Greetings from a former communard!

[oneday]

Hello, I have been looking to get more involved in left politics lately and this looks like my kind of place.

A little about me - at age 20 I turned far to the left and ended up moving to a "utopian socialist" community for 6.5 years! It was a great experience overall and I sincerely wish this type of experience was available on a large scale.

Lately I have been working in a small business (full of right-wingers) and the difference is very saddening to me. Not to mention so many people in the world (and in the US, where I live) have it much worse off then I do under capitalism.

Lately I have been studying Computer Science and programming and hope to move into that field. Since I am about at the end of leash working in a traditional corporation, I hope to either be freelance or start or join a worker's cooperative.

Also, I want to become more active in large movements, but it seems at the current time there is little activity in the US.

PS - Here is the place where I used to live - twinoaks.org

[Q]

Welcome :)

If you have political questions, you can ask them in the Learning forum. That's why it's there after all!

If you have questions about your account, don't hesitate to send me a PM or ask here.

[Creative Destruction]

what made you want to move away from Twin Oaks? my wife and i stayed in a commune for a very brief time, and it was completely unorganized and not a good experience. Twin Oaks seems to be one of the few intentional communities that have their shit together.

[#FF0000]

I've heard of Twin Oaks. How'd you like it there? What made you leave?

[Kingbruh]

PS - Here is the place where I used to live - twinoaks.org
So, how was twin oaks? I remember hearing about it.

[oneday]

I've heard of Twin Oaks. How'd you like it there? What made you leave?

I had a great experience overall. Most of my life I have lived a very socially isolated existence without many friends or relationships, but there I had many close friends.

I don’t have very good or clear reasons for leaving. It’s sort of embarrassing to mention because it’s so bizarre, but the last year or so there I developed an intense phobia of sunlight. I basically only came out at night, working and living mostly alone. Back to the isolated existence.

If you want to see what communism might be like (albeit on a tiny scale, and rough around the edges), it’s basically the closest you’re going to get, at least in the US. I’d recommend taking a look at their website, watching the youtube videos and reading the many articles that have been written about them over the years, they mostly are accurate representations.

Here are some of the positives and negatives of my experience living there from 2000-2006. This is coming from someone who was (and still is) interested in living in a communist society. If that wasn’t your interest, some might be reversed.

Positives

Very good organization. All assets (land, businesses, etc) are legally and in practice owned and controlled by the membership. Written bylaws and legislature that is observed for the most part.

Excellent governance. The planner/manager system is very effective, and highly democratic. In a nutshell, it managed to combine the better aspects of direct democracy and consensus based decision making. The planners mostly acted as facilitators for the decision making process. They served short, staggered terms and decisions could be overridden with a simple majority vote. The override wasn’t used very often as this would mean the planners reached a a sub-optimal decision, and didn’t take into account the strong feelings of a minority or majority of the membership.

Much personal freedom. There was a quota of labor hours members were compelled to contribute every week, typically ranging from 36-42. If you worked more than that, you could bank the labor credits and not work some other time. The schedule for when you contributed this and in what industries was completely your own (except able bodied communards had to do one 2-3 kitchen clean up shift a week). Certain industrial tasks required scheduling, but many creditable activities could be done whenever you felt like. Domestic labor such as cooking, cleaning, child care was all creditable and there was no commute so you typically had a lot of free time.

No bosses. The managers of the various industries basically provided guidance, accounting and focus. ‘Bossiness’ was culturally taboo. Very rarely, someone would be ‘fired’ from a task, but its not like you could be unemployed while living there.

No/low corruption or crime. Basically everything was straight up as far as I could tell. I don't think it'd even be possible for anyone to get away with much.

Lifestyle choices. Very LGBT friendly. You could be in a monogamous relationship with someone or have multiple partners. Some children had two dads and one mom. Women had no fear walking around by themselves at night.

Recreation. Lots of recreational activities. Music, arts, sports, rituals, dances, computers, lots of hanging out. Much organization and planning in these activities.

Negatives

Low $/hr businesses. The businesses basically produced income for the community at third world wages. This limited the abundance of money, limiting the ability of the community to meet all the needs and wants of it’s members. You need a lot of money to make a world without money.

Encroachments into the communal principle. Since the community couldn’t meet the monetary needs of it’s members for things like vacations directly, there were programs which eroded the communal principle. Members could work for a wage in a limited fashion separate from their labor quota in certain community businesses (community capitalism?) in a limited fashion in order to earn money for personal vacations, or for certain community projects that weren’t funded in the budget. Members could also earn money from jobs in the cities for vacations, or receive gifts for such things from relatives.

Primitivists. There were a certain number of primitivist members, which tended to encourage the first two negatives I mentioned.

Lack of ideological interest in income-sharing from younger members. At least during the time I was there, most younger members (excluding myself) did not have a strong attachment to the communal, income-sharing principle, and it wasn’t always in their material interest to uphold it. At first, I was quite alarmed by all the proposals for changes to the system that would further erode these values. However, in the years I was there, not much changed in this regard. There was a strong and numerous ‘old guard’ that would block any of these changes.

Dormitory housing. Every member had their own room, but nothing else. Sometimes sharing kitchen, bathroom, etc. with others is ok, but other times you just want to be alone. There was no provision for this.

Black helicopters. Every couple months we had black helicopters circling the property, sometimes for hours at a time. Presumably looking for drugs or whatever. We even wrote to the newspapers about this.

In general, we can see all the flaws appearing that Marx et. al. pointed out in regard to utopian socialism and worker’s cooperatives, and some of the degeneration was present that can be observed in other communes or kibbutzim. However, it was a great positive experience. A much more joyous, truthful, open, dignified existence than the capitalist world permits. We also see the inaneness of some of the arguments presented by anti-communists. For example, for the most part food and clothing were abundant and freely available. We had a 'commie clothes' where members could freely take any clothes they wanted and then return them after a time (or not). There was no one taking all the clothes and hoarding them or trying to sell them to other people or something stupid like that.

If anyone had any more questions, I'd be happy to answer. Most people get a very strange look in their eye if I start talking about my experiences there.

[Sewer Socialist]

I am confused as to how labor credits and wage labor co-existed. Under what circumstances did one work for the former, and when for the latter?

[sanpal]

One more example of Duhring's Utopian socialism i.e. practice of money + communist relations (F.Engels "Anti-Duhring")
Thank you for excelent experience.

[mushroompizza]

I don’t have very good or clear reasons for leaving. It’s sort of embarrassing to mention because it’s so bizarre, but the last year or so there I developed an intense phobia of sunlight. I basically only came out at night, working and living mostly alone. Back to the isolated existence.

Ahh... A true computer geek, welcome home buddy! :D

[Creative Destruction]

Lack of ideological interest in income-sharing from younger members. At least during the time I was there, most younger members (excluding myself) did not have a strong attachment to the communal, income-sharing principle, and it wasn’t always in their material interest to uphold it. At first, I was quite alarmed by all the proposals for changes to the system that would further erode these values. However, in the years I was there, not much changed in this regard. There was a strong and numerous ‘old guard’ that would block any of these changes.

This was the single biggest problem that we ran up on in the commune I stayed at. My wife and I are young and went there looking for a communal experience and to check-out how this kind of thing went. All of the old folks, who were invariably from the 50s and 60s counterculture and had varying Marxist or anarchist beliefs, were intent on keeping the income-sharing system and committed to the ideas on which the community was founded. But most of the people in the commune were young itinerants. They had no ideological commitment to the project, but were very much free-spirited free-wheeling types who grouced a lot about not being able to make much money there. They were there to fuck around (literally) and smoke pot. Which is fine as far as it goes, but, I mean, you can do that outside the commune, as well (and probably make money doing it, as well.)

There was also stupid amounts of drama. Barely anyone got along and there was a lot of shit talking. One person claimed that another commune member was invading her dreams and assaulting her and what not, and this came up in a meeting. It was too crazy for us, so we bolted.

[oneday]

I am confused as to how labor credits and wage labor co-existed. Under what circumstances did one work for the former, and when for the latter?

The vast majority of the labor was for labor credits. As mentioned, there was a weekly quota. As one grew older, the quota would be adjusted down, I believe a 70 year old only had a 10 hour quota. It would be quite possible to live there without ever doing wage labor, and there were some that never did. All members received a monthly stipend (~$100) for things that the community didn't cover (I'd say beer money, although sometimes community bought alcohol for parties I believe). You could also save some of this money and use it for vacation or whatever.

There were also some budgeted programs such as Weeds and Knots, which would supply some small amounts of extra money for personal things (pretty much anything, really). Often there was a money surplus after some period (this was larger amounts of money, that wasn't already budgeted), and there would be requests and a tallying system to decide what to do with it. Most often, the things that were funded first were things that benefitted the community at large, such as "build a sauna". There also needed to be labor credits budgeted for such things, and I believe this was allocated in a similar fashion. Sometimes some more personal projects got funded this way as well, and even vacations occasionally.

The wage labor that existed within the community businesses was called Over-quota Products for Projects (OPP). This was only available in direct production areas, was available in limited quantities, and was not always available in all productions areas if it was available at all. There was not an infinite pool of available work to do, we had to sell the shit. You posted a notice of your intent to do OPP, how much money you needed to earn, what it was for and what area you were going to do the work. You would then earn a variable rate wage depending on what area you worked in, with the community making some amount of profit. You didn't earn any labor credits when you did this. The money would be in an earmarked account for you. There were higher limits to what an individual could do if they were doing it to fund an un-funded or under-funded community project. It could also be used to make money for your European vacation, though the limit was lower, I believe around $1000 a year.

If there was no OPP available, or you could find higher paying wage labor on the outside, you could also earn Vacation Earnings (VE) (many worked in construction for this). This money nominally was only supposed to be used “off-the-farm”, only if you were spending 24 hours or more away, and not on something you brought back to the community, though these weren’t always followed. If you wanted, you could also choose to hand over the money to the community and earn labor credits instead.

Luckier ones could also receive money from relatives for vacations. If you had assets before moving there, you could keep them, but they were supposed to be frozen.

[oneday]

But most of the people in the commune were young itinerants. They had no ideological commitment to the project, but were very much free-spirited free-wheeling types who grouced a lot about not being able to make much money there. They were there to fuck around (literally) and smoke pot. Which is fine as far as it goes, but, I mean, you can do that outside the commune, as well (and probably make money doing it, as well.)

There was also stupid amounts of drama. Barely anyone got along and there was a lot of shit talking. One person claimed that another commune member was invading her dreams and assaulting her and what not, and this came up in a meeting. It was too crazy for us, so we bolted.

Well, Twin Oaks had a pretty conservative membership application process, and a 6 month provisional membership period during which it was pretty easy to get kicked out, so managed to keep out most of the freeloading types. I won't say anything about drugs but people who wanted to fuck around, literally, were welcome, there was plenty of time for that and work. The real intense combative drama people were kept out. Mostly people were civil to each other, even political enemies were friendly. There was some shit talking and drama, but it was at a fairly low and bearable level.

It did suffer the lack of ideological focus, reflecting the fractured state of the left in general.

[Creative Destruction]

Yeah, people wanting to fuck around or do drugs, that's cool, but that's all they wanted to do. When we got there, one of our main tasks was to weed the garden in order to grow food for the community. It was so overgrown with crap, it looked like it was fallow for at least a year.

eta. Glad you had a positive experience at Twin Oaks, though. I figured if we had gone there and had that experience, we probably would have wanted to stay.