Bruderhof factories
The Bruderhof (meaning “community of brethren”) are a Christian communist network of eight communities, each with about 300-400 people, spread out in the United States and England. They live without private property and with very few personal possessions. The Bruderhof communally provide meals, basic education, and health care, and they communally own their cars. When someone needs to pay for something like tuition for medical school, they draw from communal funds. Although the Bruderhof society is hierarchical, their factories are not.[1]
The Bruderhof factories produce learning aids for students at schools and disability centers. Factory workers come and go whenever they please, and they report to no boss. "Nor is there any hierarchy within the factory," writes the ecosocialist Joel Kovel. Factories have managers, but they "have no particular authority beyond their differentiated task". The factories do not accumulate wealth beyond what is needed to support the Bruderhof's anti-consumerist, materially simple lifestyles. Workers are not paid.[2]
Kovel argues that the Bruderhof prove there is no contradiction between industrial technology and ecological living:
If the Bruderhof are any example, we can affirm that neither industrialization nor technology can be the efficient causes of the ecological crisis. They are immersed in both and consume lightly, nor show any compulsion to grow. The reason is the social organization of labor, which under these communistic conditions causes the withering of capital’s rage to accumulate.[3]
