Reviewed by Delilah Jones
In the 19th century the secret to maintaining a society of free love was
the manufacture of household goods, and the real shame today is that no one
in the 1960s ever really figured that out.
Religious and socially inspired utopian experiments were rather common in
19th-century America. There were dozens of them from the 1820s until
shortly after the Civil War, including New Harmony, Brook Farm and Icaria.
Many of these were not devoted to free love at all , but one of the most
famous of them all was: the Oneida community, which produced a wide range
of household products in its time and even today remains a name recognized
for its fine silverware (as is Amana, a once-successful community, whose
name is still known for its refrigerators).
Many of these utopian communities were inspired by the ideas of Charles
Fourier, a Frenchman who believed that people should be like butterflies -
moving from one job to another rather than staying always in the same place
- thereby attaining the maximum achievement (because no one would get bored
or fall into a rut) - although, frankly, he also believed that a golden age
of harmony was approaching in which the sea would lose its saltiness and
turn to lemonade, and/or by those of Robert Owen, who was rather more
inspired by notions of "enlightened capitalism."
Seymour Kesten's rather ploddingly written Utopian Episodes: Daily Life in
Experimental Colonies Dedicated to Changing the World covers the history
and background of these men and the history of the Utopian movement, noting
that it arose as a response to poor social conditions in 19th-century
America. During this industrial age, people tended to come down on one of
two sides - and still do today - that the troubles of society were due, on
the one hand, to the evils of sin, and, on the other, to the evils of
poverty, ignorance and inequality.
If nothing else is true about Americans, it is that they are attracted by
kooks and extremists with solutions to their problems (especially economic
woes and psychic agonies). The louder and the kookier they are, the more we
seem to like them .
My own favorite 19th-century kook has to be John Humphrey Noyes, who
founded the Oneida community - which had the good sense to couple free love
with the manufacture of silverware and other household goods (including the
first Lazy Susan, which was invented at Oneida). The community put into
thriving economic play Noyes' theories of complex marriage (which is to say
free love among members of the community, provided that Noyes approved),
Stirpiculture (a word for human breeding coined by Noyes) and Perfectionism
(a 19th-century religious movement that was connected with the Utopian
movement).
The fascinating rise and fall of the Oneida experiment (which had its
genesis in Noyes' conception that God had made all men and women without
sin, and therefore nothing that brings pleasure - such as intercourse - can
possibly be a sin) is entertainingly narrated by Spencer Klaw in his lively
Without Sin: The Life and Death of the Oneida Community. The Oneidans, for
more than 30 years, managed to operate a communal society with thriving
businesses and sexual freedom (for its time) and social equality
(relatively) for women.
Perhaps I like Noyes because he succeeded, and nothing is more attractive
than success, or maybe I just like his silverware; but what could be more
entertaining to read than the story of a guy who wanted to sleep with any
woman he desired - so he invented a religion and a God-given mission that
made it not only an okay thing to do, but a moral imperative?
Okay, so maybe I don't approve of the fact that he slept with his nieces,
but I remain steadfast in my belief that Noyes was right about variety
being the path to heaven - and right when he said it was dangerous to get
into a rut because the devil will always know where to find you. Movement
and variety are the essence of American life. Maybe the reason we like
kooks so much is that they manage, somehow, to stick out from among all
those freshly scrubbed millions.
Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
