Page 6 - C.A.L.L. #26 - Winter 2005/2006

An article from Communities magazine (Fall 2005, Issue #128) on
the Emma Goldman Finishing School, an intentional community in
Seattle, USA.

Holding Our Resources in Common by Parke Burgess

Nine years ago seven people with a dream found an old and condemned (but huge
and spectacular) house for sale at a bargain price in the heart of one of Seattle's
most diverse neighborhoods. They pooled their money and bought the place
outright. Everyone contributed what they had: some threw in a few hundred bucks,
others tens of thousands.

They put the house in the name of one of their number, but made a courageous commitment: regardless
of how much or little each person put in, they would be paid back during the same time period (20+
years); ownership of the house would be transferred to a land trust; and the tax benefit of this contribution
would be given to the community. Thus was born the Emma Goldman Finishing School.

In the early days, before the house was habitable, members would spend their evenings and weekends
ripping the guts out of the walls, replacing the electrical system, adding plumbing, and putting in new
sheetrock and fixtures while living elsewhere and maintaining income-earning jobs during the day.
Gradually, everyone moved in. The renovation work was intense and virtually nonstop. This labor was
surely a labor of love, but it was also strictly accounted for. Labor belonged to the community and was
shared equally. Over the first five years or so, Emmas (then called Beacon Hill House) was a strict income-
sharing community—all labor belonged to everybody. Money earned at jobs in the city was given in full
to the community, and each got an equal (and modest) stipend.

About four years ago Emmas began an experiment in a modified income sharing arrangement which we
call labor-sharing. As before, we each have a monthly labor quota (which is usually around 100 hours)
which we divide between income-generating work in the city and in-house labor. Since we have no
community business, in-house labor tends to consist of meetings, renovation, cooking, cleaning,
bookkeeping, and so on. Everyone chooses what share of their labor quota they want to earn in income-
generating or in-house labor. And it's all kept in balance by "the gizmo," a computer program that makes
sure we get enough dollars and in-house labor each month to meet our carefully planned budget. We all
owe the same number of hours each month, and we value each of those hours equally, regardless of
whether it's earned at a job or in-house, and whether the job pays high wages or low. We all owe the
same number of hours each month, and we value each of those hours equally.

In recent months, we have been experimenting with our labor-sharing system to make it more egalitarian,
and more fluid. Under labor-sharing, we can work more than 100 hours in a month if we want and bank
the surplus for personal use. That means extra hours or extra money from our jobs which we can use to
cover vacations later. This year we have been trying out a policy of "spending caps," which limits the
amount of additional personal money we're allowed to spend or save. Any dollars we earn above the
spending cap we loan to a fund to help start new egalitarian communities. We're also discussing a new
policy that would allow us to trade our quota hours informally within the community.

Our project at Emmas is explicitly anti-capitalist. We aim to create an economic system that can interact
with the dominant system (because that can't be avoided), but which neutralizes capitalistic values as
much as possible for community members. We intend to build a much larger infrastructure of
communities and alternative economic systems so that more people can participate in anticapitalist
lifeways. By creating viable alternatives to a system bent upon the consolidation of wealth and power, the
use of violence, and the destruction of the environment, we hope to show by example that another way of
life is possible; and we hope to develop the skills to live joyfully and work meaningfully in a different kind
of world.

Parke Burgess lives at the Emma Goldman Finishing School in Seattle (www.egfi.org,) and is Secretary of the FEC
(www.thefec.org). Reprinted with permission from Communities magazine, a quarterly publication about intentional communities and
cooperative living in North America. Sample US$6; subscription US$20.00. store.ic.org.

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