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The Economics of Zion

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The Economics of Zion S U N S T 0 N E Plotting a Zion today where there is no poor THE ECONOMICS OF ZION By Dean L. May g THIS ESSAY CONCERNS MATTERS THAT IN MY JUDGMENT of Consecration and Kent W. Huffs Joseph Smith’s United Order: are important to the future of Latter-day Saint society and A Noncommunalistic Interpretation of Early Church History and perhaps to society in the West, generally. Two recent events- Policy.’ Both books are efforts to portray Consecration and one parochial, the other of international significance-have Stewardship as fully compatible with liberal capitalism, and thus enhanced the timeliness of this topic. The first was the publica- of no direct relevance to the way members of the Church con- tion in 1985 of Lyndon W. Cook’s Joseph Smith and the Law duct their lives today, except as pious abstract principles.’ The second is the astonishing fragmentation of the Soviet DEAN MAY is a professor of history at the University of Utah empire, accompanied by a bitter denunciation of Marxist com- and co-author of Building tt~e City of God Community and munism by those who lived under Soviet totalitarianism for Cooperation Among t/~e Mormons. Versions of this article were forty years. presented at a 1980 BYU Honors symposium, the 1986 The first event is a local expression of the politically con- Washington, D.C, Sunstone Symposium, the Miller-Ecdes Study ., servative temperament of America during the Reagan/Bush years Group in 1989, and at the Plotting Zion conference in ] 990. and may represent in part the authors’ desire to reinterpret AUGUST 1990 PAGE 15 S U N S T O N E Church teachings to accord with their own political views andof insight into what a divinely-sanctioned economic order would those of some present-day Church leaders. The second event be like. First there are scriptural descriptions of what ancient seems at first glance to affirm the first, suggesting that Cookcovenant peoples understood the economics of Zion to be. Such and Huff are right in seeing liberal capitalism as compatibledescriptions commonly arose from efforts of Saints at the begin- with Consecration and Stewardship. After all, capitalism works,ning of new dispensations to live the gospel to its fullest at a and millions in eastern Europe seem eager to follow its startime of particularly clear insight into God’s purposes and strong rather than the one they have known. God must surely be on commitment to realize them. They include the accounts of the side of that which has prevailed. Enoch’s City of Zion, of the early Christians in the New There is a great danger, I feel, that we may Testament, and of the Book of Mormon. learn the wrong lessons from these events, Second, there are nonscriptural historical and so it is appropriate to ask one more time: accounts of Saints being called by prophets Is there an ideal economic system based on The poverty in most or Church leaders to live as a Zion people.3 eternal principles that promises to bring us human societies, including These include the efforts by Latter-day Saints closer to a saintly society? If so what would to live the Law of Consecration and Steward- it be like? Need we seek to emulate that the United States, is ship in Ohio and Missouri between 1831 system insofar as prevailing legal and and 1838 and the United Order movement, political restraints permit, or should we will- rooted in the fundamental initiated by Brigham Young in the 1870s. ingly acquiesce in whatever economic bdiefs Third, as we shall see, we have the and practices prevail about us? The starting processes by which we shadow of the economy of Zion and, to some point for understanding such questions is produce and exchange extent, its substance, in the way programs the Enoch revelation received by Joseph and policies of the Church operate today. Smith in December of 1830. In this brief goods-processes that Finally, I believe that Latter-day Saints passage the glory of ancient Zion and the through the gift of the Holy Ghost and all very reason fdr the designation were need to be founded on humankind through the Light of Christ described: more ethically humane understand in their better moments that the And the Lord called his people poverty and want common in most human Z~oy, because they were of one heart and caring principles. societies, including the United States, is and one mind, and dwelt in rooted in the fundamental processes by righteousness; and there.was no poor which we produce and exchange goods- among them. And Enoch continued processes that need to be founded on his preaching in righteousness unto the people of God. ethically more humane and caring principles. And it came to pass in his days, that he built a city that Now with all of this-the scriptures, the past experience of was calted the City of Holiness, even Z~oy (Moses Saints who tried to live as they thought Zion should be, our 7:18-19). present exercise of Zion’s principles in the Church, and the The description is both eloquent and profound. It seems Spirit’s witness-one would think there would be a common to speak to all aspects of the Restoration and the latter-day work. understanding of what the economics of Zion should be. Yet It is no wonder that it touched the Prophet deeply or that at there are widely differing views, sometimes rigidly maintained times he even took upon himself the name Enoch. A truly holy, and hotly contended, on what our economy would be like if or saintly, or Zion people must seek to attain all three of thesewe were living in a society that fully merited the name, Zion. conditions: a social life where all are of one heart and one mind The main reason for this diversity, and it is understandable, (unity and harmony, not uniformity); a moral and ethical per-is that it is very difficult to see through the lens that the Lord sonal character (righteousness); and a just economic order (no has provided because of the smudges we pick up from this poor). The three conditions are so interrelated that it is hard world. We still live, after all, in the world, and it is very dif- to imagine ,one could ever be realized without the others. To be fully unified a society would have to eliminate poverty andficult to keep its doctrines, traditions, and teachings from get- in so doing would be motivated by moral and ethical concerns.ring confused with those of God, especially in that most worldly To live righteously would surely have to include a concertedof human pursuits-economics. A friend and devout member effort to alleviate the plight of the poor. To truly eliminate povertyof the Church, who is involved, as he says it, in the "home would require a unified campaign supported by high ethicalcare products business" has confided to me most earnestly his principles. belief that God is preparing the world spiritually for the millen- In this essay, however, I will emphasize the third qualitynium through the Church and economically through Amway. of Zion-the elimination of poverty, the dimension of Zion thatHe has apparently not noticed that Amway employs a marketing is most directly involved in our everyday economic activities.method that begins its pitch by asking if you would like to be What do we know of the economics of Zion beyond the brief rich, and promising to make you so, promising you anything statement m the Book of Moses? There are four main sources in thi~ world. This is just one example of how the world’s AUGUST 1990 PAGE 16 S U N S T 0 N E philosophies can be confused with those of God. The process science, Adam Smith meant not to condone or condemn the is usually more subtle, however, making it very difficult to disen- selfishness that was the driving force of liberal capitalism, but tangle the two. merely to describe its functioning and its consequence-an economic system that produced and distributed more material goods more cheaply. The Wealth of Nations thus began to bring LET us first, then, sketch briefly what in my judgment iseconomics out of its preoccupation with justice and social central to the way scholars and observers in the past have responsibility which had, prior to the eighteenth century, made thought about and described the economic systems that have it a part of more general systems of moral and social philo- prevailed in the West. Until the seventeenth sophy. The year 1776, I would argue, century, scholars rarely differentiated marked not only the Declaration of American economics as a separate science, but com- Let us hope that the rising Independence from the British rule, but at monly saw it as a part of a realm of inquiry least as importantly, a declaration of the they called "moral philosophy." As the term independence of economics as a discipline, implies, their discussions of the economic powers in Eastern Europe its freedom from moral responsibility, and questions were grounded in a consideration its focus upon material well-being as the of the moral implications of the point at do not choose to be like supreme good. issue. Questions of appropriate practice and Classical economics was built on this policy with regard to property rights, prices, the U.S. in all respects. base, and much refined, qualified, and wages, or the charging of interest, were con- elaborated, is v<ith us in the West to this day.
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