When I was younger I really liked the idea of communes, but now I think intentional communities are more practical and avoid some of the worst aspects of communes.

The difference, to me, is communes typically collectivize all aspects of life - religion, culture, economy, working for a business owned by the commune and sharing property in common, and so on - and this not only isolates people from the surrounding community, but creates a dangerous power imbalance because of how much power the commune’s leaders hold over every aspect of its members’ lives.

Basically, I think a commune is what you get when you try to run a community like a family. And, unfortunately, there are a lot of abusive families out there.

But communes are only a subset of intentional communities.

In an IC, you don’t have to share in any particular religious or philosophical belief system, you don’t have to give everything you own to the group, you just have to want to live a lifestyle more sustainable and more closely connected to other community members than your average suburb or apartment building.

And you buy into the community and start contributing to common spaces and common meals and that’s that.

You don’t lose your home and family if you criticize the commune’s leader. You don’t have to hide your doubts about the commune’s philosophy for fear of punishment. The community has a bunch of different income sources and doesn’t fall apart if one communal business fails. There’s no charismatic leader who, to give one completely hypothetical example, preys on teenage girls and gaslights their parents into thinking his dick is God’s will. Power imbalances are limited because the power the community’s leaders have over its members is limited.

I dated a guy who spent part of his childhood on [The Farm](The Farm (Tennessee) - Wikipedia https://share.google/Qygnr43R6gFX23nd6) in Tennessee in the '80s, where his mother was a nurse. He said it was like Lord of the Flies, just herds of unsupervised little kids doing whatever they pleased 24/7, and I mean way beyond the latchkey kid stereotype of unsupervised kids, which I was in the '80s myself. He hated it because there were no adults that were really in charge, no discipline when the kids hurt each other, food was scarce, school lessons were a joke, etc.

I think like so many other things, the idea of a commune draws in certain types of people, and some of those people are lazy free-loading assholes. I think they’re a good idea, but the lazy fuckers ruin it for everyone else.

I dislike the all or nothing aspect of a lot of them. It is hard enough to nail a single aspect of life. So imho it is better to have different groups for different aspects. As in you might have a housing co-operative, a co-operative work place, a utility co-operative, a bike sharing group and so forth. That makes it possible to not go and avoids being stuck in a group, which you really do not like. As in it is much easier to move to another place, then to do that and find a new job, organize transport and so forth.

well, it depends on the culture of the commune but let’s skip this and i’ll just focus on commune as a tool

if it’s used as a tool for escapism, good but it will never scale and ‘‘everyone should be in one’’ it’s just impossible

if, like i dream, it’s used as a tool to offload work of a group of people to allow them to make better politics because being much more resilient to capital swings, cool af u.u

obviously it’s not binary and what i described it’s not even a model with 2 opposites, but i wanted to focus on these cases

weird in betweens like project kamp are very interesting but I still think they focus too much on the being indipendent rather than using the commune as a tool for “greater” scope.

I lived at a couple, they have issues. Imagine being with roommates that you don’t agree with, but can’t change anything about it because of politics.

It amazed me how small non profit land projects could have such crippling bureaucracy.

My advice: know the people you will be living with for a long time, before you try.

Many people love the idea but many people want the community to be how they think it should be and get annoyed about the community as it is and rage quit.

I’d like to in theory, but I have severe debilitating OCD, and I just don’t think I would be compatible with such a lifestyle.

Honestly, communes are a great idea. And I think communal living and working should be more common. But utopian communes tend to shake out in one of three ways that don’t appeal to most people.

First, they end up religious. Of course, there are the death cults. But better examples might be things like Amish villiages, or jesuit or buddhist monasteries. And if you aren’t religious, these probably won’t appeal to you.

Next are the utopian communes. These tend to be started by overly optimistic young people and hippies with more drugs than sense. They tend to self destruct due to personal conflicts and free rider problems.

Finally, there are the practical communes. These are the ones which survived their utopian phase by learning about having strong boundaries and excluding free riders. However, as the years go on and the utopian energy fades, these communes often end up populated by those who are competent but generally have a dim view of society and their ability to integrate into it. This lack of optimism and desire to chase opportunity leads to these communes being quite poor. And so they limp along on the edge of survival, churning through optimistic young people who come each year, work for the season, and then become disillusioned with the lifestyle. Occasionally one person arrives who threads the needle of competent but disillusioned, and with these infusions the commune can limp a little longer.

The fact is, if you find a group of people who are both optimistic and competent, they will probably also not feel the need to formally make resource or labor sharing agreements, nor to cloister themselves from the world. They will simply function as informal groups of friends who may lend each other help, live together, or start businesses together.

The ones I’ve seen in real life have a tendency to become a bit culty.

They never last because people change and when you get old enough, it becomes impossible to contribute a “fair share” of effort and generally the people who have been there for years didn’t save up enough money to survive outside of the commune.

Community is however a viable option and is much easier to join and leave

Historically, they almost always involve some kind of sexual shit that ends up being their downfall

I think they’re cool but not viable for the vast majority of peopel.

There’s some successful communes in the Virginia mountains. Twin Oaks makes great tofu.

I can smell the patchouli from that picture.

They’re hit or miss, and it’s a lot of miss. My partner’s mother did the hippie commune thing in the early 70s, and she quit when she got super sick and they were all more interested in getting high than getting her to the hospital.

It’s not unlike finding a good D&D group, it’s all about the people involved. Shitty people have the mierdas touch, everything around them turns to shit too.