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To: PatrickHenry
The only thing that is acceptable about the system is that it's voluntary. That's what makes it such a neat experiment. About 97% of the population rejects it.

Yeah, PH. And the 3 percent who do accept it are probably doing so for "religious" reasons. Ex.: Israeli kibbutzim and New England Shakers among the presently existing populations who have freely chosen this economic/cultural form. [The fact that neither probably could have survived as long as they did without the support of the surrounding capitalist society is a story for another day.]

The Shakers are dying out (unfortunately), being reduced to a population of quite elderly women (the sect having strongly discouraged marriage) that one could number on the fingers of one hand. To my knowledge, there have been no "recruits" in many, many decades. So when these ladies pass, that will be the end of their "experiment," an end of a culture -- except for the legacy of a style of perfectly formed and perfectly "people-friendly" furniture.

Which brings to mind the fortunes of the Oneida Colony, which is the case of bona-fide American socialist utopia most familiar to me. It is similarly replete with a certain irony, and suffused by elements of uproarious comedy. Do you want to hear that story?

103 posted on 04/06/2003 5:39:43 PM PDT by betty boop (If there were no brave men, there would be no free men. God bless our troops.)
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To: betty boop
Which brings to mind the fortunes of the Oneida Colony, which is the case of bona-fide American socialist utopia most familiar to me. It is similarly replete with a certain irony, and suffused by elements of uproarious comedy. Do you want to hear that story?

I've read about them. In fact, I've cited them (and Sparta, and the original Mayflower settlement) whenever some bozo claims that atheism = communism. In truth, there have been many religious communal societies. Ditto for the kibbutz gang.

105 posted on 04/06/2003 5:50:31 PM PDT by PatrickHenry (Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.)
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