• the People’s commune

   

  (1958-1983)

  Image: Chinese Poster Collection, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.

• The idea of communing may typically involve a retreat from the state system, but that doesn’t mean states haven’t also tried making a system out of the idea. In Mao-era communist China, as part of the “Great Leap Forward” of the 1950s – the campaign that led to the Great Chinese Famine – the notion of the commune was developed from mutual cooperation into a utopian apparatus of production on the grandest scale. “Many rural communes will surround the cities, making for even larger communist communes. The notion of utopia mentioned by our predecessors will be realised and surpassed”, state official Lu Dingyi told a party congress of the time.
  With impossibly outlandish production targets being met by even wilder claims of their fulfilment, the sense of (politically cultivated) competition amongst APCs (Agricultural Producers’ Cooperatives) spurred them into joining forces with others in their locale. Eventually whole provinces became single cooperative units of up to 10,000 people, counting not just grain, but schools, hospitals and factories as part of their output. The People’s Commune became state policy in 1958: the name proposed by Mao Tse-tung himself, who liked how the phrase encompassed the façets of industry, agriculture, military and livelihood – all in the servitude of political power. p (fs)

• COVER

  COVER

  Cover

  Commune Revisited
• Table of contents

  Table of contents
• EDITORIAL

  EDITORIAL

  Editorial

  Commune Revisited
• ESSAY

  ESSAY

  Communities of Consciousness

  From Drop City to the digital by Fred Turner

  Text: Fred Turner
• FOUND

  FOUND

  New Harmony

  (1825-1827)

  Text: Fiona Shipwright
• CASE STUDY

  CASE STUDY

  Arthouse Revival

  Xucun, China

  Text: Elvia Wilk
• INTERVIEW

  INTERVIEW

  On Cooperation

  An interview with Richard Sennett by Rob Wilson

  Text: Rob Wilson
• CASE STUDY

  CASE STUDY

  Let’s Get Gated

  International Residential Complex Rosinka, Moscow

  Text: Florian Heilmeyer
• FOUND

  FOUND

  The Paris Commune

  (1871)

  Text: Rob Wilson
• PHOTO ESSAY

  PHOTO ESSAY

  A Natural Order

  Photographer Lucas Foglia portrays outsider life in rural America

  Text: Sophie Lovell
• FOUND

  FOUND

  The People’s Commune

  (1958-1983)

  Text: Fiona Shipwright
• CASE STUDY

  CASE STUDY

  The Mothership

  Auroville, Tamil Nadu State, India

  Text: Sara Faezypour
• ESSAY

  ESSAY

  The Rule of Hours

  James Marriott on Hans van der Laan's Abdij Sint Benedictusberg

  Text: James Marriott
• CASE STUDY

  CASE STUDY

  Eco Beach

  Lima, Peru

  Text: Sara Faezypour
• ESSAY

  ESSAY

  Enduring Concensus

  Malcolm Miles on Freetown Christiania at forty-three

  Text: Malcolm Miles
• CASE STUDY

  CASE STUDY

  Connected Communards

  Mount Telaithrion, Euboea, Greece

  Text: Florian Heilmeyer
• PHOTO BOOTH

  PHOTO BOOTH

  In the Photo Booth with...

  Piet Hein Eek

  Text: Sophie Lovell
• KLAUSTOON

  KLAUSTOON

  Klaustoon

  XXIV. Fifty years inside the bubble

  Text: Klaus
• NEXT

  NEXT

  Next

  Bricks

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