Lifestyle! Interview: Hartmut Von Hentig

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The Nazis began with this same anti-intellectual, anti-technological, isolationist attitude—they were for family and for nature, for "blood and soil" as their phrase went—and they carried it to a fearful extreme. I don't want to see this repeated. You can't rely on blind flight back to nature and simplicity alone to save you from the pressure of big society and many people living under evil conditions. The valley into which you escape doesn't really take this off your mind, nor does it protect you from it.

LIFESTYLE: An attempt has begun among some alternative communities to establish the kind of cooperation and interdependency of which you speak, a communications and trade network in which the groups work together to satisfy their collective needs. What must be done to make this effort successful?

". . . nobody can possibly "drop out" of society. They may find a more marginal place, but they'll still depend on the outside world in some way."

VON HENTIG: If they're to establish effective networks they must develop a strong feeling of commonality, especially since they're so marginal and tenuous in their existence at present. Merely disliking the existing civilization isn't enough of a common ground to close a network . . . they must know each other's interests, strengths and weaknesses well enough to avoid bad alliances. It may be more desirable, for example, to be connected with a church parish in Bavaria than with some more similar- looking group close at hand. They shouldn't hesitate to look beyond themselves for useful resources, either. Museums, libraries, universities, churches and many other places stuck right in the craw of society might be more valuable in some respects than anything that could be experienced on the communes.

Perhaps the most important thing is that they know very specifically for what reason their network is being established. Is it simply to share a feeling of brotherhood, or is it to help themselves economically, or perhaps to enrich their lives in general? . . . both networks and individual communes need a recognizable purpose for their existence. I stayed for a while with a community of anthropositivists in northern Scotland which was centered around the care of emotionally disturbed children. They took in as many children as they sensibly could and let them, live without being pushed around or put under pressure. Those people had a good commune because they had a task, the value of which didn't have to be proven to themselves or anybody else.

LIFESTYLE: One specific purpose proposed for the network is the achievement of autonomy from establishment politics and economics . . . from the capitalist system, essentially.

VON HENTIG: But the irony is that this couldn't be attempted under anything but a democratic capitalist system, in which the only real pressure is an economic one. Perhaps this is another example of Mendelsohn's "5%" theory . . . large capitalist systems usually don't harass small, marginal enterprises which pose no serious threat to the major enterprises in power. These networks could never be established in a rigid society strictly controlled by a government that demands a very specific social as well as economic organization of all its subjects. It seems, when I put it this way, that communes are seeking a third way, in between socialism and capitalism. Is that correct?

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