The Zion/Babylon dualism in Mormonism and Anarchism
By Jason Brown
What sets the anarchist critique of society apart from other political projects is the view that, because the state is as an inherently hierarchical, and therefore oppressive institution, the project of human liberation must necessarily do away with all forms of economic and political oppression, not simply attempt to reform them or mitigate their damage. This critique of society can be easily compared to the Zion/Babylon dualism found in Mormon scripture and as elaborated by Hugh Nibley in his seminal and radical work Approaching Zion.
The Dualisms of State
I have often wondered, as the Mormon folk-belief goes, that if communism is Satan’s counterfeit for the United Order, what is capitalism? Hugh Nibley believed that Satan’s greatest trick was to take us down the wrong road and then present us with a fork—it doesn’t matter which way we go from there, we are still going down the wrong road. Indeed, the 20th century has been marked by a battle between the false choice of state communism and “free market” capitalism; both of which are rejected by anarchism (and in my opinion should also be rejected by Mormonism). In their book Working toward Zion, LDS authors James Lucas and Warner Woodworth outline the struggle between these two narrow economic ideologies and argue that those of us who are truly working toward a Zion society will seek the total liberation and dignity of all of humanity through cooperative principles such as unity, equality, and participatory democracy. Though they are not advocating an anarchist revolution, they state that:
United order principles encourage equality by entrusting economic resources and possibilities to the people, not to the state or a wealthy elite. It gives ‘the little man,’ not a state bureaucrat or wealthy capitalist, the freedom to control his destiny. It gives to every child of God the freedom to make his or her own freely chosen contribution to the work of God.
In Approaching Zion, Nibley’s scathing critique of capitalism, communism and “Babylonian” economics could, without much exaggeration, be considered anarchist. In a series of essays delivered at Brigham Young University, Nibley eloquently fleshes out the scriptural concepts of Zion and Babylon, their place in biblical history and Mormon theology. He draws numerous parallels with contemporary North American society and harshly renounces our fixation with wealth, competition, property, and the ecological destruction these obsessions produce.
Zion
Zion is most commonly referred to in contemporary Mormonism as “the pure in heart” (D & C 97: 21). We rarely speak of it in terms of a movement, or a community that functions outside the world’s economy. The Zion of scripture was a type for the city of God, a place of refuge, equality, and peace; it is “any community in which the celestial order prevails” “the order of Zion is such as will leave the earth as near its primordial, paradisiacal condition as possible,” suggesting that it has little to do with the capitalist techno-industrial worldview we have hailed as being God-sent. Zion is a blueprint for a truly Christ-like society and has rarely been achieved. In one such rare occasion, the city of Enoch, described in the Book of Moses, there “was no poor among them” (Moses 7:18). In the communities established after Christ’s resurrection and assent to heaven in both the New Testament and the Book of Mormon, believers attempted to separate themselves from the world by establishing communities in which residents had “all things in common” and where there were no divisions by class or race (Acts 2:44-45, Fourth Nephi). So, although Zion was and is symbolic of righteousness and purity, it was also a very real socio-economic order, one which the Saints attempted to establish in Utah in the 19th century.
Anarchists have also attempted to put their ideas into practice, the Paris commune, Civil War era Catalonia Spain, and the Zapatistas in Chiapas Mexico, are but a few examples of communities that have attempted to live without hierarchy and class. In Catalonia, peasant communities lived for three years outside of formal state jurisdictions and implemented cooperative factories, farming, and free health care and education.
Babylon
Beyond the Old Testament Empire, Babylon is a symbol in the scriptures for the dark center of Satan’s power, the culmination of political might, a filthy place of dog-eat-dog survival of the fittest where everything is for sale and intrigue and corruption flourish. Babylon has two objectives: power and gain. It is not a far leap, to connect Babylon to the individualistic, profit seeking, laizze-faire ideologies of capitalism which promise perpetual growth and accumulation and an endless supply of goods and services. Both Babylon and capitalism thrive on the stratification of society into economic classes. The earth and its riches are seen as raw materials for the generation of cash, or as one author puts it, “for economic growth to continue there must be a constant conversion of things that have no money value into things that do. Human labor and land are commoditized, money becomes the universal standard of value and nothing escapes its potential appraisal. Although state communism was an attempt to mitigate the inequalities created by such a mind set, it did not stray far from the basic premise of capitalist production as a conversion of raw materials into wealth. The difference was, that in the former case the means of production was owned by a capitalist elite, and in the latter, a government bureaucracy.
Zion and Babylon are thus irreconcilable entities and economies. God warned the prophets of old and Joseph Smith in the Doctrine in Covenants that “Zion cannot be built up unless it is by the principles of the law of the celestial kingdom” (D & C 105:5). In other words, Zion is to be built according to the purest of Christian principles and cannot tolerate even the slightest corruption. As Nibley observes, “when we try to mix Zion and Babylon, Babylon has already won the game.” This uncompromising purity resembles the anarchist rejection of political reform, which is tantamount to mixing Zion with Babylon. Anarchism has consistently broken rank with progressive movements as soon as they became too comfortable in the halls of power. Such was the case with state Communism in the USSR, and the labor movement in the United States. This uncompromising commitment to virtue has necessarily alienated both anarchists and religious communities. The Essenes of Christ’s time, the Mormon pioneers, the Amish and other utopian communities of the 18th and 19th centuries refused to participate in “the world” and separated themselves from it, literally fleeing from Babylon.
Labor and Property
It would seem then, that both the anarchist and Mormon view of the world, though framed in different terms, would espouse similar values. Leo Tolstoy, the Christian anarchist was adamant that “living off the labor of others” was not justified by Christian doctrines. D & C 42:42 states that, “He that is idle shall not eat the bread...of the laborer” to which Nibley comments, “hailed as the franchise of unbridled capitalism, is rather a rebuke to that system which has allowed idlers to live in luxury and laborers in want throughout the whole course of history.” Tolstoy states, “If the laborer has no land, if he cannot use the natural right of every man to derive subsistence for himself and his family out of the land, that is not because the people wish it to be so, but because a certain set of men, the landowners, have appropriated the right of giving or refusing admittance to the land to the laborers.” D & C 49:20 proclaims that “But it is not given that one man should possess that which is above another, wherefore the world lieth in sin,” and as Nibley writes “the old Jewish teaching that Adam had a right only to that portion of the earth that he “quickened” on which he labored by the sweat of his brow” in other words, money has nothing to do with our rights to the land and its produce. Again from Tolstoy, “The laborer of today would not cease to suffer even if his toil were much lighter... [f]or he is working at the manufacture of things which he will not enjoy,...working to satisfy the desires of luxurious and idle people...for the profit of a single rich man, the owner of a factory or workshop in particular.” In Nibley’s practically anarchist critique of capitalist exploitation, his essay ‘Work we Must, but the Lunch is Free’ is a heretical idea in capitalist ideology. In this essay, Nibley gives the example of a man who gains control of the earth’s bounty or “lunch” by hard work. He then considers himself benevolent for allowing those he has denied access to this bounty to work for him to get it back (and to make him money in the process). According to Nibley, the bounty of the earth is a free gift, and each of us has a right to “lunch” regardless of class, race, or disposition. This analogy is squarely in line with anarchist and radical environmental critiques of capitalist notions of private property, means of production, and commoditized labor.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the famous French anarchist, famously wrote that “property is theft,” referring not to property in a general sense, but to capitalist ownership of the means of production. This idea is mirrored by Nibley’s assertion that the root of the words “private” and “property” have the same meaning “what is privatum or proprium is therefore peculiar to one person alone (not a corporation),” and refer instead to things essential for one’s survival. “One may not accumulate property, for then it ceases to be property and falls into the forbidden category of power and gain. Oil under arctic seas or mahogany in unexplored jungles can be neither private nor property, save by a theory of possession cultivated in another quarter” i.e. Babylonian economics.
From the above citations, it would seem that Hugh Nibley, Leo Tolstoy, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and Joseph Smith were reading from the same celestial cliff notes. Humans have no right to exploit one another just because of the artificial power of capital. And though I make no claim that the similarities between anarchist and Mormon thinkers overlap in all areas of theoretical discourse, the above statements illustrate that to a remarkable degree, we are all working toward the same society: one where there would be no wage labor (living off the labor of others), hierarchical economic or political institutions, private property, or classes; a world where the human family holds all things in common.
Why? Because if your goal is the “total liberation and dignity of all humanity through cooperative principles such as unity, equality, and participatory democracy” you have made the Basic Error-the one that has been repeated presumably from before the foundation of the earth. The Jews made it in Christ’s time, only they would have invoked the “total liberation and dignity through cooperative principles such as unity, equality and the kingship of the Messiah.” A good king would declare by fiat that such and such MUST BE, and it would be so. But that solution would still be political. The kingdom of God will never come by politics. Dictators from Pharoah to Stalin, Pol Pot and the rest of the Reds have invoked the same thinking. They will rid their societies of oppression by ridding them of hierarchies. They will make everyone equal by the power of the state. They will overcome human selfishness, which when allowed to have free reign, always results in messy gradations or hierarchies, ergo injustice and oppression. But it’s all an Orwellian expression of a Faustian bargain.
Come to think of it, it’s also Satan’s basic plan. He too advocated the idea that all hierarchies are inherently oppressive and to truly liberate all humanity we must make them equal. Anything else wouldn’t be FAIR. That requires one of two possibilities—chan ged hearts (the condition in which men and women voluntarily surrender their individual prerogatives for the greater good of their brothers and sisters) or some form of political force (i.e., the force of the state). Satan knew that the changed heart route would not work as a way to equality because freedom would mean freedom to sin and sin would bring inequality. People would get hurt. People would use their freedom to choose abuse and to live selfish, greedy lives and there would go the unity and equality.
The choice, I am sorry to tell you, is between liberty and equality. Christ’s plan requires that men recognize that the critical bondage of mankind is not the sort that men visit upon each other, but the bondage they are in to their own sins and indwelling selfishness. The critical choice of men in this life is what to do about their own sinful hearts. To have the liberty to make this critical choice is the most important freedom men and women can have in this life.
Sentences like, “United order principles encourage equality by entrusting economic resources and possibilities to the people, not to the state or a wealthy elite,” sound pretty good. Wouldn’t it be great to do away with dastardly “state and wealthy elites?” But really, how do you do that exactly—how do you “entrust economic resources and possibilities to the people”? Without some ultimate power or force to pass out equal portions of the pie, it ain’t gonna happen. As Jesus said, “The poor always ye have with you.” Societies that solve this problem, have other, much more serious problems from a spiritual perspective.
I don't know what book of scripture insists that Satan's plan was egalitarian. I remember this much: Satan "desired" that all men be "saved" so he could receive the glory for their salvation. Egalitarianism? Altruism? In his plan? Ha! Pride and vain-glory alone motivated the satan. The only hierarchy involved then would be one in which Satan held a role of remarkable prominence.
Second, your argument ultimately follows that since there is evil in the world, it should be allowed to reign unhindered because right-acting individuals are worse than the miscreants who desire to harm the rest. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." I wonder where then the road leads that was paved with evil intentions.
By the way, when will you be advocating for tyranny to take firm root in America since republicanism was and is a very definite step towards "diminished freedom"?
motivation. But his motivation was entirely separate from his rhetoric. And
that is a critical distinction if you are to understand the War in Heaven anf
for what it was fought. The rhetoric of all tyrants is egalatarian and shrouds
itself in the language of FAIRNESS. It’s easy to see how would fall for the
ideas. All would cme back. Can’t you just hear him rant. He had to be
pretty persuasive. One third of our brothers and sisters followed him. His
stump speech didn’t include, “Let’s fight this plan of Christ in order to bring
me honor and glory!” His followers fought God because he had convinced
them that his plan was fairer, was egalitarian. That it was cruel and unfair
to let a plan go into action that would mean some won and some lost.
Winners and losers. “Few there be that find it,” and all that. It has an elitist
ring to it. Better a plan in which everyone won. We all got “back home”
Surely, the line must have gone, “this was the greatest good for the
greatest number of people, the ultimate welfare program.” So promises
communism in all its forms. All will be taken care of. What could be a more
lofty goal than that?
My point about the inherent sinfulness of man is pretty basic to the gospel.
That does not mean that men and women do not work for noble means
and
seek just governments. But no government of men will save them in the
end. And governments that promise to save them often do it at the
expense f personal libery. Only Christ can save them from their inherent
selfishness and pride. If you haven’t discovered that in yourself yet, you
will
not understand the book of Mormon. It is not a book that recommends
anarchy or pacifism. It recommends surrender to Christ through a broken
heart and a contrite spirit. It recommends humility in the face of our
recognition of our fallen natures. It is the gift of charity that will ultimately let
men and women make a difference in their world. It is not politics.
Do I recommend against getting involved in politics? No. But first things
first. And good intentions are not first. As the war in heaven should have
taught all of the two thirds of us who made it here, good-sounding
intentions need a closer look.
You should have read at least as much Tolkein and Lewis growing up as
you did Nibley. I don’t recall having said that “right acting individuals are
worse than the miscreants who desire to harm the rest.” I did mean to say
that we are all fallen men. Your greatest hope of changing the world is to
surrender your life to Christ, not Barrack Obama. I use him as a not
particularly sophisticated example of a Great Promser.
And I do hear from the left all the time that Bush and his ilk want to set up a
totalitarian state. Funny. All the really totalitarian recommendations come
from the left. Legislation by enlightened well meaning judges who would
make law by judicial fiat rather than the “whim of the masses.” That chilling
phrase is actually a quote by Gavin Newsom as he gloated over the
overthrow of the people’s freedom to determine the definition of marriage
in
California.
I also see that the “Fairness doctrine”—labels being all important when you
are about to strip people of their basic rights—will never be passed by a
Republican administration. Who is it that wants to silence the opposition?
The real tyrants always know what’s best for us. Bush is rendered virtually
powerless at this time in his presidency. Checks and balances as built into
the constitution seem to be working just fine. What freedom are you about
to lose as a result of a Bush presidency? Not that I think he was a very
good president, but what freedom are you losing?
Human welfare is what Satan promised. Human liberty was the cost. Pride
was the mostivation, but I assure you, it was not prominently displayed in
Statan’s campaign literalture.
Anyway...
You make a critical logical error. Consider this liberty of surrender you speak of. All men and women, everywhere, and at all times are free. Even an individual living under Hitler's regime or Stalin's was still free. They were free to think for themselves, despite state propaganda that would try to persuade them to the party's line. They were free to act, despite the fact that they could be arrested by agents of the state. They were free to rebel, despite the penalty. And they were free also to accept the regime. But to act contrary to the state, to behave freely in this direction, had its consequences. Rebel against the state and you will probably be punished. But one is still free regardless. Even an individual who abdicates his responsibility and his positive liberty is still free to take it up again!
Consider Jesus' plan again. There could be winners and losers. Or there could be only losers. Or there could be only winners. Free choice allows for any of those posibilities. See, just because one may choose to rebel against God does not mean that one will. Everyone was offered the opportunity to accept Jesus' plan and salvation. Everyone. That's egalitarian. And God was willing to offer salvation to everyone, even the sinners. Everyone. That's egalitarian. Equality and liberty are not at odds, because all may excercise their liberty. It wasn't a matter of God dividing the creation into classes and saying, "You spirits who sit in the front row may choose to be saved. But you in the back, you are damned regardless of your will or desire to be saved."
Further, even if God had attached no conditions to salvation, such as surrender to his sovereign authority, and his law, and allowed everyone back into his presence, with or without Jesus' charity, one still had the freedom to rebel. One could sit at God's right hand, according to an act of will on God's part, and bask in his glory, and still rebel, and still remain outside of communion by a simple act of individual will, even if God refused punishment.
Likewise, the soup kitchen's are open, the soup is free, but one does not have to eat.
First off, many of your points were well taken, and i am not trying to deflate them, simply continue a dialogue toward mutual understanding.
Your point that "Zion is profoundly non-political". I completely see why you would assume that reading the scripture in D/C that says that Zion is the pure in heart. And from the rest of your comments i can see that you have a very individualistic view of religion and salvation. I would simply say that, in Mormonism we tend to ignore the socio-political implications of Zion and slip into a very american notion of individualism. But i am afriad the rest of D/C illustrates quite clearly that Zion is not only a state on mind, but a state of being, one in which the saints interact with each other and the rest of the world. SOME advantages of Zion may come from individual conversion, but there are also many more that come with solidairty, compassion, and service. Indeed, what would salvation mean without social relations in whcih to act out the behaviors of love, forgiveness, and charity?
Both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young believed very strongly that Zion was to be a place where there were no rich or poor, as in the city of enoch, Fourth Nephi, and the New Testament.
One unfair assumption i feel you made from my article was that i was advocating state communism. I dont believe i mentioned the state at all as a possible means to our ends. "the kingdom of god will never come by politics" seems a little naive, when kingdoms are inherently political. In fact, i dont think we should separate social, spiritual, and political as much as perhaps you would like in our daily lives. The politics of the soul are the choices we make on a day to day basis, motivated by our loyalty to ideas and the savior. I dont believe that Pol Pot or Stalin had the kingdom of god in mind when they implemented thier systems of tyranny, using the ideas of Communism as a facade. If Communism is Satan's counterfiet for the United Order, then what is Capitalism? Unfortunately, State communism behaves much like capitalism, there is simply a replacment of one elite by another.
In the article i am simply trying to show that the PRINCIPLES of United Order Mormonism and Anarchism have many similarities. Did i suggest that we form a party and take over the state immediatly? No, i too believe it will take a grass-roots effort to build institutions that preserve BOTH freedom and promote equality. Assuming we have to choose between these two central ideas is a false choice. I believe that it is an uncontrovertable fact that the D/C advocates BOTH liberty and equality.
What the Mormon Worker is about is making connections and thinking through possible solutions.
I hope that was not contentious, and i hope to hear from you soon! and perhaps you would like to contribute to our paper???
Thanks for responding. "Politics of the soul" huh. Is that what you think
salvation is? But I better back up. Thank you for responding, and for your
graceful tone. I'm sure I'm old enough to be your mother so thank you for
being polite. I'm picking up the idealism in your writing that I felt back when
I was younger and a Democrat. At this point in my life I have a profound
distrust of politics as a way to any kind of salvation, individual or corporate.
While I think the scriptures may give us guidelines for how to treat one
another---for example, this favorite scripture of mine from Phillipians: Let
nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each
esteem [the] other better than themselves,"---I must repeat my insistence
that there is an order to things. After one has surrendered his soul to
Christ in personal fealty (a covenant promise of obedience based on
Christ's having died in our place and taking our punishment for the sins of
our hopelessly fallen nature, thus making our ressurrection and eternal life
possible), then we are in a position to receive the necessary
endowment of charity to make living in Zion a possibility. Receiving charity
as a spiritual gift, indeed begging for that gift, is the only way to get it. It is,
this gift, actually the very nature of Christ himself, which is poured into us as
into vessels. I think of Paul saying "But we have this treasure in earthen
vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us." 2
Cor 4:7. We are the 'cracked pots' if you will, and Christ's nature shines
through our cracked places. It was said much better than that by Gerard
Manley Hopkins: "I say more: the just man justices; Keeps grace: that
keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is--
Christ-- for Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely
in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men's faces." (#34)
I guess my basic point is this. If a group of decent men came upon an
outpost of Zion, let's say in Enoch's day, and decided to study it and take
notes on how it was run, do you think they could recreate the system by
taking it back to their own people and establishing laws and institutions that
supported the behaviors they observed in Zion? Or does a true Zion
society have to begin with people whose hearts have been been changed
through the atonement by covenant relationship with Christ?
There is much more to say on the question but I think I'll just start with this
one question--the question of whether there is a necessary order to things.
Oh, and if you have the time for one more basic question, what is your
meaning for the use of the word "anarchism" ? You seem to use it to
indicate a state in which people have moved beyond the need for
government, but the OED says it means "Absence of government; a state
of lawlessness due to the absence or inefficiency of the supreme power;
political disorder." I am reluctant to assume your paper advocates political
disorder and chaos.
Appreciate the conversation.
as for the hypothetical society. I would say that there are plenty of examples from the scriptures and history to look to, and that the mormon worker and other projects i hope to be involved in are part of the move to take those ideas, adapt them to our day, and lead by example. Also by persuasion and long suffering. if democracy is authentic, and we have a fair and open media, that is also how laws would be passed, through vigorous discussion and debate, so that there is a mimimum amount of coesion.
And no, i do not think that Anarchism means disorder and chaos. I am a pretty conservative anarchist, meaning i am not the insurrectionary type, who thinks that the only way to a perfect society is through violent revolution. These are the purists who will be getting nothing done, while they wait for the revolution to come. Meanwhile the rest of us will be working to do things both inside and outside the system. For me anarchism, is a set of ideas and ideals that i find useful in analyzing institutions and other ideas. It is also the will to be free of coersive institutions, and the faith (if i may) that human beings are at their core cooperative rather than competitive.
Please refer to Will Van Wagenen's papers that introduce anarchism in the first couple of Mormon Worker issues.