The Vacation Credit Labor System as the Benedictine Rule for emerging post-capitalist times

“Now with the vacation-credit labor system, secular communal society has what Catholic monasticism has had with Benedict’s Rule, a means of organizing a communal, labor-sharing economy without the use of money, and in the case of egalitarian community, with a participatory as opposed to an authoritarian form of governance. Kat Kinkade’s labor system innovation may prove as important as Benedict’s Rule if Western civilization goes through another dark age as did Western Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, this time perhaps due to climate change, resource depletion, economic depression, or a perfect storm of these and more disasters.”

Excerpted from Allen Butcher:

“In the field of communal economics, the greatest innovation in secular intentional community must be the vacation-credit labor system, the most advanced form of labor-credit system in use. In these systems, hours of work done over the required minimum weekly quota of hours accumulates in the member’s personal account, to be drawn down by the member at a later time when taking a vacation. Different versions of this economic innovation have been used at Twin Oaks, East Wind, Acorn, Emma Goldman Finishing School and other communities. This method of organizing labor in communal society values all labor equally, including domestic labor and income work, and encourages and supports the feminist ideal of both men and women being free to work in cross-gender roles.

The most innovative aspect of labor-credit systems is that there is no or minimal exchange or trade of labor credits among members, since labor credits are only units in an accounting ledger, without using any form of token or anything else that might be used as a currency.

Non-exchange, labor-credit systems in communal societies are the most advanced form of time-based economy, called “labor-sharing.” Simpler forms of time-based economies do not involve labor-sharing, instead are called labor-exchanges, like “time banks,” a form of hybrid between monetary exchange systems and time-based economics, in which hour credits can be traded among members.

The vacation-credit innovation in communal economics serves to show how people can live exclusively according to the values of sharing and equality. Although this form of communal economy is not likely to be adopted by the dominant culture, it does contradict the idea that there is no alternative (TINA) to monetary economics.”

Allen Butcher continues:

“The communal alternative to monetary economics has existed in various religious forms since before the time of Christ, as Hindu ashrams were founded prior to 500 B.C. in India, Taoist communes by 400 B.C. in China, Buddhist monasteries in Tibet around 200 B.C., and the Jewish Essenes in Palestine from 150 B.C. to 70 A.D. While these communal societies organized their labor-sharing economies without the use of labor-credit systems, they used instead authoritarian forms of governance. Later, as Catholic monasticism grew and became increasingly corrupted by its own growth in wealth and power, a reform movement arose after 525 A.D. which systematized monastic life, including required hours of work along with a schedule of prayers. This was part of the Rule of St. Benedict, which was adopted by nearly the entire mo­nastic movement in Western Europe.

Thomas Woods in his book, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, explains that by the year 1300 the Benedictine Order alone had, “supplied the [Catholic] Church with 24 popes, 200 cardinals, 7,000 archbishops, 15,000 bishops, and 1,500 canonized saints. At its height, the Benedictine order could boast 37,000 monasteries.” With a system­atized model of organization, monasticism became so successful that by the year 1200 the estates of all of the various monastic orders occupied perhaps as much as a quarter of the exploited land of the Euro­pean countryside. (Durant, 1950, p. 766; Knowles, pp. 96-7; Woods, p. 28)

Now with the vacation-credit labor system, secular communal society has what Catholic monasticism has had with Benedict’s Rule, a means of organizing a communal, labor-sharing economy without the use of money, and in the case of egalitarian community, with a participatory as opposed to an authoritarian form of governance. Kat Kinkade’s labor system innovation may prove as important as Benedict’s Rule if Western civilization goes through another dark age as did Western Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, this time perhaps due to climate change, resource depletion, economic depression, or a perfect storm of these and more disasters.”

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