Charles Nordhoff
1875
Hillary House Publishers, Ltd.
439 pages
The Communistic Societies of the United States, by Charles Nordhoff, was first published in 1875. During his life, Nordhoff was a well known journalist, who investigated a number of spiritually oriented communal societies that flourished in the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Today the communities he observed may be referred to as ‘communalist’ rather than ‘communist’, as the latter term has acquired some very specific political connotations over the past century that deviate from the social phenomena described in this book. The groups and communities discussed by Nordhoff include the Shakers (a still thriving community that was founded in the eighteenth century upon the belief that a woman, Ann Lee, was a prophet of Christ’s second coming) The Amana, the Icarians, and a number of others. All of the communities discussed emerged in the United States, although many were organized by recent immigrant communities, and some existed in Europe and were carried into the United States by emigrating adherents.
The groups discussed by Nordhoff consistently formed around a set of spiritual ideals, and also often around a particular spiritual leader. The societies also were formed by a collective will for the groups to create their own means of living. Typically everyone shared in the necessary work of a society, and individual community members were typically very industrious. Many of these groups had grown to be quite wealthy by the time Nordhoff investigated them. In the book’s final chapter, Nordhoff compares the different communities and notes the importance of the modest lifestyles enforced by many of these groups upon their members, however he also laments the ascetic adornments of their villages when many of them are, in fact, materially rich. Also noted by Nordhoff were any unique practices found to exist in specific communities. The Oneida community, for example, practiced 'criticism', which were social sessions in which the community would voice criticisms of an individual's character. The benefit of this practice, supposedly, was that individual members Nordhoff also claimed that many of the groups have reaped a variety of social and material benefits by imparting equality to both of the sexes. Finally he was impressed by the democratic structure of communal decision making that many of the societies had instituted.
The book chapters are filled with detailed information as well as beautiful illustrations, mostly of the commune churches or other important buildings. Here are some examples:
Nordhoff profiled a number of these communities in depth, having devoted a chapter to each of the major societies. In these chapters he profiled each group’s history, their belief system, methods for organizing the community (both spatially and with regards to practical matters, such as the sharing of labour and resources). Nordhoff also includes the full texts of spiritual songs, prayers, and writings by leaders of the various groups. Furthermore, he includes transcripts of conversations he has had with community members. He provides some criticism of the groups in his final chapter, although he is mostly laudatory, and he attempts to construct for the reader as comprehensive a view as possible of his subject matter.
The text was originally published in 1875, however my edition was reprinted in 1961. One aspect of the 1960s counterculture was a ‘back to the land’ ethos of communal living and working. I do not know if or how the communes of the 1960s were influenced by the kinds of communities described by Nordhoff, however a number of earlier books about these communities, including Nordhoff’s, were reprinted in the period leading into the countercultural 1960s, and the subject matter was revisited in a number of texts published later in the decade.
Note: The Communistic Societies of the United States can be read for free at:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/utopia/csus/index.htm
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