I want an educated (lol) communist to explain to me the answer to this question.
Assuming society has reached post-scarcity and virtually everything is communally owned, people still have to produce food. People still have to produce technology. Things still have to get made by people. However, undoubtedly there will be people, as there are now, that do nothing to contribute to society, simply lay around all day and leech off others work. Why would a worker, who produces something from his labour, allow someone to simply take whatever they want without doing any work themselves? It's simply ridiculous, because in a communist society there will ALWAYS be some that work and produce, and some that don't. What entitles the non-labourers to the fruit of the labourer's work?
I want an educated (lol) communist to explain to me the answer to this question
Slavery.
>not a communist
If you dont work you get gulaged and die of starvation. Historical communist countries made neets work by force
I'm no fucking communist by any means. But I will say that ideally in a post scarcity Society AI will have taken over the means of production of both technology and foodperiod the prior being a bit more far-fetched but not a unfathomable idea the ladder being much more inreach with GPS and self-driving technology.
not a communist, yet communism is not what you described. The idea is that, if you do not want (want is particularly important here. there is a difference between want and can) to do your part for the community, you don't belong in such community and, as such, the state has no obligation towards you. The need should come from the people. Is hard to understand this day and age since everyone just wants the easy way out but you have to remember that, the communist ideals where idealized in a time when working was a part of life and people where proud about what they did.
This is obviously all very pretty but it doesnt mean is possible to implement. And the way our society evolves it will be harder and harder.
Communists have no idea how goods are produced. They think corporations wave a magic wand and the CEO basks in the sweet profits. These are generally people with a retard-level understanding of economics and have never worked a day in their life.
Fucking capitialist scum
I'm not a communist, but I think their responses to that are either that in a socialist society the Government would be justified in making people work with the threat of jail and/or other punishments, or that people are lazy due to disillusionment and that if society was fairer they'd be more inclined to work.
Also, not all communists believe that everyone should be entitled to the same wage.
would you care to argument your case or just spit some bullshit?
I really want to know how they'd value a brain surgeon against a cleaner. Would they really get paid the same?
Communism is not the same as Equalitarism. If you work harder (or study in your case) you do deserve more.
Not paid the same but the cleaner will have the same economic opportunities as the surgeon.
-Anarco-Communist
>What entitles the non-labourers to the fruit of the labourer's work
5 years in GuLAG for social parasitism.
/thread.
The Socialist Workers Party where I used to live supported the idea that salaries should be calculated on various criteria such as difficulty, how dangerous the job is, unsociable hours and what level of education is required.
So no, the Brain Surgeon should make more but it should be taken into account if the cleaner has to work nights, use dangerous chemicals etc.
Indeed, is not about equal pay. Is about equal opportunity
Not a communist, but as I understand it, the general idea is that in a "post-scarcity" society, zero-sum goods like land and popularity are still scarce, but material goods aren't.
In Australia a house in a shitty rural town can be bought for as low as $20k, while a house of the same size in a trendy inner suburb of a big city might run to $2m. You can feed yourself for $150/month, and pay the bills for maybe $200/month, thus staying alive for under $5k a year in your $20k house. Alternately, you could eat out sometimes, buy beer on weekends, own a car, etc. and double or triple that easily. Post-scarcity is this dynamic on steroids.
The idea of communism is AFAICT that all material goods will be so easy to create that everyone can own a car, drink beer, eat tasty food, and the total cost will be a bare fraction of the total productivity of society. At some point, anyone still working who DOESN'T have access to basic material goods will be really pissed off, and those people will rise up and take over. Since doing work is a core value of the working class, the value system post-revolution will prize and reward people who work with the resources that are still scarce: living in good areas, public recognition, interesting work, services like daycares and taxis and dry cleaners, rarities like white truffles or diamonds, etc. The difference is that only zero-sum goods will be awarded for hard work: post-scarcity ensures that most material goods are virtually unlimited.
This seems pretty fucking stupid and overcomplicated to me, but whatever.
What do you mean by zero-sum goods?
Also, I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head, OP is forgetting that technology is making human labour less and less necessary every year.
I thought communist societies didn't have any currency.
Understood. But this is still just all talk because post-scarcity is basically an impossibility.
only good commie is a dead one
>What do you mean by zero-sum goods?
Goods which can't become any less scarce, meaning that in a competition to get them, there are a set number of winners and losers.
If lots of people buy potatoes, potato growers can increase their yield in various ways. On the other hand, if lots of people buy land in London, no more land can be produced. In a post-scarcity society, everyone can have potatoes, but only some people can live in a house in London.
It's a matter of degree. Australia is nearly post-scarcity for some goods. You can buy a metric fuckload of rice, lentils, and dried or frozen vegetables for a tiny fraction of the average daily salary.
By that token, almost nobody in Australia is starving. Soup kitchens are cheap as fuck to operate, if you beg $5 you can buy a day's worth of calories, and the dole easily covers nutritional needs.
Here's what I want to know.
In a communist society, what stops me from trading? Resources are limited and talent is limited.
Let's say I am a great musician. A lot of people want to hear my music. Am I going to sing to people for free? Fuck no. I am going to sell my services.
Let's say they give me their food rations, now I have extra food rations that I use as money to trade for other finite things like a new computer.
How would you stop people from doing this?
Better yet, why the FUCK would you want to stop it? That's literally capitalism.
In a communist society you'd develop a form of currency on the first day. You'd have people trading left and right, you'd have the black market supplying people with better quality services than the government. It would completely embarrass the government and make communism obsolete, and the only reason your commie government would go after people who do this is that they realize capitalism is the natural order or things that works way better than communism ever will.
Capitalism and communism are both false ideologies. Capitalism is failing before our eyes because of greed and limited resources, there is no such thing as a 'post scarcity society' unless we colonize other planets and or/ asteroids.
Capitalism is guaranteed to fail, because it relies entirely on unrestrained growth and does not take into account ecosystems that keep our world habitable in the first place. 'Sustainability' in a capitalist framework is the biggest cosmic joke in our entire existence, and we will all find out just what happens when you have billions of mouths to feed and failing crop cycles due to a shifting climate and dying biosphere.
Communism is guaranteed to fail because also because of greed, and because no one cares about sharing things equitably outside of their immediate community.
Capitalism doesn't rely on anything.
People trade and own things, to make everything easier and more efficient there's a monetary system in place. When you have millions of people in an incredibly complex society using their resources many things can go wrong, there's a crash and then there's a recovery.
Reciting communist talking points doesn't make them valid.
Blaming capitalism for poor capital management, governments printing too much money, endless debt and credit is retarded.
No matter how much dumb commie shit you spew, at the end of the day Capitalism is nothing more than people owning things and using the things they own in whatever way they want.
The problem of capitalism isn't sustainability, it's negative and positive externalities.
>communists hate capitalism because they are "slaves" to corporations
>are fine with being forced to work by the government
/thread
> What entitles the non-labourers to the fruit of the labourer's work?
This is already happening in any form of welfare.
In post scarcity you can simply make people survive even when they don't work. When they work they just get more money.
Your understanding of communism is wrong, communism is with having to work in mind or off to the gulag you go.
By the way i wish you luck with your tax evasion, otherwise some non-labourers will taste the fruit of your labor
The scenario you are describing is much like what we're living
We HAVE reached post-scarcity
The people who work the hardest and have the most demanding lives have NOTHING, whilst the ultra-rich who live a life of LUXURY have EVERYTHING
On a fundamental level nothing is sustainable.
The only question is how fast we want to run out of stuff
Yep, and they all live in China, a self-proclaimed Communist paradise praised by commies.
This is my problem with it, it will logically transform into the same thing as modern society without a totalitarian government forcing people to abide by the communist ideals.
>no money
Until people realize they can trade for things of similar value
>lawless
Until people agree that some things are bad and should be punished
>classless
Until certain people become popular in their community for their abilities, and have more power because of their popularity and/or special abilities (doctors, engineers, etc)
>no government
Until people realize that they need people to handle foreign trade and interactions, people to manage country wide issues, courts to fairly condemn criminals.
>free gibs
Until the actual workers get pissed off that people are living off their work and either force everyone to work or give up
Your assumption is that just because ''anarcho'' commies say they want no government, that's what they actually want.
Communism can't exist without a totalitarian government. It's physically impossible to confiscate all property and privatize it, then maintain that order without a massive government.
Don't even entertain the idea of ''''''''anarcho'''''''' communism. When you are speaking of communism you are speaking about a large authoritarian government.