>Doug wrote, responding to Chris
>
>>Engels' reasoning seems less than sound here - why isn't it likely
>>that the irrational religious beliefs are what keep the community
>>together, and make their collectivism possible? Similarly, it's
>>likely that the hunter-gatherers, so revered by many, were able to
>>live their peaceful collective lives precisely because they didn't
>>engage in production on anything but the smallest scale. Pointing to
>>these models doesn't really offer much to the present and future,
>>unless we all want to become millennarians and/or don skins.
>
>Isn't possible that the Shakers' religious basis was responsible for *both*
>their medium-term success *and* their long-term decline.
>
>The first because their religion provided the personal and ideological
>solidarity that allowed their communities to be economically competitive in
>the rural US of the 19th century; the second because it prevented them from
>evolving either into capitalist corporations or into a general movement for
>general social change?
Not to mention the no-sex thing being a bit hard on reproducing the cult - literally.
Doug