To be fair, I've only been to two communes before, but neither of them were totally off-the-grid, autonomous communities. Both subsisted by everyone working together to make some kind of product that they would sell to mainstream society, then supplemented that with stuff like raising cows and growing food in a communal garden. One of them was a soy bean farm, so they ate a shit load of tofu too. I think they made most of their money by selling tofu to places around the state.
Not really the model you're looking for if you're trying to totally cut yourself off, but living with good people and working on premises with them seemed a little better than driving somewhere every morning to work for some strangers.
