The concept of Right Livelihood embodies an ethical and sustainable approach to work that aligns with the principles of environmental stewardship, social equity, and personal fulfillment. Rooted in the teachings of ancient traditions and modern eco-social movements, Right Livelihood encourages individuals to collaborate to contribute to the collective prosperity through meaningful, responsible, and cooperative endeavors.
At its core, Right Livelihood promotes:
Ethical Work: Engaging in occupations that do not harm others, animals, the environment, or oneself
Sustainability: Using resources responsibly to ensure future generations inherit the earth in state able to support quality of life, liberty and maximum happiness for people and animals through responsible stewardship of the earth’s finite resources.
Purposeful Contribution: Supporting work that ensures and maintains human dignity while contributing to betterment of local, regional and wider world built human habitat, as well as preservation of natural featured landscapes
Conversely, Right Livelihood prohibits:
Work that exploits people or depletes natural resources.
Practices that promote consumerism, inequality, or environmental degradation.
Jobs that prioritize profit over the well-being of individuals and ecosystems.
These principles form the bedrock of the Communitarian Union’s collaborative provisioning production & distribution practices, guiding associates toward creating an economy of shared prosperity and ethical provisioning.
The Communitarian Union’s SHARE Economy is a transformative system designed to cultivate ‘common’ wealth shared material security through eco-social production and distribution. Grounded in the values of collaboration, mutual care, and sustainability, this model of organized, purpose-driven production is anchored in collective ownership and the responsible eco-social practices of sharing of resources, labor, and profits.
The Communitarian Unions across the globe collaborate to establish and sustain enterprises where workers collectively own and operate eco-social enterprises through:
Collaborative Decision-Making: Each worker is expected and supported to develop skills and knowledge in a wide array of production and distribution processes to determine the direction and productive capacity of the enterprises.
Shared Prosperity: Beyond supplying the SHAREHOLDER and contributor, profits are reinvested back into the enterprises to maintain and extend production to serve members and contribute to the material security of the wider world.
Resilience and Cooperation: Enterprises prioritize collaborative efforts over competition, creating a supportive network of mutual aid.
At the heart of the Union’s mission are worker-owned and operated eco-social enterprises, designed to provide meaningful livelihoods while addressing global challenges such as environmental degradation and economic lack and limitations impeding the development of inclusive, life-sustaining livelihoods that nurture both human potential and the Earth’s integrity.
These enterprises are structured not for personal gain but for collective benefit —redistributing resources, responsibility, and decision-making power among all who contribute. Guided by right livelihood principles, these production and distribution endeavors prioritize regenerative practices, localized production, and communal wealth-building.
Each venture becomes a living classroom where Associates deepen skills, cultivate purpose, and align daily work with the values of care, cooperation, and ecological responsibility. In this way, eco-social enterprises become not only engines of economic renewal, but practical embodiments of a post-extractive economy rooted in shared abundance and relational accountability.
The Communitarian Union’s ‘common’ wealth, shared prosperity, Right Livelihood principles and practices offer a transformative pathway for individuals and communities worldwide to rise above poverty through cooperation, ethical work, and sustainable living. By adopting a model where people contribute their time, talent, and resources to become shareholders in eco-social worker-owned enterprises, this framework provides a blueprint for global prosperity grounded in solidarity and stewardship.
This inclusive model ensures that everyone has a stake in the collective success of the collaborative enterprise.
Each eco-social enterprise begins with a shared commitment among Associates to meet real needs through collaborative effort and right relationship – with each other, with the land, and with the broader social-ecological context. These enterprises are seeded through skill-sharing, collective planning, and pooled resources rather than external investment or debt. Initial offerings often emerge from local abundance, such as organic food cultivation, sustainable building, or trade training, and evolve through iterative design, open accounting, and participatory decision-making.
Sustainability is ensured not only by ecological integrity and financial transparency, but through practices of shared responsibility, rotational leadership, and mutual accountability. Rather than competing for markets, Union-affiliated enterprises cooperate to form regional circuits of provisioning, exchange, and support. Knowledge, tools, and surpluses are circulated across networks to reduce duplication, respond to need, and build resilience. In this way, eco-social enterprises form the material infrastructure of a relational economy that is rooted, replicable, and resourced through solidarity.
Eco-social enterprises are not peripheral projects; they are central to how we live, relate, and organize our days. By engaging in meaningful, cooperative work that restores ecosystems and uplifts one another, we dissolve the artificial boundary between livelihood and service, between labor and love. Every action, whether it is growing food, preparing meals, repairing tools, facilitating learning is deemed an opportunity to embody shared responsibility and express care in tangible form. As more Associates participate in and replicate these enterprises, a living alternative to the dominant economy takes shape: one rooted in sufficiency, dignity, and mutual flourishing. This is the heart of Right Livelihood – not as a career path, but as a daily practice of communal provision, ecological stewardship, and shared prosperity.
