<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <html><head><style type="text/css"></style><title>Re: Mormons as Marxists (Re: Who Does No Work, Shall N</title></head><body> <blockquote type="cite" cite>We had a Mormon faculty member who used to describe the original Mormon</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>economy as something that sounded like a crude socialist economy.</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>Engels, in the Deutsches Bürgerbucj für 1845 (MECW, 4.214-228), presented a survey of actually-existing communist colonies and rather optimistically wrote this:</div> <div><br></div> <div>"The reader will discover that most of the colonies that will be described in this article had their origins in all kinds of religious sects most of which have quite absurd and irrational views on various issues; the author just wants to point out briefly that these views have nothing whatsoever to do with communism. It is ain any case obviously a matter of indifference whether those who prove by their actions the practicability of communal living belief in<i> one</i> God, in twenty or in none at all; if they have an irrational religion, this is an obstacle in the way of communal living, and if communal living is successful in real life despite this, how much more feasible must it be with others who are free of such inanities..."</div> <div><br></div> <div>The Shakers are the communal sect he describes at the greatest length in this article, and the Mormons are (unsurprisingly) unmentioned. But the development of the Mormon communities seems to fall in this same expansionary period of American utopian communalism.</div> <div><br></div> <div>C.</div> </body> </html>