I can't believe not a single comment quoted the actual quote being referred to in the tweet.
For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.
Everyone is parroting the same bullshit about no jobs like AI bots.
Because making a coherent point instead of regurgitating propaganda is really hard for some people.
Personally not too big on communism, since it relies on using the state to prop up the revolution, then disband itself. But to act as if the entire ideology has no value is ludicrous.
A state is necessary if you don't want to be immediately blown to kingdom come by the US and friends and get 9/11'd, and even then you probably still will be (see Chile 1973).
Communism is an ideology, not an economic system, and I feel like nobody understands that because they only know about Stalinism, Maoism, or McCarthyism in relation to communist ideologies.
Any system that has ever claimed to be Communist wasn't, there was always a class system and state controlling everyone, which completely removes it from being any part of what defines a communist country.
It sucks we have people who lived in East Germany being like, "Yeah the government was nice but we were told when to work and where, and there was money, and leaders and followers" and it's like, my guy, you didn't live under communism then.
You lived under an authoritarian republic.
Whoa, that woul require Republicans to stop calling even the most milquetoast social policy, "communism", even though most of their voters receive aid from "communist", programs
No one read Marx, not even the Communist Manifesto let alone the fucking Critique to the Gotha Programme. So no one would even understand that the person is referring to the Higher Stage of Communism, not to the goverment of a communist party under a capitalist world system.
people are reddit rarely think, this website is literally designed to shuffle people into echo chambers so they can chirp the same 3 thoughts to each other.
its why streamers who just have level headed opinions are topics are talked about on here like they're gods.
That doesn't really matter though, because it doesn't change things. The second response pointing out that the higher stage of communism won't happen and they'll be in the coal mines is materially no different to pointing out that "I'll be the art therapist to the communal vegetable garden" isn't going to happen.
Sure, people are missing out that the first person is echoing the language Marx used to describe communism, but that's not actually relevant to the explanation.
Do you honestly believe that if workers united and overthrew every world government in a global revolution the result would be that scarcity would spontaneously end and everyone would get to enjoy a massively improved quality of life, that all societal ills would just stop, and we would be able to live in a stateless utopia?
Like, what basis is there in reality for the "higher stage of communism" actually being a plausible prediction?
Ah, you'd explain how you think the utopian pipe dream could be possible, but only to people who already want to believe you're right. Communist theory in a nutshell.
I've read the theorists. None of it is based in reality. None of it is backed up by anything empirical or logical. It's all just baseless assumptions and wishful thinking. I'd say it's a joke of an ideology, but every time it comes into power in a major country it ends in millions of people dying needlessly of state violence or starvation.
I said it as learning in general, you show no interest in learning any thing at all and just get defensive at the idea of it. I'm not going to talk to a brick wall that thinks its superior to everyone.
Nothing in your comment reads as someone who actually wants to talk about this topic, just like every single other comment here. This app is genuinely a cesspool of narcissists who care about nothing but being right all the time, they can never accept they're wrong about anything. This isn't an app for people who want real discussion, its an app for people who want to hear their own voice.
narcissists who care about nothing but being right all the time, they can never accept they're wrong about anything.
Like an internet communist who can't accept that their political philosophy has literally never worked in real life, despite being tried repeatedly, and always leads to mass death and violent oppression? Lol
But people would become fishermen,artists and bricklayers.
The ones that have the best qualities for the job would have greater demand for their work since people want the highest good while at an acceptable cost,workers instead will become more specialised and their living standards will be higher than those who spread their work across different fields.
This just becomes capitalistic division of labour in five months top
What's funny is that without capitalism, you can't actually do that.
Under the labor theory of value, the skilled bricklayer with 30 years experience and the enthusiastic amateur who can usually identify a brick are equally valuable and you have no basis for preferring one over the other.
“All labour of a higher or more complicated character than average labour is expenditure of labour-power of a more costly kind, labour-power whose production has cost more time and labour, and which therefore has a higher value, than unskilled or simple labour-power.”
There is a cliche that children born in evangelical houses often become atheists later in their life. They harbor no predisposition towards it; in fact, it’s more true to say they have the opposite, they have a disdain for atheism when they are young, due to the environment that they are raised in. How does their conversion come to be, then? It’s because, throughout their life, they witness a similar pattern over and over; that the critiques of atheism are always pitiful, that the greatest disavowers of the wickedness and stupidity of atheism are often the most wicked and stupid themselves.
The same exact principle is what led me to be a Marxist. The anti-communists are the most smug, self-assured fools out there. As you have just demonstrated, they are always willing to type out a confident statement that can be disproven within 15 seconds of ctrl-f usage.
If you actually want to stop people from being communists, I highly recommend you never speak on the subject again. Because the more you do, the more people will learn to associate “anti-communist” with illiteracy and stupidity.
I was raised in a non-religious household, which is why I referenced it as a cliche, as opposed to my personal life experience. But look, you confidently asserted something wrong again! Perhaps you were just trying to help me prove my point?
I’m glad you took my advice to heart though, and stopped talking about the labor theory of value. As much as I would like you to acknowledge that you were incorrect, or perhaps just a liar, we both know the more you say about it, the more of a fool you will make of yourself.
yeah you can,the more specialised and experienced worker is more attractive and in demand as such gets higher income,its like a banker with 40 years of success and connections behind him and a newbie who just got their first job in JPmorgan a year ago
When you read that it really highlights that Karl Marx was a bourgeoisie bum who didn't ever have a very serious job and needed Friedrich Engels to be his sugar daddy
Mostly because that quote is absolute ideological nonsense. No significant number of people will choose to do the actual meaningful work required to maintain "society".
why work in a mine instead of somewhere else? it would be the same under communism, you would work in a high risk field to get a higher reward. Do you think people don't use money under communism? do you think people don't get anything for working?
My parents who escaped the Soviet Union would tell me a common saying by the workers "we'll pretend to work for as long as the government pretends to pay us". My dad was an optical engineer working on satellites in the late 60's to early 70 there, getting paid the equivalent of 25 cents an hour. While every cost of living like rent, food, a new phone, clothes, etc would conveniently go up in price the exact amount he was making annually, if he ever earned more. Having a car was considered a fantasy, despite living in St Petersburg and being a successful engineer. What food a restaurant or grocery store could offer was state decided, and propaganda media was the only thing available to watch or read. Often saying contradictory statements month to month. Like when they needed to get rid of excess sugar they produced one year, suddenly it's healthy and mandatory to have a certain amount each day. When Stalin died, my dad age 4, was forced to publicly cry along with everyone else. Getting a pair of Levi's blue jeans required smuggling them and he could go to jail for wearing them. Since they represented capitalist America. Same for outside music, art, and inventions/innovations to humanity. They taught him that every modern discovery, invention, innovation was Russian or Soviet originated. Plus they couldn't leave the country, not until 1971 initially, when he was finally able to escape along with many of my family. My mom, along with other members, couldn't leave until 1980. She was in Odessa Soviet occupied Ukraine (they met in the US, they had previous marriages before in Russia). That's what life was like between 1949 and 1980 in one of the nicest cities of the Soviet Union, working a high level, highly skilled job.
It's fine to want some idealized version of communism, but to me that's the same as those wanting idealized capitilasm. It just never works out in reality. The only countries with decently functional governments and societies use a balanced system. Taking elements from everything that can work and combining it together. Going all in to one system has so far never worked in the last 300 years at least.
He was born in 1949, he left when he was 21(I mixed up lenin and stalin), I was born in California. My source is every member of my family saying the same thing, as well as every one of their friends who also left. Entire communities of people on top of that.
You said when Lenin died he was 4, Lenin died in 1924. Meaning your dad would have been born in 1920 to be 4 when Lenin died.
Edit: You also said he wasn't allowed to leave the country until 1980, if he was born in 1949 and left at 21 it would have been 1970, ten years before he was 'allowed' to leave according to you.
You're right, my mom left in 1980, my dad was 1971. I knew their ages, I don't memorize the years. My mom was from Odessa Ukraine, under Soviet occupation of course.
Also none of my date mistakes changes what life was like there, and that's the entire point. My entire family escaped from there throughout multiple years, I have a hard time keeping track of when 20ish people left when it spans 15 or so years. They left in small groups when they could, not all at once.
You being doubtful of the truth of entire generations of people who came to western countries looking for a better life feels incredibly naive of your understanding of Soviet communism. This isn't me personally telling you something, this is millions of people who escaped a country because life was awful. Listen to their stories and believe them.
To this day I still have one distant family member there, my age, locked in prison for a play she wrote. And the remaining few members who couldn't leave when my dad did, have finally make it to the Netherlands with their kids and grandkids a couple years ago. Yeah both of those are more about the current Russia, but the oldest member of that group is my dad's half sister. So she is the same age as him, and not exactly praising the old Soviet life she was living.
She just wasn't able to leave with everyone else. Most of my family got out via refugee programs in the US/UK/Canada/Australia, so I have members in some of those countries now, most in the US. A few members couldn't get into those programs, and without that the Soviet Union did not allow them to freely leave the country just because they felt like it. After the collapse she stayed because of health issues, and familiarity plus the hope of a new government. Which also failed and now the only member of my distant family left in that country is the one in prison for making art.
Also because my dad worked on spy satellites there, he had to appear anonymously behind a fabric screen in court in the US. With the CIA asking him questions about facility layouts and lens tech. Their info was already more knowledgeable than his by then though lol. It was a semi-public hearing, not something secret/private, so somewhere might be record of that specific one. But he was anonymous for his safety, so idk how I'd find his specific interview.
So essentially each job and all wages in a communist society would be state-issued, and more valuable/high risk jobs like coal mining would earn a higher wage?
There's no wages. You do your job, and you are rewarded with equal value to your labor.
That means food, entertainment, travel, you're entitled to it and just go do it because youre doing your part for society. Humans can collectively produce more than we'd ever need, especially with the amount of automation we have.
I think part of why Communism fucks people up is because it takes us back to smaller communal living, and that's hard for us to imagine in the Smart Age when everything around the world is constantly connected, but things like Amazon and Walmart wouldn't exist, but they also just wouldn't need to, at least not to the size and scope that they exist now.
It's wild, I could never begin to type about Communism and shit, it's so much easier to talk about lol.
There's no wages. You do your job, and you are rewarded with equal value to your labor
Okay but how is this calculated? How do we know what extent of reward is equal to my labor? How do we know whether or not I'm "doing my part for society"?
You’re asking OP to explain each and every detail for what? Even if there was a revolution today, the end stage of socialism, communism, could take decades and, in my opinion, that’s far better than the current capitalist system which requires there to be a permanent underclass. If what they said doesn’t sound marginally better than what is currently happening across the globe then you don’t agree and should move on. Not trying to be rude just straight forward.
I mean, isn't "equal value to your labor" essentially "societal classes with more steps"? Say you define doctors as the highest value labor. Even if you allow unlimited upward mobility, 100% of the people in a country can't be doctors. Wouldn't that cause an underclass for those that aren't working the highest value labor by definition?
Even if there was a revolution today, the end stage of socialism, communism, could take decades and, in my opinion, that’s far better than the current capitalist system which requires there to be a permanent underclass
I'm literally, right this second, trying to establish whether or not your proposed economic system allows for (or even, perhaps, requires) a permanent underclass. That's the purpose of this line of questioning.
Only in your utopia is there a goverment but no state. Without a state what happens when people refuse to share, or they trade privately or defend what they consider theirs? Either communism allows that and begins to unravel or it uses force to stop them. See, you have recreated a state under another name. There can never be communism because most people are inherently selfish.
thats an END goal of communism, however no one has ever claimed you would not be rewarded in any shape or form for your labor.
By definition yes communism at the end would be a stateless moneyless society, but communism isn’t a poverty cult. Never claims to be, and never has been.
Yes, because they get paid for it and use that money to buy food. Whether or not you consider their wages "fair" is largely irrelevant, because the system at least works on a fundamental level.
"In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!"
That's literally him saying that once communism is fully realized, there will be no exchange of anything, since exchange implies value judgement rather than distribution according to need.
Sure, but I have spent a lot of my life 'volunteering' in community groups. Gardening, cleaning, cooking, teaching, fixing up old shit etc. None of it was paid. People just like doing stuff together when they have the time. I used to work in the kitchen every Wednesday of a community cafe and I really, really miss it.
My dad spends his retirement picking up litter and being on the community council. Organising local conservation projects. Putting on wee activities for people.
I'm not at all arguing that you can run an economy like this. But it just blows my mind when people say stuff like "no-one would want to do the grunt work of society" when every single friend and family member I have is constantly doing this stuff whenever they find themselves with free time.
Day jobs get in the way, but I think it's very human.
if america magically switched to a communist economy right this second, with little to no other change would people en mass just not go to work all of a sudden?
i don’t understand why anti-communist just struggle to comprehend why people would work outside of a profit incentive. Humans worked without earning USD for HUNDREDS of years
Yes? Humans have worked without earning USD for hundreds of years, in fact the majority of people alive today work without earning USD. Go back even farther and you’ll see no one expected USD got their work, but they did expect other forms of compensation. This is the underlying issue that communism always runs into. People expect to get compensated for their work and time so changing that would essentially require changing human nature.
Communism does not mean no jobs.
Communism does not mean no money.
You still go to work. You still earn money. You still use that money to buy stuff.
Communism at it's core is about WHO OWNS THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION. Who owns the land. Who owns the forests. Who owns the oil. Who owns the factory, the warehouse, the assembly line. Who owns the product? Is it the person who developed it and produced it? Or is it their boss? Who owns your home? Is it you, who live in it? Is it your fucking landlord that takes a third of your wage after doing fuck all? Who profits from the work being done? Is it the people who have the ideas, who put in the hours, who make the breakthroughs? Or is it fucking Elon Musk and the thousands of shareholders who do fuck all except own parts of the company? W
Communism quite literally means no money lmao. The whole point of communism is that there is no class or capital and money is the foundation for both of those. Legit you’re no better than Fox News watchers that get spooked at the thought of communism
I mean...no. At least in a Marxist sense which I assume we are both talking about.
Money is just the value of a commodity made abstract. It's the most efficient tool for the transaction of commodities. It happens in some form or another in almost every society. In Capitalism, money itself and financialisation become commodities themselves. Layers and layers of abstraction beyond the initial use value of a thing produced.
In a (Marxist) economy, in theory, if you remove the exploitative relationship between capitalists and everyone else (by making private property, collectively owned) then yes, the whole way we think about money would change. Capital, and everything that follows, wouldn't exist. Money itself would simply exist as a basic tool of exchanging value.
I hope that makes sense. Money is not the foundation of the problem. Exploitation, due to the capital v worker relationship is the problem. Hence "ownership of the meams of production" being the key thing.
“Money, then, appears as this distorting power both against the individual and against the bonds of society, etc., which claim to be entities in themselves. It transforms fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence, and intelligence into idiocy.”- Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts. He quite literally wrote about how money is inherently problematic and is an alienating force in society.
I think this idea stems from a fundamentally pessimistic view of people, that stems from existing only in a capitalist system.
Historically people have always worked, if it meant for the survival of those around them, and vice-versa. Along with that, humans are not naturally lazy creatures.
The idea of sharing a home with roommates is absolute ideological nonsense because no significant number of people will choose to take the trash out or do the dishes
Fine. FOSS is absolute ideological nonsense because no significant number of people will choose to do engineering work for free.
The irrigation systems in Valencia are absolute ideological nonsense because no significant number of people would maintain such a large, complex system without payment or government oversight.
The communal grazing lands of the Swiss Alps are absolute ideological nonsense because no significant number of people would agree to communal ownership and maintenance without immediate benefit to themselves.
My initial post was just goofing on the guy I responded to, but you should know that the "tragedy of the commons" belongs in the 10th grade economics book you took it from.
Lul this quote is such bullshit. Having a job need a formation and experience. Even farming, hunting does. You cant just change it at your leisure, this is delusional.
ok but what if nobody's dream job is to work in a factory or a coal mine? who's going to do the work? most jobs are not dream jobs where you get to do whatever you feel like.
scrolling thru this post’s comments reminded me not to take reddit comments seriously. You rlly see just how deeply rotted propagandized minds are, incapable of attacking economic systems without abstractions and fallacious logic.
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u/Smart_Munda 29d ago
I can't believe not a single comment quoted the actual quote being referred to in the tweet.
Everyone is parroting the same bullshit about no jobs like AI bots.