Communes : How do they work?

[anon33466019]

@popobawa4u

Nowhere near as often as I’d like! I get on well with some artists and scientists, goal-oriented professionals, and people in very technical disciplines.

Couple things, this is the first: this is why I probably like you so much.

@ActionAbe

Sounds a little like the McMurdo Research station in Antarctica. Unfortunately it’s difficult to run without outside help due to the remoteness of the location. How they built a nuclear reactor there is actually a very interesting story.

I have a good friend that was a firefighter at McMurdo. I could tell stories, but only in person

[anon26940528]

@popobawa4u

For me, collective living has always seemed completely obvious. Consider the most crushing expenses people often face: houses, cars, education… ALL things which people could easily pool their resources on, but usually just don’t. Why don’t they? Why don’t you? Or what have you done differently? Feel free to share you successes and/or failures about communal living, criticisms, speculations, etc.

Here’s an interesting article that goes over some of the issues around a commune based around collective self-sustenance with a big technological component:

The Civilization Kit

Food for thought.

[GilbertWham]

You WANT Angry Zombie Charles Babbage? Cos that’s how you get Angry Zombie Charles Babbage.

[jsroberts]

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve worked on a ship in a commune-style environment. I think the fact that money wasn’t really involved in our daily lives made a big difference - there was a leadership structure (there had to be, as we were an ocean going ship), but they didn’t get any financial perks. We were aware that they were giving up well-paid jobs to be there and they were generally working longer hours than we were, so it wasn’t difficult to respect them. There wasn’t the distance between normal workers and the leadership either - I joined at 18 and generally found the leadership much more open to discussion than I’ve seen since in other companies. The lack of a financial status structure also helped with the different nationalities and backgrounds on board - some people were from wealthier countries or families, but nobody was paid and we were pretty much as equal as possible. There was no necessary educational level for recruits, so you might get graduates being led by someone who hadn’t finished middle school - the point was that the second person had proved their ability.

Most people stayed for two years or less, so there was a constant process of training new recruits and giving people progressive levels of responsibility. I led a few teams at different points, including organising and coordinating the fire drill most weeks. Technically it was the first mate’s job, but I was one of the three full-time firemen and he was happy to let me take over. I’ve also steered the ship into Dar es Salaam port, which was a lot of fun. The ship was always looking for experienced and qualified officers, so they would help to train you as a deck officer or engineer if that’s the direction you wanted to go. Some other strengths included a relatively self-contained and self-sufficient environment with a lot of contact within the group (this can lead to a more cult-like environment, but it does support closer in-group ties) and a common philosophy and goal, where your work has meaning and you have intrinsic motivation to promote the goal and support the rest of the group.

It would be interesting to see this effect where you may have different groups working, living and socialising together, and it isn’t just an isolated group, but rather one in the middle of a larger society. One possibility would be to limit the scope of the commune - live together and work towards a non-commercial goal, or just have a larger family-style environment where people can work where they want, but share domestic responsibilities and have a larger than normal number of social activities together. I think this final one is relatively common - there are plenty of organisations where people live in a larger communal setting and may have group eating or washing facilities, along with communal social rooms. I’ve met a number of families who live in this kind of environment too, where they have some measure of autonomy but are also part of the larger group. On our ship, families had their own section with larger cabins, kitchen facilities and family tables in the dining room, so they were able to have their privacy if they wanted it. While you will have groups with a more specific purpose (such as the Antarctic base), the fact that communes often have a stronger sense of community seems like a good enough reason to live together to me.

Here’s one example of a commune near Göttingen, which we’d be happy to live in (especially as we’ve got pretty mobile jobs). They share income 100%, which I’d say is pretty important. Money was important to our ship as there were many expenses and some jobs were more skilled and vital than others, but it didn’t separate us as nobody had an income and we were all working for the benefit of the group rather than our own advancement. At the moment we live by a lot of the same principles and currently have four people outside of our nuclear family who are staying with us, so we don’t need to live in a commune to experience a lot of the same lifestyle.

This video was made during the time I was onboard - I’m one of the firemen in yellow at 2:20 and most crew members you see are my Facebook friends. Apart from the religious element, there’s a lot I could still stand behind and I would definitely say that spending a few years in a communal environment changed my way of thinking for the better.

[Comrade]

I first learned about medieval communes reading Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space, but since that’s not available for free on the Internet, at least Wikipedia has an entry on them.

It’s pretty fascinating that communes have been around, in various forms, for a thousand years.

Medieval commune