I"m going to transpose from some of my threads posted recently at the MADboards to which I received little or no substantive intellectual engagement for consideration here, as I'd like some serious feedback and ongoing discussion on the problems inherent in some of David's concepts and interpretations of scripture, as they relate to political and economic questions to which they are intrinsically connected.
The fundamental problem, as I see it, with regard to the concept of "communal" assimilation of concepts such as sin, guilt, or salvation normally reserved, conceptually, solely for individuals (for which these concepts make sense as concepts), is found in David's concept of "community," which, despite some equivocation or "backpedaling" on his part in other posts, appears to have a kind of Hegelian sense of organic wholeness that implies philosophical and doctrinal problems of a specific kind. This is the description, as David has phrased it:
The community is very much a living entity capable of accumulating collective guilt...
David has altered this, and its metaphysical implications, in another post, in response to two quotations I had posted from 20th century General Authorities:
The United Order was not "communal" like the "Family" living on Isaac Morley's farm that attempted to have "all things in common." Modern revelation specifically countered these communal practices:"Thou shalt stand in the place of thy stewardship. Thou shalt not take thy brother’s garment; thou shalt pay for that which thou shalt receive of thy brother" (D&C 42:53-54).
But Zion is very much a communal project with individual stewardships. Historian Lindon Cook captures the distinction:
"The 1831 economic system of the Mormons was actually a hybrid combining individualism and collectivism; it contained elements of communitarianism as well as capitalism. The program was distinctly communitarian in that it required total consecration of all possessions as well as yearly donation to the Church of all surplus profits." in Joseph Smith and the Law of Consecration, 8.
As we've discussed many times, individual stewardship in this system is essential. But to suggest that President Romney meant that Zion is not a communal system where the community was "one," with a shared communal responsibility and stewardship is to misinterpret his intent, especially when his words are read in the inspired context given via the LDS Institute manual for the D&C.
Not only, one might observe, is this a moving away from the more radical, collectivistic interpretations of "having all things in common" David has put forth in his earlier, 2010 era threads on this subject, but the concept of "community" here appears to change from a metaphysical concept of an organic "entity" and, indeed, a "living" entity that itself that accumulates "collective guilt" to a symbolic representation of individual unity of mind and purpose within a social or community setting.
If this entity can accumulate guilt, if follows that "it" would be able to accumulate other metaphysical/sentient/moral attributes as well, such as evil, good, innocence, motives, will, and moral orientation.
So then, does "communal" mean "in a community" and "unified as to goals and purpose," or is it a "living" entity having a separate and distinct existence from the individuals that compose it and which can "accumulate" moral qualities that in some sense have been leeched from or averaged out of the individual members themselves and concentrated in the collective "entity," or organic social mass?
That's the initial question. I also want to explore some of the longer, more involved arguments I made at the MADboard, but were never intellectually engaged or responded to there.
More later.