A question about anarchist communism

[gorillafuck]

In anarcho-communist society, is there a form of rationing or more controlled distribution of goods when they become too scarce?

[ZeroNowhere]

In anarcho-communist society, is there a form of rationing or more controlled distribution of goods when they become too scarce?
This would be decided democratically, presumably, and thus one couldn't give a definite answer on it. My preference would depend on the situation.

[georgestapleton]

If needs be.

[griffjam]

scarcity is a lie.

[Mister X]

scarcity is a lie.What a great response supported with facts!

How is scarcity a lie? If a flood destroys the years crops and there is not enough food for everyone would this be a lie?
Hey starving people, don't listen to your stomachs, it's all a lie!

[ZeroNowhere]

What a great response supported with facts!

How is scarcity a lie? If a flood destroys the years crops and there is not enough food for everyone would this be a lie?
Hey starving people, don't listen to your stomachs, it's all a lie!
Well, unless it's a flood of deluge-scale, we'll still have more than enough food for everyone.

[Mister X]

Well, unless it's a flood of deluge-scale, we'll still have more than enough food for everyone.

We are talking about an anarchist society here. Do you think that there will be simultaneous anarchist revolutions all over the world? That is impossible due to the variation of proletarian consciousness from country to country.
Therefore it is idealist to believe such thing(don't forget that both marxists and anarchists are materialists).

My point is that if there is an anarchist region lets say for example of the size of France. Can you guarantee that there will be no scarcity? Will scarcity be a lie in that situation?
Also let's go even further in our hypothesis. Let's say that the area is the whole of Europe. Will there be no scarcity on any good or service? Will there be an abundance of oil,metals, trees etc. So with that logic can we cut as many trees as we can't because there will always be trees? Don't forget that scarcity is a lie as stated before.

What I am trying to get across here is that people should think before they make statements like that because it doesn't help the person who is trying to learn.
Yes we want to advertise anarchism, marxism or whatever and make people understand that the society we are fighting for is better than this one but we should not fill them up with lies.

You can't just go about and say" in socialism/anarchism etc there will be raining cookies and milk" . Because when they start to think it over using their logic they will likely turn away , especially if they are new to this.

[gorillafuck]

I have one more question, but this one is pertaining to history. Was Anarchist Spain Anarcho-Communist or Collectivist Anarchist?

[Mister X]

I have one more question, but this one is pertaining to history. Was Anarchist Spain Anarcho-Communist or Collectivist Anarchist?




There was a region in Spain that was "anarchistic" but it didn't manage to abolish currency and create anarchism.
There was no anarchist Spain , just as there wasn't a socialist Soviet Union.
How can you achieve anarchism , or socialism under such terrible conditions? (Civil War, Backwardness etc)

[griffjam]

What a great response supported with facts!

How is scarcity a lie? If a flood destroys the years crops and there is not enough food for everyone would this be a lie?
Hey starving people, don't listen to your stomachs, it's all a lie!


that is a shortage not scarcity. scarcity is the lie that led to all previous economic systems and is still being used in capitalism. it has always been said that resources were always and would always scarce, so economics was created to "best distribute" a limited number of resources, that is the goal of all economic systems even a centralized "socialist" command economy. people thought "hey, if these resources are scarce why do we keep spreading them thinner?" and for a while the idea was floated around that gradually human population growth rates would slow down until 0 growth rate was reached (like in Britain now), but that meant there would also be no economic growth and therefore no need for a system to distribute resources when the distribution would remain the same. so the elites needed to come up with a solution. the chinese thought, "hey smaller population more resources for all right?" so they instituted the one child policy. but that came back to bite them in the ass right about... now. the 4-2-1 problem shows population limitings impracticability. so while they were doing that the U.S. was doing the opposite, making babies. the baby boomers allowed U.S. production to increase but now that is coming back as it was just a spike in birth rates not a steady rise so there are soon going to be a large generation of retirees with smaller generations of producers. so production is going to drop. so capitalism has backed itself into a corner, you see it, like all economic systems, needs constant, rapid growth or it would collapse. so they have thrown out malthusian theory and say as long as population grows, innovation will increase. which is why we can now grow enough food on a football field to feed 1000 people. some would see this as an achievement of capitalism and just another reason to keep it around when in fact in nullifies any need for not only itself but any economic system, past present or future.

you see it used to be said "that field can only grow so much so we must ration it, what is the best way to distribute it among the people?" so people would work and say "i worked this much and should recieve an amount" and soon your word of how much you worked was replaced with money. so then someone got the idea what if i fence of some land and charge people to work it? and it became so that you had to work to survive and by working you actually getting poorer. The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said 'This is mine,' and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.

then marx came along and said hold up, the system needs to be made fairer and wanted to go back to the way it was before the fences when people worked and reaped the benefits but he thought it would just d/evolve back into fences again so he created middle man to prevent this, governmental command economy. he failed to see that people just had to realize that there may be shortages at sometimes but as long as people worked and innovated supply would grow in the long run. and with a gift "economy" people could take what they please and give what they want. so, failing to see this, his idea was to make a centralized authoritarian force do what a market was doing. they both had the same goal, to distribute scarce numbers of resources most efficiantly, and with that goal the market would always be better.

but that task doesn't need to be done, since resources aren't scarce there is no need to create force, either capitalistic or buearcratic, to distribute them.

:thumbup:

[griffjam]

I have one more question, but this one is pertaining to history. Was Anarchist Spain Anarcho-Communist or Collectivist Anarchist?


it was anarcho-syndicalist... mostly. because of the war and the fact the unions were fighting so the people rallied around them, but more that the workplaces were anarchist, the people were which could be either anarcho-communist or anarcho-collectivist, and again because of the war and some others fighting the fascist not being anarchist, they had to issue a sort of currency which meant it wasn't anarcho-communist. but had they been at peace and free from Stalinist intervention, my theory is they would have gotten rid of the bosses (so no need for unions) and currency (making it truly communist) and become anarcho-communists which is obviously the goal. but how long it would have taken i don't know.

it's a moot point anyway, stop living in 1936. it's 2009. the shadow of the past holds the future hostage.


There was a region in Spain that was "anarchistic" but it didn't manage to abolish currency and create anarchism.
There was no anarchist Spain , just as there wasn't a socialist Soviet Union.
How can you achieve anarchism , or socialism under such terrible conditions? (Civil War, Backwardness etc)

there were anarchists in Spain therefore there was anarchism. why would filling arbitrary lines on a map be a requirement for anarchism? if your heart is free, you're free, and if you're free, the ground you standing on is liberated territory.

and it is under those terrible conditions that anarchism which is synonymous with socialism and communism, is most necessary.

[ZeroNowhere]

We are talking about an anarchist society here. Do you think that there will be simultaneous anarchist revolutions all over the world? That is impossible due to the variation of proletarian consciousness from country to country.
Therefore it is idealist to believe such thing(don't forget that both marxists and anarchists are materialists).

My point is that if there is an anarchist region lets say for example of the size of France. Can you guarantee that there will be no scarcity? Will scarcity be a lie in that situation?
Also let's go even further in our hypothesis. Let's say that the area is the whole of Europe. Will there be no scarcity on any good or service? Will there be an abundance of oil,metals, trees etc. So with that logic can we cut as many trees as we can't because there will always be trees? Don't forget that scarcity is a lie as stated before.

What I am trying to get across here is that people should think before they make statements like that because it doesn't help the person who is trying to learn.
Yes we want to advertise anarchism, marxism or whatever and make people understand that the society we are fighting for is better than this one but we should not fill them up with lies.

You can't just go about and say" in socialism/anarchism etc there will be raining cookies and milk" . Because when they start to think it over using their logic they will likely turn away , especially if they are new to this.
I generally use 'communism' to refer to when we have had a successful revolution nearly internationally, rather than just a French workers' state. In a DotP, of course there can be shortages. There probably will be, though hopefully nothing crippling.


so, failing to see this, his idea was to make a centralized authoritarian force do what a market was doing.
It wasn't, but alright then.

[griffjam]

It wasn't, but alright then.

However divided the old [social-democratic] labor movement may be by disagreements on various topics, on the question of socialism it stands united. Hilferding's abstract 'General-Cartel', Lenin's admiration for the German war socialism and the German postal service. Kautsky's eternalisation of the value-price-money economy (desiring to do consciously what in capitalism is performed by blind market forces). Trotsky's war communism equipped with supply and demand features, and Stalin's institutional economics -- all these concepts have at their base the continuation of the existing conditions of production. As a matter of fact, they are mere reflections of what is actually going on in capitalist society. Indeed, such 'socialism' is discussed today by famous bourgeois economists like Pigou, Hayek, Robbins, Keynes, to mention only a few, and has created a considerable literature to which the socialists now turn for their material.

Even Leninists acknowledge that the transition to Marxist-communism under the workers' state would use the market!