Holla Forums, you go on and on about socialism and communism...

Holla Forums, you go on and on about socialism and communism, but how would living in a socialist/communist society actually affect me? I want you to answer me in concrete terms, not in vague notions like "no more exploitation/social ownership of production" but in terms of how my everyday would change as a result. When I wake up in the morning and go to work, what will have changed? When I go to the grocery store, buy a car, a new coat, go abroad, would any of that have changed? When I see cops on the street, who pays them? Who decides on the construction of large public projects?
Holla Forums, I want to know how your ideals would change my life, explained in simple and concrete terms. I admit that I am uninformed. And please don't link me to the communist manifesto or something like that, it's the exact opposite of what I'm asking. Explain to me like I'm a layman.

Is anyone capable of answering this?

OP, ask yourself, Is this really a question?
Is it something someone could ever be capable of answering concretely?

The answer is no.

Communism means different things to different people so you will never get a firm answer on it, people will create their own imaginary ideologies, either accept that or give up.

If communists can't give an answer to what their ideal world would be like aside from lofty ideals then what reason would anyone have to follow them? Completely absurd.

See, that's a question that can be concretely answered. But that's not what you asked was it?

OP in a genuine socialist state things would change as much as you wanted them to. If you went to work and wanted more democracy in the workplace then you would have it. If you wanted to just turn up and do what you were told and keep your head down without participating past your actual job role then you could do that too.

The cops in the street are paid by taxes. Large public works are decided by elected officials.

The change socialism would bring is the means of production no longer being privately owned for profit, but collectively owned for the betterment of society. Producing for all our needs and wants rather than private profit.

What is an idea for ideal world apart from ideals?

My ideal world is one in which we have flying space cars and real animu…

Do you not see that your question is fundamentally missing the point of how politics works? You CAN'T always get what you want.

I can tell you what defines a communist society, that is abolition of value form, democratic economy and worker ownership of the means of production, self-determination over what you create, etc. These are the values communism tries to make do with.

Trying to speculate on what it might LOOK like apart from that is a waste of time, just ideological masturbation.

I depends on what model of socialism you're talking about. But in general at work you would find that you are treated far better and are given a say in the functioning of your workplace. You would find your government to be far more responsive to your concerns, since there would no longer be the influence of capitalist elites on politics. All your basic needs would be guaranteed, homelessness and unemployment wouldn't exist (this isn't a vague promise, this was actually the case in the USSR). Education and healthcare would be publicly funded in full. Shit like built in obselescence and climate change would cease to exist because production is geared towards the needs of society rather than generating profit. Specifics of economic and political structures depend heavily on the type of socialism. Socialism could include planning or a market basis, and then could include different styles and scales of planning ranging from on a national scale to a local scale.

In a moneyless, classless, stateless society, your labor directly contributes to the benefit of your community and yourself. The "profit" (read product) of your labor does not go to some faraway corporation that then trickles a fraction of the benefit back down to you, it stays in your community (unless an individual from another place requests a product from your community, ie a popular cheese or automobile).

As a result, your community sees a surplus in product, giving everyone a surplus in free time. Also, since you have contributed to everyone's success, you are entitled to whatever you want without worrying if you can afford it (just don't be greedy and empty out the store, your community would not appreciate it, to put it nicely).

Nobody. They do it because they want to keep their community, and by extension themselves, safe. It's like asking who pays people that scan linux code for viruses and bugs - nobody does, they don't want a system rife with error, so they invest the time to keep it safe.

The community - they're the ones who are going to build it, after all. Now the design must be architecturally sound and built to withstand varying factors and circumstances, so the actual planning decisions can only be made by those knowledgable, like architects and engineers. However, input by the community can also play a part in the design process by people suggesting things they'd like to see in the building. If it can be done, and the rest of the community agrees on it, into the design it goes.

I talk from CC standpoint.

Communism is not some kind of utopia where every single problem is solved, you will work less in factories thanks to labor time being distributed among the population "from 13 to 4 hours a week" after that you will be free to do what ever you want.
Bread lines will be boring to slug through and subway trains will be crowded as fuck,and that sux
You will be voting for the workers council to decide who you are going to run the factories, we will get over alienation to the point where 4 stranger can enjoy their time together in the public park,
Suicide will skyrocket there is no longer an excuse to fail in life,
Hunger will end, but the ready made product will be fewer, under communism, if you want your special oat bran bread you will probably need to bake yourself


Life has the bad habit of being shit even in end of history, but hey at least i will get more time to have picnics and reading philosophy.

In a fully communist society, you will probably wake up later due to shorter work days, and less work days, that are entirely optional, the food at the grocery store, the car, the coat, and travel, would be provided free of charge, you'd see your local militia on the street if anything, councils decide things.

As a result, your community sees a surplus in product, giving everyone a surplus in free time. Also, since you have contributed to everyone's success, you are entitled to whatever you want without worrying if you can afford it (just don't be greedy and empty out the store, your community would not appreciate it, to put it nicely).

How do you stop witch hunts? Say I don't like my neighbor because he's Jewish. Can I just try to convince people he's been hoarding resources and start sharpening my pitchfork? What happens to a society where this is how civil disputes are solved?

What if I want a really nice coat instead of any regular one? Can I just go to another city and pick one out? If not, how else would I acquire one? Or are you saying that there will no longer be any luxury products at all, only basic necessities?

The regular coat will be very good coat but it wont be as good as these 10,000 us dollar *or more* coats

quality/production efficiency, no luxury under communism

Since Rebel and his retarded friends don't seem to be able to fullfill the simple request of
I will try and help you out.

Go to work for a less-than-now workday (think 6 hours instead of 8)
Once in a while you and your coworkers get together to talk about issues in the workplace and vote about what direction the company should go
And depending on what special snowflake version of socialism you have:
Vote for what policies in economy and society you would like to be implemented, which will then be implemented by the representatives you choose through [some sort of election system]
Get paid much more than now (in purchasing power, special snowflake socialism may have special moneys-not-moneys like labour vouchers or whatever)
Have more autonomy over your work, more time off, more say in your workplace, more pay.
Due to you having a more egalitarian income, your "vote with the wallet" counts more, and more of the productive labour is used to make goods for the avarage Joe, so you will be able to afford more.
The government will not be able to be bought out by ultra rich people, as ultra rich people cannot come intro existance under a socialist system. You cannot get paid more than you produce with your own hands and mind.
Social services will be in a much better position, as they are beneficial to all the people, and wont be torn down by people with lots of money who dont want to pay for it. You will be at much less risk of being fired, as you have a vote in what happens in your workplace. As such, you can't be fired just to "cut costs", as this would also be detrimental to the other workers, who jeopardise their own position and security by voting out other members (it could happen just as easily to them). Firing of workers would only happen after all other options are exhausted, and will also happen democratically and with due warning. No more being fired suddenly, you all know its coming and have time to start looking for other options. And if there are no new jobs, the better social security will ensure you do not have to resort to selling your house or car.

Large projects are decided by commitees just like they are now, however, they will be to be chosen in a bottom-up fashion and as such local planners can recall out-of-touch planners. All decisions have to be ultimately approved for by the people. If something negative is being pushed on an area, something will have have to be put in return. Want to tear down a neighbourhood for a new highway? You can't just screw people out of their house like now, you need to offer them something they will agree to (to within a large majority that is, the one stubborn old man can't halt something that benefits the rest of society.)

All in all, your working conditions, civil rights and income will increase. In addition to that, this system allows us to tackle more abstract problems like the middle eastern crisis, which is caused by capitalist interests, global warming, which is held back by "profitability" and lobbying from several industries, as well as inherent problems in capitalism, such as the fact that we have more and more productive capacity, but noone to sell it to because all the workers got replaced by workers. In socialism, all the robots would be owned by society and thus you don't run into this problem. Once society has made it so people are provided for in their basic susenance, such as food, water, housing, clothes, entertainment, people could focus their energy on things that aren't neccecarily profitable in terms of money, but do have benefit to society. We could still use money to incentivice those kind of things that society deems utmost important, such as building roads like we do now, but people would eventually, as automation increases, have more free time to use as they see fit.

I hope I made some sense.

I'm getting an idea that under communism, people are provided with what they need to survive but materialism is not an option. There are no free markets, instead there are jobs that produce essential items to maintain a basic living standard for other workers.

Does this sum up communism?

All the community must do is look in his house/storage facility. They know the designs, as they built it, so they know about all, if any, hiding places. They will also know if he obtained any extra construction material from the community stockpile.

Unless he has been furtive with all of this, in which case he would deserve the witch hunt, there would be no evidence of wrongdoing, at which point the focus of the community would be on the one who spread the rumor.

Pre-emptively
In a society where trade is done like craigslist, here someone just asks for something and someone else gives it to them, what black market would there be? I doubt there would be very much in the way of contraband in a society not governed by a state.


Not at all, luxury is an importance. In fact, think of communism like the modding community - whenever the means of production (in this case the game code) are theirs to work with as they will, they create all sorts of amazing things you would never find in the base vanilla version.

In that case I feel like communism is inadequate. People do have needs other than the ones that allow them to just continue living, they're just not as apparent. How will artists, writers, etc be compensated under socialism/communism? Scientists? I feel like I'm missing something here.

Sure. I just don't feel motivated writing 30+ pages for some guy who doesn't even put any effort in his trolling.

Three books from 1973, 1974, and 1982 that deal with practice of Socialism in USSR. A good starting point.

Well, one is about East Germany.

...

There wouldn't be "luxury" products in the same way we see them today. Today, things are bad, cheap, and awful on purpose. Standards will raise as we would no longer need to worry about the economic viability of say, the original idea for the game spore instead of the monstrosity it became because of capitalism.

sure thing, buddy

No. Communism is post-scarcity economy.

And "Materialism" has a very specific meaning in Marxist discourse. It is not the one you are thinking about.

Literally zero effort.

More than human needs we also want to meet our human wants.

In "The Dialectics of Nature", Friedrich Engels makes the argument that everybody under communism would be a kind of Renaissance man in their own right. This is because with the abundance resulting from automation coupled with lower labor hours would mean everybody would have time to exercise their talents and advance their learning to the full.

If this happens to be the case, communism seems to be a very restricted form of capitalism, a form of capitalism without free market and highly restricted when it comes to consumerism or competition.

Please explain. What does post-scarcity mean?

Communism is a state of society where such abundance is produces and the work to do so is so little that it makes little sense to use money anymore.

In a sense, yes that sums up the economic side of communism. Everything is free, as there is no money in use (there may be limits on how much you can get, you dont get to have your own private airforce) and work in the job you would like (and perhaps a bit of community service, depending on how its organised).

Thinking about communism is kind of difficult since it requires us to step away from our idea of "i need money to survive/get stuff" and "to get money i need to work". In communism this wouldn't be the case, you wouldn't need to work.

The most important thing to keep in mind here is thing: If society cannot function without monetary compentations and prices, do not abolish money. You keep money until you get to the point where you can abolish it, once its use becomes less and less usefull.

Writes and scientists wouldn't get monetary compensation. They would write and research because they want to, be it for the art itself or the social recognition or other reasons.

In a sense, communism is an ideal, an endgoal we strive for. We might not ever get there, but one must strive for greatness. Socialism (as we use it) is the primary goal, after which we can strive to reach for the stars, so to speak.


Thanks for illustrating exactly the kind of post OP is not waiting for. OP want a realistic scenario for HIM, withing HIS lifestyle, not the life of his great grandchildren.

In short, assuming the realistic defintion and not the utopic definition:
IE you want a car? You can have a car, theres enough cars. Clothes? We have more than enough. Houses? Pick one mate! Food? Plenty of it!

We are not there yet, of course, but we believe it is possible to get there eventually. At that point using money makes little sense, as money is used to distribute the scarce things we make in society.

4 hours. 6 hours was relevant in 90s.

And should the managers - or whatever other administrators there are - be removed from their posts.

Direct democracy is also an option.

Get free benefits, from "all-included" vacation and healthcare to company-run restaurant where you determine menu and company-run shop that has negotiates acquisition of cheap quality goods in bulk. It a long list.

It's literally impossible to fire someone who is effectively a shareholder without public agreement of workers.

There are always jobs.

What if too many people in society take advantage of not needing to work at all? How will the goods / items be produced? Where will we get our bread from, or our clothing from if people decide not to work and produce it?

You and your coworkers are the ones who decide what to produce, how to produce it, what your working conditions are like, and how long your work days are. You work for yourself rather than a capitalist.

And once capitalist superstructure has been completely removed there will be a lot less assholes probably.


They weren't even a thing in the USSR until Khrushchev introduced his market "reforms."

I disagree. Suicidal thoughts generally come from a place of overbearing stress, isolation, lack of sleep, and feelings of worthlessness, all of which are exacerbated under capitalism, whether though unemployment, alienating work conditions, or just its toxic effects on social relations and culture as a whole. Just look at South Korea for example. After they opened their markets their suicide rates went though the roof.


What if someone wants to make luxury coats?


No.

Nah.

Technology will advance faster thanks to the fall of all financial constraints, music art vidya will be the best, they will be made out of love and without the desire for money, the perfect video game is waiting us in communism.

Automation will help us meet our material needs.

It will be good bud, but it is a far cry from heaven on earth.

It can be achieved in our lifetime, it's not some far off pipe dream for our descendants.

Capitalism is not the exchange of goods by way of currency. Capitalism is an economic system wherein the means of production are privately owned (as opposed to being owned by a nobility, a state, or the people who live and/or work there), and they are increasingly owned by an ever-shrinking class of property owners.

The existence of communism as a system relies on the assumption that the level of automation has reached a point of more-or-less allowing post-scarcity to exist. Yes, it's a pipe dream for now, which is why communists advocate getting to socialism first and foremost(pre-scarctity system)

Air is post-scarcity.
Sunlight is post-scarcity.
Sand is post-scarcity - when you are in the middle of Sahara desert.

Of the more relevant - but less material - information in the open access is post-scarcity.

Basically, once some consumer goods shift into the category of basic human right - when you are simply granted it for free, with no obligations - those goods distributed in post-scarcity economy.

Obviously, you can have elements of Communist economy running alongside Socialist elements (as well, as Feudal/Capitalist/Tribal/whatever). All real economies are mixed, after all.

Well thats what I meant with:


People will do work because they like to feel usefull and have something to do. Automation will take a lot of work of our hands. At some point there should be enough people who volunteer to provide the material things for everyone, and the rest of the time you can do other things.

And maybe there never will be, and I am wrong. But at least we have socialism, which at the very worst scenario is a better, more democratic version of the first world today, with less working hours, more wage and the ability to tackle issues that we cant do now.


Our opinions differ then. I cannot see the entirety of africa be lifted out of poverty to the level of the first world within my lifetime.

There wouldn't be enough for everyone that wants one though - if there is the option of course anyone would choose the best. So how would they be distributed? First-come first-serve? Some sort of merit system? Favouritism?

Get the material and make it yourself.

What the actual fuck? Is it not obvious that you do not transition to "Communism in all areas for all goods" instantly?

Who is this cutie?

Can you fuck off man? Shitposting your insane ideas is bad enough, but now you're just scaring away a curious visitor who is genuinely interested in socialism and communism.

I see, thanks for responding.

I do have one question though, about automation. Do you mean robots/machines working instead of people? If so, there always needs to be workers to build the automation… and then maintain it all so it doesn't erode or breakdown over time. So even if there is automation, jobs will be necessary to keep the automation going for years and years to come.

My concern is that people might get too lazy if there was no incentive to work.

You're still thinking in terms of scarcity. Automation is already destroying jobs. It is harder and harder to find jobs for people to do, because automation is making many jobs obsolete. The communist says that this process ought not to create a class of superfluous human beings to be discarded, rather the product of automated industry should be redistributed to the benefit of all.

That is correct. But as with automation before, two people are required to maintain a machine that replaced a hundred workers. There will still be mechanics and programmers maintaining the robots and machines, but these numbers are far lower than the workers the robots replaced. As such, you need less and less people.

With current automation and even curent rudementary AI, it is possible to do rudementary maintanance automatically. Having a robot change oil of another robot wouldn't impossibly difficult to do (its just a bit expensive atm).

As you can see, as time goes on, this compounds. At some point all you need is a mechanic that is on a beeper nearby and hops by if one of the machines encounters a problem they cant fix themselves. These kind of jobs could be done by volunteers. Fire departments already operate on this premise in lots of places. People with other jobs are on a beeper and leave their job once a fire breaks out.

Your concerns are valid and we should be carefull that we do not haste our progress. If we have too little people working, the logical thing to do is to incentivise them to work more, either by paying for work a bit more or cutting welfare a bit.

Also OP I would like to just say that theres a lot of confusion about the word "socialism" because its used by anyone and their grandmother due to a lot of clusterfucks in history.

The most important distinguishable uses are "social democracy" which is capitalism with welfare (sweden, denmark, nw europe in general) and socialism as we use it, which is what we wrote in this thread.

You will see people using socialism to refer to both, so be wary of that. I don't like it either, but I can't help it.

There is an epic shitload of variance betwen the answers that different socialist ideologies will offer. I notice that a lot of guys here are talking about post-scarsity Star Trek communism, but that shit is several generations off in the future. There is really no purpuse in talking about it.

It is far more helpful to talk about talk about the intermediate socialism, and within that there are two very distinct traditions–marxism and anarchism–which each have their own ideological factions. Anarchism, in its numerous variations, employs a decentralized system of exchange. Often, as is the case with mutualism and syndicalism, that involves a market. Marxists would prefer allow democratic councils to allocate goods according to the need for them. The idea is to have the state serve the same function as the bourgeois class in capitalism does while being under the full and immediate authority of democratic bodies of laborers. It is what they call a "dictatorship of the proletariat" meaning an economy and a state under the complete control of the working class.

The way that this affects the individual worker is that he is able to affect the economic realities of his own life. When he produces his fair share he is able to receive the value of his production in the form of goods that he needs and wants. The more a worker contributes, the more he receives, which is what capitalism promises yet spectacularly fails to deliver. The utterly insane amount of work done in the capitalist ant colony that is the United States would enable the workers there to amass a massive amount of personal property in a socialist economy, although I imagine that few would want to go on killing themselves with work the way they are. Most would likely work far less than they do.

Beyond the acquisition and control of personal property, a significant difference between the current "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" and a socialist system is that the democratic nature of workplaces would allow workers to determine their own working conditions. That means things like greater safety, time off for illness, and more collective benefits. The elimination of the profit motive changes the function of a workplace to the benefit of those who work there. That is the most significant change.

Since working hours are shorter you have more time to engage in ideological wars, and informing on your neighbors that they're taking more than what they need.

If Black Lives Matters could splinter, surely international socialism has no chance.

you can do whatever job you want. art and culture is not destroyed by the neolibs but unlike nationalism it doesn't require mass genocide and authoritarian rule to function. Plus it's a lot easier to be a good Christian boi.

That's how I envision it at least. This is kind of trash cause we don't know exactly what it'll look like. Just imagine not constantly being stressed or miserable or under some asshole's boot and you got an idea of what we're goin for, bucko

You're the same guy who keeps shilling the anti-funism meme right? It fits you.


most commies don't want what he talking bout, OP. Basically you get control over your life. Think of it like libertarianism if libertarianism actually gave a shit about personal freedom. You get what you need without trying. You get what you want with some effort. you do what you want with your life.