The desire to start something new is so familiar and appealing that few people can remain unresponsive to it. A new magazine, a new college, a new community, a new society—these projects stir visions of felicity, of life lived differently, of inspired new personal relations, social awakening, and spiritual improvement. Even modest plans for new ventures share in the large hope generated by pioneers, missionaries, and dreamers in the abounding faith of the early colonists, or of the founders of towns, colleges, and industries. Naturally, a sour realism may overtake the evangelical impulse: the fellowship of the new spirit, with all things held in common, can prove fragile, the communities of the like-minded may be threatened by conflicts of personality and ideology. Inevitably, people become wise and self-protective about the hazards of new communities, about the unrecoverable expense of resources and spirit that such projects demand. How long is it since anyone wanted to start a new college? Even to start a new magazine has become heroic: think of the determination and execution of policy, the administrative and organizational problems, the financing, the distribution, all the important intricate details not mentioned in that e.e. cummings poem of so many years ago:

The classic failure of Utopian communities and other new ventures was a failure to clarify their succession, governance, and procedures. In the Sixties,