Kristen Ghodsee is no stranger to communism— or at least, “closet communism.” That is what her family called it when her and her daughter, conveniently the same size, began sharing their clothing freely during the Covid 19 pandemic.
In her book Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life, Ghodsee leads with the impact Covid had on her family life to unpack how political and economic upheaval can drive people to seek alternative experimental lives—or, in other words, to seek utopia.
Ghodsee’s so-called “closet communism” reflects the fundamental point of Everyday Utopia: we engage in the kind of open sharing that is demonized as “communism”—only that it is limited to the context of our own homes.
A professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Ghodsee has written several books on the topic of communism and socialism. In Everyday Utopia Ghodsee takes a step back, surveying the multitude of experimental living that has existed for millennia: the utopia.
Covering a wide range of concerns that have faced experimental living communities, Everyday Utopia starts with the feminist, intellectual community of Kroton, founded by Pythagoras (better known for his works on triangles) around 500 BCE and concludes with the modern cohousing and family expansionist movements of the 2020s.
Over the course of Everyday Utopia, Ghodsee encourages the readers’ imagination and gives us concrete examples of how to change our own lives, either radically or hesitantly, into our own utopias of experimental living. As she writes, “change is always fueled by the perseverance of those who believe that we can do better. Hope is a muscle we must use.”
Experimental living is by nature, experimental, and as such range far and wide in their ideologies. Ghodsee makes the argument that early monasteries, both Christian and Buddhist, served as models for the experimental living communities that followed. Some, like Charles Fourier’s combination factory and housing units in France in the late 1700s, supported an integrated form of communal living to maximize productivity. Others, like the 19th century Oneida Community in Upstate New York, were organized around radical or ‘heretical’ religious beliefs, such as non-hierarchical worship or women’s equality.
As a feminist scholar, Ghodsee is uniquely able to incorporate the role that women have played in these movements, both as intellectual drivers of experimental living, and also as beneficiaries of models of labor, child rearing and domestic life that characterize many experimental living initiatives. This sets her approach apart from earlier studies. Around the world, women have been and still are expected to do the unpaid labor of cooking, cleaning, child rearing, and providing emotional support. Given this, experimental living often aims to make these shared tasks, giving freedom to women who want to spend their time elsewhere.
Ghodsee skillfully unpacks even the most radical ideas for structuring interpersonal relationships. For instance, the polyamorous, so-called ‘complex marriages’ of the Oneida perfectionist religious community, where all unrelated men and women were considered to be married, are still considered radical almost two centuries later. In giving attention to these alternative relationships, she challenges the reader to question the societal ideals of monogamy and the nuclear family.
Still, Everyday Utopia shies away from some of the downsides of utopias and the failures of those who strive to create them. And when experimental living goes wrong, it causes real harm. For example, Charles Fourier’s antisemitism in his communal living spaces was pervasive and furthered an already deeply anti semitic streak in 18th century French society. Other communities that have engaged in polygamy often have issues with sex-based violence and can intensify patriarchal control, as some sects of mormonism. The isolation of many intentional communities also makes it difficult for vulnerable people to get help and support if leaders abuse their power.
Ghodsee does address the challenges associated with living apart from broader society, and how functionally difficult it is to transform culture. Parents worry about being able to afford their kid’s college education. Children are bullied or feel alienated from their peers in school. Local zoning laws make it impossible to have composting toilets or to live together in one house or on one property.
Throughout the course of her research, Ghodsee interviewed adults who had been raised in communal living and then left, those who did a brief stint in a communal living environment, and those whose experimental living projects have since gone by the by. Almost all speak of them fondly on their experiences with experimental living, but few stay in the long run or plan to return.
Even as it acknowledges the downside, Everyday Utopia is asking the question “can’t we do this better?”, in search of what everyone is seeking: the good life. Maybe someday, we’ll find it.
