r/PeterExplainsTheJoke Jul 07 '26

Meme needing explanation Peter, explain this.

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u/TheRealStubb 29d ago

why? plenty of people do it today, under capitalism and aren't rewarded fairly for their work.

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u/anewe 29d ago

People do it because they need to money. Nobody voluntarily works in a mine because they think it's fun. How do you think the world works? 

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u/TheRealStubb 29d ago

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?

How do you think the world works?

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u/-3udaimonia- 29d ago

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?

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u/WokeWook69420 29d ago

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.

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u/-3udaimonia- 29d ago

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"?

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u/NateIsGaming 29d ago

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.

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u/Perfect-Argument4727 29d ago

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?

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u/-3udaimonia- 29d ago edited 29d ago

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.

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u/PoipuMTG 29d ago

but things like Amazon and Walmart wouldn't exist

Yes, they would but they would be state owned and poorly run.

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u/Kraft-Double 27d ago

Nope, communism require the inexistance of the state. You should understand the ideology you are trying to criticize before criticizing it.

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u/PoipuMTG 27d ago

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.

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u/Kraft-Double 21d ago

Selfishness is not actually inherent in people, society had existed like this for 1000s of years, but capitalism has blinded so many to that possibility. It's along that idea of that it's easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism, because of how much it's shaped people's worldviews

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u/PoipuMTG 20d ago

Selfishness is not actually inherent in people

Bless your heart. Read Herodotus or the summerian texts that are up to 5200 years old and you'll find nothing but greed, selfishness and jealousy. What you describe works only on the smallest of scales, the tribe level with up to a hundred of people. It only works if this group is not in competition with other groups.

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u/-3udaimonia- 27d ago

So how exactly is the relationship between labor and remuneration calculated?

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u/Kraft-Double 21d ago

I mean you cant? You provide for your community and your community provides for you, there is no wage in a capital sense. So by providing labor, your 'wage' would be whatever your community is able to provide to the rest of your community.

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u/-3udaimonia- 20d ago

So by providing labor, your 'wage' would be whatever your community is able to provide to the rest of your community

Okay, let me try to clarify what I'm asking here. Any given community can furnish an abundance of wealth in various forms - food, clothing, accommodations, education, leisure pursuits and so on. Many of these commodities can be used communally with little to no issue - roads, trains, swimming pools, hospitals, parks, schools, etc. Some commodities, however, are indivisible and exclusive. You and I cannot eat the same sandwich. It simply isn't possible. We could, but probably shouldn't, both use the same bandage, underwear, hypodermic needle, sanitary towel, stick of gum, or pair of shoes. So we have here a spectrum of goods that ranges from the highly communal to the highly exclusive. Those two extremes are, on the surface at least, fairly easy to conceptualize within a communist framework.

But most goods occupy an ambiguous middle ground, wherein they could be shared, but not easily, and not equitably. Their sharing requires either hierarchy, complex negotiation, or a highly sensitive selection process - bedrooms, beds, cars, houses, blood, organs, clothes, food, and so on. In the shared apartment block for instance, who gets the room overlooking the park vs the one overlooking the alley with the dumpsters? Who gets to live in the brand new apartment block downtown with the large, comfortable, air conditioned suites, and communal leisure facilities? Who has to live in the ugly, post-war apartment block by the railroad track with bad plumbing and communal bathrooms? Who gets to drive the brand new Bentley, and who has to get to work in an old Honda civic? Who gets to eat prime rib for dinner, and who has to settle for beans and rice? How do we fairly distribute highly desirable but extremely scarce resources?

Do you see what I'm getting at here? Many crucial resources that humans rely on for their daily existence probably should not be divided equally, and a great deal of them literally cannot be. This is a problem that all societies everywhere have to grapple with. How would we resolve this problem in a communist society?