From each according to his ability, to each according to his need

Does this mean it is technically possible to become fabulously rich under communism?

No.

Everybody will be fabulously rich under communism. Obviously. Imagine you and your pals divvying up everything Zuckerberg owns.

don't reply to idiotic threads.

shift your mindset from artificially induced scarcity to post-scarcity and you'll find out that being rich is only possible if there are poor people. So no, you will not be rich, but you'll have everything you need to live a long and fullfilling happy life.

Why would you need to become fabulously rich?

hmm, some one accustomed to an extravagant lifestyle under capitalism could possibly loose their ability to function as regular human beings and thous need certain comforts that regular people don't. Like a larger house and people to cook their meals and drive their cars. Calling them rich is misleading since that entails power over resource management, more like falling in to the same category as people with extreme mental or physical handicaps.


Bullshit, the resource limits of the planet still apply under communism. Zukkerburg and his pals don't have that much when divided among all people of the earth.
At best material conditions will be something like western middle class, probably significantly less, but also a lot less work and more free time to do cool stuff.

Whats more, its not even about that, these peoples extraction of labour value means the labour force is beleaguered mentally and physically and the forces of production are inefficient and not serve use vale but rather profit value which leads to waste and therefore societal degeneration.

obvious troll.
what do you gain by this? some lulz? why not read and do something for yourself.

To be honest I'm skeptical of this because society will still be managed by humans. I will still be surrounded and ruled over by mouth-breathing imbeciles and the kind of scum who think that everything they dislike should be illegal. Communism will not make people stop being disgusting bottom-feeders.

No, wealth ceases to be a meaningful concept in Communism.

So much ideology contained in this post. You think that ideas spring forth from the ether instead of being shaped by material conditions. You seem to be living comfortably enough right now. Are you personally killing people because of human nature or do you think those that do are just bad guys with the idea of killing coming from some sort of magical free will?

Communism is not a complete change to the material conditions. Its impact will be primarily economic. Socially people will still be disgusted by the same things, and will still have the same desire to impose their own tastes upon others. I don't believe in free will any more than you do, but the prevailing economic system is only a small part of the material conditions.

I'm not living comfortably - I'm 99% sure I'm going to die by suicide. All of my (entirely harmless) sources of pleasure are either severely frowned upon or outright illegal. That will not change under communism.

no, you rule yourself in anarchist communism

show me it isn't. Western society is today operating at resource consumption levels that are completely unrealistic for the entire world to reach. Sure, much of it is due to capitalisms inefficiency, but it seems extremely optimistic to think everyone will be as you say "fabulously rich."

I'm not saying they necessarily should be given those comforts. But there could be made an argument that they need them. I'm using "need" in a broader sense, like how middle class "need" internet or easily prepared food.

No, that simply doesn't work. Anarchism is entirely unrealistic unless you assume the existence of some kind of benevolent dictator who acts only to enforce anarchism and prevent any other individuals or groups from accumulating power themselves.

Let's say I do [x]. Everyone else wants to stop me from doing [x]. It doesn't matter how harmless [x] is, I have no way to defend myself.

Communism doesn't really mesh well with the idea of free will and without free will the idea of pride or shame doesn't make any sense since there is no personal agency. A lot of these useless laws you're describing probably exist because of the idea of shame. Don't do drugs because it is shameful, don't watch certain types of porn because it is shameful, don't have certain ideas because they are shameful. These laws don't really make sense otherwise and would most likely die out if the concept of ideas coming from the individual and not from their environment would die.

Actually now that I think about it laws don't really make sense under communism at all. Somebody needs a reason to kill somebody else and that reason is the problem that needs to be addressed, not the individual.

You won't get people to stop believing in free will. It might be the rational position, but it just isn't going to happen.
You're talking about trying to eliminate the fundamental attribution error across the entire human population. You might as well try to eliminate the gambler's fallacy, confirmation bias, or any other cognitive bias. Changing the economic system will not fix fundamental flaws in the architecture of the human brain.

Some laws can make sense, but only in so far as they serve to prevent further harm. Punishment never makes sense. The ideal justice system would basically just be a system for secure mental health care and support.

That doesn't make any sense. If I'm able to do it then the material conditions that lead to me being the way I am can lead to everyone else being that way too.

Right. We just need to get everyone in the world to be born with your DNA, grow up in your family, talk to the same people as you, read the same books as you, and suffer the same shit under capitalism as you have.

Material conditions are complicated.

I never said it would be easy, you said it was impossible. Material conditions sure as hell worked to instill the idea of capitalism being the best system in most people's minds for a long time so who's to say it can't work for communism? Only time will tell.

Viva la revolución de naturaleza

Most of the support for capitalism is just crude tribalism. "Capitalism good. Commies bad." It requires no intelligence and doesn't challenge anyone's feelings.

In contrast arguing that a murderer shouldn't be punished because free will doesn't exist is hard. There is a minimum level of intelligence required to even understand the argument being made.

It's the difference between getting people to support their local sports team and getting people to study philosophy.

Read Proudhon. I'll give you a start with a quote from his most famous work:
Forget what you were told anarchism is because it's entirely wrong in every single way, to such a degree that it's cringeworthy and laughable.

Technology is advancing slowly but surely, and people are getting smarter slowly but surely as a result. More and more people are getting access to the internet which helps move things forward as people are exposed to new ideas and share what they've learned. The idea of tribalism is also dying out because of the internet connecting everyone across the world. In the past a layman in America would see a layman in Europe like a different species. Not so much today thanks to that line of communication.

I've listened to enough anarchists explain their ideas to me that I think I understand why you believe it will work. It's basically just a common agreement between everyone that anarchism is desirable and that they will only use violence against anyone who tries to oppress others - a kind of decentralized version of the benevolent dictator I talked about, right?

I completely agree with that. I just don't think humans are particularly intellectually developed. We live in a society where things like the war on drugs and the war on terror still see widespread support. If you spend 10 minutes talking about ethics to the average worker at your local bar you will soon understand just how far we are from civilization.


We're getting better, but it's a very slow process. Our technological advancement is far faster than our cultural and intellectual advancement. Hopefully we'll be able to speed things up a bit with genetic engineering in another couple of hundred years.

40% of food in America gets wasted. Scarcity is a myth, shitty distribution i.e capitalism is the problem

remember to sage gorilla posting