The 60s Communes: Hippies and Beyond

Syracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution

by Timothy A. Miller

The greatest wave of communal living in American history crested in the tumultuous 1960s era including the early 1970s. To the fascination and amusement of more decorous citizens, hundreds of thousands of mostly young dreamers set out to build a new culture apart from the established society. Widely believed by the larger public to be sinks of drug-ridden sexual immorality, the communes both intrigued and repelled the American people. The intentional communities of the 1960s era were far more diverse than the stereotype of the hippie commune would suggest. A great many of them were religious in basis, stressing spiritual seeking and disciplined lifestyles. Others were founded on secular visions of a better society. Hundreds of them became so stable that they survive today. This book surveys the broad sweep of this great social yearning from the first portents of a new type of communitarianism in the early 1960s through the waning of the movement in the mid-1970s. Based on more than five hundred interviews conducted for the 60s Communes Project, among other sources, it preserves a colorful and vigorous episode in American history. The book includes an extensive directory of active and non-active communes, complete with dates of origin and dissolution.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

329 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1999

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Timothy A. Miller, born 1944, professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas at Lawrence. His particular interest is in intentional communities and new religious movements.

Reviews

[Jim Nail · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yet another book about the 60s counterculture, especially the intentional back-to-the-land movement, read to gather facts and feelings for a novel I’m writing. I have pawed through a lot of first-hand accounts, Naked in the Woods by Margaret Grundstein, Free Love Free Fall by Merimee Moffat, The Alternative by William Hedgepeth, many others. They all had an immediacy to them, a direct transmission of hopes, fears and failures. This one is different, brought to us by something called the Commune Project and written by a professor of religious studies at the University of Kansas. It starts with an analysis of the set and setting out of which the communal movement began, then provides a narrative of the earliest counterculture communes, Morningstar, Drop City, New Buffalo. Then it breaks down into chapters devoted to the different motivations of communes, political, religious, secular visionary, hedonistic, then goes on to several chapters devoted to individual aspects, what was it like to be a child in a commune, what were the varieties of sexual experimentation, what was the place of drugs, etc. All of this information was valuable for my purposes but sort of dry and disengaging. And another thing, this book was published in 1999 and discusses the state of the communal vision “today”, which ones are still alive and what are the pioneers of the movement doing “now.” Thank God for Wikipedia, I can find out what has really become of the land that was once Earth People’s Park and I can read about the melodrama that finally brought down Steven Gaskin’s Farm in Tennessee.

But that’s OK. Life moves on, and I’m grateful to the Commune Project for keeping all this knowledge from slipping into the swamp of today’s troubled times.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The reason the communes of the 1960s failed was that no one ever took on a leadership position,” said one of my high school teachers. It wasn’t the first or last time a high school teacher said something that was inaccurate or wrong. If I had had a copy of The 60s Communes: Hippies and Beyond by Timothy Miller I would have given it to him and said, “I think you had better reconsider your opinion.” Miller, in this academic work, does everything right that my high school teacher did wrong. For example, he collected data and analyzed it before forming his opinion. He also clearly defined the meanings of “failure” and “success” while allowing room to consider that such definitions vary depending on who is using them. Miller also takes into account the role that leadership played in the communes. Unfortunately for my teacher, his claim doesn’t stand up under scrutiny after reading this book.

Timothy Miller’s stated purpose is not to discredit any of my educators, though. The 60s Communes was written as part of a sociological study of hippy communes in which the researches attempted to list and gather information about each and every one that ever existed. This monumental task proved to be an impossibility but they collected enough data to draw conclusions about this social movement and the results are published here. Miller does a sufficient job of defining what a hippy commune is, why they became so popular, what it was like to live on one, and also why some of them fell apart while others thrived. Three things an uninformed reader might learn right away is that such communes were not unique to the 1960s and in fact have existed in some form or other since the founding of the U.S.A. Also, while there were thousands of communes that eventually broke up, there were just as many that continued on to the time of this book’s publication (1999) and some even still exist to this day. Finally, there was a vast variety of communes that differed in their purposes, styles, and organization.

That last point is addressed in two early sections in which Miller describes and classifies the variations of hippy communes. Some groups were cultish with strict authoritarian leaders. At the other extreme were loafers who wanted to do nothing but lay around naked in the woods while doing drugs. Most were somewhere in between. Some were urban while others were rural. Some permitted drug use and on others it was forbidden. There were about an equal amount of communes dedicated to secular and spiritual concerns. There were communes for communists, anarchists, environmentalists, organic farmers, pacifists, artists, vegetarians, political activists, lesbians (but not so many gay men), nudists, and group marriage experiments. There were also communes for Neo-Pagans, Hindus, hippy Jesus Freaks, counter cultural Jews, yoga practitioners, Buddhists, UFO cults, and back to nature aficianados. Leadership styles ranged from leaderless chaos to dictatorial control. Interestingly enough, the more authoritarian communes survived for shorter periods of time then the more democratic groups. So my high school teacher was wrong about the leadership question. In fact, many communes thrived when they had effective leadership and didn’t fail at all. Even communes with high levels of drug use stayed together for a long time providing they had a sufficient amount of structure in order to do farming and other necessary work.

The latter part of Timothy Miller’s study analyzes and evaluates different aspects and facets of the hippy commune experience. Through interviewing members, he examines why some groups lasted for long periods of time while others fell apart immediately. He talks about relations with neighbors, some of which are harrowing like a commune in Taos, New Mexico where the locals assaulted, raped, and murdered some members. The same commune also had warm and friendly relations with the nearby Native American Indian population. Others maintained good relations with the surrounding community by performing services like trash clean up and providing midwifes for the delivery of babies. Some ran businesses and sold produce from their farms at local markets. Maintaining good relations with outsiders was a major factor in the survival of many communes. Effective management of conflicts within the communes was also important in this way.

The 60s Communes: Hippies and Beyond is an academic book in the best and worst senses of the word. Readers looking for entertainment and excitement had best stay away. The writing is dry and the formulaic template for a sociological study is easy to recognize. Despite its academicism, it is still written to be accessible to a general audience. There are no technical terminologies or abstruse theories and my biggest pet peeve regarding sociological writing, the vapid complexities of postmodern critical theory and social justice, are largely absent. And while it may not be a fun read, it is definitely informative. In terms of opening our eyes to a sociological aspect of American history that few people know anything about, this is a work of significance and high quality.

So my high school social studies teacher was wrong. Certainly there was leadership in many, but not all, of the hippy communes. But where he really went wrong was in the meaning of “failure”. It can be assumed that by “fail” he meant “didn’t last forever”, but what kind of definition is that? The Beatles didn’t last forever; does that mean they failed? Did Abraham Lincoln fail because he died? Timothy Miller’s definition of “success” is probably more relevant since by it he means reaching the community’s objectives and goals”. Some communes were experiments and not all of them wanted to last forever. There were communes where artists made art, farmers grew food, yogis practiced yoga, Jesus Freaks worshiped God, and nudists lived without clothes. Unfortunately for the UFO cultists, no space aliens ever landed on their land. So much the worse for them. Maybe the aliens were looking for a more intelligent life form. Besides, as mentioned previously, many communes did last a long time and the ones that didn’t had a variety of reasons for breaking up. Some members simply lost interest; others fell apart for more mundane reasons like an inability to pay rent on the land or health care needs that the commune couldn’t meet. Many communes did have their problems like the Hare Krishnas when one of their leaders murdered some followers and emptied their bank accounts or the Peoples Temple ending with the murder-suicide of more than 900 people. But the overwhelming majority of communards that Timothy Miller interviewed said that their life on the commune was a positive and memorable experience. If “success” is defined as “satisfaction with results” than we can conclude that many communes of that time succeeded. To the shame of uninformed high school teachers all over the world, The 60s Communes: Hippies and Beyond serves the purpose of driving that point home. Let this be a reminder to you that it is best to learn as much as you can about a subject before you form an opinion about it.

[Fred Froelich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read in 2000, then off I went.

[Maggie Hannis · Rating 5 out of 5]

EPIC. This book sparked a longstanding fantasy of starting my own self-sustaining farming community. Always looking to befriend people who would bring a fun new skillset to the commune.

[Craig Werner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chock full of information about a cross section of Sixties communes, but pretty "listy" in style. Miller properly stresses that the communes were both something new--a manifestation of the various rebellious and visionary energies of the time period--and an extension of patterns that have been part of American history almost from the arrival of the first Europeans: a nature-oriented romanticism, a repulsion for decadent civilization, the desire to tap into non-European cultural wisdoms. Partly because of the available sources, Miller focuses on a relatively small number of the thousands of alternative communities, only some of which adhered to the semi-mythical hippie pattern. Many others organized around religious ideals (Christian, Asian, Sufi, etc.); around political commitments (including the small number of black communes); and unclassifiable secular visions. There's quite a bit of repetition from chapter to chapter and I found myself skimming pretty quickly by the end, but there are numerous illuminating anecdotes. Like many of the books I've been reading lately, this one's mostly for Sixties obsessives. For those wanting a taste of what communes were like, I'd go to Famous Long Ago or Huerfano.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-researched and informative, but a bit plodding for the subject matter. The author had two main theses: (1) that 60s communes were a logical continuation of earlier utopian experiments in the US and(2) that religious or spiritual communes were more resilient than secular communes and that the secular communes that still thrive are comprised of members organized around a religion or at least common set of values and beliefs.

The various conflicts over sex, drugs, and rock & roll are there, but somewhat sanitized through an academic lens. Quite a bit of repetition takes place. The appendix guide of communes is a useful resource. It was interesting to me how many communes listed were also in the vanguard of the organic agriculture movement.

A better [fictional:] read on the subject is "Drop City" by TC Boyle.

[Anna Kaposetsi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Συγκεντρωμένα και κατηγοριοποιημένα στοιχεία για αναρίθμητες κοινότητες των χίππις σε ποικίλους τομείς, όπως ενδυμασία, διατροφή, αρχιτεκτονική, ιστορία της κοινότητας, σχέσεις εντός κοινότητητας ή μεταξύ κοινοτήτων.. σπουδαία πηγή υλικού προς έρευνα

[Ronald J Schulz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great collection which he may update. While he missed our Karma Farm organic commune in Wisconsin, because we were too far under the radar & off the grid, I hope we'll soon publish a juicy bit on that wild experience. Stay tuned.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wonderfully researched but kind of dry, perhaps in deliberate contrast to its subject. I think I wanted it to be how I imagine Boyle's "Drop City." A great overview, though.