Utopia Now!
January 4, 2018 8:26 AM Subscribe
Meagan Day writes about five experimental Utopias in US history for Timeline - Bible Communists embrace free love in Oneida, NY - Kansas’ octagon obsessed vegetarians - Socialist loggers in the Sierra Nevadas railroaded by capitalism - Home, Washington was red, nude and without rules - All One Farm grows apples, drops acid, and eventually poisons millions.
I read Miriam Davis Colt's sad memoir of her ill-fated journey to that Kansas vegetarian paradise, "Went to Kansas : being a thrilling account of an ill-fated expedition to that fairy land, and its sad results : together with a sketch of the life of the author, and how the world goes with her"--available via archive.org, among other places: https://archive.org/details/wenttokansasbein00colt . Such a difficult journey to even get there, and then a hardscrabble bare existence, and then a tragic journey back to a home she didn't have anymore.
posted by theatro at 8:51 AM on January 4, 2018
posted by theatro at 8:51 AM on January 4, 2018
in the absence of rules, nearly anyone could join the community, even if they didn’t accept the standards of community behavior that had previously characterized its culture. And just as colonists were free to do as they pleased, so too were other colonists free to antagonize them, with no formal procedure to sort the whole thing outReddit.
posted by Fizz at 9:25 AM on January 4, 2018 [16 favorites]
Along the same lines, there's Sointula in British Columbia.
In Sointula, Survival of the Finnish:
At the dawn of the 20th century, countless immigrants arrived in Canada. Some of them from Finland ended up working in Robert Dunsmuir's Nanaimo coal mines. They were hard workers, but they hated Dunsmuir's kind of brutally exploitive work. Dreaming of something better, they summoned a Finnish writer and activist, Matti Kurikka, to lead them in creating a new kind of community.
That was Sointula, Finnish for "place of harmony," a pioneer town carved out of the woods on Malcolm Island near the northern end of Vancouver Island. It was to be a co-operative community of utopian socialists.
[...]
Matti Kurikka, as it turned out, was better at writing than at running a community. His schemes effectively bankrupted Sointula within a few years, but many of the settlers kept the community alive by rowing out along the coast in search of work as fishers or loggers.
In hindsight, those working-class Finns were a paradox: believers in a co-operative community, they were also do-it-yourself individualists. They had no love for the kind of government that had supported Robert Dunsmuir and B.C.'s other early robber barons. Their original utopia might be dead, but the new Sointula was an inward-looking community determined to go its own way and to look after itself. For good or ill, it still is.
In the Dirty Thirties, Sointulans put their kids in the Soviet-inspired Young Pioneers, not the Boy Scouts. After the Second World War, a new wave of Finnish émigrés arrived on the island with a more critical view of communism.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:29 AM on January 4, 2018
In Sointula, Survival of the Finnish:
At the dawn of the 20th century, countless immigrants arrived in Canada. Some of them from Finland ended up working in Robert Dunsmuir's Nanaimo coal mines. They were hard workers, but they hated Dunsmuir's kind of brutally exploitive work. Dreaming of something better, they summoned a Finnish writer and activist, Matti Kurikka, to lead them in creating a new kind of community.
That was Sointula, Finnish for "place of harmony," a pioneer town carved out of the woods on Malcolm Island near the northern end of Vancouver Island. It was to be a co-operative community of utopian socialists.
[...]
Matti Kurikka, as it turned out, was better at writing than at running a community. His schemes effectively bankrupted Sointula within a few years, but many of the settlers kept the community alive by rowing out along the coast in search of work as fishers or loggers.
In hindsight, those working-class Finns were a paradox: believers in a co-operative community, they were also do-it-yourself individualists. They had no love for the kind of government that had supported Robert Dunsmuir and B.C.'s other early robber barons. Their original utopia might be dead, but the new Sointula was an inward-looking community determined to go its own way and to look after itself. For good or ill, it still is.
In the Dirty Thirties, Sointulans put their kids in the Soviet-inspired Young Pioneers, not the Boy Scouts. After the Second World War, a new wave of Finnish émigrés arrived on the island with a more critical view of communism.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:29 AM on January 4, 2018
Weird to talk about the Oneida commune without mentioning Charles Guiteau.
posted by Navelgazer at 9:30 AM on January 4, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Navelgazer at 9:30 AM on January 4, 2018 [2 favorites]
In hindsight, those working-class Finns were a paradox: believers in a co-operative community, they were also do-it-yourself individualists.
There is a difference between doing it yourself and being out for yourself, but both get called individualism.
posted by Zalzidrax at 9:50 AM on January 4, 2018 [11 favorites]
There is a difference between doing it yourself and being out for yourself, but both get called individualism.
posted by Zalzidrax at 9:50 AM on January 4, 2018 [11 favorites]
One of my favorite podcasts is doing a series on Utopias.
posted by rikschell at 10:10 AM on January 4, 2018
posted by rikschell at 10:10 AM on January 4, 2018
Previously on the Oneida cult. There was a lot wrong there.
posted by Xoc at 10:42 AM on January 4, 2018
posted by Xoc at 10:42 AM on January 4, 2018
Seems like five pretty random picks out of many Utopian experiments, some ongoing — maybe she is going to write more of these?
posted by beagle at 11:00 AM on January 4, 2018
posted by beagle at 11:00 AM on January 4, 2018
If Reddit is the example of an "online Utopia" that doesn't work, then MetaFilter is the one that does. (Which just shows the benefit of professional moderation/management)
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:35 PM on January 4, 2018
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:35 PM on January 4, 2018
Jo Freedman's "Tyranny of Structurelessness" seems applicable to many of these.
posted by rmd1023 at 1:46 PM on January 4, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by rmd1023 at 1:46 PM on January 4, 2018 [6 favorites]
In counterpoint, The Farm in Tennessee has been active for nearly 50 years. The numbers have dropped quite a bit from their peak of about 1200 in the early 80s, but as more people are worried about tech-based lifestyles in general, they might pick back up.
They started as a communist group; that part has changed. I remember hearing they were originally free-love nudists; it's hard to find any hint of that now. They're still strongly vegetarian and pacifist. (They don't disallow eating meat, but they don't raise livestock for food nor allow hunting for meat. Presumably, residents who want the occasional burger pick one up in town.) Vanity Fair had an article on them 10 years ago that mentioned the poly relationships they used to have and some of their other history.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 2:43 PM on January 4, 2018 [1 favorite]
They started as a communist group; that part has changed. I remember hearing they were originally free-love nudists; it's hard to find any hint of that now. They're still strongly vegetarian and pacifist. (They don't disallow eating meat, but they don't raise livestock for food nor allow hunting for meat. Presumably, residents who want the occasional burger pick one up in town.) Vanity Fair had an article on them 10 years ago that mentioned the poly relationships they used to have and some of their other history.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 2:43 PM on January 4, 2018 [1 favorite]
Private property had been abolished, and all labor was both essential and non-coercive.
I don't know about non-coercive. Their rule was "no work, no food."
which displaced the colonists using eminent domain in 1890
Not so. The government said that the colony never had a lawful claim on the land (which was still public land), so they had no property interest that could be taken. I just spent 15 minutes reading olde-timey Congressional Records, and it was much weirder than eminent domain.
posted by jpe at 3:23 PM on January 4, 2018
I don't know about non-coercive. Their rule was "no work, no food."
which displaced the colonists using eminent domain in 1890
Not so. The government said that the colony never had a lawful claim on the land (which was still public land), so they had no property interest that could be taken. I just spent 15 minutes reading olde-timey Congressional Records, and it was much weirder than eminent domain.
posted by jpe at 3:23 PM on January 4, 2018
Reunion Tower in Dallas Texas is named after a socialist utopia started outside dallas in 1855
And that was the first and last socialist utopia in Texas. I mean god bless ya Austin you tried.
posted by Annika Cicada at 7:07 PM on January 4, 2018 [2 favorites]
And that was the first and last socialist utopia in Texas. I mean god bless ya Austin you tried.
posted by Annika Cicada at 7:07 PM on January 4, 2018 [2 favorites]
A friend of mine's sister spent some time at a commune - I think it was The Farm but I'm not totally sure - but it sure sounded like proof that there are functioning communes out there.
posted by rmd1023 at 8:30 PM on January 4, 2018
posted by rmd1023 at 8:30 PM on January 4, 2018
Jorn Barger of Robot Wisdom [previously] is noted to have been at The Farm back in the 1970s.
Being a Swede in the Midwest, my family has been to Bishop Hill a number of times (the best time to go is Midsommar, naturally). Although like many utopian communities it did not last as such, unlike many others it left a lasting legacy in architecture, and a general interest in the tourist trade (Wikipedia indicates that no known descendants of the colonists remain) has meant the village is maintained with as great deal of historic character. The only problem is that it's pretty far out of the way from just about anywhere.
The other related site in Illinois is, of course, Nauvoo. For Reasons it isn't often discussed in the same breath as the other more directly utopian communities, but it's interesting to contemplate as an example of one that survived (after relocation, to be sure) and thrived.
posted by dhartung at 11:41 PM on January 4, 2018
Being a Swede in the Midwest, my family has been to Bishop Hill a number of times (the best time to go is Midsommar, naturally). Although like many utopian communities it did not last as such, unlike many others it left a lasting legacy in architecture, and a general interest in the tourist trade (Wikipedia indicates that no known descendants of the colonists remain) has meant the village is maintained with as great deal of historic character. The only problem is that it's pretty far out of the way from just about anywhere.
The other related site in Illinois is, of course, Nauvoo. For Reasons it isn't often discussed in the same breath as the other more directly utopian communities, but it's interesting to contemplate as an example of one that survived (after relocation, to be sure) and thrived.
posted by dhartung at 11:41 PM on January 4, 2018
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Although there's a real lesson about the pitfall of an open-to-all, anarchic community in that story: posted by Panjandrum at 8:48 AM on January 4, 2018 [5 favorites]