communism

81:6.33Such a highly spe­cial­ized so­ci­ety will not take kindly to the an­cient com­mu­nal and feu­dal prac­tices of olden peo­ples. True, many com­mon ser­vices can be ac­cept­ably and prof­itably so­cial­ized, but highly trained and ul­tra­spe­cial­ized hu­man be­ings can best be man­aged by some tech­nique of in­tel­li­gent co-op­er­a­tion. Mod­ern­ized co-or­di­na­tion and fra­ter­nal reg­u­la­tion will be pro­duc­tive of longer-lived co-op­er­a­tion than will the older and more prim­i­tive meth­ods of com­mu­nism or dic­ta­to­rial reg­u­la­tive in­sti­tu­tions based on force.

69:9.64. The urge for se­cu­rity and power. Com­mu­nism was fi­nally de­stroyed by the de­cep­tive prac­tices of pro­gres­sive and suc­cess­ful in­di­vid­u­als who re­sorted to di­verse sub­terfuges in an ef­fort to es­cape en­slave­ment to the shift­less idlers of their tribes. But at first all hoard­ing was se­cret; prim­i­tive in­se­cu­rity pre­vented the out­ward ac­cu­mu­la­tion of cap­i­tal. And even at a later time it was most dan­ger­ous to amass too much wealth; the king would be sure to trump up some charge for con­fis­cat­ing a rich man’s prop­erty, and when a wealthy man died, the fu­neral was held up un­til the fam­ily do­nated a large sum to pub­lic wel­fare or to the king, an in­her­i­tance tax.

69:9.18The pres­ent so­cial or­der is not nec­es­sar­ily right—not di­vine or sa­cred—but man­kind will do well to move slowly in mak­ing changes. That which you have is vastly bet­ter than any sys­tem known to your an­ces­tors. Make cer­tain that when you change the so­cial or­der you change for the bet­ter. Do not be per­suaded to ex­per­i­ment with the dis­carded for­mu­las of your fore­fa­thers. Go for­ward, not back­ward! Let evo­lu­tion pro­ceed! Do not take a back­ward step.

69:9.1While prim­i­tive so­ci­ety was vir­tu­ally com­mu­nal, prim­i­tive man did not ad­here to the mod­ern doc­trines of com­mu­nism. The com­mu­nism of these early times was not a mere the­ory or so­cial doc­trine; it was a sim­ple and prac­ti­cal au­to­matic ad­just­ment. Com­mu­nism pre­vented pau­perism and want; beg­ging and pros­ti­tu­tion were al­most un­known among these an­cient tribes.

69:9.2Prim­i­tive com­mu­nism did not es­pe­cially level men down, nor did it ex­alt medi­ocrity, but it did put a pre­mium on in­ac­tiv­ity and idle­ness, and it did sti­fle in­dus­try and de­stroy am­bi­tion. Com­mu­nism was in­dis­pens­able scaf­fold­ing in the growth of prim­i­tive so­ci­ety, but it gave way to the evo­lu­tion of a higher so­cial or­der be­cause it ran counter to four strong hu­man pro­cliv­i­ties:

69:9.31. The fam­ily. Man not only craves to ac­cu­mu­late prop­erty; he de­sires to be­queath his cap­i­tal goods to his progeny. But in early com­mu­nal so­ci­ety a man’s cap­i­tal was ei­ther im­me­di­ately con­sumed or dis­tributed among the group at his death. There was no in­her­i­tance of prop­erty—the in­her­i­tance tax was one hun­dred per cent. The later cap­i­tal-ac­cu­mu­la­tion and prop­erty-in­her­i­tance mores were a dis­tinct so­cial ad­vance. And this is true not­with­stand­ing the sub­se­quent gross abuses at­ten­dant upon the mis­use of cap­i­tal.

69:9.42. Re­li­gious ten­den­cies. Prim­i­tive man also wanted to save up prop­erty as a nu­cleus for start­ing life in the next ex­is­tence. This mo­tive ex­plains why it was so long the cus­tom to bury a man’s per­sonal be­long­ings with him. The an­cients be­lieved that only the rich sur­vived death with any im­me­di­ate plea­sure and dig­nity. The teach­ers of re­vealed re­li­gion, more es­pe­cially the Chris­tian teach­ers, were the first to pro­claim that the poor could have sal­va­tion on equal terms with the rich.

69:9.53. The de­sire for lib­erty and leisure. In the ear­lier days of so­cial evo­lu­tion the ap­por­tion­ment of in­di­vid­ual earn­ings among the group was vir­tu­ally a form of slav­ery; the worker was made slave to the idler. This was the sui­ci­dal weak­ness of com­mu­nism: The im­prov­i­dent ha­bit­u­ally lived off the thrifty. Even in mod­ern times the im­prov­i­dent de­pend on the state (thrifty tax­pay­ers) to take care of them. Those who have no cap­i­tal still ex­pect those who have to feed them.

195:10.7No so­cial sys­tem or po­lit­i­cal regime which de­nies the re­al­ity of God can con­tribute in any con­struc­tive and last­ing man­ner to the ad­vance­ment of hu­man civ­i­liza­tion. But Chris­tian­ity, as it is sub­di­vided and sec­u­lar­ized to­day, pre­sents the great­est sin­gle ob­sta­cle to its fur­ther ad­vance­ment; es­pe­cially is this true con­cern­ing the Ori­ent.

70:2.11The na­tions of Uran­tia have al­ready en­tered upon the gi­gan­tic strug­gle be­tween na­tion­al­is­tic mil­i­tarism and in­dus­tri­al­ism, and in many ways this con­flict is anal­o­gous to the age­long strug­gle be­tween the herder-hunter and the farmer. But if in­dus­tri­al­ism is to tri­umph over mil­i­tarism, it must avoid the dan­gers which be­set it. The per­ils of bud­ding in­dus­try on Uran­tia are:

84:7.27In the pres­ent in­dus­trial and ur­ban era the mar­riage in­sti­tu­tion is evolv­ing along new eco­nomic lines. Fam­ily life has be­come more and more costly, while chil­dren, who used to be an as­set, have be­come eco­nomic li­a­bil­i­ties. But the se­cu­rity of civ­i­liza­tion it­self still rests on the grow­ing will­ing­ness of one gen­er­a­tion to in­vest in the wel­fare of the next and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. And any at­tempt to shift pa­ren­tal re­spon­si­bil­ity to state or church will prove sui­ci­dal to the wel­fare and ad­vance­ment of civ­i­liza­tion.