[toeslist] Upon the Shoulders of Communitarian Giants
Allen Butcher
Anticipating the First New Community Movement of the 21st Century
A. Allen Butcher, Denver, March 30, 2008
If I have seen further it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.
Isaac Newton (16421727)
Every day we hear of the quickening changes in our world:
environmental, economic, technological, political, spiritual. In
every previous such era of change intentional community has played a
role, 1 and so it is in our time as well. To better understand the
role of community in our contemporary milange of crisis and
opportunity it can help to climb upon the shoulders of one of the
giants of the communitarian movements for better views of the way
we've come, the path we're on, and the possible ways forward in time.
Befriend the giant who best represents your view of community and
hold on!
Looking back at the latter half of the 20th Century we can see the
trails of community designs and trends that led to the beginning of
several new intentional community movements. These include: various
Eastern and Western spiritual community traditions, and out of one of
the latter came the consensus process of governance; innovations in
the science of psychology, resulting in better systems of
labor-sharing in communal society; a range of new inter-personal and
group communication processes in communities, coming out of the sexual
revolution and the support for gender equality; temporary celebrations
of gifting and sharing in Rainbow Gatherings, Burning Man, Witch Camp
and other events; a range of methods of holding land in common and of
sharing land rent in the community land trust movement; various
sustainable agriculture and renewable energy designs concentrated in
the ecovillage movement; and the practice of sharing privately-owned
property with particular architectural and land use designs comprising
the cohousing movement. That was such a time of creativity by
communitarian theorists and activists!
All of the new movements of the 20th Century, along with earlier
communitarian models including housing cooperatives and the many
religious community traditions, blazed the different trails that
people took through earlier periods of challenge and change to where
we are today. People looked carefully at the problems of their day
and devised answers which they then lived as their chosen expression
of community.
If we were to look closely at the problems of our day, we might then
ask our favorite communitarian giant, "What is the root cause of all
of the problems in the world?" The answer may be given that humans
are responsible for the world they create. Our current financial and
economic problems are due to mismanagement allowing greed to grow like
a cancer. Our wars are due to the behavior of nations led by rulers
desiring power over others, whether to control their land and other
natural resources, or their production and markets, or to impose
change in their way of life or culture. Our pseudo-wars or "moral
equivalents of war" such as the war-on-poverty and the war-on-drugs
are due to the problems of discrimination and the inequalities of the
economic system and the feeding of addictions. Much of the change in
our environment is due to human activities diminishing the quality of
our air, land and water. All of these problems can be explained as
resulting from the values of possessiveness and of competition, and of
the system which supports those values called monetary economics.
If humans are responsible for their own problems, then humans must
take responsibility for resolving them. Depending upon the giant you
choose to befriend, the suggestion may be made that a good place to
begin to understand the origins of our problems is in 1st Timothy 6:10
in the "Bible," where it is written that, "For the love of money is
the root of all evil." If our tribulations are all traceable to the
evil of the power that flows from money, then we can see that the
opposite of the values of the monetary system of possessiveness and of
competition must be sharing and cooperation, and therefore it may be
affirmed, "That the love of gifting and sharing is the root of
happiness!" 2
Sitting upon the shoulders of one's favorite communitarian giant it
may be explained to us that intentional community through the ages of
civilization may be seen as the method people have used for getting
outside of the exchange systems of barter and of monetary economics,
to instead practice the economic processes of gifting and sharing.
Just like with money, these two processes can involve both material
things and labor, with the latter involving the two non-monetary
practices of labor-gifting and of labor-sharing.
All forms of intentional community can be said to use either
labor-gifting or labor-sharing, or a combination of the two. Notice
that gifting and sharing do not involve any kind of exchange, neither
any form of alternative currency, nor even any form of labor exchange.
3 Intentional communities can use alternative currencies and labor
exchanges if desired, yet they all use gifting and/or sharing. Among
these the most complete alternative to monetary economics is the
vacation-credit form of labor-sharing, used in communal societies
which emphasize commonly-owned property through income-sharing. Once
a common agreement among a group of people is made to contribute an
equal amount of labor to the community, it is no longer a process of
gifting but of sharing.
By far the most common non-monetary economic system in the communities
movement is labor-gifting, in which each member determines their own
level of time or labor contribution. Labor-gifting is purely
voluntary, and although there may be expectations of reciprocity, and
even implicit reinforcement in the culture of the community for
practicing labor gifting, individual members remain free to
participate as little as they like or not at all, while remaining a
member. This is because their labor agreements are secondary to their
monetary agreements. The fastest growing form of community today,
cohousing, uses labor-gifting almost exclusively rather than
labor-sharing.
Ask any communitarian giant and they will likely affirm that
particular aspects of a community design may be changed, yet as long
as labor-gifting is maintained the community will thrive! For that
matter the same is true of labor-sharing, with regard to which it is
said of at least one communal society that, "Our labor-credit system
is the glue that keeps this community together." 4
The next question to ask one's friendly giant is, "If maintaining
community is as easy as labor-gifting, what then inspires people to
create community to begin with?" The answers to this question will
vary, as different people find inspiration for making a change in
their lives from different experiences. Yet what we have now, that we
didn't before, is the success of cohousing, providing inspiration for
people who cannot afford cohousing to look for simpler ways to acquire
what cohousers have, the joy of community!
Sitting upon the shoulders of communitarian giants one hears talk
among them of the visions they have for the future of community. They
cite the aging of the baby-boomers who can expect healthy and
energetic lives long after retirement. Many of those may revisit the
communitarian ideals of the `60s and `70s, or discover and appreciate
them for the first time now that they have time and assets to
contribute to creating community. With limited income as retirees
they will likely appreciate the non-monetary economics of
labor-gifting for providing all the wonderful luxuries of
communitarianism that money alone cannot buy! 5
Another thought circulating among communitarian giants is that the
fears of ecosystem and of economic collapse may yet be realized. In
response, relocalization may replace globalization once the cost of
shipping energy and commodities such as food around the world becomes
prohibitive, or if the monetary system itself fails to serve human
needs. Then humans will need to know how to live by gifting and sharing!
Yet the idea that we may some day have no choice but to rely upon
communitarian gifting and sharing is fatalistic. The economic
dislocations of Peak Oil and the demise of the petroleum culture may
be phenomenal and inevitable, yet the monetary system existed before
the age of oil and it will persist long after. Therefore an
ecological or economic or other crisis will not of itself result in
people abandoning the monetary system, they will seek to revive it as
was done during and after the Great Depression. In order to enjoy a
possible future of cooperation and harmony without reliance upon
possessive and competitive economic systems people must work to create
the alternative, otherwise we will continually recreate what we've
always known.
Extra effort is now required in this 21st Century in order to see
beyond the range of vision of the communitarian giants, so it's time
to rise from our seats and stand upon the shoulders of these giants.
It appears from this vantage point that if cohousing is currently the
fastest growing intentional community movement, and if their primary
success factors are the sharing of privately-owned property and the
facilitation of labor-gifting, then it follows that sharing private
property and labor-giting provide the greatest potential for a new
community movement in the new millennium.
If the practice of labor-gifting among people holding private property
is maintained, then we can change any or even all other established
criteria of classic cohousing, to create a new community movement that
is not cohousing yet that may share the success of cohousing, if not
surpass it! It isn't the cost of cohousing that makes it successful,
nor the reliance upon professionals, nor any particular archtectural
or land use design element, instead it is the common agreements kept
by members that among other things results in the practice of
labor-gifting to community projects and services.
If the lesson of cohousing boils down to the simple statement that the
essence of collective community is the facilitation of labor-gifting
(and similarly that the essence of communal community is
labor-sharing), then the way becomes clear toward a new community
movement that only shares with cohousing the patterns of labor-gifting
and the sharing of private property, while all other aspects of
classic cohousing can be changed. 6 (See Appendix 1) The number of
people involved can be far fewer, and greater cohesiveness and
commitment may result when, contrary to classic cohousing, a
particular affinity is affirmed, whether religious, spiritual,
political, ideological, ethnic or other. The cost of creating a
non-cohousing collective community can be far less when existing
structures are converted to community use, rather than having to
contract with professional real estate developers. This essentially
spins off the "retro-fit cohousing" model to help create a new
community movement. Methods of real estate equity-sharing among
members can be developed through forms of legal organization such as
the limited liability company, 7 as opposed to the condominium legal
model used by cohousing.
To support the development of new intentional community movements in
the 21st Century we may anticipate the possible assistance of new
communications technologies. These may be particularly helpful in
urban communities for maintaining regular communication among
community members despite the distractions of the city.
Today there is research into methods of using cellular communications
technology for modifying human behavior. One such field is called
"persuasive technology," and the part of the electro-magnetic spectrum
that has been used for analog TV transmission has now been auctioned
to mobile phone companies for such use beginning in 2009. Yet as
communitarian movements have always managed to adapt technology to the
service of community, ways may be found to tweak this technology for
use in at least urban communities. The use of advanced mobile
communications technology for community may be given the name
"appreciative technology," building upon the management and planning
process called "appreciative inquiry" to assure that the psychology
involved is neither coercive nor manipulative yet that instead is
consensual in respecting our highest moral and ethical ideals of
sharing and cooperation.
With better understandings of how communications technologies can
support both labor-gifting and labor-sharing there may arise a greater
appreciation for non-monetary economics, both here on Earth and if
people manage to eventually establish settlements elsewhere in space.
For assistance in changing our culture we can appeal to the
multi-disciplinary field of utopian studies, to consider the lessons
of communitarian history and the suggestions of utopian literature. 8
In addition to historical models and theoretical works on the value,
ideals and designs of communitarian movements, there are also science
fiction anticipations of the future, such as in "Star Trek," a
non-monetary culture on a global scale where no one has gone before!
Inspiration from fantasy writings also provides metaphors and
allegories for explaining and affirming that money doesn't have to
rule our lives. We can destroy the hold that money and its imperative
of possessiveness has over our lives and our minds, a hold so strong
that it is as though money itself were the Precious! 9
It's a good place to be, upon the shoulders of communitarian giants.
Up here with the big picture one may see patterns in the forest of
lifestyle choices not visible at ground level that may be helpful in
choosing a path into the future. With all of this perceived wisdom,
and all of these received visions, it is time to climb down from lofty
metaphors and to apply these revelations to the question of how we are
each to live our values in our lifetime.
***
Each of the following references to the Culture Magic website is to a
free downloadable document in PDF format.
1 For a discussion on the influence of intentional community on the
dominant culture through history see: Intentional Community Theory;
and for a historical survey of community movements around the world
see: International and Historical Overview of Intentional Community,
http://www.culturemagic.org/RationalAltruism.html
2 For a presentation of different systems of labor-gifting and of
labor-sharing see: Gifting and Sharing: Living the Plenty Paradigm in
Cohousing and Communal Society,
http://www.culturemagic.org/RationalAltruism.html
3 For information on the range of labor systems see: Time-Based
Economics: A Community-Building Dynamic,
http://www.culturemagic.org/TimeBasedEconomics.html
4 Mala, Twin Oaks Community. Quoted by Emily Rems in "Ecovillage
People," BUST Magazine, Winter 2003. Retrieved from:
http://thefec.org/about/media/bust--magazine
5 For a list of qualities of intentional community, presented as
"luxuries," see: Intentioneering A Happiness Ethic,
http://www.culturemagic.org/Intentioneering.html
6 For a list of the six defining characteristics of cohousing see:
http://www.cohousing.org/overview.aspx
7 For more on the proposal for a new community movement see: HLAN:
Equity-Linked Affinity Network - Interpersonal Process, Financial
Structures and Legal Designs for Landed, Spirited, Joyous Urban
Community, http://www.culturemagic.org/EgalitarianCommonwealth.html
8 See: Timeline of Communitarian Movements and Literature,
http://www.culturemagic.org/RationalAltruism.html
9 See: Landed Rainbow: Allegory of Gifting and Sharing,
http://www.culturemagic.org/TimeBasedEconomics.html
***
Appendix 1: Cohousing Thesis versus HLAN Antithesis
The first new community movement of the 21st Century may arise from a
combination of the most successful aspects of existing communitarian
movements. Among these aspects may be an emphasis upon the cohousing
model of the sharing of privately-owned property and the facilitation
of the practice of labor-gifting, while each of the six classic
criteria of cohousing may be changed (see following).
To name such a new community movement, consider first the practice of
sharing private property, then the affirmation of a specific affinity
among a small group of people. Next, consider that a diverse
collection of sub-groups within a larger community, particularly an
urban community, permits each sub-group to adopt different methods of
sharing property, and permits each sub-group to affirm different
affinities. The name for such a new community movement is then
suggested to be, "equity-linked affinity network," forming the
acronym, "HLAN."
Six defining characteristics of cohousing (quoted from:
http://www.cohousing.org/overview.aspx) versus six defining
characteristics of HLAN:
CoHo 1. Participatory process. Future residents participate in the
design of the community so that it meets their needs. Some cohousing
communities are initiated or driven by a developer. In those cases, if
the developer brings the future resident group into the process late
in the planning, the residents will have less input into the design. A
well-designed, pedestrian-oriented community without significant
resident participation in the planning may be "cohousing-inspired,"
but it is not a cohousing community.
HLAN 1. Activist-driven process. An HLAN community begins with one
or more people who are able to acquire real estate finding those with
whom they may share the equity in the property through any of various
group real estate ownership structures or syndications. This requires
an initial articulation of a values-set for the community, whether
political, spiritual, philosophical, cultural or other. This is the
"affinity" in the acronym, "Equity-Linked Affinity Network," which may
evolve with community input after initiation by the founders.
CoHo 2. Neighborhood design. The physical layout and orientation of
the buildings (the site plan) encourage a sense of community. For
example, the private residences are clustered on the site, leaving
more shared open space. The dwellings typically face each other across
a pedestrian street or courtyard, with cars parked on the periphery.
Often, the front doorway of every home affords a view of the common
house. What far outweighs any specifics, however, is the intention to
create a strong sense of community, with design as one of the
facilitators.
HLAN 2. Intentioneering. The particular affinities affirmed by the
HLAN members creates the strong sense of community, providing the
foundation for the sharing of privately-owned and/or of commonly-owned
property. Since most HLAN communities will be retrofitted, or involve
acquiring and modifying existing structures, this will dictate many
aspects of the community's land use and architectural design. An HLAN
community may become a retrofit cohousing community, using the
condominium legal structure, or may become a "pod community" with
different parcels of land in different legal structures, like a
community land trust or a communal group.
CoHo 3. Common facilities. Common facilities are designed for daily
use, are an integral part of the community, and are always
supplemental to the private residences. The common house typically
includes a common kitchen, dining area, sitting area, children's
playroom and laundry, and also may contain a workshop, library,
exercise room, crafts room and/or one or two guest rooms. Except on
very tight urban sites, cohousing communities often have playground
equipment, lawns and gardens as well. Since the buildings are
clustered, larger sites may retain several or many acres of
undeveloped shared open space.
HLAN 3. Common facilities option. An HLAN community may or may not
involve common facilities. Any common facilities may involve the
sharing of privately-owned or of commonly-owned property, the former
being like cohousing or housing co-operative or other form of
collective intentional community, and the latter potentially involving
either some property placed under a community land trust or being
controlled by a communal core group.
CoHo 4. Resident management. Residents manage their own cohousing
communities, and also perform much of the work required to maintain
the property. They participate in the preparation of common meals, and
meet regularly to solve problems and develop policies for the community.
HLAN 4. Community management. HLAN communities may use any of a
range of management systems, sometimes involving all members including
renters, other times involving only the equity-sharing members in
decision-making.
CoHo 5. Non-hierarchical structure and decision-making. Leadership
roles naturally exist in cohousing communities, however no one person
(or persons) has authority over others. Most groups start with one or
two "burning souls." As people join the group, each person takes on
one or more roles consistent with his or her skills, abilities or
interests. Most cohousing groups make all of their decisions by
consensus, and, although many groups have a policy for voting if the
group cannot reach consensus after a number of attempts, it is rarely
or never necessary to resort to voting.
HLAN 5. Diverse governmental processes. As there is no one specific
legal structure used by HLAN communities (partnership, limited
liability company, S corporation, cooperative corporation, nonprofit,
etc), the governmental structure may range from consensus, to
democratic, to participatory with leaders, to authoritarian
governance. The latter may be the default situation in cases where all
or the majority of the real estate is owned by one or a few persons, a
partnership or a corporation, constituting the equity-sharing members,
while other members rent space from the community's core group, which
itself could be collective or communal.
CoHo 6. No shared community economy. The community is not a source
of income for its members. Occasionally, a cohousing community will
pay one of its residents to do a specific (usually time-limited) task,
but more typically the work will be considered that member's
contribution to the shared responsibilities.
HLAN 6. Shared community economy. Equity-sharing is practiced in
which members of the community receive equity accounts in the
community real estate, which they may withdraw according to community
agreements. Labor gifting, sharing and/or exchange systems may be
used. Worker-owned and/or community-owned businesses may also be
developed within the community, potentially linked to the real estate
equity.
Appendix 2: Communitarian Precedents for Sharing Private Property
When we think of sharing in community we tend to think of using
nonprofit and tax-exempt legal structures for holding community
property, and so it is ironic that the most successful intentional
communities utilize possessive economic and legal designs. The
deference may be defined as: collective intentional communities share
privately-owned property, while communal intentional communities share
commonly-owned property.
In the 19th Century the first secular intentional communities
typically used the "joint stock" legal format, which has evolved into
different legal forms today. Fourierist phalanxes and Grvnlund
cooperative commonwealth communities usually were joint stock
corporations. Charles Fourier was a French utopian socialist who
coined the term fiminisme in 1837 believing that "the extension of
women's rights was the general principle of all social progress."
[See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fourier] The term phalanx
refers to the military formation used by Alexander the Great and
others in their conquests. Laurence Grvnlund was a Danish immigrant
to America in 1867 who wrote The Cooperative Commonwealth, adapting
European socialist and communist theory to American sensibilities.
The consumer cooperative movement also arose in the 19th Century. The
"father of the cooperative movement" is considered to be Robert Owen,
the Welsh utopian socialist and social reformer who created the first
"infant school." [See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Owen]
The worker-cooperative movement followed upon consumer cooperatives.
In the 20th Century the cooperative corporation, commonly used by
housing co-ops, was also used by many other intentional communities,
and continues to be widely used in the 21st Century. Along with these
examples of collective intentional communities others have used the S
Corporation and even the C Corporation or for-profit corporation.
(For examples see the PDF document Forms of Legal Organization at:
http://www.culturemagic.org/EgalitarianCommonwealth.html)
Although, given the above history, it would not be appropriate to
suggest that cohousing pioneered a model of intentional community
based upon private property ownership, it would be valuable to
recognize that the founders of cohousing successfully applied the
standard processes of real estate development in the US for building
intentional community. (For a timeline and overview see:
http://www.mccamant-durrett.com/history.cfm) The only other form of
community that has ever managed to do that on a significant scale was
the developer-driven New Towns, Garden Cities or Greenbelt Towns of
the early 20th Century. (See:
http://www.gmu.edu/library/specialcollections/plancomm.html)
Appendix 3: Origins of and Communalist Reactions to Cohousing
Cohousing began in Denmark with the Danish name "bofaellesskaber"
(translated as "living communities") from both individual writers and
small groups organizing on their own in the mid and late 1960s. A
design competition sponsored by the Danish Building Research Institute
in 1971 identified similar ideas to those already being advocated by
activists, with the first actual Danish cohousing community,
Saettedammen, built in 1972. Cohousing then arose as a social
movement in Denmark from a private-public-academic collaboration. The
result was so successful that it has gradually spread around the
world. One reason for its success in America must be the fact that
those who transplanted the idea of cohousing here utilized a legal
format for their community design which supports the sharing of
privately-owned property as opposed to commonly-owned property.
An aspect of how bofaellesskaber or cohousing was regarded by those in
other intentional community movements at the time was noted by the
authors of the Cohousing book (McCamant and Durrett, 1988, p. 138),
who wrote, "From the perspective of the ongoing youthful protest
movement, these were nothing more than nice suburban developments for
people who could afford private ownership." After the 2nd
International Communes Festival in 1981 at Mejlgard Castle, Denmark,
the newsletter, International Communes Network printed the comment by
Clive of Rapid Transformations (a nomadic bus collective), "There is
something unalternative about Danish communesa response to their
affluence. Danish communes seem to be well integrated into the parent
culture, and very bound up with the money economy. I found this
slightly disturbing." (See: An International Network of Communities,
Allen Butcher, Twin Oaks Community, 1989, PDF file downloadable from
the link "International Intentional Community Networking 1978 -1988"
at: http://www.culturemagic.org/RationalAltruism.html)
Appendix 4: Invitation to Discussions About Intentional Community
For discussions on the ideas in this paper and others you are invited
to join the email list:
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