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Actually what you’re hoping to avoid is authoritarianism. Modern socialist theorists like Richard Wolff and David Harvey are well aware of the failures of autho

Actually what you’re hoping to avoid is authoritarianism. Modern socialist theorists like Richard Wolff and David Harvey are well aware of the failures of authoritarian communism in the 20th century, and advocate for voluntary systems instead. For example Richard Wolff’s proposal for a more Marxist world (with “worker ownership of the means of production”) is to encourage workers to form worker owned cooperatives. If the Marxist theory of worker ownership of the means of production is valid, then an economy where the preponderance of firms are worker owned is going to have a lot more freedom for the average person than what we have today. But no authoritarianism is necessary. Anti-authoritarian communism as a political theory goes back to the 19th century to thinkers like Peter Kropotkin, who advocated for “anarchist communism”. Very few people beyond edgy internet teenagers advocate for authoritarian communism today. The real takeaway of Marxism for modern audiences is that an economy where the preponderance of firms are owned by an elite ownership class is going to create a society where all social and legal forces benefit the wealthy to the detriment of the working class. We could have a society where the average person works ten hours a week, has ample time off and plenty of spending money, and owns a home. But instead money is continually funneled to the elites who own and control the means of production. In this sense, Marx’s analysis of capitalism seems correct. And in fact he never advocated to authoritarianism. It was opportunity Soviet leaders Lenin and Stalin who used the popularity of communism in popular culture to seize the power they desired. Other communists like Peter Kropotkin renounced the idea of anyone, even themselves, holding that much power. Sadly they were defeated in the political sphere by the authoritarians. Spend a little time looking at the history of anti-communism efforts by the United States in South America and you will see that we’re authoritarian too.

upwardbound 2y ago
> We could have a society where the average person works ten hours a week ... and owns a home. I don't think 10 hours a week on average is enough hours to grow the food to feed everyone, or keep any other part of the economy running. There's probably truth in some of the other parts of what you're saying but this, no way. Maybe 30 hours might be believable.
- timschmidt 2y ago
  Modern tractors literally drive themselves and automatically notify the manufacturer when in need of service. They're also enormous. Cows allowed to milk themselves via automated milking apparatus actually produce more milk and seem happier. Societal investment could easily bring these technologies to every farm.
  - Earw0rm 2y ago
    At least for staple/commodity/bulk crops. Not necessarily desirable for every type of produce or animal agriculture. Automated chicken factories are also enormous and remarkably light on labour input, but there are other consequences.
    - TaylorAlexander 2y ago
      It’s funny this comes up because I’m designing an open source solar powered farming robot as a community oriented engineering project specifically to address the long tail of specialty crops: https://youtu.be/MWDnCemVpxI https://youtu.be/MWDnCemVpxI
- Earw0rm 2y ago
  Depends how you define work, and how it's divided up. A remarkable amount of labour goes into generating income to pay for care, for example. Both people saving for their own in later life (or insurance to pay for it), and working to pay for childcare so they can work. And a sizeable amount also just to facilitate the work itself. Car payments so you can get to work. Student loan repayments on your training, and so on. Paying over the odds for a city apartment because that's where the work is. None of this can be magicked away of course. But the amount of hours that directly address economic need or generate discretionary income is a lot less than 40.
- TaylorAlexander 2y ago
  Oh it’s absolutely enough. It’s hard to fathom just how much wealth we actually have in this world, just not evenly distributed. If we had community ownership of the means of production, wealth would be distributed much more throughout the population instead of concentrated at the very top. Many things would change because of this. For one, significantly less unnecessary stuff would be produced. Huge sectors of our economy are devoted to producing junk that is designed to make someone lots of money and then break quickly. A community oriented economy would produce more durable and useful goods meant to be repaired and upgraded instead of thrown away. It does not necessarily take any extra manufacturing capacity to make things repairable, but they would last much longer. Because of this you can run the same manufacturing capacity less and still provide for everyone. There’s also much more of an incentive to automate when the choice is literally build a robot or you have to do the labor yourself, so we’d see more pressures towards automation. Actually this is something Noam Chomsky talked about in 1976: https://youtu.be/h_x0Y3FqkEI https://youtu.be/h_x0Y3FqkEI It’s difficult to grasp the degree to which the economy would change if we had community oriented production. It’s not a simple incremental change, but a massive improvement in conditions for the average person. Another angle to think about it is like this: imagine a world where all school children are taught how to properly participate in a cooperate economy from youth. We all learn how to write proposals and vote in regular meetings and work out disputes and by the time we’re adults we’re running big cooperative organizations smoothly. Okay now imagine a place like Amazon starts up as an co-op and all the workers are sharing in the profits. Let’s say they’re just as good as Jeff Bezos at running the company, but there’s no Jeff Bezos to absorb all the profits? How much would each worker earn? Now in a truly cooperative economy there wouldn’t be poor third world workers to exploit for profit the way Jeff Bezos did so there wouldn’t be such massive windfall profits available, but it’s worth briefly considering how much each Amazon worker would be worth if they actually earned their fair share of the value they’re producing. By the way the Black Panther Party ran a community learning center for children that focused on cooperation back in 1977. Imagine if all our schools were like this: https://youtu.be/9dYsjDqUdr0 https://youtu.be/9dYsjDqUdr0
richie-guix 2y ago
[flagged]
weebull 2y ago
I don't really see how benign communism would be sustainable. In order for communal decision making to be practical, some form of representative hierarchy needs to form. That brings the concept of leaders and that brings concentration of power. With power comes privileges and you're then relying on none of those leaders exploiting their position for personal gain so that it doesn't devolve into a classist society of ruling classes Vs serfs. In my eyes communism is fatally flawed. Inequality is inherent in human society at scale. Better to accept that fact and design the society with mechanisms that try to keep it in check.

upwardbound 2y ago

> We could have a society where the average person works ten hours a week ... and owns a home. I don't think 10 hours a week on average is enough hours to grow the food to feed everyone, or keep any other part of the economy running. There's probably truth in some of the other parts of what you're saying but this, no way. Maybe 30 hours might be believable.

timschmidt 2y ago
Modern tractors literally drive themselves and automatically notify the manufacturer when in need of service. They're also enormous. Cows allowed to milk themselves via automated milking apparatus actually produce more milk and seem happier. Societal investment could easily bring these technologies to every farm.
- Earw0rm 2y ago
  At least for staple/commodity/bulk crops. Not necessarily desirable for every type of produce or animal agriculture. Automated chicken factories are also enormous and remarkably light on labour input, but there are other consequences.
  - TaylorAlexander 2y ago
    It’s funny this comes up because I’m designing an open source solar powered farming robot as a community oriented engineering project specifically to address the long tail of specialty crops: https://youtu.be/MWDnCemVpxI https://youtu.be/MWDnCemVpxI
Earw0rm 2y ago
Depends how you define work, and how it's divided up. A remarkable amount of labour goes into generating income to pay for care, for example. Both people saving for their own in later life (or insurance to pay for it), and working to pay for childcare so they can work. And a sizeable amount also just to facilitate the work itself. Car payments so you can get to work. Student loan repayments on your training, and so on. Paying over the odds for a city apartment because that's where the work is. None of this can be magicked away of course. But the amount of hours that directly address economic need or generate discretionary income is a lot less than 40.
TaylorAlexander 2y ago
Oh it’s absolutely enough. It’s hard to fathom just how much wealth we actually have in this world, just not evenly distributed. If we had community ownership of the means of production, wealth would be distributed much more throughout the population instead of concentrated at the very top. Many things would change because of this. For one, significantly less unnecessary stuff would be produced. Huge sectors of our economy are devoted to producing junk that is designed to make someone lots of money and then break quickly. A community oriented economy would produce more durable and useful goods meant to be repaired and upgraded instead of thrown away. It does not necessarily take any extra manufacturing capacity to make things repairable, but they would last much longer. Because of this you can run the same manufacturing capacity less and still provide for everyone. There’s also much more of an incentive to automate when the choice is literally build a robot or you have to do the labor yourself, so we’d see more pressures towards automation. Actually this is something Noam Chomsky talked about in 1976: https://youtu.be/h_x0Y3FqkEI https://youtu.be/h_x0Y3FqkEI It’s difficult to grasp the degree to which the economy would change if we had community oriented production. It’s not a simple incremental change, but a massive improvement in conditions for the average person. Another angle to think about it is like this: imagine a world where all school children are taught how to properly participate in a cooperate economy from youth. We all learn how to write proposals and vote in regular meetings and work out disputes and by the time we’re adults we’re running big cooperative organizations smoothly. Okay now imagine a place like Amazon starts up as an co-op and all the workers are sharing in the profits. Let’s say they’re just as good as Jeff Bezos at running the company, but there’s no Jeff Bezos to absorb all the profits? How much would each worker earn? Now in a truly cooperative economy there wouldn’t be poor third world workers to exploit for profit the way Jeff Bezos did so there wouldn’t be such massive windfall profits available, but it’s worth briefly considering how much each Amazon worker would be worth if they actually earned their fair share of the value they’re producing. By the way the Black Panther Party ran a community learning center for children that focused on cooperation back in 1977. Imagine if all our schools were like this: https://youtu.be/9dYsjDqUdr0 https://youtu.be/9dYsjDqUdr0

richie-guix 2y ago

[flagged]

weebull 2y ago

I don't really see how benign communism would be sustainable. In order for communal decision making to be practical, some form of representative hierarchy needs to form. That brings the concept of leaders and that brings concentration of power. With power comes privileges and you're then relying on none of those leaders exploiting their position for personal gain so that it doesn't devolve into a classist society of ruling classes Vs serfs. In my eyes communism is fatally flawed. Inequality is inherent in human society at scale. Better to accept that fact and design the society with mechanisms that try to keep it in check.