How do you maintain a communist society?

[Dristol]

So how do you maintain a communist society?

If there is no government, how do you ensure that things don't fall apart?

How do people go about obtaining jobs?

Are what we would traditionally consider governmental occupations in existence except without the ties to government?

How do you employ policing mechanisms to make sure people don't become greedy?

[rouchambeau]

Maybe you should check some of your premises (and grammar) first.

Try asking: Does society need government to "keep it in order"?

[Dristol]

Part of me actually thinks society does need government.

Although if people are cooperatively working together and are infused with the vision of society, then it might not be.

But it still doesn't answer the question.

[shorelinetrance]

I've been asking around for this, and no one gives me a concrete answer.

[Dristol]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 09:27 pm
I've been asking around for this, and no one gives me a concrete answer.
Yeah, I'd like to hear from someone who really has a good understanding of the proposed system.

It seems that when I have discussions with non-communist people they always harp back on how do you maintain this level of cooperation.

[Dimentio]

A government does not equal the entire social order, nay, not even the organs of society. The government is just the constitutional framework at the top. Instead of a state, we are discussing some sort of federation of autonomous communes.

Since 90% of all crime is economically-related, we could diminish police and security organs to the same level.

We could still have an integral communication system for a communist society, but it should be holarchic, not hierarchic. With such a communication system, I am obviously referring to departments. Since there is no money, we won't need bureaucrats, and the departments would thus be technical in nature.

Such a system could be called a "technate".

http://en.technocracynet.eu ~ Some proposals.

[LSD]

Who would work the factories? (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=48269)

[Dristol]

Equality doesn't mean uniformity, it just means equal access to the resources of society. How these specifics are portioned out and in what order shipments are made will be decisions for society to make. And they will undoubtably be based on the specifics of individual cases.

How does society make these decisions?

Blanket comments about society solving the problem do not fully address the question of how specifically things will be dealt with.

Does this mean that a group of people as members of society get together to solve each problem? Does the whole community get together? How do they solve the problem if there are disagreements? If people are assembling in vast quantities for each and every decision then how does anything get accomplished?



We cannot know the exact details of how it will work, but at this point in history, given what we already have, we can say with a reasonable amount of certainly that it can work.

It's too airy fairy to say that it will and can work if we don't have any mechanisms to explain how it will unfold. Saying that it will just be taken care of because it can doesn't answer the question.

Will we be using a country wide web forum to discuss and vote on issues? What if by chance a vote goes against the principles of communist society? Is it thrown out? If so does the voting really work?

One of the basic tenants of a communist society is for people to cooperatively work together for the greater good of society. Sort of like ants working together and doing what is necessary to further perpetuate the colony or in our case, country.

Is this what communism is all about?

If so, how do we instill the notion that individual sacrifices are ultimately beneficial to the community?

EDIT:


Well, in communism, everyone is "in charge" and so everyone bennefits.

How can everyone be in charge? That would mean that each of us makes decisions that stick. It seems to me that anyone in charge defeats the whole principle. It is not so much that everyone must be in charge than no one must be in charge.

I want to see a simulated roleplaying system where we try to portray what a day in the life of a communist society might be like so that I can understand exactly how these things will unfold.

[Aurora]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_democracy

[Janus]

If there is no government, how do you ensure that things don't fall apart?
There is still a government even without a state.


How do people go about obtaining jobs?
Jobs will be acquired based on interests rather than monetary necessity.

Most of your other questions have probably already been answered:

would communism work? (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=57360&hl=+maintain++communist++society)
life under communism (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=57720&hl=communis*)
communism (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=56866&hl=+maintain++communist++society)

[BreadBros]

Dristol,

Answering your questions about how things will be micro-managed or how specific societal functions will operate is near impossible. Presumably they will function through organized bureaucracies, likely elected. Common sense will be employed, so obviously, no, the entire society will not have to congregate to make minutae decisions but they will come together to decisions that effect everyone.

The problem with your question is that communism is not based on abstractly imagining a new societal system and deciding to implement it. Marxism hypothesizes that societal change occurs through the change and collapse of economic structures. So communism is the system that will result from the collapse of capitalism, which in turn will either become unsustainable due to the fact that it is no longer progressive (meaning it not longer offers the best possible economic opportunities to) the majority of people or because the ability of capital to expand markets and extract profit will decline and cause crises. At it's most basic core communism entails the collective ownership of the means of production, meaning that the capital invested into production will be collectively owned, erasing the need for wage-labor and resulting in goods that are produced for direct consumption instead of as commodities for sale in a market.

Of course, because Marxism hypothesizes that societal structures are the product of the economic structure, the social landscape will change also. There is probably too much on this topic for me to include here, but most theorize a significant expansion of freedom and the transformation of social relations from being mediated by commodities and the production/consumption process to more 'organic' personal relationships resulting in a greater sense of communalism.

To your question about the state: there is considerable debate but most here consider the state to be a product of a society that has is divided into classes. Our society has a capitalist class that makes a living off the profits from capital investment and a proletariat class that sells its labor to make a living and has wealth extracted from their production. The state essentially exists to mediate or keep social peace in this divisive economic landscape (thats a very simple explanation, you could delve much deeper, but the point is it's a product of class society). So if we erase classes (as Marx hypothesized communism would do) then much of the necessity for a state would go away. Of course chances are that there will remain a need for centralized action, whether it be as simple as record-keeping or more complex, so yes a government will continue to exist but not in the current form of a state.

Thats basically like...Marxism 101 there and hopefully that will show you where we are coming from and why it's difficult to answer questions that specific? Although, I must say, you are not the only one who is curious so others have gone in-depth with their hypothesizing, which you can read in the links Janus provided. Of course those are HYPOTHESIS and ultimately the structure of a communist society will be determined by those who build it, and not before.