Audio Interview, Fred, November 28, 1973
- BRUCE JEWELL: Turning from the subject of how gay
- and straight men related within the commune, it seems to me,
- that there was a need there to bring
- in more women for the straight man 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.
- It wasn't the meat market.
- The thing was that--
- BRUCE JEWELL: Well, I didn't want
- to imply that it was a meat market,
- but people do call it that.
- 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 that 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 I hadn't seen in about two years,
- but our relationship is and was highly sensual and extremely
- sexual.
- 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, at certain points,
- that just our ideas were just getting really stayed.
- 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 like six people
- sit down and write an article.
- What we wanted to do was 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 noticed now, of course,
- you're at the University of Buffalo.
- FRED: Right.
- I should state that I graduated from Stony Brook
- and am now a graduate student, here.
- BRUCE JEWELL: OK.
- How are 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?
- FRED: 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 to send
- one person for a full year and one person for a half a year.
- BRUCE JEWELL: You are, just to digress here a moment
- and move off from that, that you are making plans
- to work together to promote one another's
- careers and so on and so forth.
- FRED: Well, not one another's careers.
- Our career.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Your career, as a group.
- FRED: 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.
- There are now five people, two of whom are well, old people,
- and three of whom are new people at the commune in Rocky Point.
- There are about twenty or twenty-five people
- in the collective.
- 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.
- I carry around each of the people who were in the commune
- and who are in the commune, whom I love, with me.
- I 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.
- We try to operate writing letters and articles
- for the newspaper, which is still ongoing,
- together in sort of a chain type of way.
- I will write something and send it to Marcia in California,
- and Marcia will send it to Steven in Europe.
- The letter finds its way all around the world.
- It's just incredible.
- 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, 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.
- 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.
- First thing I should say is that there
- are many types of communes.
- The urban and rural and gay and straight.
- And service communes and political communes and women's
- communes.
- And all sorts of communes.
- I'll talk 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 BF Skinner
- and trying to control their own relationships,
- and, indeed, relationships based on Skinnerian principles.
- Skinner is identified with behavior modification that
- is positive and negative reinforcements
- of desired and undesired behavior.
- The commune is 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.
- They operate on a labor credit system,
- much like the old Utopian socialist Fourier
- in phalanstère which was a communal form of labor
- and of living where 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 is 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 of, sort of, probationary period,
- I would suppose, wherein you can decide to leave at any point.
- 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 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 and 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.
- 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
- and needs.
- BRUCE JEWELL: The second question is, are there
- any gay people in this commune?
- FRED: Oh, yes.
- BRUCE JEWELL: There are?
- FRED: Oh, yes.
- There are.
- I don't know how many.
- 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.
- 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.
- Most people there are students and go to Harvard
- or Amherst or Boston.
- They operate on a principle that they got together for
- based on economic needs.
- 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 to what material we have
- and what it costs.
- They've had to learn the hard way, unfortunately--
- it's 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 planned as a long range thing,
- or is this just while they're going to law 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 of that type of--
- FRED: In Vermont, you may know, and 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's also, incidentally,
- was the network that originally proposed the Wyoming Project.
- You may not be familiar--
- BRUCE JEWELL: No, I'm not familiar with that--
- FRED: --with that.
- That was a project back in 1970, '71 who's ideology
- was, well everyone who is 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 was really weird.
- But the Free Vermont communes started out
- as anarchist communes and were just totally anarchic.
- Like when I was there, like, there
- was a group of people at one of the communes, called--
- what was the commune called?
- It was 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.
- 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 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.
- It was absolutely amazing.
- BRUCE JEWELL: I don't suppose the life span
- and this kind of 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
- were certain characteristics to distinguish these,
- such as a total horror of anything
- called structure, a 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 in saying 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.
- Where they'd live off the waste product,
- the garbage of America.
- They did pretty well at it.
- 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 been 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,
- and usually they're not.
- Well, let me get into the problems
- that you had asked about that most communes seem to face.
- Like 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 transients problem had gotten
- to the point where 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 exploited relationships?
- FRED: No, well, anarchism is a multi-definition--
- BRUCE JEWELL: It has to have (unintelligible)
- 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 individualistic anarchists
- and others.
- In any case, anarchism doesn't mean bomb throwing
- and it doesn't mean total disruption
- and hate yelling and 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.
- 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 dramatic 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 or what should they do?
- How is it done?
- It's always a big--
- FRED: Well, of course, there is no set way.
- But there are a couple of generalizable elements
- 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 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 period of 1967 on.
- But to get down to cases, one of the things
- is a stable and valid economic base.
- That means, essentially, that you
- have to know where the bread is coming from and, you know,
- 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 multi-versity
- or a mega-versity.
- But that doesn't, of course, preclude
- the invalidity of any such learning form, the--
- BRUCE JEWELL: OK, we have to have then, some firm
- idea of where money is going to come from,
- how we're going to support ourselves to--
- FRED: Usually it's best, in terms of the monetary aspect,
- to 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 outside repression.
- 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.
- 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 were going to plan to raise animals,
- you should have someone who knows something
- about veterinarian 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: Frankly what kinds of crises (unintelligible)?
- FRED: Sexual crises.
- Crisis wherein people feel really used or really
- feel oppressed and the commune not
- having the structures to bring that out and to deal with it.
- 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
- that in the collective groups that I've
- visited that they put a great deal of an 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 the 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.
- There have been people at communes,
- at our commune for one, who were looking for therapy
- and didn't find it.
- 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.
- Like it's hard to explain.
- 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 half times.
- Like get together or come together or together,
- we're here or some permutation.
- Like 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?
- FRED: Depends upon 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.
- 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 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 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 total, would you say?
- FRED: Something, well, either a little less or a little more.
- 2,000 with a differential of about three to four percent
- BRUCE JEWELL: Do you think there's
- an optimal size for a commune?
- FRED: Yes.
- BRUCE JEWELL: What is it?
- Where would you say that is?
- 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.