Raymond Mungo recounts the history of LNS, the radical underground news service he and a friend started. It includes his version of events surrounding the split between two factions at the press, how that split happened and how very terribly the other side behaved. Those on the other side have described his account as a work of pure fiction, and I'm not very interested in who was right and who was wrong in that famous long ago that has little to do with me and is over details of a philosophy and politics I don't share- especially when the details are so fine an outsider can hardly distinguish them. However, the book is powerfully written and very interesting for reasons that perhaps Mungo did not envision- or maybe he did.

I just missed the sixties, but being somewhat countercultural ourselves, I find the period fascinating.

I also enjoy reading any book, from any period of time, written in such a way that assumptions, standards, values and culture of that time and place are revealed in such a living way as one could never get from reading an encyclopedia entry. Ray wrote his Famous Long Ago in 1969. He and Marshall Bloom had only started the news service in 1967, the split was in 1968, and it was also in 1968 that Ray, Marty Jezer, a girl called Verandah and a few of their friends started the commune at Total Loss Farm in Packers Corner. So the window of history in Famous Long Ago is immediate, and much of the flavor and generally taken for granted assumptions of the era are revealed inadvertently rather than didactically. It's a great historical relic. Here are some of the pieces I found particularly interesting for one reason or another:

Ray Mungo describing the people he and Marshall Bloom gathered around them, or rather, who drifted up around them, in their 1960s DC apartment building:

"They were people who were homeless, could survive on perhaps five dollars a week in spending money, and could tolerate the others in the house. I guess we all agreed on some basic issues—the war is wrong, the draft is an
abomination and a slavery, abortions are sometimes necessary and should be legal, universities are an impossible bore, LSD is Good and Good For You, etc., etc.—and I realize that marijuana, that precious weed, was our universal common denominator."

These would be countercultural issues where we do not have much in common. It is interesting to note that while the propaganda arm of the sixties would have us believe it was all about peace, love, and acceptance, the acceptance was really largely just for those who shared a belief in those 'basic' issues- and whose judgment was warped by drugs.

Raymond also notes that "it is difficult to remain "independent" of aggressive young Trotskyites when you share a bathroom with them."

The whole point is that a free community does not have meetings, and your attendance is never required in a free community. You are welcome to do whatever comes to mind, so long as it does not actively harm others, in a free community. Nothing is expected of you, nothing is delivered. Everything springs of natural and uncoerced energy. Compassion and understanding will go a long way toward making your community free, delegation of labor will only mechanize it.

Sometimes, of course, you harm others by omission, by inaction, as much as you do by actions. If nothing is expected of you and nothing is delivered you don't really have a free community. You are in bondage to your own and everybody else's whims. And then we have a disconnect between the previous comment and this one- why is it difficult to be independent of aggressive young Trotskyites? Where's the compassion and understanding? In this freedom to do whatever comes to mind, why may they not hog the bathroom and proselytize?
If the most important bond you share in common is shared use of mind-altering, reality bending, hallucinogenic substances, then maybe, you know, that bond isn't really one that will support a life together in community without the crutch of mind-altering, reality bending, hallucinations. It's also odd that these things could be written by a man who writes elsewhere that there is no such thing as good evil, these are just intellectual conceits.

After all that carping, I have to say I think I largely agree with the quote below. Before reading I will explain that the term 'ped-xing' comes from 'pedestrian crossing,' and is used to refer to taking care of the boring, mundane, routine drudgery of the 9-5 lifestyle- getting appointments made, paying the rent, getting the phone turned on, answering business mail, getting papers to the printers on time, meeting deadlines, that sort of thing.

"...ideals cannot be institutionalized. You cannot put your ideals into practice, so to speak, in any way more "ambitious" than through your own private life. Ideals, placed in the context of a functioning business enterprise (such as the government, SDS, or LNS) become distorted into ego trips or are lost altogether in the clamor of daily ped-xing which seems related to the ideal but is
actually only make-work."

The ped-xers of the world are those who get things done and we cannot do without them. I share Raymond's dislike of ped-xing, but not his disdain. I wish I were better at that sort of thing and I know that the reasons I am not have to do with personal character flaws and failings and are not a mark of my superior approach to life.

However, I totally agree that the best place to put your ideals into practice is through your own private life, at home, with your friends, in the local community where God has put you (not an idealized, artificial community created by you and some of your friends who think a sort of monastic withdrawal from the community of the lost is where it's at. Soapboxing over. For now).