CHAPTER IX: The Oneida Community - Yves Guyot, Socialistic Fallacies [1910]
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Socialistic Fallacies (London: Cope and Fenwick, 1910).
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CHAPTER IX
The Oneida Community
Further communistic experiments—The Oneida Community—Its administration—The reign of God—“Mutual criticism”— Promiscuity — Dissolution — One Community formed by Americans, the others by Germans.
further experiments were made in the United States, there being thirty-two Socialistic establishments in 1842. John Humphrey Noyes, the author of the first “History of American Socialism,” founded the Oneida Community in 1848, under the influence of Fourier's ideas. Its supporters contributed $107,000; in 1857 the balance sheet shewed assets of $67,000—a loss of $40,000. In the ten succeeding years they made a profit of $180,000; in 1874 they possessed 900 acres of land and numbered 300 members. Their affairs were administered by twenty-one committees, there being one committee for twenty members; there were also forty-eight directors of the various industries. The staff therefore must have been ample.
They believed that the kingdom of God was at hand; they desired the total and immediate abolition of sin, and they practised sexual promiscuity within the community, limited by freedom of selection. Control was exercised by “mutual criticism,” with or without the consent of its object. Nordhoff has given a description of one of their sittings at which fifteen members were assembled. For a quarter of an hour they attacked a young man whose emotion was made apparent by his paleness and by the large drops of perspiration which he emitted.
The community existed for thirty years. Outside opinion was hostile to the system of sexual morality which they practised, and possibly the “Perfectionists” were themselves tired of it; they gave it up, but from that day the community was dissolved, and in 1880 it became a commercial limited company.
This is the only community which was formed by Americans, all the others were formed by Germans, and all of them failed for the same reason, the corruption and despotism of those who directed them, and internal dissensions and rivalries, so that the time which ought to have been employed in production was wasted in disputes and compromises.
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