Friends Have All Things in Common: Utopian Property Relations

Introduction

This article explores utopian practices that challenge dominant property narratives. These narratives are long-standing (stemming from Roman law and other classical sources) and they inform modern attitudes, beliefs and behaviour about property. The people whose lives and beliefs are the subject of this article are variously suspicious of the idea that humankind has dominion over the world, that private individual ownership is the best, natural or only property relationship, that ownership of things reflects our self-worth, that possessions are an extension of our ‘selves’ and/or that taking possession of things makes us human. They reject at a deep normative level the idea that possession and ownership grant to individuals rights of usage and disposal. And they seek variously to replace the egoistic property-owning individual self. Instead, they intend that all members of their community ‘have’ things in common. In different ways and to varying degrees, these people value co-operation, selflessness, service, surrender and responsibility. They belong to, but are not necessarily informed by, a long tradition within utopian thinking observable in Plato and appearing again in More, Morris and subsequent utopias, which rejects and replaces private property as part of an attempt to make the world a better place (More 1965 [1516]; Hardy 1979; Plato 2000; Sargent 2001; Morris 2004 [1890]).

Discourses and narratives about property form the conceptual backdrop to many ideas about the human self and society, material and moral status, and value and identity. Property is a powerful idea; it lies close to the heart of global capitalism, informing key paradigms of (individualist) ontology, materialism, justice, rights and social order. It is a keystone of modern life. The study of property occurs on a crowded field occupied by, for example, moral and logical philosophers, economists, political theorists, historians (of ideas and practices) as well as sociologists, literary theorists and legal scholars. My own interest in property stems from long-held theoretical, empirical and normative perplexities around the notion of private and individual ownership of property, and in this article I explore two utopian experiments with alternative property regimes. ¹ This will necessarily involve descriptive discussions of empirical cases, which are connected to extant debates within political theory. It is impossible, given the confines of space in this article, to develop these connections and so discussions will prioritise extrapolation of the new material (concerning alternative practices) while gesturing towards theoretical debates (some of which are discussed in depth by other authors in this special issue). In order to access something of the complexity of the concept of property my discussion commences with a brief consideration of the word's etymology, which illuminates the conceptual terrain for this article. The article then moves on to introduce the concept of utopianism and its realisation in intentional communities, before exploring two case studies in which people have experimented with alternative property regimes.

The word ‘property’ is packed with etymological and metaphorical cognates whose parallel and divergent meanings combine to embrace something as powerful as it is problematic. The roots of the word ‘property’ reach out in a number of directions, drawing together ideas about the self, ideas of correct (proper) behaviour, possession and ownership. The word derives from the Old French propriéte, root of the modern English word ‘propriety’. Propriety (in its most common modern usage) denotes correct behaviour or conformity to convention. Thus property appears to be normatively entwined with correctness (‘proper’ conduct). At first glance this is puzzling. Why does the primary root of the word ‘property’ evoke ‘correctness’?

Clues lie in archaic meanings of the word ‘propriety’. These involved the identification of special and essential qualities or attributes: propriety was once what marked an individual as individual (OED, 2382). The root words for ‘propriety’ are proprietas and proprius. Proprietas (according to Cassell's Latin Dictionary) has a twin meaning of (i) a property or peculiarity, ² and (ii) ownership. ³ At the roots of property, then, lie peculiarity and ownership and it would seem that to have a relationship of property with something is to mark it as particular or different from other things. It marks the thing as ‘mine’ (of me). If I remove something from the common and make it ‘my own’, I make it special, different and peculiar to me. I mark it as different from all those things that are not ‘mine’, and do not belong to me. Proprius, the second root term for propriety, also combines certain ideas about the self (and this is an individual self, separate from others, distinct in some way from the rest of humanity) with ownership. Cassell gives ‘one's own’, ‘special’, ‘particular’ and ‘peculiar’ as the various meanings of proprius. Ownership denotes specialness, distinction and particularity and is contrasted to communis or alienus. Communis connects to moenia and munus: shared, common, general and universal—public as opposed to private. And alienus describes things that belong to another(domus), as well as strangeness, foreignness: those with whom ‘we do not feel' at home’ (OED, 34).

‘Property’, then, is (etymologically) distinct from the common; it denotes individuality, particularity and the peculiar or special. ‘Property’ is one's own, pertaining in some way to the self. ‘Property’ is, in other words, private, separate and exclusive. And ‘property’ is correct and proper. It is a complex and incredibly powerful concept.

Utopianism and Intentional Communities

Utopias combine criticism with creativity. They disrupt familiar concepts and practices, creating spaces in which alternatives can be imagined and explored. They hold up a mirror to their world, often revealing the familiar to be actually very strange, odd or peculiar; suggesting the commonplace, taken-for-granted, universally accepted ‘truths’ of the author's world might actually be just conventions, convenient functions or rhetorical devices. Utopia is, literally, ‘the good place that is no place’ and this paradox emerges from Thomas More's (1965 [1516]) etymological and phonetic play on three Greek terms: eu (good), ou (non or not) and topos (place).

Utopias and utopianism articulate dissatisfaction with the now and desire for a better tomorrow (Levitas 1990). They can be at once radical and authoritarian, liberating and restricting, exciting and frustrating, and utopian experiments are rarely unqualified successes. Utopia and its cognates (utopianism, dystopias, eutopias) are restless and shifting phenomena, resistant to tidy conceptualisation, reflecting the messy, complex and contradictory nature of human desires for a better world (see Sargent 1967 and 1994). And the study of utopia can illuminate problems with today and gesture towards programmes for change because utopias lie at the heart of politics and society. They tell us about people's dreams, concerns and aspirations. Rooted in dissatisfaction with the political present, utopias express desires for alternatives. In this they speak to central questions: what do people want? What is wrong with the ‘now’? Where do we go from here? ⁴ In the discussions that follow I seek to apply these questions to the private ownership of property by investigating two lived experiments. Both of these occur within intentional communities.

Founded in discontent with the now and desiring to create a better way of life, intentional communities are lived utopian experiments (Fogarty 1980; Metcalf 1989 and 1995). They are not fully realised perfect eutopian societies, but rather they embody utopian aspirations, and experiment with utopian dreams. They are often founded on a shared vision of the way the world should be. This may be a fully articulated utopian text, ⁵ but this is rare. More often, the vision is only partially envisaged and community founders seek a life that is better, in their eyes, than life in mainstream society. Like fictional and theoretical utopias, then, intentional communities stem from discontent with the now and seek something better. They are critical and creative, devising living experiments with the good life. ⁶

The communities selected for this article are Riverside Community (1941–present) and Centrepoint Community (1977–2000). They are comparable and share some features: both are located in New Zealand; each has (or had) longevity; each has, at some point in its existence, defined itself as a religious or spiritual group (religious charitable trusts); and each has contained transgressive property practices as part of a larger vision or raison d'être. However, these are two very different communities with utterly different visions of the good life. One was founded by members of the Methodist church, and the other was ‘a communal psychotherapy cult’ (Oakes 1986, 10) which, remarkably, gained state recognition as an independent religion. One is deeply egalitarian, the other formed around a charismatic leader who described himself as ‘God’ (Oakes 1986, 87). The utopian practices and visions of these groups are utterly different, and each illuminates a different property story.

Riverside Community

Riverside Community is remarkable. Founded by Methodist pacifists in 1941, ⁷ Riverside became secularised in the 1970s ⁸ and is one of the oldest income-pooling communities of its kind in the world. The community owns just over 500 acres of land, including a dairy farm, commercial orchards, a garage, cafe, hostel, educational venue and houses. The community consists of full and probationary members and some homes are rented to tenants. When I visited in 2001 there were 33 members (18 adults, 15 children) and 23 tenants (13 adults, 10 children). The community has been larger in the past (home to over 150 people), but numbers have remained fairly constant over the last decade. ⁹ The community has experimented with a number of different and varyingly communal living arrangements. At the time of writing, the group holds all property in common but members do not live communally (in one building). Rather, each household occupies a separate home. ¹⁰ Levels of community interaction have varied across time and the current practice is to eat together twice a week (one lunch and one evening meal), plus weekly community meetings and regular ‘working bees’ (single-task working sessions). In addition, all members contribute 40 hours of labour to Riverside each week. This group has sustained unusually high levels of cohesion for a remarkable length of time. And the group has always articulated a particular view of private property.

This image of three people pondering the future of the world has become an important part of Riverside mythology. Its significance for this discussion consists in the associations made between materialism and ideology, beliefs, values and actions. The story, as depicted here, offers a material criticism of contemporary society: it suggests that there is something profoundly wrong with a capitalist system, which yields both socioeconomic inequality and war. Property is close to the heart of what is wrong with this society.

These beliefs about property, war and materialism stemmed from a religious ethic. The Methodist tradition draws on strands of Christian belief that reject materialism in favour of a return to a simple apostolic life. Possessions are a distraction from the good life in these accounts, drawing attention away from the plight of others and towards gratification of the self, egoism, self-aggrandisement and competition. The account continues:

This account of Riverside's beginnings contains many of the factors that mark the community across time. These include pacifism, anti-materialism, a belief that individual actions matter, that small collectives can have positive impact, and a commitment to act upon these beliefs. ¹¹ Concerns about war and peace, ¹² materialism and poverty, combine to produce the Riverside critique of modern society. Capitalism is identified as a causal factor and alternative property relations form an important part of Riverside Community's attempt to change things for the better. For the founders, this was firmly rooted in the Methodist tradition, and religion played a key role in the early community of Riverside, founding the vision of social justice embraced by the community over a period of more than 60 years. The community became secularised in the 1970s, but the core values remain constant and alternative property relations still form an important part of the community's mission. Members own no personal assets (homes, cash reserves or income) and the group has developed a sophisticated internal economy which supports its commitment to ‘voluntary poverty’. This is a much-used phrase at Riverside, which involves a commitment to minimal personal possessions, a life without private property, ¹³ a non-materialistic ethos and a re-evaluation of humanity.

Riverside Community website (2009) opens with a brief history and description of the community (its location, number of members and brief descriptions of living arrangements). It then proceeds to describe current property relations and decision-making procedures:

This statement makes interesting connections between communal ownership (of homes and cars), collective responsibility and egalitarian internal processes. These are linked by ideas about co-operation and sharing: possessions, responsibility and (decision-making) power are shared. Whereas property relations in a capitalist economy generate or contribute to competition (which is linked by these people to war), communal ownership grounds a co-operative community.

To these ends, Riverside Community operates a fully fledged income pool with clear entrance and exit procedures. ¹⁴ The internal economy of Riverside is complicated and comprehensive and it is not necessary to discuss the intricacies here, but I do want to provide some detail in order to permit the feeling of life inside a ‘property-free’ social group to emerge. The community owns its land, homes and businesses communally, in trust. This is not collective ownership: individual members do not own shares or proportions of the property (or other assets). Rather it is fully communal and members surrender their own assets to Riverside Community Trust when they join the group. The proprieties that stem from these property relationships are egalitarian in a levelling sense. For example, there are rules (in the collectively authored Community Agreements) concerning the use of private assets when joining Riverside. Lavish spending when setting up home is discouraged because members are all expected to live at more or less the same levels of material existence. ¹⁵ Members of Riverside Community are not in material competition with each other and the ownership system encourages a collective sensibility: ‘mine’ becomes ‘ours’.

Riverside Community seeks to change the relationship between work and property. Instead of working for pay, which attaches to the individual (‘my pay’ for ‘my labour’), Riverside members give 40 hours of service to the community each week as part of their membership. Individuals are not ‘paid’ for work here. And work forms an important part of the community ethos at Riverside. Again, the internal system is complex and arrangements for holidays and sabbaticals are quite detailed ¹⁶ but the definition of work is flexible and may include serving or cooking in the cafe, labouring in the orchards, running the farm, maintaining properties or preparing a communal meal. There is no hierarchy of work written into this model and, while in practice the more experienced always tend to accrue more power in a group, at Riverside there is no material difference between an inexperienced and a skilled worker: a manager works the same hours as an unskilled labourer and has the same voting status. All adults receive weekly ‘pocket money’ and this is the same amount for each adult (households also receive set allowances for teenagers, children and babies).

The internal economy includes provision for leave of absence, compassionate, paternity, maternity and sick leave, as well as retirement and health insurance. This model has a number of intended outcomes. It severs the relationship between work and pay. It discourages an association of self-worth with income or pay. It encourages egalitarianism. And it encourages individuality (people work in the areas most appropriate to their abilities) while discouraging individualism.

Intentional communities often depict themselves as offering an example of a different (and better) way of life and this, I suggest, is important. Utopias always depict or suggest better worlds: and this enables them to criticise their own society. They tell us what their author believes to be wrong with the now and they imagine alternatives. In fictional utopias these two moves (of criticism and imagining alternatives) often occur concurrently: as the protagonist experiences new ways of doing things, he or she comes to see the flaws in his or her own world. And so, Hytholoday in Thomas More's Utopia comes to appreciate what is wrong with his world (16th-century England) through his very different experiences of the society of Utopia. The citizens of Utopia hold no private property, commercial value systems are treated satirically (via golden chamber pots) and this helps More to reveal the injustice and irrationality of the English property law, penal system (especially for property crimes) and socioeconomic inequalities (More 1965 [1516], Book 1). Riverside Community, by offering a living example of a chosen alternative way of life in which property relations are significantly different, is performing an important utopian function.

This is an important statement, rich to interpret as it further illuminates the community's vision of a good life. Utopias hold up a mirror to their world, exposing its fault-lines, and this statement suggests both material and ethical wrongs in the world. To address poverty, exploitation and environmental degradation, it suggests, we need to inhabit a certain moral and ethical standpoint, which can be found in all the world's religions. ¹⁷ This takes us beyond a conception of property as a relation with/over things and into the sphere of ontology, self and other. This involves an attitude to the other (including other people, nature and future generations) which is grounded in love. From this stems a commitment to individual, collective and intergenerational responsibilities, universal respect, equity and egalitarianism. And this, in the Riverside view, requires service, self-sacrifice and action. Within this statement lies a rejection of private property and profit. It suggests that these form part of today's problems. Individual ownership of private property embraces and encourages a certain idea of the self: this self is ontologically separated from others, permitted and indeed driven to relentless personal acquisition of wealth. This is a selfish self. Riverside seeks to develop selves who are other-focused: individually responsible for doing good and avoiding harm, collectively responsible for community decisions and actions; and aware that the whole is greater than the total of its parts. Living together in the community with a voluntarily limited material comfort and no personal property forms is one route towards this goal. So is participation in world peace and social justice movements.

Before leaving Riverside, it is important to note some of the difficulties and unintended consequences of these property relations. Joy Cole, a long-time member of the community (who joined with her husband during the Second World War), reflected on this in an interview. She recalled that pressures from the outside world made it difficult, sometimes, for members to realise their commitment to poverty. It is important (and difficult) to maintain a balance between the ideals of the group, their desire to live together in a non-affluent, non-materially rich manner, and the needs of members (for example, to live in some comfort, or to be socially acceptable):

For the community to survive across time its members cannot live in deep impoverishment. For example, members need enough to eat and their children need clothing comparable to that of their peers. People from outside the group need to be able to come into it without embarrassment. Joy Cole's examples may appear trivial but they are not. Extreme poverty affects the morale, physical and emotional well-being of the group and, ultimately, its sustainability. On the one hand, Riverside's commitment to voluntary poverty could threaten its future. Firstly, living in an intentional community is challenging and members need to be sustained and nourished, not underfed or in significant material discomfort. Secondly, some identify the income pool as the reason for (relatively) low membership numbers over the last decade. In recent years, some prospective members have challenged this institution, seeking to retain personal assets, and an amended process is under trial at the time of writing, which seeks to maintain the integrity of the income pool while addressing some of these concerns. ¹⁸ On the other hand, Riverside's income pool, internal economy and commitment to voluntary poverty as part of offering an alternative to capitalist life make this community what it is: an extraordinary living experiment with the good life.

Centrepoint Community ¹⁹

The interplay of ideals, intentions and outcomes in intentional communities is fascinating, particularly in my second case: Centrepoint Community. Centrepoint was, in many ways, a highly successful community. In its heyday it generated high levels of income from a plant nursery, paper-making press, pottery and other co-operative enterprises. It was financially affluent and had high levels of new membership until its closure in 2000. The physical surroundings are beautiful and the community owned a 30-acre plot of land in Albany (near Auckland) with extensive buildings, including a swimming pool, craft studios, a substantial community house and a well-equipped school. And Centrepoint Community was, without doubt, a utopian experiment in communal living. It was, at one time, home to up to 300 people and was New Zealand's largest, most influential intentional community. The utopian vision on which Centrepoint was founded and ran for over 20 years aimed primarily at the personal growth of its members. Members sought to accomplish this through spiritual and interpersonal experimentation. This was a spiritual community based on personal and sexual liberation. Remarkably, it claimed and achieved legal court recognition as an independent religion, led by a charismatic leader, Bert Potter. ²⁰

Centrepoint was, in some ways, a very successful community. In other respects it proved disastrous and the community's legacy includes sexual abuse and exploitation. Centrepoint was closed by the courts in 2000 (on financial grounds). This followed years of high-profile allegations of sexual abuse within the community. The community survived a series of trials in which Potter and other prominent members were imprisoned ²¹ but, following a period of internal schism, was closed on a legal technicality. Some of the details of these events are relevant to this article because Centrepoint members pursued a vision of personal liberation and emancipation from the ‘straitjacket’ of conventional religiosity and morality. And property formed an important part of both Centrepoint's critique of the modern world and its route to a better life.

For Potter, personal growth meant becoming ‘like God’:

In order to reach this goal, members sought to transgress certain defensive mechanisms and behavioural patterns (via psychotherapy), and to develop a liberated self (via social and sexual experimentation). The key to personal growth (and ultimate godliness) was ‘openness’ which was sought through various acts of surrender, many of which concerned property.

On a material level, the first act of property surrender concerned material assets: members gave all their assets to the community on joining and gave any money earned (or other income) to the community during their membership. This was an income-sharing group. Members owned no private possessions and the community pooled all material resources, such as clothing, food and labour as well as non-material resources, such as love, commitment and energy. To omit the latter would be to misrepresent this group which sought, and indeed achieved, intense closeness. Giving up the right to individual possessions formed part of this larger goal.

The second and more unusual material property act involved the arrangement of physical space. ‘Openness to God’ at Centrepoint involved living with ‘no barriers’ between the self and others. To facilitate this, the group lived in an extreme form of communalism in which members had absolutely no private personal space. This is very unusual—many communities explore communal living (in shared houses, for example) and most shift towards less communal living arrangements (as Riverside has), because communal dynamics are intense and difficult—the fact that Centrepoint lasted for over 20 years with this highly communalised norm is extraordinary. Members slept side by side on mattresses in long wooden buildings. People would move from bed to bed so as not to become possessive about sleeping spaces. Meals were shared in the community kitchen. Even the bathroom (usually a solitary space in which one can be alone, even in communal homes) had no doors, the lavatory contained several toilets, side by side, and the showers had no curtains or doors. Centrepoint members surrendered their physical space as part of an attempt to explore with, surrender and transcend the private self.

A third and related set of norms and practices revolved around self–other relations. The community sought to dissolve the separation of self from other within the group. This took a number of forms, as activities that are ‘normally’ private and personal were opened for ‘sharing’. Examples included childbirth and masturbation. And Potter identified possessive (interpersonal and sexual) relationships as a root problem in modern society, leading to neuroses and alienation (from other people, God and the higher self). The solution was experimentation, with occasional instruction from Potter, if he felt that sexual ‘tasks’ could help a person to reach their spiritual core (or ‘centre point’). ²²

Membership of Centrepoint involved routine participation in Potter's ‘cures’ (suggested tasks in response to problems identified in therapy, counselling and instruction. Much of the counselling at Centrepoint was in ‘open session’, wherein members told the entire group their problems. ‘We aimed at “No Barriers!” ’ (Interview, Anon., 6 May 2001).

The intensity of life at Centrepoint is hard to imagine. Every aspect of life was shared. And for many, Centrepoint was, for a time, eutopia realised. Former members recalled in interview ‘exhilaration and liberation’ and ‘intense and overpowering love: it felt like coming home to your heart, to God and to the universe’ (Interviews, Anon., 4 May 2001 and Anon., 6 May 2001). Adult life at Centrepoint was, by all accounts, intense, emotional and absorbing. Every aspect of life was ‘open’ to scrutiny and some former members recall this as a powerful mechanism of control within the group. And children ‘ran feral’ (Interview, Anon., 2 February 2001), largely unsupervised in the group's latter years. Former child members suggest their parents were too absorbed in their own complex relationships to notice as an inappropriate (paedophiliac) core formed around Potter.

Centrepoint raises interesting questions: did the community change or was it always formed on corrupt principles? For example, Potter taught that children should experience sexual encounters appropriate to their level of development; he taught that people should be sexually liberated and that learning to masturbate was a part of this. He taught that ‘no barriers’ meant that this should and could legitimately occur in a public space (at least within the group) and so, when one person in an interview recalls being taught (at the age of 11) to masturbate in a communal gathering, she expresses ambivalence: was this abusive, exploitative or liberating?

The evidence suggests that a combination of irresponsibility and naivety permitted an extremely abusive situation to arise which was then legitimised by the internal processes that governed this community. I dwell on this because it is important for the property stories I am exploring in this article. It would have been easier to select two ‘benevolent’ communities in which alternative property relations can be observed to function beneficially and the selection of Centrepoint is deeply problematic. Firstly, it feeds many preconceptions and salacious fantasies about intentional communities (despite the image, very few actually hold orgies, and even fewer are home to paedophile rings). But this community did and was and the lessons we can learn are, I think, both limited and important. Firstly, it is without doubt that utterly unacceptable things occurred at Centrepoint. But it does not follow that all radical property experiments would end likewise. Secondly, I suggest that it is possible, without condoning the activities of members, to claim that something interesting happened at Centrepoint. Potter and his followers took their critique of the modern world and their desire for something different (and in their own eyes better) to its logical extreme, thoroughly stripping away layers of privacy and possession to seek an alternative way of being. Radical experimentation with the self at Centrepoint involved a complete surrender of property. This included properties external to the self (assets and possessions) and, more challengingly, many aspects of the self: private thoughts and the body. Interestingly though, community publications at its height stress the importance of individuality. Centrepoint members joined because they wanted to explore themselves, to find their own central point: ‘Centrepoint is a community of individuals each doing his or her own thing’ (Oakes 1986, 145).

Conclusions

Any empirical observation of utopian experiments in intentional communities is bound, at some level, to become an exploration of unintended consequences and we have encountered some of these: fears about material hardship at Riverside and abusive relationships at Centrepoint. These are important and should be acknowledged but they do not, I suggest, render the experiments worthless or failed.

Both of these communities have attempted, albeit in different ways, to transgress and disrupt the egoistic self of possessive individualism. ²³ These experiments seek to encourage and develop a different and better kind of self: a person with different relationships to possessions, capital, land and other people. Members own next to nothing as individuals and have no individual claim over the assets of their communities. They have surrendered the right to personal private property. This has freed them from certain responsibilities and to do certain things. It has bound them to their group, dissolving the distinction between ‘mine’ and ‘thine’. At Centrepoint this was taken further, in a surrender of personal space, privacy and certain levels of autonomy. This is one difference between the two groups. Another lies in the fact that, despite the radical nature of many of their actions and the desire to dissolve boundaries, Centrepoint members were self-focused in ways that Riverside members are not. The motivation, ontology and politics of this group remained with the individual.

People living within Riverside Community, when I visited, seemed happy with their lives, and in interview, spoke enthusiastically about their work, the daily processes of living at Riverside and the larger project for change. None were materialistic and all were committed to their way of life. The complex internal economy enables members to be free of financial burdens, free from concerns about a basic standard of material well-being and free to spend their lives trying to make a difference. Riverside Community does more than ‘just’ offer a passive alternative of the good life. Members engage in local social programmes (working with people with drug and alcohol dependency) and the community donates financial support to national and international peacekeeping and social justice organisations. ²⁴

This returns me to the etymological connection between the self and property and to the manifold and complex debates raised by utopian property relations. It is impossible to engage with these debates satisfactorily in an article of this length, but it is important to note that the self nurtured in these groups (and particularly at Riverside) is very different from the individualist self who removes things from the common for his or her own profit and use (Locke 1964 [1689]; or Macpherson 1961). And none of the things that follow from this (individualism, materialism, possessiveness, competition and aggression) are proprieties at Riverside. These selves are part of something larger. They are friends, or at least neighbours, who hold all things in common. They have, in Rousseauvian terms, given themselves to the community ²⁵ and they have replaced private property with what might accurately be called a common wealth.