Scottish Island Communist society

[The Idler]

I realise this is obscure and a bit of a long-shot but perhaps someone will know about this. I read in a Focus (popular science) magazine around January 1997 a paragraph on a fully-functioning communist society on a Scottish Island (I think one of the Shetland Islands). I think it was also something that worked for centuries and only ended in the mid to late 20th Century. Does anyone know any more about this as I am keen to learn more about it.

[The Idler]

Just been looking around and it might have been St Kilda.

[OneNamedNameLess]

I remember when you first posted this. I'm surprised nobody has taken an interest. Could you post some links mate?

[Dave B]

There is a link on Saint Kilda below;

http://www.abandonedcommunities.co.uk/page39.html (http://www.abandonedcommunities.co.uk/page39.html)


From what I think I know about it they did appear to work collectively as a kind of co-operative. However that was not so uncommon as described in the link below where Engels discuses the Scottish Clan and the Russian Mir system.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/01/russia.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/01/russia.htm)

In Capital Karl describes a kind of ‘primitive feudal system’, a bit like the original patriarchal clan system in Scotland where the community voluntarily supports the ‘Lord’ etc. And therefore it was not exploitation as everybody sort of agrees to go along with it as ‘mutual personal relations’.

A bit naïve in my opinion.

It is a bit dense I think but here goes;

Karl Marx. Capital Volume One, Part I: Commodities and Money, Chapter One: Commodities

SECTION 4, THE FETISHISM OF COMMODITIES, AND THE SECRET THEREOF




"Let us now transport ourselves from Robinson’s island bathed in light to the European middle ages shrouded in darkness. Here, instead of the independent man, we find everyone dependent, serfs and lords, vassals and suzerains, laymen and clergy. Personal dependence here characterises the social relations of production just as much as it does the other spheres of life organised on the basis of that production.

But for the very reason that personal dependence forms the ground-work of society, there is no necessity for labour and its products to assume a fantastic form different from their reality. They take the shape, in the transactions of society, of services in kind and payments in kind. Here the particular and natural form of labour, and not, as in a society based on production of commodities, its general abstract form is the immediate social form of labour.

Compulsory labour is just as properly measured by time, as commodity-producing labour; but every serf knows that what he expends in the service of his lord, is a definite quantity of his own personal labour power. The tithe to be rendered to the priest is more matter of fact than his blessing. No matter, then, what we may think of the parts played by the different classes of people themselves in this society, the social relations between individuals in the performance of their labour, appear at all events as their own mutual personal relations, and are not disguised under the shape of social relations between the products of labour."


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm)

He appears to backtrack a bit elsewhere, perhaps it is dialectical or maybe it was just previously concealed.


Capital Vol. III, Part VII. Revenues and their Sources, Chapter 48. The Trinity Formula




"……..where slavery or serfdom form the broad foundation of social production, as in antiquity and during the Middle Ages. Here, the domination of the producers by the conditions of production is concealed by the relations of dominion and servitude, which appear and are evident as the direct motive power of the process of production."



http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch48.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch48.htm)

There are better examples of communist societies given elsewhere;


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/10/15.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/10/15.htm)

The Shakers originated from Bolton on the outskirts of Manchester.

[Dave B]

As this seems to be quite a popular thread as far as views per post is concerned, I am providing a link to another article this time by Karl on the same topic of ‘archaic’ collective communes re Russia etc.

Their relation and interaction with capitalism and possibilities of them making a seamless incorporation into a socialist system. Etc etc

It is also interesting I think as gives a rare insight, in between the lines, into what Karl thought Communism was and for that matter what it wasn’t. EG.



"……… which capitalist production has undergone in the European and American countries where it has reached its highest peak, a crisis that will end in its destruction, in the return of modern society to a higher form of the most archaic type — collective production and appropriation."


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/03/zasulich1.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/03/zasulich1.htm)


.

[The Idler]

So is crofting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crofting) considered feudal? Or some other system?

[Blake's Baby]

Crofting's at root just a system of farming. It could in theory exist under most social systems. If you see, 'most' crofters are tenants, with inheritable tenencies. Others may be short-term tenants, some may actually own their own land, some may be co-operative farmers for all I know.

But as it wasn't actually set up until the 1750s, I'd call it a reaction to the capitalisation of the Highlands and Islands myself. I mean, there may be feudalistic social relations in parts of Scotland but it's part of the earliest capitalist economy (ie Britain) and evolved at a time that Scotland was being 'capitalised ' and 'proletarianised' by turning the traditional communities off the land and turning it over to extensive agriculture.

[Dimentio]

The funniest thing was when the island of Sark recently was forced to change from a feudal system into a democratic one, and the islanders had the audacity to elect the same feudal people as before, leading to a blockade from capitalists. XD