Obtaining commodities in a communist society

[TheWannabeAnarchist]

I'm new to Revleft. I don't know much about socialism and communism yet (more than your average bloke, but that's not saying much) and although I cannot say I endorse such a system, I can say that I want to give it chance. So here's my question:

In a capitalist society, when someone wants food, they go to a store. They hand the cashier their money and in return they get their bag of donuts.

How does one obtain a product like that in a communist world? Do "stores" exist at all in communism? (I know there's no monetary system).

Do you simply go to a collectively owned building, take out the food you want, and eat it? Are there limits on how much food you can take? Do you get to choose what you want to eat?

In short, how do people obtain products in a communist society?

[Fourth Internationalist]

Step 1: Go to store

(though not a store like we think of one today, as you said there is not monetary system)

Step 2: Take what you need

(because their is an abundance of resources due to production for use rather than profit, you can always go back for more which ends the problem of taking more than you need, selfishness, hoarding, etc.)

Step 3: Leave

(as you said, there is no money, so no need to pay, and unless there is say some sort of world-wide crisis with a shortage of food or other goods, and thus a temporary rationing system in place, there is no need to keep track of what you have obtained)

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

One note, there is no such thing as commodities under a Communist system. A commodity is something produced for extange value. By this I mean that when I go to work to pick apples I do not do it for the sake of picking apples, I do it for the money that I will get paid for it. Under Communism, labor will not be done for profit but the actual need of working people


(Note, I said capitalist instead of communist. Yes there are commodities under capitalism. Derp)

[Kalinin's Facial Hair]

Just to settle something here. There would be no commodities in a communist society. That is because a commodity is

A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference

but


Commodities come into the world in the shape of use values, articles, or goods, such as iron, linen, corn, &c. This is their plain, homely, bodily form. They are, however, commodities, only because they are something twofold, both objects of utility, and, at the same time, depositories of value. They manifest themselves therefore as commodities, or have the form of commodities, only in so far as they have two forms, a physical or natural form, and a value form.

The exchange-value prevails over the use-value. The exchange-value, as we know, is determined by the amount of socially necessary human labour spent on the commodity production; that is, abstract labour. Which is, for instance, a form of alienated labour that the communist society will do away with. Very vulgar explanation, but I probably can't do much better.


How does one obtain a product like that in a communist world? Do "stores" exist at all in communism? (I know there's no monetary system).


Do you simply go to a collectively owned building, take out the food you want, and eat it? Are there limits on how much food you can take? Do you get to choose what you want to eat?

In short, how do people obtain products in a communist society?

No, there will be no stores. At least not how we know it today. But then again, the answer is quite speculative, since we do not know how a communist society would be in its very details.

Probably (very likely, if not for certain), we would get as much food as we wanted and needed because production would be bigger than today (and 'we' already produce enough to feed everyone). As for the limits, they're not necessary because why would one take a 100 apples if one can only eat 15? To sell them? Stock them in case of zombie apocalypse? I don't think so.

[TheWannabeAnarchist]

Understood.

Apparently, there are two meanings of "commodity." One is an item to be bought or sold. The other meaning is simply a useful resource. Google it. I meant the second meaning; sorry about that.

[ckaihatsu]

The only thing I could ever potentially 'grumble' about, in any social context of revolutionaries, is that our theory-in-common is often not 'updated' for contemporary technological realities -- I think it would be worth the effort and imagination to *blend* the enlightened social relations (over mass production) that we advocate, with the mechanistic technological methods available today (and even with those of tomorrow).

So, post-capitalist social relations + industrial and digital technology = worldwide primitive communism on steroids, basically. If we care to posit any kind of anthropological ideal, meaning how most people would *want* to live, free of wage slavery and private ownership, we might wind up dispensing with domestication and even fixed locations *altogether*, in favor of a pure GPS-based sense of dynamic spatial arrangements, for everyone and everything.

Mass production, while obviously fixed to machinery and locations of natural resources, need not necessarily be on a conventional assembly line in a fixed large-building location. We might think of the productive process as taking place in a series of *stages*, with those stages being variously *distributed* over all kinds of geographical space, and even mobile, to the extents that energy (fuel) is freely available and usable for arbitrary point-to-point relocating.

So, for example, continual surveys of mass demand might reveal that a certain amount of pine lumber is needed in the vicinity, but that the pine will be processed much further, and in differing ways, depending on the various places requesting it. So, instead of a set Point-A-to-Point-B logistics that sources all pine from one spot, to then process all of it the same way, to then send all of it to 'Point B' for the next regular stage of bulk processing, we might instead see a more *diffuse* web of interconnections that *spreads* sourcing and distribution down to a per-log basis, thanks to current communications and tracking technologies.

This could all be transparent to the end user who has simply requested a new untreated shelving unit, but at the same time the user *could* access the back-information that traces the final product all the way back through all of its preceding nodes, even to exactly which tree(s) were used and when and where they were initially planted. Likewise, the requester may not be *retaining* the shelving for themselves, but may instead be another 'node' in the production process and life of the object, using craftsmanship to impart an artistic design onto the table, for others to use and pass on, indefinitely. A simple RFID-type chip in the body of the pine unit would give the object a permanent digital identity, linked to a database for all purposes of tracking and history.

So, in brief, we can always use the answer of 'stores' to ease our discussions with others, but we should ourselves consider how people might realistically deal with the production process, the natural or urban environment, and personal lifestyles along the way, using available technologies. If the (Calvinist) work ethic is an anachronistic relic imposed on us from centuries ago, how might we disentangle ourselves from that legacy and realize a mass productivity that meshes into more-individually-intentional kinds of lives and lifestyles -- ?