It’s very arrogant to start from the position that your platform is correct and sensible, and then be completely unable to dismantle arguments to the contrary.
Again, I support the ideal of communism as a model government. However I simultaneously believe that Full Communism is not workable. So I remain hopeful of seeing pragmatic plans to adopt the closest achievable, stable system.
But you just don’t understand our position, you’re not in a place to call us incorrect when you are literally shadowboxing. The only people who want the current society to transform into a classless, moneyless, stateless society are anarcho communists. I like them, but I think they’re the minority on Hexbear. Among Marxists (and some ancoms consider themselves Marxists which I don’t seek to invalidate but I think their position is heterodox) the view is very different. Marxists and other “state” socialists don’t want to do your version of communism, they want to first transfer the currently existing means of production into a different form of administering them called socialism. Under socialism, workers would control the state (i.e. instead of the current dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, a dictatorship of the proletariat) and direct the state to defend their revolution against the inevitable backlash from capitalists. If you go to texts from Marx and Engels (e.g. in Socialism: Utopian vs Scientific) it’s clear that what they view to be the final point of that class struggle isn’t really a utopia as you describe it, but a distinct mode of social organization where the current contradictions that give rise to the national states, money, capitalist exploitation of workers, and other contradictions (IMO the biggest ones being related to imperialism, which Hobson and Lenin would later identify) would be transformed into a new way for society to be.
You can argue against that. I’m personally not even a Marxist myself and I’m skeptical that communism as Marx describes it could come to pass. But I’m a socialist and I believe the only way capitalism can be replaced by something different is revolution, that’s what history bears out and it’s what materialist analysis lands at. If you want to say that it’s wrong, I’m all ears, but at least base your understanding of Marxist positions on Marxist texts, not Star Trek.
Edit: Also, reading through your comment again, with a better understanding of what communism actually is (not this weird version where everyone is still working regular jobs in a society that would look fairly similar to ours), you could’ve just said you think communism won’t work because of the tragedy of the commons. Maybe for service work it’s a little tortured, but the idea is that in communism all the goods that are produced would just be owned collectively, most being produced automatically, then what can’t be produced automatically wouldn’t need to be produced by people working 40 hours a week at the mud factory, instead it would be a small enough quantity of labor that with just some people pitching in out of boredom you’d be fine. That seems ridiculously utopian now, hence the tragedy of the commons criticism (why work for stuff if you can just get it for free? why use resources mindfully if there’s always more?), but this would be what happens after a long time with socialism developing the means of production to drive down the amount of socially necessary labor. If 95% of the things people consumed were just automated away, and only about 5% required some human input to make, I think the criticism holds less weight because we only expect people to be producing stuff for a couple of hours each week. For service work, especially what you describe as dirty work, I think it’s necessary to think in terms of what a society that goes through a hundred years of socialist construction looks like; especially in the late stages of socialism where their sight is set on carrying out a plan to reform society into one that completely minimizes the amount of labor input necessary. Is it possible that they reduce the amount of professional plumbing, garbage handling, healthcare, and other difficult jobs to absolute 0? Almost definitely not. Nevertheless, I think if society was organized in a way that is radically different, it’s possible that those services could be handled in a way that doesn’t require coercion the way socialism does. Is there a reason to think that no amount of re-organizing society would reduce the amount of necessary labor to a point that no longer requires coercion?
It’s very arrogant to start from the position that your platform is correct and sensible, and then be completely unable to dismantle arguments to the contrary.
Again, I support the ideal of communism as a model government. However I simultaneously believe that Full Communism is not workable. So I remain hopeful of seeing pragmatic plans to adopt the closest achievable, stable system.
But you just don’t understand our position, you’re not in a place to call us incorrect when you are literally shadowboxing. The only people who want the current society to transform into a classless, moneyless, stateless society are anarcho communists. I like them, but I think they’re the minority on Hexbear. Among Marxists (and some ancoms consider themselves Marxists which I don’t seek to invalidate but I think their position is heterodox) the view is very different. Marxists and other “state” socialists don’t want to do your version of communism, they want to first transfer the currently existing means of production into a different form of administering them called socialism. Under socialism, workers would control the state (i.e. instead of the current dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, a dictatorship of the proletariat) and direct the state to defend their revolution against the inevitable backlash from capitalists. If you go to texts from Marx and Engels (e.g. in Socialism: Utopian vs Scientific) it’s clear that what they view to be the final point of that class struggle isn’t really a utopia as you describe it, but a distinct mode of social organization where the current contradictions that give rise to the national states, money, capitalist exploitation of workers, and other contradictions (IMO the biggest ones being related to imperialism, which Hobson and Lenin would later identify) would be transformed into a new way for society to be.
You can argue against that. I’m personally not even a Marxist myself and I’m skeptical that communism as Marx describes it could come to pass. But I’m a socialist and I believe the only way capitalism can be replaced by something different is revolution, that’s what history bears out and it’s what materialist analysis lands at. If you want to say that it’s wrong, I’m all ears, but at least base your understanding of Marxist positions on Marxist texts, not Star Trek.
Edit: Also, reading through your comment again, with a better understanding of what communism actually is (not this weird version where everyone is still working regular jobs in a society that would look fairly similar to ours), you could’ve just said you think communism won’t work because of the tragedy of the commons. Maybe for service work it’s a little tortured, but the idea is that in communism all the goods that are produced would just be owned collectively, most being produced automatically, then what can’t be produced automatically wouldn’t need to be produced by people working 40 hours a week at the mud factory, instead it would be a small enough quantity of labor that with just some people pitching in out of boredom you’d be fine. That seems ridiculously utopian now, hence the tragedy of the commons criticism (why work for stuff if you can just get it for free? why use resources mindfully if there’s always more?), but this would be what happens after a long time with socialism developing the means of production to drive down the amount of socially necessary labor. If 95% of the things people consumed were just automated away, and only about 5% required some human input to make, I think the criticism holds less weight because we only expect people to be producing stuff for a couple of hours each week. For service work, especially what you describe as dirty work, I think it’s necessary to think in terms of what a society that goes through a hundred years of socialist construction looks like; especially in the late stages of socialism where their sight is set on carrying out a plan to reform society into one that completely minimizes the amount of labor input necessary. Is it possible that they reduce the amount of professional plumbing, garbage handling, healthcare, and other difficult jobs to absolute 0? Almost definitely not. Nevertheless, I think if society was organized in a way that is radically different, it’s possible that those services could be handled in a way that doesn’t require coercion the way socialism does. Is there a reason to think that no amount of re-organizing society would reduce the amount of necessary labor to a point that no longer requires coercion?