So, if we get a successful revolution and we transition from Socialism to Communism, how would getting food work exactly?
There'd be something similar to a store, but would
you have to provide something to know if you've
actually been working so you deserve the food?
Other urls found in this thread:
nplusonemag.com
twitter.com
In communism there's no obligation to work, that's the difference
Under socialism we should use labour vouchers imo
not all socialists believe in labour vouchers since they're indifferent from money when you get down to it
Good thread OP. I think it is important to imagine logistical matter such as this in order to ground our theory in the material.
I think that for the most part, individuals wouldn't need to shop for groceries, as the nuclear family wouldn't really exist. I think that for the most part, people would live in larger housing collectives or communes (20-40 people), and meals would be eaten in a central dining area with that whole group.
Vegetables would be grown on rooftop and lawn space gardens by the housing collectives. Bread and animal products would be delivered to them by agrarian communes. The housing collectives would place orders a year in advance so that the agrarian communes would know how much they would need to produce for that year.
So wait, we wouldn't eat in our personal homes?
I mean that sounds like a cool get together and
event but even as a Communist I'd like to get
food, go home, put it together, and eat.
You want to eat alone?
eating alone is comfy
If that's your thing, then I don't think anyone would stop you from eating in your personal home. You would just have to grab ingredients from the food storage at the housing collective. I'd picture this as a room full of pantries with a walk in fridge and walk in freezer. You would probably have a personal kitchen in your personal living space.
People might think you where a bit antisocial though.
If I live alone, but also maybe with just my partner
and I or something similar to that.
Why do you want to live alone?
I don't necessarily want too for all my life but as
a person I like to keep to myself whenever
it has nothing to do with things like work or other
important things.
Question yourself this, is all work "equal"? Does the product you produce define yourself? Or is it the effort that matters more? I say that work is irrelevant, food is a common necessity that everyone should be guaranteed to have. Luxury things like alcohol, candy, and so on are the products that would be relevant but not food. I don't see anything wrong with a common store, you have to trade for something with the farmer to get the food after all.
I'm not that guy, but why not? No people, no problem. Nobody shouts, nobody acts like an idiot, nobody causes problems. Privacy is a wonderful thing, having to live in "collectives" of 20 people would be a nightmare, people start to think less logically and more of crowd-mentality, a collective subconsciousness where the opinions of the group matter more than facts. Some people are okay with this, but not everyone.
I don't have a problem with people wanting to live alone, I guess I just can't relate to it. I suppose logistically you could just go pick up food from a local storehouse and the storehouse could order the food from farms.
>labor vouchers can't buy means of production but I have never had enough money to become a boss anyway so there is no practical difference xD
Stop posting anytime.
How about existing models of living that successfully mixes the commons and the privacy like student dormitories? And a variation of it.
You have your space but there are also common areas. And people generally eat in the mess hall or cafeteria.
Or commieblocks with an emphasis on common areas, like the infamous Pruitt-Igoe.
The only concern of any sort of living arrangement would be to eliminate waste of space, energy and labour needed to maintain it. The solutions of inhabitants being on rotation for the mess hall cooking and serving, cleaning of the common areas and maintenance of the utilities is probably the most feasible one.
When there is a society-wide aim of increasing the efficiency of labour serving the needs of the entire society, those might be parts of such implementation.
Also this is feasible when no one has to do 40 hour work weeks, and instead something like 16 hour work weeks are required, or even less. Because how much of labour that people do in the first world is directly related to the needs of the society. And how much of that can be automated to more efficiently allocate labour to areas that cannot be automated, like care for the elderly, and the entire medical field, which can also benefit from mechanization of information processing.
Today at least in eastern europe we have a shortage of doctors. And training to become a doctor requires that you have someone who will give you pocket money for 6 years, because the med school studies are a full time job.
Stop drinking the ML koolaid and actually read Marx.
And read Conquest of Bread. Labour vouchers are shit.
I wish I was living in the same fairy tale Kropotkin did.
This is only true of the mutualist version (or any version where they freely circulate), the marxist notion of labour vouchers doesn't involve the circulation of vouchers, you can't transfer them to another person. It's just a kind of score keeping mechanism for work hours. You can redeem vouchers/credit you get by working at consumer outlets in exchange for goods and services but they aren't transferred to those working at the store: they simply get canceled out (rather like a movie ticket).
Now you can certainly argue that they have some money like characteristics (they compel people to work) and that they reproduce the division between work and leisure, a problem which has been raised by some on the communist left, but to argue that they perform the same function as money is absurd.
Honestly this fetishisation of local/small scale production ticks me off, communism isn't a return to subsistence production and expecting people to produce all their food in such a manner not only risks famine but it largely prevents the *technical* division of labour (a separate thing from the social division of labour, which needs to be abolished) necessary for technologically advanced society to exist. Not to mention you'll have a hard time growing the necessary amounts of food in such limited spaces, if you want to farm in dense cities you'll need to convert entire buildings into hydroponic farms, which I'm all for to be honest: it's not like we're going to need all that office space used by financial institutions under capitalism.
I think that labour vouchers or something like them (tying luxury incentives to certain roles, perhaps?) have a role to play in suppressing commodity production in the early days of communisation (it's certainly better than letting informal commodity production go unchecked), though in the long term they'd become a hindrance as they'd get in the way of abolishing the division between work and leisure.
I used to suffer from misanthropy aswell before I read him.
Disgusting. It'd take a long time after the social revolution to make sure all basic needs are met, and then we can start developing the need for "luxury". In the meanwhile however, you can repurpose public buildings as cultural centers, make sure some resources and time are available for amateur theater and cinema to flourish.
the real problem is that the international supply chains of food and literally every other product that our society runs on require capital exchange at every level. big companies leverage the competition between players in this supply chain to drive down costs, which enables the necessary innovations to deliver products at the prices we expect.
and unlike much leftist writing insists, labor is becoming increasingly unnecessary to swaths of the population because of increased automation.
this is a good article that goes in more depth: nplusonemag.com
Don't get your knickers in a knot, I'm talking about allocation of things the presently exist, I'm not talking about production of bourgeois nonsense like fine wines and gold watches. Picture it this way, certain forms of *necessary* work are incredibly undesirable in there present form, and we can't simply wait for alternative ways of doing these things without civilisation collapsing, on the other hand capitalist society has already produced an abundance of bullshit which could be reserved for those that do those undesirable tasks. I'm advocating such a measure so that all basic needs can be met as rapidly as possible.
Pretty sure Kropotkin talks about this in The Bread Book. From what I remember he said that food would be given out and prepared within this communal eating area then if you wanted to eat alone or at home you could take it back to your place.