The importance of envisioning “community” (part 3)

In this 4-part series on sustainable communities, we critique dominant western conceptions of 'community', try to help clarify confusions of the term in EB feature articles, review various approaches to "building community", and call for clarity in our dialogues about "building sustainable communities". Parts 1 and 2 were published last week. In this part (part 3), Gary Clausheide gives a short history of "community" -- how humankind lost it, and how we might regain it. In part 4 to come, we present a radical theory on building sustainable communities, drawing on lessons from the past, and arguing that there is no more important question for us to grapple with than the question of how our community and larger society should be organized. We show that if you want sustainability and equality “at the end of the day”, you have to build them in at the start.

Presently most of us are like deer in the headlights, watching with both excitement and horror the approaching social, economic, ecological “collapse”, with each of us envisioning both our worst fears and our best hopes (like many did with Obama). In lieu of direct action, or in addition to it, many of us spend a lot of our time “envisioning”. How will this collapse play out, and what is the timing? What are the possibilities of change? What exactly are the changes that need to happen? Like the deer, we know we should bolt (act), but which way, when? It is all so confusing.

The major media, while they may report isolated instances of the collapse, never try to connect the dots, and thus become increasingly irrelevant to our attempts to understand what is happening to the world around us (“the bigger picture”). They become even less relevant to our efforts to understand what changes we, the people, should be trying to make happen. It has also become increasingly clear that governments serve mostly as handmaidens to the very wealthy. Adam Smith said that the purpose of government was to protect property. Apparently the property of the wealthy is much more important than the homes, farms, and jobs of ordinary people.

Where does this leave us? ENVISIONING. That should have been a major task of a free and democratic citizenry all along. But while we may have freedom of speech, we certainly don’t have free and equal access to the microphones and presses to carry on public dialogue. Any ideas regarding alternatives to, or criticisms of, capitalism, or of the increasing centralization of power and wealth, have been effectively quashed. Even our universities, which should be at the vanguard of change, have chosen instead to defend and assist the status quo while lining up at the federal and corporate troughs for more subsidies.

The closest thing we have to a large public forum is the internet – specifically, web sites that deal honestly with the subjects that are leading us to collapse, web sites such as Energy Bulletin. They and those writing for them have a large impact on the growing number of citizens who are aware enough to realize that a huge transformation is coming soon to a location near each and every one of us.

A lot of writers in the “collapse” movement disparage trying to plan out a society in advance. Capitalist economists certainly hate the idea of a “planned society”, believing as they do in Adam Smith’s theory that everyone naturally operates in their own self-interest, and that doing so leads inevitably to social harmony – with the help of an invisible hand. * [See ENDNOTE 1] It was and is a pretty wild theory, but it has served the merchant class well these past 230 years.

We cannot build what we cannot envision

I would argue to the contrary that we cannot build what we cannot envision. Our imagination, along with our ability to form our images into words to communicate to others, are perhaps the most powerful tools that humans possess. But language isn’t a perfect tool, and others often interpret our words differently than we intend, particularly with more abstract concepts like “democracy”, “community”, “sustainable communities”, and “sustainable agriculture”. With these particular concepts, it isn’t so much a matter of misinterpretation as that we haven’t worked very hard at clarifying these concepts, or clarifying the images underlying them.

Take the concept of “liberty” for instance. That is a pretty vague concept, but John Stuart Mill’s essay “On Liberty” was a tremendous effort to clarify it. Tolstoy did the same for “non-violent resistance”. Thoreau helped to clarify the concept of “civil disobedience” with his essay on the subject and with his refusal to pay war taxes. Gandhi helped to clarify both concepts with the way he lived his life. It remains for us in the present time to clarify what is meant by “community” and by “sustainable communities”.

In part four we will contribute to this effort. We will present a radical theory on sustainable communities that includes both the physical and philosophical design. This is an effort to put one vision, one theory on building a sustainable community from scratch, onto a wide public forum for peer review. We do this both for the practical purpose of thinking about design in trying to build such a community, and for the comparative purpose of providing a model for thinking critically about the society and the “communities” we currently live in. We welcome criticism and perhaps it will inspire others to present alternative visions. It is in no way intended to diminish the significance of “building community” within existing towns, villages or neighborhoods.

A short history of community

It would be good to keep in mind that humans evolved from earlier primates, who lived in small groups and survived through cooperation in securing food, raising young and defending their group from predators or intruders. They evolved into small groups of humans who lived pretty much the same way – through cooperation. They lived together, they worked together, they hunted together, they gathered plants together, and they fought for their survival together. That should justify calling them “communities”. Anyone consistently “acting in their own self-interest” would have been banished. As these communities grew in number there must have come a point when they needed to split up for logistical reasons, but most likely would have maintained “tribal” (kinship) ties. As their population increased and food sources diminished, they would have needed to keep spreading out.

Acquiring a taste for the "fruit" of the plants we now call grain (rye in a field):
Photo: Dominik Cruchet

But then along came the advent of agriculture. Around 10,000 B.C. we are told, but it would have taken centuries, if not millennia to evolve. First to discover and acquire a taste for the “fruit” of certain plants that we now call grain. A while longer to realize these plants grew only along rivers that overflowed each spring depositing soil on top of last year’s remaining fruits, and smothering the existing perennial plants that would otherwise choke out the annual grain plants. Later realizing that those little grain berries were seeds that could be spread on the fresh deposits of soil on these river bottom lands, covered and left until late summer or fall, when they would be ripe and could be “harvested”. More time would be needed to learn how to preserve these seeds and all the different ways they could be eaten. With the preservation of large quantities of dried grain came the first real “wealth”. During lean times, humans would feel compelled to kill and die for this substance. Sort of like oil today.

The advent of agriculture had several major effects on humankind. First, it allowed these communities to become sedentary (stay in one spot). This allowed the communities to grow larger. At some point the larger group would have started to divide up into cliques, as happens in large high school populations. Perhaps the combination of cliques and lean times caused them to fight over the stored supply of grain, the stronger and more violent winning out and in time becoming a ruling elite.

Dominator vs partnership societies

Rianne Eisler has a different theory that she has written about in The Chalice and the Blade. She says that early societies developed in two different directions. One type became pastoral “dominator” societies, nomadic, patriarchal, and violent. The other type were agrarian, peaceful, sedentary, egalitarian, and goddess worshippers. She calls them “partnership” societies, and they began in middle Europe around 6,000 B.C. At some point the dominator societies began to invade them, supposedly for food, and later taking over their towns and enslaving them. The last partnership society was on the island of Crete and was destroyed around 1500 B.C. The point is that as partnership societies were overtaken by dominator societies, their patterns of equality and peaceful cooperation were overtaken by patterns of aggressive competition and hierarchy. That is what we have inherited today. (Note that once societies become hierarchical, I no longer call them communities. I believe “community” and “hierarchy” are mutually exclusive concepts.)

Another impact of agriculture was that as it improved, it freed up a lot of members of those societies. It allowed these people to focus on other crafts: house building, pottery, metal work, etc. Thus the beginning of “division of labour” and specialization.

A giant leap in the evolution of agriculture would have come when groups moved to higher elevations and tried to farm without the aid of flooding rivers to enrich the soil and smother existing plant growth. People would then have to figure out “tillage” (creating seedbeds) and how to maintain fertility.

By the end of the last partnership society, most societies are hierarchical, violent, patriarchal, have a ruling elite, and run on the energy of slaves. They are, in effect, dominator societies. These are the societies that historians dwell on. So let’s skip ahead over the thousand or so years of Conquest. The names of Kings and Queens, presidents and prime ministers, dukes and princes, popes and generals, who defeated whom, etc. is quite irrelevant to the history of community. We’ll pick up the story at around 1,000 A.D., after the Romans had cleared out of northern Europe.

To the Manor born

The Encyclopedia Americana tells us that trade didn’t return to northern Europe until “the rise of towns in the10th and 11th centuries”. The land back in those days was divided up into manors. The king (the latest conqueror) appointed his favorite knights to head (lord) the manors, replacing the previous lords who were either killed or run off during the last battle for conquest. The manors were subsequently handed down to the eldest son. Unless or until the next conquest. The peasants (ordinary people) who survived the last battle simply came with the land, but they weren’t simply slave labour and cannon fodder. There existed a certain unwritten agreement between the lord and his peasants. The peasants had access to a certain amount of land to grow food, and access to the woods for lumber to build their homes and for fuel. The lord got a certain percentage of the food that the peasants grew and had the right to call on the peasants to go to war for him whenever the king called on him to go to war.

The North American model where farmers are spread far and wide across the land:
Photo: Pamela Courtenay-Hall

The peasants tended to live in a cluster (village) near the manor house. The peasants went out of the village to work in the fields, unlike the North American model where farmers are spread far and wide across the land. This allowed the peasants to live near each other, to work together, and to recreate together when possible. In other words, they were able to build “community” and to provide for themselves.

Ah, but then came the return of the merchant, at first just a lone man with a donkey to carry his goods. He appealed to the peasants to make woolen goods for him, mittens, sweaters, woven cloth, etc., and whatever else they could produce that he thought he could sell. He would have had to take them to a distant town where people had money, because the peasant villages would have been self-reliant in such goods and short of money. As trade increased and peasant cottage industries were peaking, the merchants developed a “putting out” system, where the merchant hired others to gather the raw materials which he then took to the peasant craftspeople.

The next significant development came when the crafts people got behind in paying the merchant for the raw materials. The merchants would then confiscate their tools as collateral. That led to the merchant supplying the room (factory) in towns, where the peasants had to come to work. This gave the merchant a great deal more control.

In time some of the villages grew into towns with a lot more commerce and merchant activity. The merchants were the first to organize themselves into guilds (associations) for protection and for profit. They also controlled the towns. Sort of like they do today. It took another hundred years or so before the crafts people began to organize themselves into craft guilds, mostly as a defense against the merchants, but also to protect their crafts from competition. By the time Water and Wind were harnessed to turn a wheel that turned a shaft that turned machines, the factory system put an end to the guild system. Some of the master craftsmen were hired as supervisors in the factories. Thus the dichotomy between owner and worker was established. That dichotomy, that owner-worker relationship, is more significant than the energy source that turns the wheels that turn the shaft that turn the gears that turn the machinery. It is the foundation of the financial aristocracy that has replaced the feudal aristocracy during these past 1,000 years.

Enclosure

Enclosure, usually referred to by historians as the Enclosure Movement, was the process whereby the lords of the manor took away some of the common farmland for the purpose of raising sheep. As the woolen industry grew, and especially once water power came into play, the need for wool greatly expanded. A conflict was rising. The merchants wanted not only more wool, but also more peasants to work in their factories. Once the industry was mechanized, division of labour reduced the need for skilled craftspeople, so more peasants were leaving the manors to work in the factories in town. The lords were not only jealous of the merchants’ rising new wealth, but also angry at them for luring their (the lords’) workforce. A compromise of sorts arose when the lords realized they could make more money by raising sheep and selling the wool, than they could by taking a percentage of their peasants’ crops. To do this, though, they had to take some of the common farmland away from the peasants. These fields were usually enclosed by the planting of hedges around the fields to make clear they were off limits to the peasants; hence, “enclosure”.

Understand that at the beginning of this “movement” some of the peasant craftspeople moved to town voluntarily. Nudged perhaps by having their tools confiscated. But as the lords got involved and started making money, more and more of the peasants were forced off the land. Enclosure began as early, by some accounts, as the 13th century in England, and it didn’t end until the late 19th century. There were a number of peasant revolts to this forced removal from their manor. It is important to remember that the peasants felt they had an agreement with the lords whereby they could build their homes there, grow their food there, graze their animals there, and harvest the wood they needed. It was their survival. What is neglected by historians (usually British and of aristocratic birth) is that it marked the end of the “community” that flourished in those peasant villages. These historians often record this process as an “agricultural revolution”, whereby some lords became the landed gentry - the new farmers, at least the managers and overseers.

There were two other crucial impacts to community that resulted from this “movement” from feudalism to a market economy -- impacts that were prerequisites for a market economy and the death knell for “community”. The first was that land, through small legislative steps, became a commodity. The concept of “ownership” was expanded to give the lords the legal right to parcel off and sell sections of their land. Before, this land changed hands only by conquest, by inheritance, or by a grant from the king. This gave the lords entry into the emerging market economy as serious players, thus reducing more of the friction between the descending aristocracy and the ascending merchant class (whose members were mostly the younger sons of aristocrats who didn’t inherit a manor). Those lords who weren’t up for managing the farming of their land could enrich themselves selling real estate.

Lured into town

The second impact was the commodification of labour, a process that took almost as long as Enclosure. Peasant craftspeople began producing for merchants on a part time basis while still living at home in the relative security of their village communities. Little by little they were lured, then forced into the towns to work in the merchants’ factories. Many of them understood what they were losing and fought back, but their revolts were put down by government forces. They were reduced to “labour”, to be bought by the hour for whatever the merchants chose to pay, often below subsistence wages. By the time Adam Smith wrote his theory on the “market economy” (1776), the division of labour so admired by Smith (the pin factory) resulted in most of these workers performing small repetitive tasks over and over, twelve to fourteen hours a day. They now lived in towns in squalid, cramped quarters that they rented from the merchant class.

{Warning: Ordinary people should beware of movements from the top down – enclosure, globalization, free trade, public/private partnerships, etc. Especially when governments and the elite of the merchant class team up. A marriage between government and corporations is the definition of fascism.}

This brings us to a point where peasant history ends and the history of the labour movement begins. But that is another story. This present story shows that we evolved within community, the spirit that arises naturally amongst relatively small groups of people who live and work with and for one another and as equals, and with the land as commonwealth. That spirit was lost when ruling elites took control of societies and organized “the people” to work for them. Moved then out of villages where they could cooperatively take care of themselves, into cities where they became extremely dependent on governments and corporations. We can regain community when we are ready to accept one another as equals and learn to live and work with and for one another
-- when we are ready to organize ourselves for our ends rather than to allow more dominant forces to organize us for theirs.*[See ENDNOTE 2]

Next: Part 4, “A Radical Theory on Building Sustainable Communities from the Ground Up” – by Gary Clausheide and Pamela Courtenay-Hall

Endnotes

Note 1: It helps to understand this theory to know that Smith was a deist. It was a religion of sorts popular with intellectuals during the Enlightenment. They believed that the creator was analogous to a watchmaker, and the universe was like a watch. It was made with certain laws built in. It was up to the scientists and philosophers to figure out the laws, and Smith thought that he had figured out that people were designed to “always act in their own self-interest”. But that was a good thing, he imagined, because he believed the creator had also designed the universe such that by everyone acting in their own self-interest, the resultant competition miraculously led to social harmony.

Note 2: With thanks to Pamela Courtenay-Hall for her critical feedback, her editorial assistance, and her incredible patience.

Gary Clausheide has been an organic farmer for more than 25 years. He learned how to farm organically in the early 1970s from people who farmed, and from books that were written, before the advent of chemical-based agriculture. He farmed in Vermont for 10 years before moving to PEI in 1991 to establish Sweetclover Farm in Valleyfield, on land that had been leased out to conventional growers for 20 years. After restoring the soil, he began experimenting in the late 1990s with interplanting in vegetable production. He is currently developing a technique of perennial interplanting to reduce the need for tilling. Clausheide's search for a gentler way to farm the land was inspired by the work of the Japanese agrologist Masanobu Fukuoka. His research on building a small-scale, agrarian, truly egalitarian and democratic community was inspired by the work of the 19th century anarchist Robert Owen. (Photo: Dominik Cruchet)
(bio at Green Party of PEI website)

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