Communal Architecture: Social and Physical

The Canadian Review of American Studies, Volume IX, Number I, Spring, 197 8 I Communal Architecture: Social and Physical William P. Thompson Kenneth Rexroth. Communalism: From Its Origins to the Twentieth Century. New York: Seabury Press, 1974. 305 + xviii pp. Dolores Hayden. Seven American Utopias: The Architecture of Comrnunitarian Socialism, 1790-1915.Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1976. 401 + ix pp.+ 246 b/w illus. That the last several years should have produced a spate of books onthe subject of communalistic societies is not surprising. In many ways it constitutes the literary correlative, response or reaction to certain trends which have been enacted in the society and culture of the past decade and a half. Disillusionment with American politics as evidenced by the Vietnam War. for example, together with the world recession of the I960's and '70's, occasioned the formation of hundreds of communes by "drop outs" fromthe mainstream of Western society. Similarly, that element in Western civilization which has always been critical of materialism and capitalism, and accordingly has been attracted to the philosophies of anarchism and socialism, _wasgiven added stimulation by the "energy crisis" of the 1970's and by the discovery of corruption in high places which climaxed withthe resignation of Richard Nixon as President in August, 1974. But if in contemporary American society, communalism has an immediate and practical significance, the ideal of a simple life lived in harmony withthe land has long been a part of the Western tradition and has been sketchedb) men as different in time and place as Jean Jacques Rousseau (Emile)and Thoreau ( Walden), although regrettably most modern day communalists have not read these works. Nor, possibly, are many contemporary foundm of communes familiar with the experiments conducted in this respect inthe past, which experiments and the conclusions to be drawn from them arethe subject of two recent studies of communal living. I Communal Architecture 97 InCommunalism, Kenneth Rexroth attempts to provide a developmental overview of the philosophy and the practice of a communal society. He begins with a discussion of the neolithic village and ends with a commentary on the present-day Hutterites. In the process, he discusses the Hussites, Anabaptists, Diggers, Shakers, Inspirationalists, Oneidans, Owenites, Brook Farmers, fourieristsand Icarians. Clearly the book is designed as an introduction to thesubjectby an authority on it, and to this effect it constitutes a marvellous example of condensation: Robert Owen and his projects are treated in 4500 words, Fourierism in 2800, and Oneida in 2400 ! Unfortunately, the work is marred by many factual errors: there was no Shaker settlement in Florida (see p. 200); nor was it their holding all things incommonthat caused the Noyes group to leave Putney, Vermont, but rather alawsuit against Noyes for blasphemy and licentious conduct (seep. 210). And moreserious, perhaps, are the unsupported assertions and dubious interpretations .In his introduction, Rexroth pontifically observes, for example, that "thesymptoms of the collapse of the civilization are all about us, and they arefar more pronounced than they were in the last years of the Roman Empire" (p. xvii). Or again, on the subject of the North American Phalanx, hestates that when faced with loss occasioned by fire, the stockholders decided against raising funds for rebuilding and instead dissolved the colony. Such an explanation is much too facile and ignores the more basic reason fordissolution. Onthe positive side, Rexroth frequently summarizes with a deft hand the respective achievements of a community: "New Harmony provided an exampleof what not to do in organization of a secular communalistic community. But it also introduced America to educational methods which would profoundly influence all public education" (p. 229). And at times his generalizations and speculations are intellectually provocative, as for example when in the process of commenting upon communal beliefs and procedures henotesthe resemblance of certain Shaker practices to those of Negro slaves intheSouth and to Haitian voodoo rituals and then goes on to suggest that suchpractices may have been introduced to the Shakers by Blacks who escaped and came to live with them. Butif the far-ranging scope of Rexroth's book is conducive toward such observations and shows the advantage to be gained from seeing the respective communities as part of...