Real Wealth and the Communitarian Social Profit Motive of Communitarian Capitalism* (1983) What is real wealth? It can't be material goods or ownership of property or power over others. No, these things can be bought out from under any individual or stolen or lost in any number of ways. Real wealth doesn't come from ownership of things or from power to control others. Real wealth can't be bought or sold because it isn't transferable. Real wealth exists only in relationships between living beings. Real wealth can be measured only by oneself as a quality value of one's relationship to others. Consider: can love, genuine love as we understand it if not define it, be bought or sold? Can genuine friendship be bought or sold? Can genuine care and concern be given a purchase price? Can an unasked for, yet freely offered helping hand extended to you when your need is great be given any sort of quantitative value? No, these are quality aspects of relationships between oneself and others and exist only as such. Therefore, real wealth can only be present in quality relationship with others. Real wealth then is a completely social phenomena inseparable from one's community of friends and loved ones. Real wealth imparts well-being because human beings are always dependent on one another for their ability to cope successfully with the problems of life. No one is an island and no one stands alone for long without losing well-being. Without threat of oppression human beings will naturally seek the well-being of real wealth relationships. This is the communitarian social profit motive at work. The communitarian social profit motive works more or less unconsciously in all interpersonal relationships. There is no social profit in dealing with others who demonstrate antagonism towards one's conscious or unconscious goal of forming quality relationships with others because quality relationships always add to one's well-being. Political or economic or other practical benefits may tie people together but if the opportunity for forming quality relationships is not present, these practical relationships become a burden that will be discarded as soon as circumstances permit transfer to quality relationships offering opportunity to form real wealth. The communitarian social profit motive naturally seeks real wealth and is therefore, the prime motivating factor that drives everyone, each at their own pace which is set during early childhood, towards a final goal of building social capital or real wealth. Material capitalism or material socialism are irrelevant to the ever-present reality of the communitarian social profit motive which is at work in every kind of human social structure. The survival and longevity of any social-economic system is directly proportional to each system's degree of facilitating formation of social capital or real wealth between individuals within the system. Communitarian Capitalism then is not an offshoot of either capitalism or traditional socialism but is instead a basic or root mode of social organization millennia old that reflects recognition of a universal human economy measured in terms of quality and not quantity values. * I first used "Communitarian Socialism" as the title for my economic theory but realized years later that "communitarian" and "socialism" are redundant, so "Communitarian Capitalism" is now the term I use. For the sake of historical truth it should be noted that Jesus is the Father of the Universal Socialist ethic.
Essene, Qumran and the Theraputic Monostastic communities practiced communism but were exclusive.
Jesus' teachings seemed to have universalised the ethic in early Christian communities that welcomed all who believed in the Savior.
Early Christians were communists
"Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need."
-Acts 3:44,45 This ethic inspired the earliest Christian communities and during the Middle Ages and in the Americas, a great variety of Christian communistic communities. Even Karl Marx borrowed from Acts when writing his famous "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need." Political Communism's great failure was the co-option of the non-violence ethic without which socialism degenerates into another political tyranny run by an elite group of men greedy for the same power and control that money buys in Capitalist systems. But everything Jesus said about money and material things shows conclusively that his was a Socialist ethic and not Capitalist. This is another area where Pauline Christianity in its effort to appease Roman authorities and win the support of Roman (Capitalist) rule has led traditional Christians into false Christian doctrines. The poor are blessed because the Kingdom of God favors them and will give them their daily bread which stands for what each of us needs for life.God knows, Jesus knew, that in order for one to become richer others must become poorer; that is the way a money oriented market economy works. Becoming rich means to hoard wealth instead of sharing it. Those who share their wealth will not become rich as what wealth they have they share with others thus losing their "capital", their hoarded wealth necessary to build more wealth by investment in profitable enterprises. The Kingdom of God on earth is a socialist ethic or economic democracy, shared wealth. This is what Jesus preached as his negative views of the rich reflect and as these sayings also reflects:
"How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." -Lk 18:24,25 "Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away." -Mt 5:42 "If you have money, do not lend it at interest, but give it to one from whom you will not get it back.""Businessmen and merchants will not enter the Places of My Father."
-Gospel of Thomas And of course the origin of Christian communism: "Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among them all, as anyone had need." -Acts 2:44,45 Karl Marx twisted this ethic into a political rationale for a new type of enslavement of society under a new breed of rulers who used democratization of wealth as their rationalization for taking away the rights of individuals. All they really did was substitute power for wealth and in the end they themselves fell victim to greed for wealth for themselves. Does this mean the Communitarian Society must be Christian? No. It's just that the ethic of sharing must be religiously held in order to be effective over the long haul. Sharing cannot be legislated, cannot be forced by government decree. Certainly, traditional Christianity has had it's problems too with the sharing ethic. Recently, I have had a great deal of trouble dealing spiritually with my dear good friend who is a born-again Christian. She has bought into the Wealth and Prosperity campaign that seems to be taught more and more in evangelical churches. She believes that God is going to favor Christians with wealth in order to make others jealous of God's material blessings. In Africa the movement has gone completely nuts with many new "Christian" converts only converting in order to score riches with "God's help". The evangelical TV evangelists' money scams are becoming the model for these new African evangelical preachers. Perhaps if they had used their heads for thinking more deeply about what Jesus said instead of being satisfied with surface Christian Church doctrines, these people would figure out God really is sincere about the need for humanity to share the wealth or otherwise social injustice just goes on and on and on.In the Kingdom of God, the kindly king who follows the will of his heavenly Father takes the shirt off his back and gives it to the poor man who has none and thus establishes the precedent that those who would rule must serve.
From Internet Talkboard discussions on Christianity & Capitalism The Problem: Corporate Capitalism NJ, I suspect the reason you're not answering my series of "dumb" questions is that you haven't studied your capitalist system very deeply, you're only at the surface level, dealing with buyers and sellers at market and not dealing with the whole system-from who makes the batteries in the first place for example, how that process is done, who gets the lion's share of profits from that process, i.e., does the owner(s) of the battery mfg. company get it or is it set up like most capitalist business so that the original capital owner succeeds in setting up a battery co. that will continue to pay him or them profits regardless of the amount of work effort they contribute as long as there is a market for the batteries. My point is that at the mfg. level the capitalist gets the biggest share of profit from product which means that in every capitalist business the owners of capital get the biggest share of profits, leaving the workers sharing profit that is based on they're being shortchanged of the value of their labor. This shortchanging of workers' profits of course alters the money flow in the capitalist system. Someone has to "make up" the difference and that someone are the consumers (mostly workers) who mass numbers of purchases mask the deficit of money within the system at all times. The workers (consumers) are shortchanged for the value of their work. They do have money to purchase though and through mass numbers of purchases keep most of the capitalist enterprises afloat but not all of them and not any of them if the system stops expanding at any point. The extra money has to come from somewhere and where it generally comes from is new markets opened up for both old and new products. This is why like cancer, the capitalist system has to always grow to just stay even in the market place and it also explains why capitalism periodically crashes with recessions and depressions-it literally runs out of necessary capital and collapses until the over-production items are eventually bought. Meanwhile the workers are laid off and must rely on the socialist bailouts of unemployment, welfare, etc, which are absolutely necessary for modern capitalism to work. So, NJ, who made the batteries sold for a buck and how can a virtual credit system which capitalism really is as it relies totally on future purchasers at this point, be good for us in the long run when the credit bills come due and there aren't any more resources or gullible consumers to exploit? I think it very foolish for Americans to rely on limited resource systems that fuel modern world capitalist enterprises. There is not enough to go around for all to live at the American middle-class standard. If all the world aims at the American standard then the planet is probably doomed since the American standard uses up such a disproportionate share of those resources. At some point, Americans are going to have to either severely cut back on their consumer lifestyle habits or set up new worldwide informational and material sharing system based on ecologically sound technologies that won't exhaust our resources or befoul our air and water. Americans who refuse to look at the statistics for American consumption of resources compared to the rest of the world will only be contributing to the kind of hatred seen against America that led to 9-11. Jesus told us what to do a long time ago and no material wealth blessings we enjoy should ever blind us to our Christian duty to help our fellow human being as we would want them to help us in our hour of need." * * The Answer: Communitarian Society The Communitarian Society is a plan for creating a non-profit religious association that spiritually, legally, and economically supports all who join as members. It's worldly purpose is give individuals and families who believe in cooperative community living freedom from economic insecurity and legal harassment. In order to accomplish these aims, the Communitarian Society will rely on two main financing mechanisms: Equal distribution of a 10% Tithe of monthly incomes of all associate members Equal distribution of profits made over and above salaries and operating costs from all Communitarian Society owned businesses and professional services. The list of potential Communitarian Society income projects will be found in the Communitarian Society Income Projects page still under construction as of this writing. The Communitarian Society will be organized as a cooperative association of individual Communitarian Society communities throughout the world. The Communitarian Society communities will be legal associations at first, then as funding permits, the Communitarian Society will obtain lands for individual Communitarian Society communities of homes and community development. All lands owned by the Communitarian Society will be held under a Communitarian Land Trust Covenant modeled on the Holy Land Trust proposal. The Communitarian Land Trust will be under the administration of the Communitarian Council. How individual Communitarian Society communities structure themselves in their differing localities will be up to them as long as they all agree on the Communitarian Society's basic tenets of cooperative community living and the rules of the Communitarian Land Trust Covenant. The Communitarian Council will administer Communitarian Society affairs. Communitarian Council members will be composed of two representatives from each Communitarian Society community. The two representatives from each Communitarian Society community will be selected by whatever ways are agreed upon in each individual CS community. There is no set pattern for selection except common agreement among individual Communitarian Society communities. Some communities may choose their representatives by consensual agreement, others by two-thirds majority vote, others by electing managers to do their selection for them, still others perhaps by appointing hereditary royalty or political chiefs. It doesn't matter as long as each community is content with the representatives they have chosen through whatever ways work for them and as long as each community abides by the Communitarian Society's basic tenets for cooperative community living and the rules of the Communitarian Land Trust Covenant. Disagreements within Communitarian Society communities must be cooperatively resolved by the individuals within that community. Communitarian Council intervention in disputes within individual Communitarian Society communities would only occur when no other conflict resolution method proved workable. Even then, Communitarian Council recommendations would only be accepted with a two-thirds majority of individual Communitarian Society community membership approval. A Communitarian Society Plan*will cover all the basics for maintaining healthy, comfortable and fulfilling individual, family, and cooperative community life: land costs, home costs, health insurance, job placement, new industry development, education, individual and community transportation, legal expenses, entertainment, traveling, are just the beginning list of cooperative self-support systems that will be covered as the Communitarian Society grows and prospers. * See the Heartlands Trust Co. proposal and Palco Community Corporation pages for how a Communitarian Society can be made from an existing capitalist corporation. * *
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