Communitism's Hunt for Harmony: The Syncretic Communism of John A. Collins and the Skaneateles Community

The Skaneateles Community was a utopian socialist experiment that existed from 1843 to 1846 in Mottville, New York, United States. Abolitionist lecturer John Anderson Collins founded the community on a transatlantic blend of the "non-resistance and no-government" principles of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison from Massachusetts and the "community of property" ideas of Welsh industrialist Robert Owen. The Skaneateles Community found favorable conditions in Upstate New York because of their comradeship with the followers of French socialist Charles Fourier, despite their many theoretical disagreements. Collins' brand of socialism was a maverick among the many socialist experiments of 1840s Western New York. "Communitism," the Skaneateles Community newspaper's namesake, was unique, but it was also a blending of the most respected radical self-improvement, freethinking, dietetic, phrenological, educational, artistic, political, social and economic thinking of the time. Though the Fourierists thought the Skaneateles communards too radical, they encouraged them and wanted them to succeed. The communitists did likewise with the Fourierists. Through a look at the transatlantic trade in radical thought, this work argues, that "communitism," was as syncretic as it was idiosyncratic, as transatlantic as it was patriotically American and as ecumenical as it was dogmatic.