Creating Communes That Last

by Raven

Here’s a couple of interesting questions: If everyone wants to build communes, why aren’t there more of them?  And why do so many fall apart?

Some of us throw around the made up, but probably accurate, statistic that 90% of new communities fail.  These days, I find myself discouraged by all the communes that have fallen apart or become barely functional or have stopped income sharing over the last few years.  I want to look at some of the reasons communes fall apart as well as some things that I think can strengthen them and make them last.

The first step is to create a community that actually works.  Many communes are started by a couple, two people in a relationship who design what seems to be the perfect community for them, and then they wonder why no one else wants to join them long term.  I wrote about a made up community like this, with an ecological focus and an alpha male at the helm, which seems unable to grow.  While the community was fictional, it was based on three real communities that I knew of–and I have recently thought of a fourth that also fits the bill.  I intend to give a five year update on these communities in the future, but here’s the short version: in the only one of these communities that has turned around and succeeded, both of the founders have left, and it was only after the alpha male founder left that the community started attracting folks.

Other so-called communities are just one person with an idea.  You can’t build a community by yourself. (I will write more about this in the future.) Most importantly, a rotating cast of interns, WWOOFers, Work Awayers, guests, and visitors, does not make a community.  You need a somewhat stable core of folks to build a community around and it needs to be at least four folks. (The FEC now requires five full-time long term members before it grants full membership status to a community.)

And then there are the folks that think that if you just get a place, or land, people will automatically flock there. (This is sometimes called the “If you build it, they will come.”)  I’ve seen it work, sort of, on rare occasions.  However, I’ve more often seen someone stuck with an expensive piece of property and taking in all sorts of not really appropriate folks, just to pay the mortgage or rent.  (I’ve done this myself, and not been happy with the results, which is why I’m so critical of this approach.)  

My basic commune building strategy is to get the right people first.  I’ve written out how to start a commune (which is by far the most popular post on this blog) as well as what I see as the four steps to creating a commune.  Paxus’s piece for folks wanting to start communities is also very useful (and popular). I’ve also created a list of dos and don’ts for community founders.

But beyond starting a commune, there is the difficulty of getting it to last.  I’ve been directly part of forming two communes that never really got off the ground and lasted five years in one case and less than two in another.  I’ve watched dozens of communities fall apart in the six years I’ve been managing this blog.  I wrote a piece a while ago that is similar to this one, focusing on what we can learn from communities that have actually lasted.

Here I want to look at the strategies that the communities that have lasted have used.  First of all, there are Twin Oaks, East Wind, and Acorn (ages fifty-five, fifty-two, and twenty-nine years), sometimes known as the Kat Kinkade communities.  As far as I understand, Kat’s strategy was to build up membership quickly–if you have enough folks, the community will survive the inevitable membership losses.  (I understand that Kat also claimed that the way to hold members was to get them laid.  While I’m not recommending this, I will push the idea that relationships are a way to keep members.)  No matter what you feel about these pieces of advice, it’s obvious that Kat knew something.  As someone who has watched communities fold under me, it’s amazing that this woman was part of starting three very long lasting communities.

Kat Kinkade at Twin Oaks

Sandhill Farm is an interesting community to compare to the Kat communities.  It was built on a similar income-sharing model (Laird, a founder, claimed that he decided to build the community after reading Kat’s first book) but although it lasted as an income-sharing community for forty-five years, it always remained small–having a maximum of ten adult members and often much less than that.  It’s worth looking at because I believe the reason it lasted so long as an income-sharing community is that it relied on the income of a couple of members.  Although it was a farming community, most of its income came from Laird’s community consultation work and Stan’s work as an organic farm inspector.  When Laird and Stan left, the community survived but stopped income sharing, which makes sense because, unlike the Louisa communities which are anchored by Twin Oaks and Acorn, two income-sharing communities, the two other communities in Rutledge, MO, are Dancing Rabbit (lured there by Laird at Sandhill) and Red Earth Farms (a sort of split off from Dancing Rabbit) neither of which is basically income-sharing (although Red Earth Farms has had income-sharing homesteads and there are homesteads there that want to do income-sharing and Dancing Rabbit had an income-sharing sub-community for over twenty years that basically fell apart because it was so small that the departure of three of its four members doomed it).

The danger of relying on the income of one or two members is further illustrated by the slow demise of Compersia which began falling apart when the member who had a large income that basically supported the community left.  This was also caused by a romantic breakup between two members–a different danger when relationships are what stabilize a community.

However, relationships are the model I am most interested in.  This is what I see holding Ganas (which is not overall income sharing but has a core group that shares not only income but assets and has lasted forty-eight years) and Glomus Commune (which has only been around for seven years but which I see as being very stable) together: strong relationships.  

Ganas is a very unusual community, not only in being a hybrid of sorts (a communal core group that manages a cooperative like larger community) but one that thrives on a degree of conflict.  In spite of occasional meetings where people yell at each other, the core group has a very strong commitment to each other that keeps them going through various conflicts and other difficulties.  

It has been amazing to watch the way that Glomus works–in spite of their decision to remain small, they also have strong bonds with each other, some romantic and some just very close friendships.  I joke that one of the people there is dating all of the other members but, truly, that person works on all their relationships because they know (they are a community veteran) that that is what holds a community together.  While others at Glomus don’t work as hard on relationships, there are still a lot of caring and strong bonds between many of the members–and those interwoven relationships are what I think hold the community together so well.

The crew at Glomus Commune, circa spring 2020

To sum this long post up, the first step in creating lasting communities is to create communities that work.  I’ve written a lot about this, starting with finding the right folks.  Once there’s an up and running community, it seems like there’s  two models of communities that last:  one is the Kat Kinkade model (build it fast and large) and the other is what I will call the Ganas/Glomus model (rely on strong, close relationships).  The last thing I know that seems true is to not depend on one or two people for the community’s income.

Now who wants to build a commune?