An arrangement in which members give up private ownership of property and draw on a common stock, usually on religious grounds, modelled on the Jerusalem church described in Acts 2 and 4.
In more detail
Hutterites keep personal effects but jointly own houses, vehicles, barns and machinery and take no wages. Shakers held all things in common within celibate villages; Oneida combined it with complex marriage; the secular Icarians pooled property on admission. It differs from a worker or consumer co-operative, where members hold shares in an enterprise but keep private property outside it.