by Raven
I previously wrote about Individual Freedom in the Communes. Here I want to look at economic freedom in income-sharing communities. By economic freedom I mean the freedom not to worry about poverty, hunger, or homelessness. I like what Keenan said about life in Twin Oaks in our interview: “We can say to somebody who’s walking in off the street, ‘For the rest of your life, you’re never going to be poor. You don’t have to worry about that.’ That’s great. The main drawback is you’re never going to be rich.”
In a capitalist society, economic survival is usually an individual or family concern. Financial security is still a concern in income-sharing communities, but here it is generally a community concern and not an individual concern. Even if the community is in trouble, this should be everyone’s worry, together In a community, you don’t have to be alone. You can have folks you can think with and collectively we have more resources than any of us have individually.
This is only true, however, if people work together to make it true. Unfortunately, I know of one community which became an exception to the economic security usually found in the communes. This was at an income sharing community which seemed to be dominated by a single individual who also kept the books by themselves. This person claimed to have not looked at the books (for what seemed a good reason) for several months and when they did, they discovered that the community was in deep financial trouble. My understanding is that they then told everyone that they needed to fend for themselves.
I think of this as a cautionary tale. For one thing, never have only one person monitoring a community’s financial situation. (In a different community, the sole bookkeeper was eventually caught embezzling.) For another, if a community is built so that people actually care for each other, no one should have to fend for themselves.
In the two income-sharing communities that I’ve been part of that we decided to end, we all worked together to make sure that each person was taken care of. In other communities, we’ve created exit agreements to take care of people while they are leaving the community.
If done right, an income-sharing community provides the economic security and freedom usually only found in this society by the rich.
commune life 