Kevin Coffee discusses the establishment of a limited liability joint stock company among the Oneida, the "Oneida Community Limited."
Kevin Coffee, "The Oneida Community and the Utility of Liberal Capitalism," Radical Americas 4, no. 1 (2019)
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On 18 July 1880, the board met to form a commission to propose a long-term structural solution. Board secretary Francis Wayland-Smith provided the following record:
1. In regard to leadership and government. We have no government worthy of the name. The Council is a failure. The young people do just as they like.
2. We have no religious unity, which is the cornerstone of communistic success.
3. Our business credit is threatened by our divisions and internal dissensions. Our businesses are so expanded that we have been obliged to borrow about $60,000 of the banks.
4. Our own members are, many of them, no longer industrious. They see no object in toiling while the earnings and profits are controlled by others.
5. We are no longer so economical as formerly and the present government is powerless.
6. The young people are no longer under proper control.
The other shoe dropped on 20 August 1880, when that commission proposed to create a limited liability joint stock company – Oneida Community Limited – from the communal assets, with shares sold to current commune members according to a calculus determined solely by the commission. In so doing, the group formally shed any further pretence to communalism in favour of operating as a private capitalist enterprise.