I don't understand something, Holla Forums. I want to like you, badly, but I need some convincing...

I don't understand something, Holla Forums. I want to like you, badly, but I need some convincing. I haven't read any of the economic theory behind socialism or communism or anarchism or any of that. I understand the idea of democratic control of the means of production.

However, my biggest problem is to do with the supposed lack of money such a system would bring about. Without money, will there really be an incentive to be a coal miner anymore? Will there be people willing to toil away day after day to gather raw materials for use in other industries? Will there be enough workers to accomodate "each according to his need"?

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There are different schools of thought on the subject, but, that phrase is preceded by 'from each according to his ability'.

Personally I'm a state socialist and I would use labour vouchers and so on.

You're misunderstanding the extraction of natural resources for required industries, with the market false representation in the capitalist system of its supply and demand while ignoring all speculation and the primary purpose of capitalism - accumulation of fantasy, accumulation of representations of power, and forcing all of society to play and view everything view that representation and nothing else.

In a communist society, the transitionary stage towards it, you would still have money, and a market of some sort, in the final version it would cease to exist. Designs for coal or the mining of coal and similar would be made by the engineers and people involved at every step, and the extraction of it would be made with the idea in ones head that they themselves would be part of the extraction. Automation would be applied as much as possible, and finite raw resources would be used only in ways that were required.

You're thinking of communism or socialism on the path towards communism through the lense of capitalism. Nothing about your every day life would be the same.

Under a capitalist society, technological advances are used to advance the rule of the rich. Under communism it would be used to advance the comfort of all, for the benefit of all. A lot of production as it exists today, would simply vanish. Oil would never be used, as a raw resource, to create thousands of variations of plastic knives and forks, for instance. Things like that.

Food, shelter, energy, would be the first things to focus on and run and drive communally (collectively). The "incentive to work" that you're referencing, is not an actual incentive to keep a community or the world going - it's an incentive to engage in the capitalist mode of production to 'produce' representations of wealth. The focus has nothing to do with actual needs, and the market does not function as catering to the actual needs of mankind, but rather mandkind exists as a function to cater to the needs of the market.

There would be no lobbying by coal companies and oil companies so alternative energy has a better shot at being developed and improved. Till then people would work in the mines knowing power would run out without it. I dont think many would have it a full time job though, it would be more likely that almost everyone works in the mine for like a week out of a year. Of course at the same time someone would try to automate it as much as they can.

Most of the worst back-breaking toil has already been automated. There won't be any need for an incentive to become a coal miner or an assembly line worker because automation will be directed in such a way as to minimize repulsive labor, not to maximize profits.

Can you faggots please stop using "dude robots lmao" as a deus ex machina for the questions that arise from a communist mode of production?

The need for another system than capitalism arise partially because automation is detroying more and more jobs in the first place.

I imagine that coal miners will have a much higher reputation than now, because they won't work anymore for the benefit of some private company, but for the good of everyone and are indispensable. They will be like heros. Anyone who does hard and necessary work for society will be considered a hero and that will make the work attractive. In capitalism everyone primarily works for themselves, to earn money for themselves, so that the kind of their work doesn't really matter, as long as they get money. Work has no meaning in capitalism. But if it serves the common good, then it becomes meaningful.

Yes but there will always be things that can't be automated and the question will always remain how do you ensure those things are done without renumeration of some sort and I have never seen a realistic answer.

true communism can only be achieved by FALC

Most essential production can be automated, though. Transportation? Check. Food production? With minimal oversight, check. Electricity generation? It's already just maintenance, and no resource extraction is required other than for mining the initial minerals and iron and in certain cases rarer sorts (excluding oil), which would only need to resupply periodically.

All essential goods can be automated to the point where just maintenance is required. We'd all be taking turns in mines at some point, but rarely, and even that could be automated, though the initial investment and the initial resources to build the machinery could not (but these are things already mined out, already available… you don't need to remake society from scratch, you know). Why don't you instead point out what cannot be automated?

Money is to be phased out as automation is phased in.

Congratulations. You are slowly learning that socialist collectivism is feudalism with a different shade of lipstick.

The theory is that the workers would specialize in a small set of tasks. Some workers would farm, some workers would manufacture and some workers would create propaganda posters. They would pool their resources together and innovate new technologies so that each specialty can become less laborious. The result would be more leisure time.

In reality, governments have to be set up when people stop working to chit-chat and end up in ideological wars. Since there is no outside party to mediate because muh solidarity, there is a split and factions go their separate ways.

Will there be a use for coal any more? Coal mining is massively destructive and we have alternative fuel sources. The reason we're still on any fossil fuel is because of historical momentum and consolidation of power in the fossil fuel industry.

Is doing this even necessary? A lot of mining can be automated, and the only reason people work the hours they do is to massively overproduce. What products demand such resources? Remember that planned obsolescence is a thing. If we got rid of the profit motive that props that up, our resource requirements would plummet, probably by at least an order of magnitude.

There already are. The problem is that people have to be given busywork. In order to make money, porky has to sell products. People can't buy products without money. People can't make money without jobs. So porky comes up with bullshit for people to do so they can buy shit and make porky money. At least 90% of the "work" people do is a waste of time, sometimes literally as their employer doesn't give them something to fill their time with.

You can have money in socialism, there's many different proposed methods for organizing socialist societies and many include money.

Work will still be necessary and in order to be recognized as a citizen of a socialist society and receive the requisite benefits. Social pressures and norms will fill in the rest. Hopefully, the burden of toilsome labor will be mediated by technology, democratic workplace culture, and a society that appreciates and idolizes socially productive labor.


So, set up a state and a network of institutions to mediate conflicts, measure popular needs and establish an economic plan to distribute essential goods and services. Even the anarchists will have to concede that some level of organizational planning and hierarchy is necessary to hold a large, complex and populous society together.

Also
Fuck you people.

Your place will be in the gulag doing 16 hour shifts every day of the year then.

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In a few decades "dude robots lmao" will be the status quo fam

And your place will be in the fields picking crops and not sitting in a computer chair, because farming will still need to be done and socially necessary labor will still be a thing regardless of your bourgeois fever-dreams of a totally automated fantasy-land.

What century do you think this is?

you realize that we already transferred from coins and banknotes to largely paying by electrons on plastic cards (also credit cards). so how it is different from abolishing this belief system, of moneyz is the ultimate incentive?
also read more, marxism's basic truth is that you cant get any better incentive than with doing away with alienation from the product of your own efforts whether physical or intellectual.
also, here is a library on diverse topics of interest for you thesovietbroadcast.tumblr.com/thesovietlibrary

I have participated in a few anarchist projects, such as squatted houses and black-green forest occupations, where we lived in tents.

In those projects I have volunteered, among others, to empty the shit bucket of an outhouse, and i've volunteered to chop wood and carry water, both being activities that make my back ache after a while. Not really something I'd want to do all day every day, but when I'm doing it for the community (which includes myself), I get joy out of the work.

Centralized shitting doesn't scale.
You should have made a designated shitting street.

I can give you a guide on post-keynesian economics if you like, if you're not so interested in Marxism itself.

It's actually extremely convincing. Rejecting holism and methodological individualism as wrong for good reasons, replacing it with a common sense premise.

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The twenty-first, of course! :^)

I'll preface this by saying you should stop being such a lazy cunt and read a fucking book. Convincing? Fuck you.
People don't have enough money for their needs because for every hour that they work the full value of their labor is being appropriated. People work far longer than they need to, in order to get a wage packet that does not actually reflect their contribution in production.

Who the fuck would want to go down a coal mine for 8-10 hours? No one, nor would that be required. Coal mining might remain necessary in the short term, but the coal miners still working wouldn't need to work as long or as hard in order to provide for themselves and their families. The work, similarly, wouldn't be as dangerous because the intensity of the work would be lower, and so on. The goal is production for use, not exchange; therefore, an immediate result of the revolution would be the lowering of the rate of exploitation of coal miners as that goal is pursued.

And it isn't a problem of not having enough workers – it's about the productive forces of society being developed enough that we can finally cease commodity production entirely. The motor of the economy will no longer be production for exchange – for profit – but for the needs of society.

That won't happen immediately, but it something that will have to be pursued immediately. In all likelihood markets and money will remain until that process is relatively advanced. Do we know what that will look like? No – you know why? Because we haven't gotten that far yet. There was a good attempt made with the Soviet Union but that ran into serious problems, and no, I don't just mean the purges and the 100 gorillion and so on, even if those were indicators of some serious shit going wrong.

I mean shit like the workers not owning the means of production; I mean commodity production not being transcended; I mean competition not being abolished; I mean the fucking economy not actually meeting peoples' needs and allowing the flourishing of a huge black market; and so on and so forth.

All issues that will return the next time Porky goes full retard and the masses have had enough.

wew lad

You want the real answer, OP. It's nobody and not even robots either will fix this because nobody wants to build or fix the robots. Everyone will be to each their own and it'll revolve into the same old song and dance since Stalin's game of musical chairman. But fuck capitalism.

Is it possible to incentivize work that is especially grueling?
That's what I was think about when asked this problem.

if you do then it's not socialism
thread's over

Less hours for harder work, pretty easy.

yeah, that's what I was thinking.

How is that different from money?

wew


People who volunteer for grueling work shouldn't be expected to shoulder the burden without reward. Lets speculate. A reduction of the working day beyond what has been achieved in general, while still being rewarded more; a democratic process so that all share the worst of the worst jobs on-site; longer holidays away from such work; opportunities to transition out of such work through education; efforts to create communities and other support networks around such work so families don't suffer unduly; and above all attempting to find scientific/technical solutions so such work is easier.

You could have ideological means too, such as acknowledging those who do such work as those who have willingly sacrificed for society, rather than them just being ignored – so that they will be placed ahead of others when being considered for other work. That way you get people volunteering in order to further themselves later in their working life.

Everyone (at least everyone who works or has a genuine reason they can't work) gets the same amount and they can't be traded between individuals. Only back to the collective to buy stuff. No income inequality, no accumulation of capital. There's no way for you to own anyone else. No way to own property other than your own personal things (I'm torn on whether people should own houses, I personally lean towards no, you can pay rent to stay there depending on the house as long as you want and easily switch to somewhere else if you want/need to move).

Basically, it's just a way to get stuff from the labour the collective has undertaken, it has no social or structural power to make yourself someone else's master.