Possession in Communism

[VCrakeV]

In a communist society, at which point is a line drawn between public domain and personal items? Would a person in such a society own a house/apartment? A room? At least their own bed?

What about food? Do I go to a store and just grab some food to store in my own house/apartment/room? Or would it be like college, and I just go to the cafeteria for my meals?

What about utilities, like personal hygiene items, recreational tools, and so on?

[Theta Sigma]

Entirely depends on the communist ideology.

To try to answer your questions in a general basis:

1. Each person would have afforded to them the basic needs in order for them to survive, that is, each person would have food, clothing, shelter etc. Housing would not be predicated on rarity as it is now, whereby the house is not an abode, rather, it is a 'living machine' with no true connection to the occupant. Of course, you would be able to have your own possessions, but there would not be the same need for 'security' or the storage of commodities as there is now, because theft (as we know it) would be completely unnecessary.

Anarcho-communism would have a communal food store whereby everybody would take what they need.

Same goes for utilities.

Read Minima Moralia by Theodor Adorno.

[Red Economist]

In a communist society, at which point is a line drawn between public domain and personal items? Would a person in such a society own a house/apartment? A room? At least their own bed?

What about food? Do I go to a store and just grab some food to store in my own house/apartment/room? Or would it be like college, and I just go to the cafeteria for my meals?

What about utilities, like personal hygiene items, recreational tools, and so on?

In a communist society, the means of production are owned collectively. So a factory or office space would be owned collectively.

In practice, this can overlap so drawing the line between communal and personal property is defined by 'use'. So, if you have a really big house- you might end up sharing with some other people.

In a communist utopia, the 'family' has been abolished (because the institution of marriage is a product of private property rather than natural sexual feeling) and so having a 'private' residence (your own house) may be a thing of the past. you'll still get your own room. So in theory- you may end up in a cafeteria.

personally, I don't see any reason why you should have to share your bed or toothbrush, so that would be personal property. But it does dependent on how coercive/collectivist the form of communism is. Some Authoritarian and militaristic visions for communism end up like being a barracks- but this is pretty extreme. really this is about how the boundary between the individual and society is defined; some conceptions of communism would give you more personal space and property than others. so it very much depends on the kind of people your with and what kind of society they would jointly create.

[Sinister Intents]

In a communist society, the means of production are owned collectively. So a factory or office space would be owned collectively.

In practice, this can overlap so drawing the line between communal and personal property is defined by 'use'. So, if you have a really big house- you might end up sharing with some other people.

In a communist utopia, the 'family' has been abolished (because the institution of marriage is a product of private property rather than natural sexual feeling) and so having a 'private' residence (your own house) may be a thing of the past. you'll still get your own room. So in theory- you may end up in a cafeteria.

personally, I don't see any reason why you should have to share your bed or toothbrush, so that would be personal property. But it does dependent on how coercive/collectivist the form of communism is. Some Authoritarian and militaristic visions for communism end up like being a barracks- but this is pretty extreme. really this is about how the boundary between the individual and society is defined; some conceptions of communism would give you more personal space and property than others. so it very much depends on the kind of people your with and what kind of society they would jointly create.

Beautifully said!! I'd like to add that homes and vehicles can be personal possessions, at least with how I've always interpreted this

[Blake's Baby]

Ask 10 different communists and I suspect you'll get 10 different answers.

All of them will start with 'it's futile to make to plans for communists society because we don't know what the working class will do, but...'

So, because I'm nothing if not predictable (and ultra-left) I'll say - my own judgement is that 'communisation' will be as extreme as possible.

To answer your specific questions...


In a communist society, at which point is a line drawn between public domain and personal items? Would a person in such a society own a house/apartment? A room? At least their own bed? ...

No. 'Ownership' classically implies 3 rights, which are 'usus, abusus, fructus' or the rights to use, abuse (destroy, alienate) and enjoy the fruit (products) of property. In capitalism, if I own a printing press, I get to chose who uses it, and can charge people to do so. I can destroy my press legally, and no-one can stop me. I own the fruit of that press, the things it prints.

I maintain that the only right we'll have as individuals is the right of 'usus' - if there is a community printing-press, we can use it. Without the other two rights, that's not 'ownership' in any meaningful sense. You don't 'own' the sea, but you can go swimming in it, ie use it.

So, as I think that the community would have a right to intervene if you decided to set fire to your house, room or bed, then I don't think you 'own' that either.


...What about food? Do I go to a store and just grab some food to store in my own house/apartment/room? Or would it be like college, and I just go to the cafeteria for my meals?...

Bit of both I suspect, and I think you'll also be in the cafeteria sometimes helping to make meals.


...What about utilities, like personal hygiene items, recreational tools, and so on?

You can go and get a toothbrush 10 times a day if you wish. Eventually, though, people are going to ask questions about what you're doing with all the toothbrushes. Are you worried that someone will take your toothbrush? This is a really weird bogeyman of the right. 'What's to stop the godless communists taking my toothbrush?' Err, the fact that I wouldn't touch your toothbrush with someone else's bargepole to be honest.

You have the right to use things. You have the right to use toothbrushes. You don't have the right to take all the toothbrushes and hide them from everyone else or set fire to them. So you don't 'own' them.

Is that relatively clear?

[Rafiq]

In a communist society, at which point is a line drawn between public domain and personal items? Would a person in such a society own a house/apartment? A room? At least their own bed?

What about food? Do I go to a store and just grab some food to store in my own house/apartment/room? Or would it be like college, and I just go to the cafeteria for my meals?

What about utilities, like personal hygiene items, recreational tools, and so on?

The point does not concern such things - Communism is not some kind of ascetic imposition upon society. Communism derives from our current way of life.

What must be evident to the working people - what should be evident is that the fruits of enjoying "Man's sacred right to property" are reserved for a rather significant minority of the population - or rather, that by merit of their condition enjoying these fruits is impossible, anyway. The civic man even, is therefore a property-less being in a society in which those unworthy by merit of their demographic, social and civil place as unique minorities to represent the lives of most living in our societies.

[Luís Henrique]

No. 'Ownership' classically implies 3 rights, which are 'usus, abusus, fructus' or the rights to use, abuse (destroy, alienate) and enjoy the fruit (products) of property. In capitalism, if I own a printing press, I get to chose who uses it, and can charge people to do so. I can destroy my press legally, and no-one can stop me. I own the fruit of that press, the things it prints.

I maintain that the only right we'll have as individuals is the right of 'usus' - if there is a community printing-press, we can use it. Without the other two rights, that's not 'ownership' in any meaningful sense. You don't 'own' the sea, but you can go swimming in it, ie use it.

True, but it doesn't address an important concern: to what extent will people be allowed collective or individual, or even exclusive, use of something.

In the example of the printing press, for instance, "we can use it", no doubt. Does that mean, however, that I can use it in combination with other users (so that we print a community or professional newspaper, for instance), or can I use it sometimes for my own purposes, with no questions asked? This, of course, becomes more relevant in the case of shelter. Will individuals/families/small groups be allowed exclusive access to residential facilities? That is, I imagine, the Great Fear that anti-communism imposes into people: the idea that their bedroom can be at any moment assigned to a different person, with them having to move elsewhere with no previous notice.

As you say, we have no idea of what people in a socialist future will or will not think better for them, but I think that these scary fantasies are merely fantasies. There is an important habitational deficit, which will have to be meted by expanding the supply of residential units. There is a big problem of imobiliary speculation, with a few individuals owning 20 or 200 individual residences for rent (and keeping some of them empty to manipulate prices), which requires expropriation and redistribution. There is a minor problem of a few families or individuals owning obviously overdimensioned residences (with three stories, sixteen bedrooms, a hundred square meters dining room, etc.), which will probably be handled case-by-case but having the ultimate transformation of these sumptuary residences into public facilities (libraries, museums, headquarters of community enterprises, etc.) But it comes to reason that knowing where to go each night for rest, or where to find someone else in the city, are good things in themselves, so that arbitrary, Kafkian relocations aren't something in the interest of either individuals or communities.


So, as I think that the community would have a right to intervene if you decided to set fire to your house, room or bed, then I don't think you 'own' that either.

It indeed has this right even in capitalist societies. You cannot set your own home at fire, even if it is an isolated house. Depending of the kind of residence you live in, you cannot keep some kinds of pets, or even pets at all. You cannot allow too much garbage, or still water, inside of it. Abusus is a quite restricted right at these days, generally limited to alienation or dereliction upon socially convened places. At most publicly supervised and licensed demolition is possible.


You can go and get a toothbrush 10 times a day if you wish. Eventually, though, people are going to ask questions about what you're doing with all the toothbrushes. Are you worried that someone will take your toothbrush? This is a really weird bogeyman of the right. 'What's to stop the godless communists taking my toothbrush?' Err, the fact that I wouldn't touch your toothbrush with someone else's bargepole to be honest.

Lots of (small) things are de facto common property in our very capitalist societies. Just imagine how toothpicks or drinking straws are managed in a shopping center: nobody cares about them, and we normally don't see people going into shopping centers to pick as many drinking straws they can from each restaurant there. It is usually assumed that you cannot make a personal fortune from such an activity; in the same way, it would be assumed, in a socialist society, that no one in their right minds would attempt to reignite capitalist accumulation by collecting toothbrushes.

Luís Henrique

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

I think possession is best left to priests and witch doctors.

[Blake's Baby]

Sorry Luis, quote function is down again.

I don't get what you don't understand. Unless you're just pretending not to understand.

'To what extent will people be allowed collective or individual or even exclusive use of something?'

Who is doing the 'allowing'? The community (of which you are part) administers everything. So, what is 'allowed' is 'allowed' to the extent that you and your fellow-members of the community 'allow' it to be 'allowed'. I don't see why you can't make a community newspaper. I don't see why you can't print something else even if it's just you. I can see why you can't stop anyone else using the printing-press.

As for shelter, well, if you live in a house with 5 spare bedrooms, and there are people sleeping on the streets because there are no more houses, then I'm damn sure that they're moving into 'your' house, whether you want them to or not. But as you say, case-by-case. If there isn't a shortage of housing then it's not a problem.

Pretty sure as long as your house isn't insured (in which case, it's a crime) and it isn't a danger to others, then you can set your house on fire if you want. But I may be wrong about that. Pets I think is slightly more complex but usually depends on different degrees of 'ownership' of (for example) ownership by many 'owners' of apartments in a block that is 'owned' by other people; in this case the ownership (and the control over what happens) are not total. But I know of no-one who owns their property outright who can't keep pets on it.

Quite true 'no-one in their right mind would attempt to re-ignite capitalist relations through the accumulation of toothbrushes. Ergo, if you seek to do so, you're not in your right mind and we have a responsibility to intervene. My point was more about taking a huge amount of a communal resource and denying access to others rather than 'selling' it back to them though. You don't 'use' 10 toothbrushes a day. You don't really use more than 1 a month. Is it reasonable for you to take 10 a day in this case? No, not to my mind it isn't.

[Slavic]

Honestly most of these possession questions will be ad-hoc decided by local communities. Until we all live in the fanciful scifi socialist future of fly cars and abundance for all; there will be communities which have different needs and concerns due to geological and demographic reasons. For this reason the level of personal ownership of certain goods may fluctuate.

A lot of these concerns are what Blake's Baby brings up with the Right's boogey man man of the selfish man in a socialist society taking everything that is free. Just look around you and you will see how this is a ridiculous postulation. No one in their right mind would take in excess goods for free for which they have no possible use for, and the ones that do, exist today; hoarders.

[VCrakeV]

So, as I think that the community would have a right to intervene if you decided to set fire to your house, room or bed, then I don't think you 'own' that either.

Is that relatively clear?

So, there'd be a room, for example, dedicated to me, but I wouldn't be allowed to destroy or ruin it in any way. What if I have been living there for years, and it was essentially "my" room; would I be allowed to customize/personalize it? Could I hang drawings on the walls, move around the furniture, and what not? Or would the rooms all be clones?

Another thing comes to mind; what about privacy? If I'm currently using a room to stay in, can I have sexual relations in there, knowing that no one would barge in on us? What if I'm upset, and need some alone time? Would I need an occupied sign, or would we have public-bathroom-stall-like locks?

[RedWorker]

I think that people would de facto own the houses they live in, along with everything they make use of. It's not like someone's gonna enter your house and start messing around or someone's gonna take your laptop in communism. The only thing which will really be destroyed is capitalist property - which already, today, exists only for a ridiculous minority of the population. A factory will be operated socially, a house not nor is there any necessity for this. Abandoned (for a long time) and new homes however may be turned into either homes for individuals/families/small groups or new social homes. There will probably exist a combination of both.

Everything which is natural to us will still be there in communism. There's no reason for anyone to doubt this. Actually, what will mostly change will be the artificial.

[MarxSchmarx]

Capitalism has a wonderfully efficient, if crude, method of tracking ownership: did you pay for it? and can you sell it?

For instance, I can sell the dumbbells I bought but never used. In this sense, under capitalism, I own the dumbbells.

An analogous criteria for socialism is: was it deducted from the value of the labor I provided? Would I be able to exchange it, of my own free will, for something of comparable value to the labor I expended to obtain it.

Let me make this concrete. Suppose I earn 10000 USD a year under capitalism for 350 days work, and my dumbbells that are collecting dust cost 50 USD. The value of my labor under capitalism is probably higher, lets say 15000 USD, but the 5000 USD gets skimmed off the by capitalist (i.e., is surplus value). Therefore, relative to the value of my labor, the dumbbells would have been "consumed" from the economy for 50/15000 USD, or approximately 1.2 days of labor. Now suppose it would take me about 15 mins to collect a bushel of bananas, and with economies of scale a bushel of bananas in my kitchen comes from about 1 USD or 30 mins of work. It therefore seems I should be able to exchange the dumbbells for 50 banana bushels. The key difference with socialism as opposed to capitalism is: No more, no less.

Now it is true that technology might improve so that producing and delivering a dumbbell comes to a cost akin to a bushel of bananas. But the point is I can't speculate on this happening, which is what the capitalist accounting system, based on currency and its relative scarcity, as well as marginal value decision making, permits.

TL;DR labor credits

As to how this will look like after socialism (i.e., under communism), we should let the socialist development process play out and see what emerges. One step at a time.

[Palmares]

I think possession is best left to priests and witch doctors.

As long as I don't get in trouble for smokin' da reefer.

That's what I thought this thread meant by "possession" when I first read the title... :o

[ckaihatsu]

Okay, I gave everyone a little head-start with this thread, but here I am, and now I'm actually *in your house* as you read this -- if you count pixels as being an extension of personhood, that is. (grin)





Who is doing the 'allowing'? The community (of which you are part) administers everything. So, what is 'allowed' is 'allowed' to the extent that you and your fellow-members of the community 'allow' it to be 'allowed'. I don't see why you can't make a community newspaper. I don't see why you can't print something else even if it's just you. I can see why you can't stop anyone else using the printing-press.





[T]o what extent will people be allowed collective or individual, or even exclusive, use of something.

In the example of the printing press, for instance, "we can use it", no doubt. Does that mean, however, that I can use it in combination with other users (so that we print a community or professional newspaper, for instance), or can I use it sometimes for my own purposes, with no questions asked? This, of course, becomes more relevant in the case of shelter. Will individuals/families/small groups be allowed exclusive access to residential facilities? That is, I imagine, the Great Fear that anti-communism imposes into people: the idea that their bedroom can be at any moment assigned to a different person, with them having to move elsewhere with no previous notice.

As you say, we have no idea of what people in a socialist future will or will not think better for them, but I think that these scary fantasies are merely fantasies. There is an important habitational deficit, which will have to be meted by expanding the supply of residential units.


(Agreed that the crux of the matter is whether there's abundance / availability or not, and that any scarcity or shortfalls can be remedied by increasing social production.)


---





Who is doing the 'allowing'? The community (of which you are part) administers everything. So, what is 'allowed' is 'allowed' to the extent that you and your fellow-members of the community 'allow' it to be 'allowed'.





[R]eally this is about how the boundary between the individual and society is defined; some conceptions of communism would give you more personal space and property than others. so it very much depends on the kind of people your with and what kind of society they would jointly create.


This is fine as a kind of *placeholder*, but here's a thought-experiment, for the sake of argument:

What if someone was used to living in a room that's full of family heirlooms, which also happen to have world-historical significance from before the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism -- ? It would be a bed, paintings, tables, chairs, rugs, etc. -- all made of the finest artistry and workmanship -- and now, without having personally offended anyone that person wants to take occasional trips to other places and wants to return to find those personal possessions unscathed.

What if the room was rather sizeable, the number of objects rather numerous, was located in a fairly large building (mansion), and a certain upkeep / maintenance was required on a regular basis just to prevent undue deterioration and/or incursions -- ?

Should that person have a kind of special / privileged access to that room for their entire lifetime, no matter how long they may unexpectedly be away on travel? Should collective resources, even liberated-labor, be allocated to the room's upkeep while the person is away? What if the person was more on the elderly side of their years and couldn't properly tend to all of the duties of upkeep while they were present? And, finally, what special privileges, if any, should their *descendants* have to that room?

I'll even go so far here with a *second* line of argumentation as to cast doubt on my political credentials in the eyes of some....

Consider that, post-revolution, there could be varying use-cultures among various geography-specific communal groupings -- some might set the boundary between individual and society fairly tightly so that personal sentiment isn't favored, and so that almost all efforts would be additions to the collective enterprise.

But *other* groupings, on the other hand, might be fairly *tolerant* of individual self-determination, and would give each person a *wide latitude* over the direction of their own efforts.

Could there, over time, develop a kind of inter-factional / 'tribal' conflict based on 'personality differences' among these varying cultures, as over how to generalize production on larger scales -- ?

If, in the event of something catastrophic and unpreventable like a meteor that comes crashing through the earth's atmosphere, would the-grasshopper-and-the-ant narrative come to the fore, to socially horrendous results -- ?

[ckaihatsu]

Now it is true that technology might improve so that producing and delivering a dumbbell comes to a cost akin to a bushel of bananas.


This material-valuation situation highlights the *shortcoming* of almost all existing communist-type political-economy approaches -- either materials are *not* valuated at all, in which case all liberated labor is necessarily sheerly voluntary, with free-access products, or else all material valuations must be *socially* determined, as by a specialized bureaucratic apparatus, that may very well assign valuations, per-item, that do not correctly correlate to actual material quantities.


Pies Must Line Up

http://s6.postimg.org/5wpihv9ip/140415_2_Pies_Must_Line_Up_xcf_jpg.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/erqcsdyb1/full/)





But the point is I can't speculate on this happening, which is what the capitalist accounting system, based on currency and its relative scarcity, as well as marginal value decision making, permits.


We can -- and do -- readily dismiss the capitalist accounting system because of the artificial scarcity it produces, relative to actual-existing quantities, but the currency system itself allows for a universal flexibility in exchanges among products and services of all kinds. It's this kind of arbitrary, self-directed choice-making over consumption items that the currency system allows, through 'prices', however fundamentally flawed, exploitative, and oppressive it may be.

Communist-type approaches, as I've already mentioned, attempt a 'hands-on' approach to material valuations as a replacement for 'prices', but such a task will always remain too complicated and unwieldy, as seen in the graphic above.





TL;DR labor credits


It'll still be here whenever you're ready for it....





A post-capitalist political economy using labor credits




http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?bt=14673

[Red Economist]

What if someone was used to living in a room that's full of family heirlooms, which also happen to have world-historical significance from before the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism -- ? It would be a bed, paintings, tables, chairs, rugs, etc. -- all made of the finest artistry and workmanship -- and now, without having personally offended anyone that person wants to take occasional trips to other places and wants to return to find those personal possessions unscathed.

What if the room was rather sizeable, the number of objects rather numerous, was located in a fairly large building (mansion), and a certain upkeep / maintenance was required on a regular basis just to prevent undue deterioration and/or incursions -- ?

Should that person have a kind of special / privileged access to that room for their entire lifetime, no matter how long they may unexpectedly be away on travel? Should collective resources, even liberated-labor, be allocated to the room's upkeep while the person is away? What if the person was more on the elderly side of their years and couldn't properly tend to all of the duties of upkeep while they were present? And, finally, what special privileges, if any, should their *descendants* have to that room?

ok- a fair number of questions in here. Again- I would point out it really depends on the kind of communists you're with. The ultra-authoritarians would say "no!", and more libertarian one might allow it because they respect that person's rights and don't expect them to change overnight to fit in with the revolutionary order.

if it was me- It sounds like a palace/mansion, so I'd turn it into public property and either make it communal (with this person have some rights to the property) or else turn it in a museum- in which case person X would live somewhere else... and maybe keep some of their stuff for sentimental value [I might turn them out of what is now the 'peoples house', but I'm not a complete asshole.:grin:]. if this person was elderly... I'm not fussed. I might even let them stay there for the rest of there natural lives...

either way- it would be maintained at some collective cost.. unless a democratic decision is made to tear it down. it's communism. all things (good and bad) are possible.

If you can find out what the Bolsheviks did with the Tsar's old palaces- that might answer your question better as to what happened 'last time' commies got hold of large estates?


Consider that, post-revolution, there could be varying use-cultures among various geography-specific communal groupings -- some might set the boundary between individual and society fairly tightly so that personal sentiment isn't favored, and so that almost all efforts would be additions to the collective enterprise.

But *other* groupings, on the other hand, might be fairly *tolerant* of individual self-determination, and would give each person a *wide latitude* over the direction of their own efforts.

Could there, over time, develop a kind of inter-factional / 'tribal' conflict based on 'personality differences' among these varying cultures, as over how to generalize production on larger scales -- ?

If, in the event of something catastrophic and unpreventable like a meteor that comes crashing through the earth's atmosphere, would the-grasshopper-and-the-ant narrative come to the fore, to socially horrendous results -- ?

The key phrase in this is 'personality differences' which is a way of ascribing the differences in balancing personal and communal property as a 'trait'- a variation on the human nature argument in terms of a 'trait' theory of personality.
Your right that there could well be variations, but this is not solely the product of cultural differences- but would be based in economic differences too. i.e. I don't think it be so 'fixed' that you get clashes, but you get regional variations in the system.


I'll even go so far here with a *second* line of argumentation as to cast doubt on my political credentials in the eyes of some....

we're all products of a capitalist society. I'm not secretly gathering information on the people I would purge...

or am I? :sneaky:
(I had to look up the Ant and the Grasshopper: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ant_and_the_Grasshopper)

This is again another slight variation on the human nature argument, that moral qualities are independent of socioeconomic realities. But yeah, it is possible; "he who does not work, neither shall they eat" should ring a bell?

But to be honest- you could 'condition' the grasshopper out of that behavior in time. it is certainly true that the extent of alienation diminishes how much we enjoy work and therefore the intrinsic motivation to do it.

Or else... "Ants of the world unite and Feast on your Grasshopper overlords! Eat the rich! eat the rich! eat the rich!....."

yeah. cannibalism. that's fairly nightmarish.... ;)

[ckaihatsu]

ok- a fair number of questions in here. Again- I would point out it really depends on the kind of communists you're with. The ultra-authoritarians would say "no!", and more libertarian one might allow it because they respect that person's rights and don't expect them to change overnight to fit in with the revolutionary order.


I don't even necessarily mean to take sides within the context of this scenario -- rather, I see the decisions made in light of this very real possibility, and/or variations of it, to be inherent trade-offs of material aspects.

If the 'sanctity' of the historical and/or artistic qualities are valued, then the past as represented by the objects of the room and the room itself, will be something of a *burden* on the revolutionary movement and its aspirations to a new social order and culture.

If the 'sanctity' of the historical and/or artistic artifacts are *not* so valued, then they will have to at least be abandoned, to make way for the revolutionary movement and its new social order and culture. (My reasoning being that people have finite time and attention, so more time spent on artifacts means more cumulative / mass attention on that, instead of on revolutionary-political matters, going-forward.)

Also, as a sidenote, I find it interesting that you put communists on a continuum of relative authoritarianism -- the *political* side of things -- instead of basing the subsets on *economics* instead.

Certainly entity-groupings would be circumscribed and defined by the actual collective decision-making of the same, but, since communism has yet to be brought around, we might do better to conceptualize communistic entities on more of an *economic*, *productive* basis, rather than on a summarily authoritarian, political one.

So, to revisit the scenario on more of a material / economic basis, the room and all of its belongings could very well be *abandoned* and left to nature, unless special efforts were made on the part of those concerned -- like the family-member -- to preserve and/or use it in an active capacity.





if it was me- It sounds like a palace/mansion, so I'd turn it into public property and either make it communal (with this person have some rights to the property) or else turn it in a museum- in which case person X would live somewhere else... and maybe keep some of their stuff for sentimental value [I might turn them out of what is now the 'peoples house', but I'm not a complete asshole.:grin:]. if this person was elderly... I'm not fussed. I might even let them stay there for the rest of there natural lives...

either way- it would be maintained at some collective cost.. unless a democratic decision is made to tear it down. it's communism. all things (good and bad) are possible.


I would tend to say the exact same thing myself.





If you can find out what the Bolsheviks did with the Tsar's old palaces- that might answer your question better as to what happened 'last time' commies got hold of large estates?


Good call -- I'll see what I may look into regarding that.





The key phrase in this is 'personality differences' which is a way of ascribing the differences in balancing personal and communal property as a 'trait'- a variation on the human nature argument in terms of a 'trait' theory of personality.


It *can* be, but the way *I'm* using it is as a *generalized value judgment* of a communal grouping -- so 'personality' becomes 'group characteristic', of its own, and is *not* derived from an a-priori, idealist 'human nature' "quality".





Your right that there could well be variations, but this is not solely the product of cultural differences- but would be based in economic differences too. i.e. I don't think it be so 'fixed' that you get clashes, but you get regional variations in the system.


*This* part of what you're saying contradicts the previous part and also confirms what *I'm* saying -- there would most likely be qualitative variations, or varying characteristics, based on differences in how material quantities are handled (economics), per grouping.





we're all products of a capitalist society. I'm not secretly gathering information on the people I would purge...

or am I? :sneaky:


Spooky! (grin) You're early for political Halloween -- !





(I had to look up the Ant and the Grasshopper: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ant_and_the_Grasshopper)

This is again another slight variation on the human nature argument, that moral qualities are independent of socioeconomic realities. But yeah, it is possible; "he who does not work, neither shall they eat" should ring a bell?


So you're again confirming that qualitative-type characterizations can be based either in moralistic- / idealism-type absolutes, or could be derived from materialist / socioeconomic realities.

If we take my grasshopper-or-the-ant scenario to be potentially based in *actual real-world conditions*, then we arrive at the conclusion I already posited -- that there *could* possibly be faction-like / 'tribal' differences in how materials are collectively administrated, varying by each geography-specific grouping. Any such schisms like this would cut *against* potential generalizations of productive activity, for greater efficiencies of scale.





But to be honest- you could 'condition' the grasshopper out of that behavior in time. it is certainly true that the extent of alienation diminishes how much we enjoy work and therefore the intrinsic motivation to do it.

Or else... "Ants of the world unite and Feast on your Grasshopper overlords! Eat the rich! eat the rich! eat the rich!....."

yeah. cannibalism. that's fairly nightmarish.... ;)


Fun.

Look out, Jon Stewart -- !

[ckaihatsu]

"[H]e who does not work, neither shall they eat" should ring a bell?


Not sure if you're actually *advancing* this or not, but if you are, I have a position that's *contrary* to the principle of it:





'How would an individual obtain goods in a feasible post-capitalist social order, in a socially acceptable way, without having to work.'





And, to address this, my conception of such a social order *would* readily allow individuals to receive goods *without* providing work themselves, *because of* the existence of machinery that doesn't require much work-effort input to produce mass quantities of manufactured goods.

Here's the "proof", in steps:





Material function

consumption [demand] -- All economic needs and desires are formally recorded as pre-planned consumer orders and are politically prioritized [demand]




Determination of material values

consumption [demand] -- Basic human needs will be assigned a higher political priority by individuals and will emerge as mass demands at the cumulative scale -- desires will benefit from political organizing efforts and coordination




Ownership / control

communist administration -- All assets and resources will be collectivized as communist property in common -- their use must be determined through a regular political process of prioritized demands from a locality or larger population -- any unused assets or resources may be used by individuals in a personal capacity only




Infrastructure / overhead

communist administration -- Distinct from the general political culture each project or production run will include a provision for an associated administrative component as an integral part of its total policy package -- a selected policy's proponents will be politically responsible for overseeing its implementation according to the policy's provisions




Propagation

labor [supply] -- Workers with past accumulated labor credits are the funders of new work positions and incoming laborers -- labor credits are handed over at the completion of work hours -- underfunded projects and production runs are debt-based and will be noted as such against the issuing locality




http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=1174





So, in brief, this means that any one person's demands would only be their own, but, depending on what's demanded, they may resonate with the same, or similar, demands of many others.

If the goods that someone wanted were commonly demanded and routinely produced then it would just be a matter of making sure that the number of units produced would be adequate to satisfy one's own personal requirements -- I'd imagine this would simply be an administrative matter of contacting those whose policy package it is that's actively in use, to have production bumped-up accordingly. I doubt that additional labor credits would have to be considered for this, since you're only one person, and the additional production to cover one person would be negligible.

So we can see that the key variable here is 'which goods'. If the request / demand can be satisfied with already-existing mass production, then there you have it -- no work needed on your part, and you get what you want, subject to the real-world political process.

The downside is that it *would* still require you to be part of a *social-political* process, since the context is a *political economy*, unless regular practices included producing significant surpluses of whatever, for those like yourself to just find and take from.

At *worst* you might have to deal in a more-involved way with those whose policy package is being used, to have it favorably amended, and/or to deal with the liberated laborers themselves, to ask them to run a larger batch, for your personal benefit.