Leisure items, film industry

[LeftAbove]

So in a communist society all workers own the means of productions. Following the mantra "to each according to his ability, to each according to contribution" would people in the, let's say, film industry take in less items since they're not contributing as much as the laborer or farmer?

How would leisure items (for lack of better word, I'm describing items like baseball cards, film, home computers, books, etc.) work in a communist society? In a capitalist society supply and demand fuel these businesses. What happens if a film is made and no one wants to see it? What happens if a toy is manufactured but it isn't popular enough and you're left with additional surplus that no one wants? Would it be a waste of labor, like if the same happens in a capitalist society?

This question has been floating in my mind lately.

[Regicollis]

The mantra is "to each according to his needs, from each according to his ability". A worker in the film industry has the same needs for food, housing, health care and leisure as a mine worker so he would get just as much of these things.

Why would the workers at a toy factory spend time and effort producing toys that no one wants? - In a socialist economy production would still respond to demand but the reasons for doing so would be different. A huge motivation for producing goods or services in a socialist economy is the fulfilment that comes from seeing the fruits of one's labour being put to good use. It is a lot more fun to make something that people want.

[bcbm]

nobody would be constrained to one job

[MarxSchmarx]

I think the ultimate answer has to do with automation, and developing the tools to facilitate the easy creation of such products.

Film is actually a somewhat special case because the technical/menial side for mass producing popular films are in fact incredibly well worked out. For example, special effects software are now so incredibly widespread most people with an internet connection can create some special effects only dreamed of 30 yrs ago.

I think there are some aspects of films that can never really cease to be hard work. For example, writers work on scripts for hours upon hours and their work weeks are intense and hellish. Perhaps the best we can hope for is that a few individuals, highly skilled in the craft of writing, spend a few weeks a year where they are utterly miserable, work crazy hours and get deprived of their humanity. But, they ahve the rest of teh year to enjoy, perhaps somewhat like crab fishermen today.

I think we can automate, or at least reduce the workload, on a lot of "leisure" production - for instance, I think video games will benefit even more from minimized coding demands and with a focus on story line and entertainment. I think this will be broadly true of a lot of a lot fields. But for some, particularly leisure like film or say producing an opera, it will probably still be intense hard work for those involved. THe best we can hope for is that they won't be reuiqred to invest so much of their time and effort for the bulk of their waking lives, although perhaps some will relish such arrangements.

[StalinFanboy]

I think a more important question, or maybe just more interesting, would why is there a need for spectacular entertainment, and why there has been such an explosive proliferation of it within the last 50+ years.

Not that I have some sort of moral opposition to movies or video games, but personally the reason why I end up watching tv or playing video games when I get home from work is because I am physically and emotionally exhausted and its easier to sit in front of some distracting device than to do something that might be much for fulfilling and better for me (like reading, or going out with friends, or traveling).

I would hope, and think, that in a post-capitalist world, life will be a little less alienating and the importance of "Entertainment" will dwindle.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

The central goal on the road to a "From each according to his ability to each according to his needs" communist society, needs to be the gradual cutting of manual work labor hours/automation of production, immediate removal of markets for planning and immediate starting of the institutionalisation of workers control over their own surplus. T

The conditions needed for a beginning of a socialist society and transition to a communist society are: absolute historical obsoletness of capital/markets! The conditions needed for beginning of a communist society (no more currency, automation of production) are: not one strong capitalist state left standing; Completely democratic bottom-up worker council planned economy; a closed "gap between manual and think work"/automation of production; each individual workers control over his own surplus and labor; social, collective and democratic upbringing for capable and educated workers self-management;.