When is it time for retirement?

[pusher robot]

How do proposed communist societies determine when retirement is "earned?" Do you think there should be a set age - say, 70 - beyond which nobody would be required (or permitted?) to work? What if a person wishes to work extra hard in their early years so that they can retire sooner? Without the ability to save, doesn't this become impossible?

Or would people simply be expected to work until they are dead? Or permitted to quit whenever they "felt like it?"

[Bud Struggle]

Communist El Supremos tend to die in office.

No retirement for Communists.

[RGacky3]

As soon as possible, or when its nessesary, although probably older ones would probably do less work, I don't think the concept of work will be the same, i.e. 9 to 5, the work thats nessesary will be taken care of by the community, and they'll decide on that.

[Red October]

Communist El Supremos tend to die in office.

No retirement for Communists.

Fidel?

Anyway, in a communist (stateless, classless) society, work would be distributed fairly, resulting in less work. Automation would also eliminate tons of work. The goal is to eventually do away with as much work as possible. As Harry Hooton said, Enter away message"Machines need no wages. Moreover, they need no bureaucracy -- no manpowers, police, clerks, snivel servants -- to drive them to work. The technicians abolish the State, as we know it, simply by abolishing us -- as slaves."

[Dean]

How do proposed communist societies determine when retirement is "earned?" Do you think there should be a set age - say, 70 - beyond which nobody would be required (or permitted?) to work? What if a person wishes to work extra hard in their early years so that they can retire sooner? Without the ability to save, doesn't this become impossible?

Or would people simply be expected to work until they are dead? Or permitted to quit whenever they "felt like it?"

It's hard to describe how an unregulated society would regulate people's quitting time. I could just say that people would quit when they want, but that doesn't describe anything except the basic thesis of the social theory. So I guess I would reiterate my point from the thread Socialist18 made, adding that the society meetings would likely encourage a healthy retirement age, and include the individuals in discussion and debate so that they can explain themselves. The perceived problem of laziness should not exist as a large phenomenon when people have no one but themselves to blame for shortages. That is, when society as a whole takes on responsibility in active, associative discussion and activity, it becomes a distinctly social activity to be shiftless. There is no reason that people would meet together in an open, analytical atmosphere and decide to doom themselves to stagnation and poverty.

[Axel1917]

It is going to largely depend on the given state of the development of the productive forces, and I suppose it is not theoretically ruled out that retirement age could come sooner as these productive forces are more advanced (even for the transitory phase of socialism to exist, the level of productive forces must be higher than those of even the most powerful capitalist nations of today.).

I would say that a good retirement age for a transitional demand would be voluntary retirement at the age of 55 with full benefits for those that do retire, and this is largely based on the current level of the productive forces.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Technocrats presented 45 (http://www.technocracy.org/Technocracy%20and%20%20Peak%20Oil.htm) as the standard retirement age back in the 1930s, coupled with two and half months vacation per year and 16 hour work weeks. People would enter the workforce at the age of 25, give or take a few years. This would surmount in 20 years of labor in any recognized field of one's choice. Currently the average American spends about 80,000 hours of his life devoted towards work. There would come a 80+% decrease.

This dramatic reduction in labor requirements for a single individual would result from:

- Eliminating one third of all existing labor markets where the job only exists to satisfy the state and money.
- Adopting personalized energy accounting as a replacement for circulating currencies. A lot of people live off of someone else's salary. Currently about ~50% of all Americans, including undocumented workers, hold a job - either part-time or full-time.
- Natural tendency for democratic firms to produce more than top-down firms.
- Elimination of unemployment
- Elimination of forced part-time work

Each sector, or possibly firm, would probably direct an age of retirement using the same formulas capitalist firms use (excluding profits) - demand from new job seekers.

For the inexplicable comment postulated about entrepreneurs taking more than 16 hours coming up with an invention - if there does come an invention which does take off - there can always be standards enacted by the firm, sector, and commune which would quantify an even bigger dip in required working hours based on [consumption, voting, what have you].