Audio Interview, Fred, November 28, 1973
- BRUCE JEWELL: --and related within the commune.
- It seems to me that there was a need there
- to bring in more women for the straight men to live with,
- and, or whatever.
- Maybe I'm phrasing it improperly.
- But how-- what kind of plans-- how
- did you deal with relationships going
- on outside of the commune with other people?
- Was there some plan made, perhaps,
- to bring other people into the commune?
- FRED: Yeah, there were several plans
- to bring other people into the commune,
- but it wasn't according to sexual terms,
- like it wasn't the meat market.
- And the thing was that, I mean--
- BRUCE JEWELL: Well, I didn't want
- to imply that it was a meat market,
- but people do fall in love.
- FRED: Well, people do--
- I've seen people, and I've seen a lot of groups
- of people calling themselves communes,
- and collectives, and politically highly spirited groups,
- turn the personal sphere into a meat market, which
- is why I use the term.
- But what was going on in the commune was,
- in terms of sexual relationships,
- was that one of the previously straight men
- was now having sex with one of the women in the commune,
- one of the women outside the commune,
- and one of the men in the commune.
- The two gay men were having sex with one another
- in the commune.
- The other straight man, which was myself,
- was having sex with one woman outside the commune,
- and with another woman who, well, I
- hadn't seen in about two years, but our relationship is,
- and was, highly sensual and extremely sexual.
- And this other woman was, well, bisexual.
- And this is the woman I spoke of earlier.
- The move to bring people into the commune
- was based not so much on sex.
- It was based on a lot of things, sex, which, of course, was one.
- But the reason that we wanted to bring people into the commune
- was to get mainly new inputs into, well, what we were doing.
- We found a certain points that just our ideas were just
- getting really stayed, that if we wanted to write and edit
- an article, well, the editing took place
- with some thirty people from the collective and the commune.
- But the writing itself was, well,
- like, six people sit down and write an article.
- And what we wanted to do is get some fresh perspectives.
- And it wasn't only on the writing.
- It was on organizing.
- And it was around the way we related to one another
- personally, also.
- BRUCE JEWELL: I notice now, of course,
- you're at the University of Buffalo.
- SPEAKER: Right.
- I should state that I graduated from Stony Brook,
- and am now a graduate student here.
- BRUCE JEWELL: OK.
- How are the people in the commune now, or the collective?
- What are they doing?
- Are they still in one location, or have you spread out,
- or are you making plans to come back together?
- What is the current situation?
- SPEAKER: What has happened is that over the year and a half
- that we spent together in the commune and the four years
- we spent together politically, we
- developed this ideal of putting together a politically
- motivated legal commune.
- And as such, we started planning,
- when we were in the commune, sending people to law school.
- And we got together enough bread for, well,
- to send one person for a full year
- and one person for a half year.
- BRUCE JEWELL: You are-- just to digress here a moment
- and move off from that, then you are making plans
- to work together to promote one another's careers,
- and so on, and so forth?
- SPEAKER: Well, not one another's careers, our career.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Your career as a group.
- SPEAKER: Right.
- And well, there are presently people--
- there's one person, as I said before, in Europe.
- And there's me in Buffalo.
- And there's someone in California.
- And there are now five people, two of whom
- are, well, old people.
- And the three of them are new people
- at the commune in Rocky Point.
- And there are about twenty or twenty-five people
- in the collective.
- And the relationship between the commune and the collective
- is something else we might get into later on.
- But at the moment, it's kind of like, as I said before to you,
- the Sioux nation.
- Like I carry around each of the people who were in the commune
- and who are in the commune whom I love with me,
- and carry the collective around, too,
- and carry the political aspects, and the political aims,
- and the personal aims, and of course, my own feelings
- around with me as well.
- We plan to come together again, whenever that occurs.
- We're constantly posting one another on what we're doing.
- And we try to operate, writing letters and articles
- for the newspaper, which is still
- ongoing together, like in sort of a chain type of way.
- Like I will write something and send it
- to Marcia in California, and Marcia will send it
- to Stephen in Europe.
- The letter finds its way all around the world.
- It's just incredible.
- And we've written three articles that way so far.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Fred, you've done work
- with just the idea of communes.
- You've visited other communes, I gather.
- FRED: Yes, I'm planning my PhD thesis in communalism.
- BRUCE JEWELL: In communalism--
- could you tell me something about other types of communes
- that you have visited or lived on?
- And I know that there are many different styles
- of communal living.
- FRED: Yes.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Some are quite successful
- and some are failures.
- Perhaps you could describe some of the communes
- that you visited and tell me what you think
- makes a commune work and what--
- FRED: Sure.
- So had you asked me this question a year ago,
- I couldn't have given you a coherent answer.
- But since then, I've done a good deal of synthesis
- of just my own thoughts, and the material that I've worked with,
- and the people with whom I've related at various communes
- around the country.
- Firstly, I should say, I guess, that there
- are many types of communes.
- There are urban and rural, and gay and straight,
- and service communes, and political communes,
- and women's communes, and all sorts of communes.
- I'll talking about several, I suppose.
- One which is notable is the Walden Two Commune
- in Louisa, Virginia, which is set up.
- It's a planned community.
- It's an intentional commune, unlike most communes,
- and was set up based on several students' reaction
- and liking of the ideas of B. F. Skinner,
- and trying to control their own relationships,
- and indeed, create relationships based on Skinnerian principles.
- And Skinner is identified with behavior modification--
- that is, positive and negative reinforcements
- of desired and undesired behavior.
- The commune was planned out, and has
- been operating for about four or five years now.
- They support themselves with an economic base, making hammocks
- and other crafty type of things.
- Work is done communally, and they operate on a labor credit
- system, much like the old topian socialist Fourier
- in phalanstère which was a communal form of labor
- and of living, wherein everyone contributed a certain amount
- of work and money to a community.
- And it worked according to, well, communal principles.
- The commune in Louisa is ever-growing.
- Like, they have about thirty-four people there now.
- They started out with six.
- And there have been hundreds of people
- who have either visited or lived there for a while.
- And there's a period of two years
- where you do get to live there.
- If you want to join the commune, there's
- a period of two years, a sort of probationary period,
- I would suppose, wherein you can desire to leave at any point.
- But after that two-year period, what you do,
- you're kind of committed, if you're accepted by the--
- and they operate on majoritarian principles.
- If you're accepted by the majority of the commune,
- you pool all your resources there,
- and operate within the hierarchy of Twin Oaks, which
- is the name of the commune.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Two questions about that-- one,
- it's Skinnerian in principle.
- Whether-- do you think Skinnerian principles
- are working there?
- FRED: From what I was able to see there,
- and from the reports I get from people who are still there,
- it is working generally, but there are an extreme number
- of problems, like for someone to give up
- a certain mode of behavior is easier said than done.
- And the community has to reinforce the person,
- and has to treat the person lovingly,
- and has to teach that person, well,
- ways of operating that are consistent with communal aims,
- ends and needs.
- BRUCE JEWELL: The second question was,
- are there any gay people on this commune?
- FRED: Oh, yes.
- BRUCE JEWELL: There are?
- FRED: Oh, yes.
- There are.
- I don't know how many, but when I was there,
- there were a substantial number of gay people.
- Another thing I guess I should say about the commune
- is that it's not, like so many other communes,
- a below thirty phenomenon.
- People are there who range from ages around seventy-five
- down to one month or so.
- And children have been born there.
- And children are supported by the commune.
- BRUCE JEWELL: I see.
- What other types of communes have you visited?
- FRED: Other types of communes include
- work communes like Boston Commune in Boston,
- obviously, is attached to Boston University.
- And most people there are students,
- and go to Harvard or Amherst or Boston.
- And they operate on a principle that they got together for
- based on economic needs.
- And they pooled their resources, and have
- been working to support one another as well as themselves,
- and finding, well, buying food together, and living together
- can cost about a fraction of what it would in, well,
- the mainstream way.
- They've gone through a lot of head changes.
- And they've realized that living communally isn't just
- a question of material, and what material we have,
- and what it costs.
- And they've had to learn the hard way, unfortunately,
- with a lot of nervous breakdowns,
- that people can relate to one another
- only after they've confronted things such as monogamy,
- such as sexism, such as, well, political identification,
- such as what it is about the world in which they
- live that is a symptom and that which is a cause.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Is this commune plan is a long range thing?
- Or is this just while they're going to law school
- or in school or what?
- FRED: I'm not sure.
- I believe it was originally planned as a long-term thing.
- However, people have come and gone.
- And no person who was originally there is now there.
- I'm not sure what they're into now.
- I'm sure that it's not as long range,
- or possibly not even long range now.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Did you ever visit any of the free communes,
- such as Morningstar in California
- or any of that type of--
- FRED: Yes.
- BRUCE JEWELL: --communal arrangement?
- FRED: In Vermont.
- BRUCE JEWELL: In Vermont.
- FRED: In Vermont, you may know, you
- may not know that there is a network of communes
- up there called Free Vermont.
- And this encompasses about 2,000 people
- on about twenty-four or twenty-five different communes,
- who are mainly agricultural in their economic base,
- and have done a good deal of co-operative marketing
- and exchange on barter-type system of economic necessities,
- and for whom there was, at one point, a huge movement
- in the urban areas to support them, like in New York City
- we would gather all sorts of stuff
- that Free Vermont could use.
- Free Vermont also, incidentally, was the network that originally
- proposed the Wyoming Project.
- You may not be familiar with that.
- BRUCE JEWELL: No, I'm not familiar with it.
- FRED: That was a project back in 1970,
- '71, whose ideology was, well, everyone who's
- into communalism, and everyone who's into the dope culture,
- and everyone who's into alternatives
- to modern American capitalism moved to Wyoming,
- because it's got so small a population,
- we can eventually take it over, and kind
- of form our autonomous unit, and hopefully, eventually secede.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Yeah, sure.
- FRED: It was a mystical and a material trip at the same time.
- And it was really weird.
- But the Free Vermont communes started out
- as anarchist communes, and were just, I mean, totally anarchic.
- Like when I was there, like, there were some--
- there was a group of people at the commune,
- at one of the communes, called--
- what was the commune called?
- Something of the Purple Sun.
- I don't recall it.
- But there were some people really into ecology,
- and into cleaning up the earth and the air,
- and into macrobiotic diets, and that trip.
- Not that I put it down.
- And there would be-- but it was such a crazy thing that people
- would be going off in all different directions,
- such that one day, I wandered down
- to the stream that went through their land.
- And upstream, there were some people, well, having a party,
- and throwing bottles in.
- And downstream, there was this group fishing it out.
- It seemed like, for a while, I was
- wondering if there was someone with a television
- camera running around.
- I thought they might be making a commercial
- or something of the sort.
- But it was real.
- And it was absolutely amazing.
- BRUCE JEWELL: I don't suppose the lifespan
- or the stability of this kind of commune is too very great.
- FRED: No, most communes which do consider themselves or conceive
- of themselves as anarchist-- and there
- are certain characteristics to distinguish these,
- such as, well, a total horror of anything called structure,
- or total horror of anything called, well, getting together
- in a meeting or whatever, and sitting down and talking.
- BRUCE JEWELL: I'm inclined to get sarcastic
- and say maybe one of the signs is
- garbage strewn all over the--
- FRED: Oh, don't knock garbage.
- Like you know the diggers in Arizona,
- at least, were into what they called "creative scrounging,"
- wherein they lived off the waste products,
- the garbage of America.
- And they did pretty well at it.
- Like they created domes out of empty tin cans
- and lived in them.
- But no, the lifespan of these communes is relatively short.
- And the people at them usually become, well,
- a class that have come to be known to me, at least,
- as commune hoppers.
- They are transients who go from commune to commune, working
- if they're inclined to it.
- And usually they're not, and usually
- just fucking the commune up.
- Because-- well, let me get into the problems
- that you had asked about that most communes seem to face.
- One of them is the transient problem,
- where people will come and go, or just
- come and stay for a period of time,
- without contributing anything.
- And not only does the lack of contribution detract
- from the ability of the commune to work, but at times,
- it openly threatens to destroy it,
- like at one commune in Canyon Colorado that I was at.
- The transient problem had gotten to the point where just people
- who had made a long-term economic
- and personal and sexual and political
- commitment to be at the commune, and to live there
- for the rest of their lives, presumably,
- were going out of their mind.
- They wanted to throw the people out,
- but couldn't say to them, well, leave,
- because they had conceived of themselves
- as an anarchist commune, and acted according
- to those principles, except for the fact
- that the people who lived there were into one another.
- And the people who lived there--
- BRUCE JEWELL: You don't think--
- as an anarchist, do anarchists feel
- that they don't have a right to protect themselves
- from exploitative relationships?
- FRED: No.
- Well, anarchism is a--
- BRUCE JEWELL: You'd hardly have a--
- FRED: --multi-definition--
- BRUCE JEWELL: --complaint against--
- FRED: Anarchism is a multi-definition term.
- Like there are people who consider themselves
- anti-structural anarchists, and don't really understand
- what they mean by that.
- And there are those who do.
- And then there are individualist anarchists and others.
- But in any case, anarchist doesn't mean bomb throwing.
- And it doesn't mean total destruction and Hegelian
- negation.
- What it does mean, at least at the communes,
- is that, well, we have a right to be here.
- And we have the desire to create our own alternative lifestyle.
- And our ability to survive is tantamount.
- But we don't want to oppress anyone else in the process.
- And that concept can be taken to extremes, wherein
- they oppress themselves.
- Like it becomes a form of masochism
- to start relating to the structure
- that their previous set anarchist
- doctrines have created.
- A contradiction, but it affected a lot of people's lives
- in very traumatic ways.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Fred, what do you think are the elements that
- make for a successful commune?
- If a group of people wished, or an individual, let us say,
- wish to start a commune, or two or three
- people wish to start a commune, what elements of--
- what should they do?
- How is it done?
- That's always a big--
- FRED: Well, of course there is no set way,
- but there are a couple of generalizable elements
- which one can-- which I have been able to pick out,
- and which other people before me have.
- If you want to read something really good on this,
- there's a book by the name of Getting Back Together by a man
- by the name of Robert Houriet, who's himself into communalism,
- and has visited and lived at many communes
- from the period of 1967 on.
- But to get down to cases, one of the things
- is a stable and valid economic base.
- And that means, essentially, that you
- have to know where the bread is coming from,
- and you have to know what skills people have that can be relied
- upon for the commune to survive, and where to acquire
- other skills, and how to teach people,
- and how to learn from other people.
- Like there's an immense amount of stuff that we people,
- political people, nonpolitical people,
- can teach one another without relying upon a multiversity
- or a megaversity.
- But that doesn't, of course, preclude
- the invalidity of any such learning form.
- BRUCE JEWELL: OK, we have to have then some firm idea
- of where our money is going to come from,
- how we're going to support ourselves.
- FRED: Usually it's best, in terms of the monetary aspect,
- to, well, own where you're living.
- Like to own, if you're an urban commune, the house in which you
- live, or to own the land if you're a rural commune.
- Because a lot of hassles, like the biggest hassles,
- at least in the rural communes, have been, well,
- outside repression.
- And this comes in the form of police harassment.
- And it comes in the form of sanitation laws and ordinances
- made in 1763 being violated, and the claiming
- that a house or a barn is a fire trap.
- If you own your own land, you can usually
- avoid a good deal of this.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Next, you think that people should--
- you have to have people who have real skills, that
- is know how to--
- FRED: People who either have the skills
- or are willing to acquire the skills.
- BRUCE JEWELL: What skills do you recommend people having?
- FRED: Some knowledge of, well, medicine, for one thing,
- and some knowledge of legal aspects of straight society
- is usually pretty good.
- Also, if you're a rural commune and are planning
- to do any sort of farming, of course,
- you can't just plan to plant something and have it grow.
- You have to have some knowledge of fertilizers, et cetera.
- If you're going to plan to raise animals,
- you should have someone who knows something
- about veterinary medicine, or at least about, well,
- what makes an animal tick.
- BRUCE JEWELL: OK, now we've gotten down
- the idea of the economics and the skills that are required.
- What about choosing the people, and the adjustments
- and relationships that will have to take place?
- FRED: Usually, the adjustments and the relationships
- can't be projected into the future.
- But there are some basic things that you
- should do before getting into a commune with people.
- You should know the people, basically.
- Like, this doesn't mean that you should know them
- for a certain amount of time, or that you should know them
- for a certain amount of places, or in a certain amount
- of different types of relationships.
- But you should know how they're going to react to say, crises.
- Because, I mean, the thing that tears most communes
- apart are crises, either created from outside
- or, more usually, created amongst the people who
- are in the commune.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Briefly, what kind of crises do you have in mind?
- FRED: Sexual crises, crises wherein
- people feel really used, or really feel oppressed,
- and don't have the--
- and the commune not having the structures to bring that out
- and to deal with it.
- And people have to be able to relate and be willing to relate
- to one another in open fashions, without a lot of brain damage
- defense mechanism.
- BRUCE JEWELL: I'm sometimes struck,
- in the collective groups that I've visited,
- that they've put a great deal of emotional burden
- on one another.
- That is, rather than thinking in terms of how can I contribute
- to make things better, how can I function here,
- the people seem to gravitate towards communal living
- in an effort to solve their problems.
- They're looking to take something from someone
- to restore their own mental health, or whatever it is,
- rather than thinking in terms of what they can give.
- That seems to me to be a disastrous approach.
- FRED: Yes.
- Well, it is.
- Like there have been people at communes-- at our commune,
- for one--
- who were looking for therapy, and didn't find it,
- and got more fucked up by it, and fucked over some people
- in the process.
- The thing is that people have to be kind of self reliant,
- but able to rely upon others as well,
- and able not to expect too much, but to expect
- interpersonal responsibility, and this, hopefully, in sensual
- terms.
- It's hard to explain, but when it occurs,
- it's really a beautiful thing.
- And it's really a thing that gets people, well, together.
- And that word--
- I mean, I must have heard that word a million
- and a half times, like get together, or come together,
- or together we're here, or some permutation.
- That is a very highly stressed principle, yet not
- often prepared for principle at many communes.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Do you have any idea
- how many viable communes there are in the country now,
- and how many people--
- FRED: Depends on what you mean by viable.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Well, I would define viable as something
- where people are living together well,
- and can do so over a longer term, some period of years.
- FRED: Well, put it this way--
- I mean, last year I took a general survey
- and a hell of a lot of research, and figured out
- that there were about 1,500 communes in the country.
- Now, out of those--
- most of them gathered on the east and west coasts.
- Out of them, I'd say that if half of them--
- well, half of them probably have a life expectancy
- of a year or less.
- The other half, well, from just different variables-- economic,
- social, interpersonal, sexual, political, intellectual--
- from all those variables, I was able to project through some
- devious researcher's means that about a third of the half--
- in other words, a sixth of the 1,500--
- were viable on a long-term basis.
- BRUCE JEWELL: About 250 communes--
- FRED: Approximately.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Involving how many people?
- FRED: The average.
- BRUCE JEWELL: 2,000 all told, would you say,
- something like that?
- FRED: Something, well, either a little less or a little more--
- 2,000 with a differential of about, say,
- three or four percent.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Do you think there's
- an optimal size for a commune?
- FRED: Yes.
- BRUCE JEWELL: What is that?
- Where would you say that is at?
- FRED: Well, the thing is that I'm
- saying that there's an optimal size to start a commune,
- not necessarily to perpetuate one.
- Like I'd say an optimal size would be between four and eight
- people to start a commune.
- To perpetuate an already existent one
- with a clear direction and a clear,
- well, emotional web could be unlimited.
- BRUCE JEWELL: I see.
- Thank you very much, Fred.
- FRED: You're welcome.