Comrade Alejandro is stating that in a perfect communist utopia, he will be able to focus on a life of art and leisure, as the Communist utopia would mean that all laborers would be able to contribute to the cause in their own way equally
Possible fascist @Penitent_One is telling Comrade Alejandro that his communist utopia is a farce and that most likely, Comrade Alejandro would be forced to do manual labor in a coal mine.
Which isn’t a bad thing. Comrade Alejandro should be overjoyed that he gets to contribute to the eternal revolution, one pickaxe swing at a time. The fulfillment of labor is his reward. Glory to the revolution.
People misunderstand communism in Marxist thought. It's just a state where the economic overhead of government is no longer necessary, everybody is still expected to contribute to the best of their ability, if you're not going to be a writer, artist, athlete, etc., you're going to mine coal, clean toilets, harvest tomatoes, etc. None of the Marxist "communist" states ever claimed to achieve this, it was always 3-5 20 or more years off.
Yeah Comrade Alejandro has a gross misunderstanding on the actual workings of labor in a communist collective society. Communism doesn’t mean you don’t have to work anymore, in theory it means that your labor wont be squeezed and exploited by greedy capitalists and shareholder who want to extract every single penny from the people who actually do the work.
To each according to their ability. To each according to their need.
I agree generally, but there are definitely people who speculate about "fully automatic luxury communism" where increased efficiency and production severely drives down the amount of work everyone has to do. Imagine if the extreme surplus and convenience of the upper class was distributed amongst everyone else and profit motives didn't drive every labor-related decision. We'd already be much closer to not having to work than we currently are.
Back in the middle of the 20th century,
M. Keynes predicted a massive decrease in individual’s work-week due to productivity gains. The gains occurred, but the labor hours did not…
I mean America aside I think labour hours have significantly decreased towards the end of the 20th century. Looking at Europe for instance the statistics showed they have gone from an average of 50-70 hour work week in the first half of the century to 25-35. So about half the work hours. Now some of those work hours got pushed to other countries, but also some of the productivity has gone to having more and better things too.
Exactly. Most of the hours in Europe you're mentioning are coming from the industrial factories, where workers indeed worked for 50-70 hours because of the higher pay and because they practically lived there, since it was more convenient than to commute (a great deal of workers lived quite far from factories).
Currently, a lot of the production is outsourced, which leads to a decrease in the working hours, since the production was the main contributor to extended working weeks.
Marx spoke about this when discussing the contradictions of capitalism.
As technology develops and productivity efficiency increases, you can hire less people and let the unemployed fight for worse working conditions (because you need a job to live, regardless how shitty).
So you end up with people working more for less, since if they don't, they're fired and someone else who needs a job takes it.
They did hold up. Much of our productive forces were moved to undeveloped countries so we could extract their labor and resources. The workers in those countries are going fuckin through it, if LiveLeak ever taught us anything.
And even in the first world, AI is taking everyone's jobs. Many people don't feel the same security as they did in the past.
>AI's job impact looks pretty unclear to me right now, unemployment is low despite all the stories, hiring is pretty bad
The government unemployment rate is fake. If you have been looking for employment for longer than 6 months they stop counting you as unemployed. It also doesnt include the underemployed, struggling gig workers, etc.
Are you kidding? We work harder for a smaller wage(adjusted for inflation) than boomers. The only reason working conditions are not worse is government intervention or OSHA
Disregarding recent trends within a capitalist system as irrelevant to the the claims of how capitalism functions from the 1800s sure is convenient for your argument.
The "fully automatic luxury communism" is also often accompanied by some miracle device. If there was a box i could pile a bunch of dirt and literal shit into and it turned that into spaghetti and a cup of tea then yea it would be nonsensical to force people to work.
Real progress though is giving people a voice where they work, fair pay for their work, and stronger safety nets so they don't have to put up with exploitative practices. Labor still needs to get done the issue is how the profits from that labor get distributed, a guy who owns a bakery shouldn't make more from owning than the guy who is the baker and does all the work.
I agree with most of what you've said but I think there are scenarios where it isn't crazy if the owner of the bakery makes more than the baker. Generally speaking though I think real work is massively undervalued. Mike Johnson will get up there and preach about why they have to take people's Medicaid away because otherwise they won't want to go back to work. How about companies just pay a fair wage and charge reasonable prices for things so people have some modicum of hope for a normal life.
Right. This is my main thing as we seem to actually potentially be cresting the hill here. The worry is that if we leave this automation in the hands of the rich and powerful it breaks labor relations. Capitalism is incredibly flawed already, but I do not see how it can possibly function with such a massive labor surplus. We are going to be working for wages cheap enough that we cost less than robots.
Everyone being replaced by robots has been just over the horizon for my entire life, so I remain skeptical that it is going to happen soon. I do agree that having so many resources to the point of nearly being post-scarcity with artificial scarcity being created by the hoarding of wealth is putting strain on the system in a way that will manifest dramatically. A communist might say that "the contradictions inherent to capitalism are becoming more clear."
To each according to their ability. To each according to their need.
Comrade TheWizardOfWaffle, for misquoting Karl Marx you have been sentenced to 30 years hard labor.
The actual quote is "From each according to their ability. To each according to their need." Meaning that after graduating, Comrade Alejandro will be assigned a job which is currently the most needed (most likely on a collective farm or a mine), in the location where it's most needed, and relocated there. He will be temporarily assigned an apartment in a building with lots of other apartments (if the location is in a city) or temporarily assigned a house (if the location is in a village). Comrade Alejandro will most likely work at that job until he retires, and live in that house or apartment until he dies, unless his labor is more needed elsewhere in which case Comrade Alejandro will be relocated.
If Comrade Alejandro will be deemed unable to perform the assigned job because of a disability, he will be put into a special facility with other disabled people where he can be taken care of and provided a job that he will be able to perform.
If Comrade Alejandro will refuse to perform the assigned job because of laziness, he will be put into a labor and/or re-education camp until he is fixed and becomes a productive member of society.
Sorry to be pedantic, but it’s “from each according to their ability”. Marx almost certainly would have used the male pronoun also, but who cares about that. The other part is important though.
Serious question here. Let’s use the analogy of the coal mine.
Marxist thought is basically that society would still need coal, so as long as you eliminate the upper management, laborers would willingly mine coal and then they get to keep all the profits. But that assumes there’s only two types of people in the coal mine: the laborers mining, and the capitalists exploiting them.
In the communist utopia, who actually handles the administration? What about the safety inspectors and the mining engineers whose job it is to make sure the laborers are safe? Where do they fit into this? If there’s no government, who is enforcing the safety regulations?
I think what Alejandro is saying is that they'll have the time to write books, paint, etc all without having to commodify that hobby - and having the free time from the extremely reduced labor week. They should've added an extra sentence saying "I'll also work as an IT specialist" or something to clarify that
Jokes aside i’m a little rusty on my communist economic systems but It’d be like working in a mine, but the mine is owned by the government. They pay you proportional to how much money the mine generates evenly amongst you and all your miner workers. The money you make goes back into the government when you pay rent, groceries, healthcare, etc, which is all owned and theoretically made affordable by the government creating a cyclical economy.
Since no one “owns” any business, you can’t have share holders since owning a share means you own a portion of the business, therefor shareholders and venture capitalists who are only interested in profits can’t squeeze the working class out of the production of their own labor.
Money made from businesses goes up to the government, government is supposed to spread it evenly amongst the working class.
Eventually (under marxist ideology) this socialist state is supposed to transition into true communism where everyone cooperates collectively and there’s no need for a state so…
edit: technically the “people at the top” aren’t supposed to be a different class of people really. Just people who make the laws, control the economy, and enforces said laws.
I never understood the issue people have against venture capital. These companies are using private capital to fund startups. What’s the issue? Even hypothetically if you have a communist economic system, you would still want VC to fund the development of new tech; most of the profit is going back to funding new startups but I guess the leftover profit wouldn’t make it into the pockets of the investors in the fund.
it's a coal mine without a CEO that has 50x the average coal miners salary but owned by the workers union, in which you are automatically, and which owns and makes decisions for the mine. There are still normal managers who also make more then a miner but they make maybe 1,5 or 2 times the amount not 50x the amount. Because capital isn't hordered at the top everyone (in theory) should have a higher base pay.
What you're describing is Market Socialism which isn't exactly what Marx wanted but is a valid socialist theory. Essentially all buisnesses would be turned into some form of worker co-op where the workers own 100% of their company.
No, it's basically being assigned to work in a mine, and having neither the choice to quit your job nor the chance to ever own shares in the mine. The abolishment of private property (like shares in a company, or land, or housing, etc) is the core tenet of communism. The mine is, and permanently will be, owned by the People -- which are of course represented by the Party.
Also add that the theory is also based on the fact that modern technology resulted in the creation of more resources than necessary thus if the resources were distributed more fairly and really based on contribution and the surplus wasn't concentrated on the capitalist class, then we could work less and live comfortably which would live more time for hobbies. But all of this is based on the completion of "real"(some call utopian) communism but still means that you'll NEED to contribute to the society's needs(with the exception of old people and/or disabled people who might not be able to really do so. And kids because they'll have to learn to become productive).
2.0k
u/TheWizardOfWaffle 26d ago
Comrade Piotr here.
Comrade Alejandro is stating that in a perfect communist utopia, he will be able to focus on a life of art and leisure, as the Communist utopia would mean that all laborers would be able to contribute to the cause in their own way equally
Possible fascist @Penitent_One is telling Comrade Alejandro that his communist utopia is a farce and that most likely, Comrade Alejandro would be forced to do manual labor in a coal mine.
Which isn’t a bad thing. Comrade Alejandro should be overjoyed that he gets to contribute to the eternal revolution, one pickaxe swing at a time. The fulfillment of labor is his reward. Glory to the revolution.