According to Osho, commune-ism is a voluntary, decentralized economy where the rich pool their wealth and creativity in self-governing communes, drop private ownership, and invite diverse creators - plumbers to poets - as equal members. The commune multiplies wealth, shares it to raise everyone to the same living standard, and expands through love, intelligence, and generosity, not force, transforming society peacefully.
Rich people team up, share what they have, welcome skilled people as equals, and make sure everyone in the group lives well—by kindness, not coercion.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, I have heard you extol "commune-ism" as the highest form of economic system, the equal sharing of abundance and richness in a loving family of man. However, I have heard you say that the poor should be brought up to the level of the rich rather than the rich being dragged down into poverty, as has happened in all existing communistic societies. But how can the rich share wealth now, and live in "commune-ism" without being dragged down into economic mediocrity?
The first thing is that the rich people of the world should start living in communes. Let those communes be of the rich! -- so they will not be dragged down from their standard of life, their comforts, their luxuries. Let there be around the world hundreds of communes of rich people -- rich communes. And to me, wealth is a certain kind of creativity. If five thousand rich people who have all created wealth individually are together, they can create wealth a millionfold. Their standard will not go lower; their standard can even go higher. Or they can start sharing. They can start inviting people who are not rich but who are creative in some other way, who will enhance the life of their commune although they may be poor. Five thousand rich people together with their genius for creating wealth are capable of creating so much wealth that…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT IS YOUR IDEA OF A MODEL COMMUNE? Maneesha, mankind is at a crossroads. It cannot live the way it has lived up to now. That has become simply impossible. It has been dreaming for a better future as far back as you can conceive, but life has been deteriorating rather than becoming better. It has come to a point where we are facing either suicide, a global suicide, or a total transformation of human consciousness and its style of life. My idea of a model commune implies the whole life of man from all the possible aspects. First, the family cannot remain the basic unit of the society. It is the root cause of millions of diseases; it is the basic brick of which nations are made, races are made, religious organizations are made.
Question: BELOVED MASTER, WHAT IS YOUR VISION FOR THE NEW COMMUNE? Krishna Prem, the new commune is an experiment in spiritual communism. The word 'communism' comes from 'commune'. There is only one possibility of communism in the world and that possibility is through meditation. Communism is not possible through changing the economic structures of societies. The change of economic structures of societies will only bring new classes; it cannot bring a classless society. The proletariat may disappear, the bourgeoisie may go, but then the ruler and the ruled...that's what has happened in Soviet Russia, that's what has happened in China. New distinctions, new classes have arisen. Communism is basically a spiritual vision. It is not a question of changing the economic structures of the society, but changing people's spiritual vision.
Beloved Osho, if national boundaries and visa restrictions continue to separate us from you and from each other, what is best for us to do about it?
They will not. It is for me to find a way that they don't restrict you from seeing me, from being with me. I am working on it, and I don't think it will take a long time to find a way; perhaps a month at the most. So nobody need worry about it. We will soon have our own place which will not be under any country's rule. And I want a totally new experiment that has not happened in history. There have been anarchists -- their philosophy is one of the best. But it is so good that it becomes impossible to make it real; it remains utopian. Prince Kropotkin, Tolstoy -- these people dreamed of a humanity which one day would drop all governments. They thought that governments are the causes of all the evil that exists on the earth. To some extent they are right, but…
Question: BELOVED MASTER, WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT COMMUNISM? Raja, I don't think about such things -- in fact, I don't think at all! I am certainly interested in communes, but not in communism. The moment something becomes an "ism" it becomes dangerous. The idea of a commune is beautiful: people living together in a nonpossessive way, neither possessing things nor possessing persons; people living together, creating together, celebrating together, and still allowing each one his own space; people creating a certain climate of meditativeness, of love, and living in that climate. I am certainly interested in the idea of the commune -- it simply means where communion is possible. In the world there is no communion possible. Even communication is not possible, what to say about communion! Communication means a dialogue between two minds -- even that is not possible -- and communion means a meeting of two hearts.