Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T21:33:56.276Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Austerity and Unintended Riches

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Barrington Moore Jr.
Affiliation:
Harvard University

Extract

What are the social and psychological sources of social movements that are committed to (1) equality among their members, (2) communitarian ideals emphasizing strong ties of affection among members and a belief in spontaneous cooperation without direction by authority, and (3) austerity in the consumption of physical goods and also in the use or display of comforts and ornaments? In the course of time what becomes of such a movement as it tries to put its ideals into practice? Many but not all of those that have lasted—and I shall limit this inquiry to examples that have lasted for at least several generations—have become quite wealthy. How and why does this change come about, and what are its consequences?

Type
Communal Strengths
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For a good study of ephemeral groups and movements in the United States, see Kanter, Rosabeth Moss, Commitment and Community: Communes and Utopias in Sociological Perspective (Cambridge, Mass., 1972)Google Scholar.

2 On Christianity, see Grundmann, Herbert, Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter, 2d ed., rev. (Hildesheim, 1961)Google Scholar; Little, Lester K., Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (London, 1978)Google Scholar. A brief but meaty introduction to Buddhist theory and practice may be found in Basham, A. L., The Wonder That Was India (London, 1954), 256–66Google Scholar.

3 For a concise treatment of Socialist-Zionism, with references to further sources, see Rayman, Paula, The Kibbutz Community and National Building (Princeton, 1981), 918Google Scholar. More specific remarks on the hope to reverse the European pattern of Jewish society may be found in Catarivas, David, Vivre au kibboutz (Paris, 1983), 3334Google Scholar. Note also Leviatan, Uri and Rosner, Menachem, eds., Work and Organization in Kibbutz Industry (Norwood, Pa., 1980), 6465Google Scholar.

4 Lekai, Louis J., The Cistercians: Ideals and Reality (Kent, Ohio, 1977)Google Scholar, provides a revealing account of the history of donations to the Cistercians. The original Cistercian goal had been to retreat from a corruptive society, to seek land in solitary and “desert” areas, and to work it themselves with the help of lay brothers. Essentially, they wanted to live on the fruits of their own labor for the sake of moral purity (pp. 30–31, 65). They did do a great deal of cultivation in this manner. But from the beginning they also violated their own rules by acquiring lands with feudal revenues, especially tithes. Meanwhile they managed to gain exemptions from paying tithes themselves (pp. 48–49, 65–68, 282–84, and further on tithes, 293–307). By the fourteenth century the original modest Cistercian farms had grown to become extremely large estates (p. 72), requiring “professional” management. The Cistercians changed from escapists from the feudal economy to early leaders in the modernization of that economy. For further information on historical changes in donations, see pp. 16, 18, 75, 286–91, 300–302, 307. In regard to the kibbutz, Kanovsky, Eliyahu, The Economy of the Israeli Kibbutz (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 128–29Google Scholar, shows that the organization was not economically viable and required economic and organizational assistance from the government and other central authorities. Since the 1950s, he also asserts, the standard of living in kibbutzim had become divorced from their profitability (p. 135). It became necessary to subsidize the standard of living in order to avoid increased dissatisfaction and defections. According to the case study of one kibbutz in Rayman, , Kibbutz Community, 7476Google Scholar, Kibbutz Har could not have been established or been able to survive without containing capital investment from the Jewish community in Palestine and Jews in the Diaspora. Other private sources also helped; in 1938 they provided 38 percent of the credit of older kibbutzim.

5 Gernet, Jacques, Les aspects économiques du Bouddhisme dans la société chinoise du Ve au Xe siécle (Saigon, 1956), 112–20Google Scholar.

6 In the beginning the founders vowed to live exclusively from the fruits of their labor. Not long afterward they decided to acquire landed properties far from human dwellings and cultivate them with the help of lay brothers and hired hands. See Lekai, , Cistercians, 3031, 65Google Scholar.

7 Leviatan, and Rosner, , Work and Organization, 6475Google Scholar, present a general treatment of the issue that brings out the differences among kibbutzim. Rayman, , Kibbutz Community, 114–19Google Scholar, is an unusually candid treatment that reveals the role of ethnic differences and classsentiments. Blasi, Joseph Raphael, The Communal Future: The Kibbutz and the Utopian Dilemma (Norwood, Pa., 1978), 132–34Google Scholar, shows in another case study that the issue can be very troubling even in a kibbutz that utilizes outside labor for no more than 7 percent of its total number of work days and for relatively unprofitable undertakings.

8 Lekai, , Cistercians, 282Google Scholar.

9 Ibid., 295.

10 Ibid., 297–98.

11 Ibid., 310–11.

12 Ibid., 316–17.

13 Ibid., 312–13.

14 Ibid.; on exemptions, 311.

15 Workman, H. B., “Monasticism,” Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (New York, 1937), X, 587Google Scholar.

16 Lekai, , Cistercians, 301–2Google Scholar.

17 Ibid., 72–73.

18 Ibid., 316.

19 Basham, , Wonder That Was India, 281–82Google Scholar.

20 “Buddhism,” Encyclopaedia Brittanica, 11th ed. (Cambridge, 1910), IV, 749Google Scholar.

21 Wright, Arthur F., Buddhism in Chinese History (Stanford, 1959), 51Google Scholar, mentions an Emperor Wu of the Liang who reigned 502–49 and took the Buddhist vows.

22 Gemet, , Aspects économiques, 149, 154–55Google Scholar.

23 Weinstein, Stanley, “Imperial Patronage in the Formation of T’ang Buddhism,” in Perspectives on the T’ang, Wright, Arthur F. and Twitchett, Dennis, eds. (New Haven, 1973), 273–74Google Scholar.

24 Cf. Wright, , Buddhism, 6061Google Scholar.

25 On Quaker equality and community, see Raistrick, Arthur, Quakers in Science and Industry: Being an Account of the Quaker Contributions to Science and Industry during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, 2d ed. (Newton Abbot, Devon, 1968), 24Google Scholar; Isichei, Elizabeth, Victorian Quakers (Oxford, 1970), xxivGoogle Scholar. By the mid-nineteenth century equality was dead. Howe, Anthony, The Cotton Masters, 1830–1860 (Oxford, 1984), 70Google Scholar, describes the Quakers as a “sect in which the wealthy dominated and from which the bankrupt were expelled.”

26 On this aspect, see Isichei, Victorian Quakers, ch. 5.

27 Raistrick, , Quakers in Science, 1011, 4243Google Scholar; Isichei, , Victorian Quakers, 147Google Scholar.

28 Emden, Paul H., Quakers in Commerce: A Record of Business Achievement (London, n.d. [preface dated 1939]), 13Google Scholar.

29 Raistrick, , Quakers in Science, 319Google Scholar.

30 Isichei, , Victorian Quakers, 23Google Scholar. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, ser. 1, XVIII, 108Google Scholar, Shillitoe gave up a position with a Lombard Street bank at the age of twenty-four because the bank sold lottery tickets. I do not presume to say whether that behavior qualifies as neurotic. After a brief stint as a shoemaker he became an itinerant preacher for many years, during which time he managed to obtain audiences with two kings of England, the king of Prussia, the king of Denmark, and Emperor Alexander of Russia. John Barclay, though bearing a name famous in Quaker annals, does not turn up in standard biographical source books, including Quaker ones. There are two brief references to him in Brinton, Howard H., ed., Children of Light: In Honor of Rufus M. Jones (New York, 1958), 388–89, 403Google Scholar. From them one can learn the dates of his birth and death and that, on being taken into his father's bank, he expressed doubts about the morality of making money.

31 Isichei, , Victorian Quakers, 152–53Google Scholar.

32 Ibid., 139, 141.

33 Talmon, Yonina, Family and Community in the Kibbutz (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), 2Google Scholar; Barkai, Haim, Growth Patterns of the Kibbutz Economy (Amsterdam, 1977), 1113Google Scholar; Catarivas, , Vivre au kibboutz, 181–84Google Scholar. For a succinct statement of the meaning of equality for Socialist-Zionists, see Rayman, , Kibbutz Community, 14Google Scholar. They wanted to break the connection between distribution and the individual's output or social position.

34 Barkai, , Growth Patterns, 14Google Scholar, explains that housing is allocated on a points system to take account of complicated criteria in assessing needs.

35 Rayman, , Kibbutz Community, 236Google Scholar; Catarivas, , Vivre au kibboutz, 9498Google Scholar.

36 Shepher, Israel, The Kibbutz: An Anthropological Study (Norwood, Pa., 1983), 55Google Scholar.

37 Ibid., 43–61.

38 Ibid., 61–63.

39 Barkai, , Growth Patterns, 56Google Scholar; Catarivas, , Vivre au kibboutz, 169–70Google Scholar.

40 According to Ruppin, Arthur, Der Aufbau des Landes Israel: Ziele und Wege jüdischer Siedlungsarbeit in Palälstina (Berlin, 1919), 209–10Google Scholar, Dagania (or Degania), widely regarded as the first collective settlement, begain in 1909 with seven workers. Its success exceeded all expectations.

41 Barkai, , Growth Patterns, 7Google Scholar.

42 Blasi, , Communal Future, 196Google Scholar. The novel by Oz, Amos, A Perfect Peace (Tel Aviv, 1982 [in Hebrew]; New York, 1985)Google Scholar, provides insight into the tribulations of an aging kibbutz leader with close ties to national officials. Talmon, Family and Community, ch. 7, and Catarivas, , Vivre au kibboutz, 155–76Google Scholar, provide further valuable information on the context of leadership.

43 Rayman, , Kibbutz Community, 91, 196–97Google Scholar.

44 Rayman, , Kibbutz Community, 52, 236Google Scholar, reports an actual case of a teapot dispute. For paragraph (2), see notes 45–49. For paragraph (3), Blasi, , Communal Future, 217Google Scholar; Rayman, , Kibbutz Community, 237Google Scholar; Rosner, Menachem, Democracy, Equality, and Change: The Kibbutz and Social Theory (Darby, Pa., 1983), V, 5556, 127Google Scholar. For paragraph (4), Talmon, , Family and Community, 7476, 7980, 84Google Scholar; Rayman, , Kibbutz Community, 125–26Google Scholar; Catarivas, , Vivre au kibboutz, 8089Google Scholar. For paragraph (5), Bettelheim, Bruno, The Children of the Dream (London, 1969), 225–26Google Scholar; Rayman, , Kibbutz Community, 158–59Google Scholar; Catarivas, , Vivre au kibboutz, 113–14Google Scholar.

45 This tension appeared with the birth of the first babies to kibbutz parents. Cf. Blasi, , Communal Future, 29Google Scholar; Talmon, , Family and Community, 48Google Scholar.

46 Talmon, , Family and Community, 9495Google Scholar.

47 Ibid., 96

48 Rayman, , Kibbutz Community, 234Google Scholar.

49 Catarivas, , Vivre au kibboutz, 105–14Google Scholar.

50 Jr.Moore, Barrington, Privacy: Studies in Social and Cultural History (Armonk, N.Y., 1984), 4159Google Scholar.

51 For details, see Lambert, M. D., Franciscan Poverty: The Doctrine of the Absolute Poverty of Christ and the Apostles in the Franciscan Order, 1210–1323 (London, 1961), ch. 3Google Scholar.

52 The Carthusians: Origin, Spirit, Family Life, 2d rev. ed. (Westminster, Md., 1952), 4251,6061Google Scholar; “Carthusians,” Encyclopaedia Brittanica, 11th ed. (Cambridge, 1910), V, 432–33Google Scholar.

53 Thompson, E. Margaret, The Carthusian Order in England (London, 1930), viGoogle Scholar.

54 See “Carthusians,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed. (Cambridge, 1910), V, 432–33Google Scholar.

55 Carthusians, 66–68.

56 “Carthusians,” New Columbia Encyclopaedia, 4th ed. (New York, 1975), 468Google Scholar.