Communal Architecture: Social and Physical

Abstract

Kenneth Rexroth. Communalism: From Its Origins to the Twentieth Century. New York: Seabury Press, 1974. 305 + xviii pp. Dolores Hayden. Seven American Utopias: The Architecture of Communitarian Socialism, 1790-1915. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1976. 401 + ix pp. + 246 b/w illus. That the last several years should have produced a spate of books on the subject of communalistic societies is not surprising. In many ways it con- stitutes the literary correlative, response or reaction to certain trends which have been enacted in the society and culture of the past decade and a half. Disillusionment with American politics as evidenced by the Vietnam War, for example, together with the world recession of the 1960's and '70's, occasioned the formation of hundreds of communes by "drop outs" from the mainstream of Western society. Similarly, that element in Western civiliza- tion which has always been critical of materialism and capitalism, and accordingly has been attracted to the philosophies of anarchism and socialism, was given added stimulation by the "energy crisis" of the 1970's and by the discovery of corruption in high places which climaxed with the resignation of Richard Nixon as President in August, 1974.