Agrarianism is an organic system. An agrarian community can succeed only insofar as its participants adapt themselves to one-another and their environment. Its culture is defined by the collective memory of its members, and evolves with their traditions and beliefs. In essence, it cannot arise spontaneously, but builds upon itself as the experience of its members accrues -much in the way that limestone accumulates layer on layer with the gradual deposition of alluvial sediment.
Consequently, it would follow that no such community could be artificially contrived - that is, consciously engineered within the space of a single generation - and still meet with success. In numerous instances, history reaffirms that assertion. Utopian communities founded spontaneously on agrarian principles have generally met with disaster: Harmonists, New Harmonists, Benthamites, Oneidans, and Shakers, to name a few. The Amish, Midinites, and other German Agrarian Protestant groups cannot claim exception, as they did not spontaneously self-establish, but instead arose from preexisting agricultural communities in Europe, and so belong to an entirely different category.
Examination on a case-by-case basis reveals that the downfall of such communities proceeds from failure on part of the communal tenants either to adhere to the created culture, or transmit it to succeeding generations. The fromer shortcoming was the province of the Benthamites, New Harmonists, and Oneidans, whose elaborate cultural experiments failed when the members of their communities reverted to previous lifestyles, affecting the dissolution of the newer agrarian systems. The same fate befell the numerous separatist micro-communes of the 1960s and 70s; their populations became gradually became disillusioned with the communities' founding tenets and eventually abandoned them. The Harmonists and Shakers, on the other hand, had strong cultures but failed to perpetuate them through time, largely because both sorts of communities refrained from sexual congress, and were under-zealous in their attempts to assimilate new members from outside the community.
If future agrarians could surmount these two obstacles - establishing a community which creates a compelling and easily transmissible culture - then the resulting society should healthily self-perpetuate. However, I know of no existing, permanently occupied, artificially created agrarian communities that have survived for more than a decade, and am thus inclined to believe that such an endeavor is difficult if not impossible.
The question may seem largely irrelevant until one considers the current state of traditional agrarican communities. Rural America is dying. Its economy flags, its population lags, and its citizens are aging. In order to revitalize the heartland, agrarians must choose between subversion (re-agrarianizing existing communities from within) and revolution (the creation of wholly new agrarian communities). If attainment of latter option proves impossible due to the untenable nature of spontaneously established agrarian communities, then the efforts of agrarian reformers would be much better spent on the former.
Consequently, it would follow that no such community could be artificially contrived - that is, consciously engineered within the space of a single generation - and still meet with success. In numerous instances, history reaffirms that assertion. Utopian communities founded spontaneously on agrarian principles have generally met with disaster: Harmonists, New Harmonists, Benthamites, Oneidans, and Shakers, to name a few. The Amish, Midinites, and other German Agrarian Protestant groups cannot claim exception, as they did not spontaneously self-establish, but instead arose from preexisting agricultural communities in Europe, and so belong to an entirely different category.
Examination on a case-by-case basis reveals that the downfall of such communities proceeds from failure on part of the communal tenants either to adhere to the created culture, or transmit it to succeeding generations. The fromer shortcoming was the province of the Benthamites, New Harmonists, and Oneidans, whose elaborate cultural experiments failed when the members of their communities reverted to previous lifestyles, affecting the dissolution of the newer agrarian systems. The same fate befell the numerous separatist micro-communes of the 1960s and 70s; their populations became gradually became disillusioned with the communities' founding tenets and eventually abandoned them. The Harmonists and Shakers, on the other hand, had strong cultures but failed to perpetuate them through time, largely because both sorts of communities refrained from sexual congress, and were under-zealous in their attempts to assimilate new members from outside the community.
If future agrarians could surmount these two obstacles - establishing a community which creates a compelling and easily transmissible culture - then the resulting society should healthily self-perpetuate. However, I know of no existing, permanently occupied, artificially created agrarian communities that have survived for more than a decade, and am thus inclined to believe that such an endeavor is difficult if not impossible.
The question may seem largely irrelevant until one considers the current state of traditional agrarican communities. Rural America is dying. Its economy flags, its population lags, and its citizens are aging. In order to revitalize the heartland, agrarians must choose between subversion (re-agrarianizing existing communities from within) and revolution (the creation of wholly new agrarian communities). If attainment of latter option proves impossible due to the untenable nature of spontaneously established agrarian communities, then the efforts of agrarian reformers would be much better spent on the former.