"The commune movement is part of a reawakening of belief in the possibilities for utopia that existed in the nineteenth century and exist again today, a belief that by creating the right social institution, human satisfaction and growth can be achieved"
About this Quote
The intent is less to romanticize communes than to rehabilitate institutional optimism at a moment when modern life often feels over-engineered and under-nourishing. By tethering the commune movement to “the nineteenth century,” she invokes the era of intentional communities, socialist experiments, and religious settlements - not because they all worked, but because they shared a faith that structure can reshape the self. The subtext is ambitious and slightly dangerous: people are malleable. If you get the container right, “human satisfaction and growth” follow.
That promise lands like a pitch and a warning. It appeals to a culture disappointed by individual self-help and tempted by collective fixes: build a better system, stop blaming individuals for failing inside a bad one. At the same time, “belief” does heavy lifting - it hints that utopian experiments run on morale as much as logistics, and that the reawakening can be as cyclical as it is sincere. Kanter is capturing a recurring American impulse: when institutions fail, people try to prototype new ones from scratch.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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| Source | Evidence: The commune movement is part of a reawakening of belief in the possibilities for utopia that existed in the nineteenth century and exist again today, a belief that by creating the right social institution, human satisfaction and growth can be achieved. (Exact page not verified; likely in the opening discussion of contemporary communes / Chapter 1 "A Refuge and a Hope"). The strongest primary-source match is Rosabeth Moss Kanter's 1972 book "Commitment and Community: Communes and Utopias in Sociological Perspective," which is her own major work on nineteenth-century utopias and the modern commune movement. Google Books confirms the book title, author, publisher, year, and table of contents. However, I could not directly access a searchable/full-view primary scan that exposed the exact page containing this sentence, so the page number remains unverified. Based on the subject matter and chapter layout, the quote most likely comes from the early framing chapters discussing the relationship between nineteenth-century utopianism and the contemporary commune movement. Other candidates (1) E-governance, a Global Journey (Matthias Finger, Fouzia Nasreen Sultana, 2012) compilation93.6% ... The commune movement is part of a reawakening of belief in the possibilities for utopia that existed in the ninet... |
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. (2026, March 6). The commune movement is part of a reawakening of belief in the possibilities for utopia that existed in the nineteenth century and exist again today, a belief that by creating the right social institution, human satisfaction and growth can be achieved. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-commune-movement-is-part-of-a-reawakening-of-168434/
Chicago Style
Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. "The commune movement is part of a reawakening of belief in the possibilities for utopia that existed in the nineteenth century and exist again today, a belief that by creating the right social institution, human satisfaction and growth can be achieved." FixQuotes. March 6, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-commune-movement-is-part-of-a-reawakening-of-168434/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The commune movement is part of a reawakening of belief in the possibilities for utopia that existed in the nineteenth century and exist again today, a belief that by creating the right social institution, human satisfaction and growth can be achieved." FixQuotes, 6 Mar. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-commune-movement-is-part-of-a-reawakening-of-168434/. Accessed 27 Mar. 2026.
