One of my mutual follows on twitter tweeted this today:
“asking questions like ‘how will communism actually work’ will be classed as unnecessarily pedantic within 6 months”
Let us all hope this prediction comes true.
I say this because the question itself is incoherent. Its persistence can be explained by the fact that too many radicals do not realize capitalism has already answered this question.
To understand my point, consider that no radical ever asks, “How does Walmart or Amazon actually work.” It’s obvious that these huge capitalistic firms manage huge supply chains. They bring the most diverse products together with customers without any of the fuss or bother that is said to be an obstacle in a planned economy.
The only objection to this cold fact is to assert that Walmart and Amazon do this rather amazing feat without planning their activities. We know in fact that this is not true. Production and distribution of commodities is not an art, but a hard science. These massive capitals know, almost down to a single screw, where every commodity is in their logistic chains and can tell you when and where it will finally arrive on a store shelf or your doorstep.
Place an order with Amazon and you can follow your purchase from reception to delivery on your smartphone. Communism doesn’t invent this modern marvel and to ask how communism works in this regards is indeed to concern oneself with trivialities.
There is a deeper question here, however.
Some people think communism has to reinvent the wheel when it comes to the organization of production, but nothing could be further from the truth. Communism is essentially economic and, insofar as it is economic, it is created directly by capitalist accumulation and nothing more. The communistic organization of production is not itself created by communism, but capitalism.
The very idea that this marvelous instrument of social production has to be reinvented by communism is a misapprehension of communism that results from the rather primitive backward economic conditions of Russia or China.
It is entirely true that before actually reaching communism, Russia and China had to first create the material foundations for communism, but this fact has now entered into the conception of communism as some necessary preliminary stage of history. It is not. Unlike Russia in 1917 or China in 1949 there are no peasants in the United States. The idea that we have to create the material foundations of full communism prior to realizing communism is completely mistaken.
People today are seriously talking about the imminent complete replacement of living labor in production with AI. China already has factories where living labor has been almost entirely replaced by robotic processes. And the US has been boasting of “lights-out” manufacturing, where there is little or no human intervention in the production process at least since 2003.
Living labor in production is already obsolete and continues only on the basis of the most egregious reduction of wages to unimaginable levels of poverty. The worker can only compete with the machine if she can survive, as the machine does, without food, clothing or shelter. Even if the worker could live on air alone, she could not compete with a machine.
To put this in the most brutal accelerationist terms: A meatbag cannot compete with artificial intelligence.
Communism has no purpose if the creation of modern industry were at issue. Communism has another purpose entirely: As Marx and Engels put it: “The reality, which communism is creating, is precisely the true basis for rendering it impossible that anything should exist independently of individuals”.
We communist don’t give a fuck about factories or machines or production or distribution or any of that productivist bullshit. We only care that these things should not exist independent of the individuals.
People. That is all we fucking care about. People!
If a radical comes to you asking how production will be organized under communism, pop that motherfucker in the face, he is the enemy. No communist should ever give a fuck about how production is organized. If anyone is concerned about how to organize production, they can go to business school.
We don’t care how the future society will produce widgets; we only care how to end work itself — wage slavery.
The Real Movement 
The question of how communism would work should never have been thought of as a question of technology but as a social or political one. This is why it was surprising to some that the major revolutions of the 20th century occurred in China and Russia rather than, say, Germany.
Communism works just fine in a family or small society like a tribe where the number of people is on the order of ~150 or less (‘Dunbar’s number). I think David Graeber has pointed this out. The issue has more to do with diminishing trust in larger numbers. How is the worker to know that her sacrifices (working late, cleaning up vomit, etc.) will be compensated? Why not just take heroin all the time? How will I know that ‘the commons’ will be maintained since in ordinary life under capitalism it almost never is? State Socialism like the USSR at least had an answer to these issues.
As to the blog post at hand, why study the mechanisms of capitalism if they give no insight into how communism might function? Perhaps the real issue is that Marx and Engels really did not believe Capitalism was new on the scene or could be overthrown (in this Weber may have been correct). I took your advice and read Engels’ Utopian and Scientific Socialism. It was a good, actually a really great essay…Right up until the end, where Engels describes how Capitalism would meet it’s downfall. Then we go into story time, with comforting fables. Fables way less convincing than the Bible IMHO.
There is no reason the processes of capitalism must lead to the overthrow of capitalism itself. It is true that there are crises inherent to the system. The means of production become useless, etc. However, they can be destroyed (as you point out, the Military is a powerful way of achieving this destruction). The main problem though is that the proletariat itself is part of the means of production, and our numbers are not so easily able to be reduced on economic downturns. This is why Malthus and his ilk arose right on cue with the economic crises of the 19th century. This is why the mouthpieces of the capitalists are concerned above all with population control and coerced sterilizations (make sure to keep caught up on your vaccinations, everybody). Wars don’t seem to do the trick as there is only the tiniest of blips in demographics from 1910-1950.
Jehu, you (and Tarzie to a lesser extent) are almost the only leftist on the internet today worth paying attention to. But you contradict yourself all the time and never fail to annoy.
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Is communism then a sort of ‘auto-organized’ society? Where no one will take a ‘leading’ role?
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Bingo.
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Do you think this communism thus arises outside of theory? Or how does communism arise without conflict? That is, is communism necessarily a conflict free zone?
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Communism is what society does when it is not engaged in politics and discussing philosophy and ethics.
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So do you think at some point people will stop discussing how groups of people are organized and what the nature of that organization is?
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No. Among a certain group of nerds, this sort of speculation is a popular as the next season of Game of Thrones.
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Technology development under capitalism is slow, inefficient, chaotic, and most importantly, self-destructive. Let’s be honest, it’s possible “communism” will be a term used to describe some retrograde state of society(ies) struggling to survive in a depleted habitat unable to support modern amenities. Keep in mind, our communication networks alone rely on a vast infrastructure of powerlines and undersea cables that become tougher to maintain as the weather becomes more extreme. A rational society would’ve considered and implemented better, more durable systems decades ago while under capitalism we get Amazon and think we’re living in the future.
Any communist fetishizing accelerationism and thinking AI will solve our problems is simply redirecting attention away from the fact that that capitalism has the best answer to “self-organization”. And, when it fails along with the crops, people will become much more agreeable to totalitarian solutions. Any discussion on this that doesn’t factor in global warming is decades out of date.
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The defects you highlight here, and rightly, all point in the direction of production for profit, i.e., wage slavery, not the technological achievements of capital itself. Communism is only concerned with the abolition of wage slavery. Instead of detailing how wage slavery itself is an obstacle to the employment of technology by mankind, perhaps we should get to the task of putting an end to it.
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I think there is room to quibble over the nature of technology developed under capitalism. Technology is not neutral. Even if it can be re-purposed, it takes labor and energy to produce and modify. We don’t get that energy back, and time is short for society to get it’s act together.
Recognizing the bias of technology also gets at the heart of the accelerationist idea that capitalism will evolve itself away to reveal communism. I’m not familiar with all the variations of accelerationist thought, but where it contends that communism is inevitable, it needs to explain why we haven’t already transitioned — decades ago. The notion is very suspect and I’d go as far to contend it’s a red herring in today’s world. The central bankers and elite are already working on how to handle the next recession while the working/unemployed class fight over the same political issues they’ve always fought over. Technology doesn’t seem to change this dynamic at all.
So, the overall point is that there is a basis for the question “how should production be handled?”, even if it needs to be interpreted charitably as possible. There is physical dimension that needs to be addressed when thinking about how to end wage-slavery. Strikes get halfway there, but fail if not maintained. Some form of production is required and communists can’t rely on Capitalism’s method to regulate it. So how does it work?
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Can I employ an analogy? Foot binding was widely practice in China until the revolution. The deformities produced by the years long bindings applied to the foot did not immediately disappear once the bindings were undone. In fact, for those individuals who suffered this atrocity, the deformities never healed in most cases. But with the ending of the practice, no one was ever forced into such barbaric practices again. Generations of young women were never forced by social prejudices to submit themselves to this barbaric practice.
We do what we do in most cases not for ourselves but for the future generations that come after us.
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But we’re concerned with a mode of production. Let’s imagine today’s global climate existed when the practice began to die off in the early 20th century. It took another half-decade before it was gone entirely. In our time, it will be massive hurricanes, floods, and overall ecological collapse that force those changes while everyone is debating the cultural equivalents to foot binding.
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half a *century*
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Climate change is not caused by existing technology, but by the production of surplus value. Surplus production now accounts for about 90% of all production today and it is mostly waste. If we could ever get to the point where we end wage slavery, this surplus production would end entirely. Damage to the environment, like poverty, is the result of capitalist production, not production itself.
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Production of surplus value is the mental construct used to describe how technology develops in this case. Technology exists physically and it’s global warming impacts are permanent. We can change our philosphy, end it entirely by going to communism, and still suffer the same effects. There are certain parameters a future society must heed if it wants to survive due to the actions of today and the past. Understanding those parameters helps describe how production should be carried out.
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All evidence suggests the reduction of hours of labor — that is, attacking production for profit — is the simplest way to halt climate change. I have no idea where you get the idea that production for profit is a mental construct.
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We can’t “halt climate change” if we stopped production for surplus value. Even if we could stop all activity tomorrow we’d still suffer the effects from it’s internia. We’re locked in for a 2c global average within a couple decades no matter what we do.
Global warming is due to the nature of technology produced under this particular mode of production — production for surplus value. Whatever mode of production replaces this one will have to exist within limits imposed by a less forgiving habitat in the future. Simply ending Capitalism isn’t enough now.
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If I didn’t know better, I would overlook that you have nothing to base that assertion on except climate change models that all currently assume the continuation of wage slavery.
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The 2C rise is based purely on carbon emissions that have been released already. If you want to include the continuation of the production of surplus value, it goes way higher.
The melting arctic is a prominent example of one feedback loop — a process that will continue despite our actions today. Ironically, industrial civilization provides a global “dimming” effect that provides some cooling. Aircraft contrails, for example, actually provide a surprising amount of cooling. This was measured after 9/11 when the planes were grounded in the areas of measurement. It made a 1C difference. The wikipedia page on Global Dimming has more info.
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STATEMENT 1: “Simply ending Capitalism isn’t enough now.”
STATEMENT 2: “If you want to include the continuation of the production of surplus value, it goes way higher.”
Which is it? I don’t care which one you choose, just make your mind up.
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1: Simply ending Capitalism will not prevent a rise to 2C.
2: If we do not end Capitalism, we will certainly overshoot 2C. We’ll probably overshoot it anyway.
You’re correct that most climage change models assume we will continue emissions (continuation of wage slavery). However, even if we stop emissions regardless, we’ll still get a rise to 2C unless there are efforts to de-carbonize the atmosphere.
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Do we not have a better chance to do something else if we no longer are killing ourselves to create surplus value? Won’t people be more amenable to climate change solutions without the damage inflicted by capitalism? Right now, jobs clearly outweigh any concern for the climate.
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Sure. The problem is simply ending Capitalism alone doesn’t solve the greatest problem we face. Assuming we don’t nuke ourselves, global warming is inevitable and requires a proactive global solution. I contend it’s better to build toward that solution, rather than focus only on ending Capitalism and letting things “work themselves out”.
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“As to the blog post at hand, why study the mechanisms of capitalism if they give no insight into how communism might function?”
I must have completely missed the point of your post if that question is a viable reaction to it.
We know that capitalism gave us the socialization of labour.
We also know that the ongoing division of labour within the capitalist mode of production is the foundation for increased automation.
Further we know that this automation is rendering living labour obsolete.
We also know that even though labour has been socialized, compensation for labour is only available to those individuals who are able to sell their labour power.
We further know that the means of production have become so vast that the bourgeoisie have come superfluous to the production process.
I have to ask, are these not the mechanisms of capitalism, which we can only ignore at our own peril?
In “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”, Engels tells us, “By this act, the proletariat frees the means of production from the character of capital they have thus far borne, and gives their socialized character complete freedom to work itself out.”
I can only interpret that as meaning that the socialization of labour and the requirement for individual compensation are not compatible. In no way does Engels suggest that we abandon the socialization of labour.
The most revolutionary act available to the proletariat is not in taking up arms against the bourgeoisie and their agents, the State, but the collective realization that the means of production are so vast that it is no longer necessary to labour for wages.
I’ll have to study your post as well as “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific” in more detail, because surely I am missing the point. 🙂
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