Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist
1st April 2013, 03:04
So I was reading Engel's piece Law of Value and Rate of Profit and at one point I dosed off to thinking about minecraft, so then I got thinking about how full communism could possibly be achieved in minecraft. So after a bit of thought I came up with a model loosely based off of the Chinese experience. I'm not sure how to organize this so I'll just make it into sections.
Introduction to Minecraft Socialism:
The goal of any socialist society ought to be the abolition of extange, and the law of value. For our purposes this means that distribution should be collectivized, and that scarcity should be abolished so goods can be distributed from the ability (or more accurately, the productive capacity) to the need.
So for something to be distributed by the need, this would mean in practice that let's say, everyone needed a new pickaxe at once, a pickaxe could be provided to them without the need for bartering or extange. This does not mean that distribution could be based on how many pickaxes everyone wants because that would be impossible, since one person could say they want twenty pickaxes and if every person did that then there would be no efficient way to calculate how pickaxes should be distributed other than to return to extange.
Problems of Socialism:
First of all, it should be apparent that not everyone will be able to get everything they need right at the bat. For example let's say collective farm A asks the central planner for 20 iron hoes and collective mine A asks for 10 iron pickaxes, but there are only 30 iron ingots, who gets priority since not everyone can get what they want?
So considering this problem, it appears that even if distribution is centralized then the law of value will continue to operate. So then the question is how should this law be overcome?
Organizational outline of a Socialist Society:
At the most basic level there will be the people communes. The People's Communes are responsible for producing raw resources such as wheat, wood, and iron.
At the highest level will be the Capital city. For simplicity's sake, there will be only one capital city. Here actual goods will be produced and here is where the planning will take place.
The People's Commune will not have a single leader, instead when a certain amount of goods are needed, a meeting will be held where the needs of the Commune will be decided. Then a delegate will be elected to go to the capital city to get the required goods. These delegates will also be able to vote to elect and recall central planners
Economics and Politics of the Transitional Phase
A certain percentage of the resources produced by the People's Commune will be given to the capital city. So for example if People's Commune A produces 10 units of wheat within a certain amount of time, and the production quota percent is 20%, then the state will get 2 units of wheat. What the People's Commune keeps will be their responsibility to distribute. Although I can not think of an exact mathematical formula right now, generally the more of a resource a Commune produces the greater the percent seized ought to be, to the eventual point where the entirety of the resource is seized and distributed centrally.
Since most resources at the beginning will be subject to some level of scarcity, some sort of mechanism other than need will be needed to regulate distribution, and as Ernest Mandel argued, the best mechanism is a sort of money. The central planner will be responsible for printing the money from sugar cane and regulating the amount of money in circulation. The People's Commune will be responsible for purchasing goods from the central planner and individuals will be expressly forbidden from buying from the central planner.
A good that can not be distributed according to the need will be sold to the peoples communes. The price of the good shall be easy to calculate. The price should be calculated in a way that the total amount of money in circulation in the Communes could only afford the amount of the good in circulation. So if there are 300 Money units in circulation and 30 iron pickaxes, the price of the pickaxes should be ten money units to prevent shortages.
To regulate the circulation of money, the central planner can make a mandatory purchase of a resource from a Commune for a certain amount of money or a central planner can distribute a certain amount of a resource in extange for seizing a certain amount of money.
A Commune, in addition to being able to purchase goods from the central planner, can also purchase goods from other communes.
The Transition from Value to Need in Distribution.
There are various technologies in minecraft that make the production of resources either more efficient or less labor intensive. For example the efficient mining schemes and automatic farming.
At the very beginning very little will be sent to a central planner because the People's Communes will need to be established for this to happen. However once enough Iron is discovered to make a large scale irrigation system then a quota can be established for food. Once this is set in place food collection will become less burdensome and a quota for wood and stone collection can be established. Once enough iron is discovered to mine most ores, then an efficient mining system can be made at level Y12 and most ores, including most importantly, gold, iron and red stone, can have quotas established for them.
Once the central planner can receive these, the central planner should focus little on producing goods for the needs of the People's Commune but rather on saving up the resources needed to create automatic farming systems, railroads, and other red stone machines designed to make labor more efficient.
The effort at this point should not be on reducing the amount of labor put into production but rather improving the amount of output that results from production, with the goal of increasing output exponentially. As the People's Communes produce more and more resources, greater and greater amounts should be seized from them in quotas until the point that there are no goods distributed through value and distribution takes place entirely upon need. At this point it can be said that at least the lower phase of Communism has been reached.
Now I know that there are plenty of other schools of thought in the left including anarchists, left communists, and others who have another idea on how to establish socialism in Minecraft. So I thought it would be fun to try to create sketches of what a transition to Communism in minecraft might look like for each of the schools of thought and to test them out on a minecraft server. Since I realize that this will take a long time to organize the game won't actually start until July (actual date pending).
Introduction to Minecraft Socialism:
The goal of any socialist society ought to be the abolition of extange, and the law of value. For our purposes this means that distribution should be collectivized, and that scarcity should be abolished so goods can be distributed from the ability (or more accurately, the productive capacity) to the need.
So for something to be distributed by the need, this would mean in practice that let's say, everyone needed a new pickaxe at once, a pickaxe could be provided to them without the need for bartering or extange. This does not mean that distribution could be based on how many pickaxes everyone wants because that would be impossible, since one person could say they want twenty pickaxes and if every person did that then there would be no efficient way to calculate how pickaxes should be distributed other than to return to extange.
Problems of Socialism:
First of all, it should be apparent that not everyone will be able to get everything they need right at the bat. For example let's say collective farm A asks the central planner for 20 iron hoes and collective mine A asks for 10 iron pickaxes, but there are only 30 iron ingots, who gets priority since not everyone can get what they want?
So considering this problem, it appears that even if distribution is centralized then the law of value will continue to operate. So then the question is how should this law be overcome?
Organizational outline of a Socialist Society:
At the most basic level there will be the people communes. The People's Communes are responsible for producing raw resources such as wheat, wood, and iron.
At the highest level will be the Capital city. For simplicity's sake, there will be only one capital city. Here actual goods will be produced and here is where the planning will take place.
The People's Commune will not have a single leader, instead when a certain amount of goods are needed, a meeting will be held where the needs of the Commune will be decided. Then a delegate will be elected to go to the capital city to get the required goods. These delegates will also be able to vote to elect and recall central planners
Economics and Politics of the Transitional Phase
A certain percentage of the resources produced by the People's Commune will be given to the capital city. So for example if People's Commune A produces 10 units of wheat within a certain amount of time, and the production quota percent is 20%, then the state will get 2 units of wheat. What the People's Commune keeps will be their responsibility to distribute. Although I can not think of an exact mathematical formula right now, generally the more of a resource a Commune produces the greater the percent seized ought to be, to the eventual point where the entirety of the resource is seized and distributed centrally.
Since most resources at the beginning will be subject to some level of scarcity, some sort of mechanism other than need will be needed to regulate distribution, and as Ernest Mandel argued, the best mechanism is a sort of money. The central planner will be responsible for printing the money from sugar cane and regulating the amount of money in circulation. The People's Commune will be responsible for purchasing goods from the central planner and individuals will be expressly forbidden from buying from the central planner.
A good that can not be distributed according to the need will be sold to the peoples communes. The price of the good shall be easy to calculate. The price should be calculated in a way that the total amount of money in circulation in the Communes could only afford the amount of the good in circulation. So if there are 300 Money units in circulation and 30 iron pickaxes, the price of the pickaxes should be ten money units to prevent shortages.
To regulate the circulation of money, the central planner can make a mandatory purchase of a resource from a Commune for a certain amount of money or a central planner can distribute a certain amount of a resource in extange for seizing a certain amount of money.
A Commune, in addition to being able to purchase goods from the central planner, can also purchase goods from other communes.
The Transition from Value to Need in Distribution.
There are various technologies in minecraft that make the production of resources either more efficient or less labor intensive. For example the efficient mining schemes and automatic farming.
At the very beginning very little will be sent to a central planner because the People's Communes will need to be established for this to happen. However once enough Iron is discovered to make a large scale irrigation system then a quota can be established for food. Once this is set in place food collection will become less burdensome and a quota for wood and stone collection can be established. Once enough iron is discovered to mine most ores, then an efficient mining system can be made at level Y12 and most ores, including most importantly, gold, iron and red stone, can have quotas established for them.
Once the central planner can receive these, the central planner should focus little on producing goods for the needs of the People's Commune but rather on saving up the resources needed to create automatic farming systems, railroads, and other red stone machines designed to make labor more efficient.
The effort at this point should not be on reducing the amount of labor put into production but rather improving the amount of output that results from production, with the goal of increasing output exponentially. As the People's Communes produce more and more resources, greater and greater amounts should be seized from them in quotas until the point that there are no goods distributed through value and distribution takes place entirely upon need. At this point it can be said that at least the lower phase of Communism has been reached.
Now I know that there are plenty of other schools of thought in the left including anarchists, left communists, and others who have another idea on how to establish socialism in Minecraft. So I thought it would be fun to try to create sketches of what a transition to Communism in minecraft might look like for each of the schools of thought and to test them out on a minecraft server. Since I realize that this will take a long time to organize the game won't actually start until July (actual date pending).