The New Communes [antikvár]

PREFACE"Let us dream daily, and with/extreme energy, but always keeping in mind that our/dreams will come to nothing. Let us be ardent and skeptical" Maurice BarresMy intrigue with the new Utopians began in two ways: I developed a generalized interest in Utopian thought as I studied young people who were enmeshed in the Utopian ideology of a rather orthodox religious sectthe Latter-Day Saints1and my political concerns led me to follow with interest the fortunes of the New Left on college campuses. Whether one followed the moderate route of Gene McCarthy's "children's crusade" or the rather more militant voice of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or Students for a Democratic Society, the political climate of America brought tremendous frustration and anger to those seeking racial justice or an end to the seemingly interminable war in Vietnam. The apolitical "hippies," "diggers," and "heads" who attempted early semicommunal ventures in Greenwich Village or Haight-Ashbury had always maintained that the American society was not worth saving. Many later communalists, however, "dropped in" to their new utopias to gain strength to confront, rather than ignore, the outside world.I have attempted in this book to describe some of the Utopian and communalist movements now extant in the United States. Describing many of the groups is much like discussing the structure of the proverbial can of worms. Some Utopian groups never get to the point of actualizing their ideas; others begin energetically only to fold up their tents (sometimes quite literally) and move on to new experiments. Also, since my definitions of Utopians and communalists are inclusive, groups as dissimilar as California hip communalists and the Catholic workers arei. See my unpublished doctoral dissertation, Dilemmas of Utopian Commitment in a Contemporary Religious Sect (Louisiana State University, 1969)r