• Dessalines
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    fedilink
    19 hours ago

    Old refutations would be Engels - Socialism: Utopian and scientific, and Bukharin - Anarchy and scientific communism

    Communist society is, as such, a STATELESS society. If this is the case - and there is no doubt that it is - then what, in reality, does the distinction between anarchists and marxist communists consist of? Does the distinction, as such, vanish at least when it comes to examining the problem of the society to come and the “ultimate goal”?

    No, the distinction does exist; but it is to be found elsewhere; and can be defined as a distinction between production centralised under large trusts and small, decentralised production.

    We communists believe not only that the society of the future must free itself of the exploitation of man, but also that it will have to ensure for man the greatest possible independence of the nature that surrounds him, that it will reduce to a minimum “the time spent of socially necessary labour”, developing the social forces of production to a maximum and likewise the productivity itself of social labour.

    Our ideal solution to this is centralised production, methodically organised in large units and, in the final analysis, the organisation of the world economy as a whole. Anarchists, on the other hand, prefer a completely different type of relations of production; their ideal consists of tiny communes which by their very structure are disqualified from managing any large enterprises, but reach “agreements” with one another and link up through a network of free contracts. From an economic point of view, that sort of system of production is clearly closer to the medieval communes, rather than the mode of production destined to supplant the capitalist system. But this system is not merely a retrograde step: it is also utterly utopian. The society of the future will not be conjured out of a void, nor will it be brought by a heavenly angel. It will arise out of the old society, out of the relations created by the gigantic apparatus of finance capital. Any new order is possible and useful only insofar as it leads to the further development of the productive forces of the order which is to disappear. Naturally, further development of the productive forces is only conceivable as the continuation of the tendency of the productive process of centralisation, as an intensified degree of organisation in the “administration of things” that replaces the bygone “government of men”.

    • Bukharin - Anarchy and Scientific Communism
  • Cowbee [he/they]
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    1 day ago

    For some goods and services, I suppose, but not the backbone of the economy, and certainly not in the near future. If the Global North has a revolution and transitions to Socialism, it will need to focus on re-industrialization in the short term, and likely would not benefit from some form of extended NEP, ie a focus will need to be had on central planning and full public ownership to drive rapid development.

    Once all industry is publicly owned and planned, small gifts can exist to temporarily fill in gaps not covered by the rest of society. Once the productive forces are developed enough, it might look similar to a gift economy anyways, like a not-sci-fi version of Star Trek.

    Gift economies aren’t something I can “support,” rather they would only be a small part of a much larger whole to begin with IMO.

  • @Valmond
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    52 days ago

    Well that won’t work. IMO.

    • @FMT99
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      12 days ago

      It may work at very small scales. It won’t work on the scale of a city or probably even a neighborhood.

      • @[email protected]OP
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        12 days ago

        Hi, I think at the scale of neighborhood or bigger, it would work even better as people would have more produce and more to share , more variety and quantity of resources and tools , more population could even mean less time clashes among people for volunteering for help.

        • @FMT99
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          210 hours ago

          But how do you oversee the activity? I fully agree there are many motivated people that work for the joy of it and that are happy to share the fruits of their work, myself included. But I also think there’s a whole lot of work of the daily grind type that (almost) no one enjoys and given a chance people will avoid, especially once you move to larger scale populations.