Opting out of communism?

A capitalist community would need more than just some sort of legal entitlement to some land; it would need a viable market to produce for, for starters.

I ask again - why would people want to buy something which could be got for free from a communist distribution centre? There is no way a price system can compete against a communist system of free access QED

Communism will deprive the market of the very oxegyn it needs to survive. Communism does not need to resort to force or coercion to ensure this outcome. Its intrinsic advantages from the standpoint of human self interest alone - why pay for something when you can get it for free? - is what will ensure that outcome.


An-cap speculations on the possibility of "capitalist enclaves" in a communist society have a hidden agenda. It is to elicit from communists an acknowlegement of the need to use state force to crush such capitalist enclaves and therefore to paint us as "statists". We dont need to rise to the bait.

Communism will be a completely stateless society and capitalist enclaves will not exist in such a society simply becuase the material conditions under which they might exist will no longer be present. And this will be a matter of people freely choosing that this should be the case. The very freedom they will enjoy will depend upon them making this choice.

This is perhaps a little too cut and dried. Yes ultimately it is true that you cannot "opt out of" capitalism as a global system unless you get rid of it as a global system. However, it is a fact that coextensive with the dominant capitalist relations of production today there are to be found qualitatively different kinds of production relations - some pre-capitalist in nature (e,g, peasant self provisioning production, forms of slavery etc), others possibly prefiguring a future communist society (e.g many communes - see, for example, Engels here on the subject http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...1844/10/15.htm) . Of course it goes without saying these are relative and limited in scope but this may change with the growth of the communist movement itself.


However while non-capitalist (albeit, subordinate) relations of production can exist within the framework of a global capitalist society, it does not follow conversely therefore that capitalist relations of production can exist in the form of enclaves within a non capitalist communist world

Such enclaves are not possible precisely becuase of the qualitative differences between capitalist relations of production and all other forms of relations of production in which the law of value does not operate and direct production for use predominates, Capitalism can only survive through expansion. Its self-expanding dynamic is intrinsic to the system itself and in order to expand it needs markets.

From whence does a market arise in communist society of free access and why would individuals want to buy something that they could get for free anyway? It makes no sense. This is the major stumbling block to the idea of capitalist enclaves in communism

I agree completely. In fact, I did mention in my previous post that there were pockets of non-capitalist production to be found around the world (perhaps only mentioning the scarcity-hit hunter-gatherer tribes still in existence was a little too short in scope).

I still stand by the fact that someone living within an active capitalist economic system cannot 'opt out' because they destroy the ties they have their only major social relation (the market), which would almost always end up with them being dead. I also said that someone living outside the social relations of capitalism (i.e. bushmen or Nepalese subsistence farmers) absolutely cannot escape it's influence.

Yes, in an absolute sense, no one can opt out of global capitalism precisely because it is the dominant mode of production. Even those tiny pockets of people not implicated in the money economy at all cannot escape the repercussions of global capitalism and its tentacles of influence that extend into even the remotest corners of the world

However, it is still worth making the point that despite the dominance of capitalism everywhere, contemporary global society is an admixture of productive relations and is far from being uniformly capitalist.

I recall reading an article some years ago on the extent of self provisioning food production in Africa. The long term decline in global commodity prices in the latter half of the 20th century coupled, of course with other factors such as internecine warfare and parastatal corruption, conspired to bring about a sharp reversal in the growth and share of commercial agriculture in farming. More and more food was being produced not for sale on a market but directly for consumption. I dont know to what extent this situation has changed recently with the extension of the role of agribusiness into domestic food production in many African countries beyond its traditional focus on cash crop exports . I would be interested to hear from anyone who has updated facts and figures on the subject....


There is also a lot of material about the extent of what is called the grey economy - comprising all those non-market non-monetised productive activities we get up to not only inside our own homes but in community projects and volunteer groups. In terms of labour hours expended, the United Nations Development Programme some years ago, calculated that roughly as much time is spent on unpaid work as on paid work (The North-South Institute Newsletter Vol.3, No.2 , 1999). The figure would be significantly higher in the so called Third World



I actually find it heartening and empowering from a communist perspective - that despite the insidious encroachment of the market on our lives, individuals are still able to savour the experience and warmth of direct unmediated human relations in their productive activities, unsullied by the cold calculus of money

You are rising to the bait. It doesn't matter how much you dance around the question. Your answer amounts to "no you wont be able to opt-out of communism, but you will have no rational reason to anyway".

Nope, Im not "rising to the bait" which in this context means acknowledging the need to resort to force to ensure that a capitalist enclave could not exist in communism. I am saying quite explicitly that no force will be required for that purpose. It cannot happen for the reason I specified - a viable market simply cannot come into existence in a society in which free access to goods and services is the norm. No one is going to pay for something (with what anyway?) when they could get it for free, are they now?


You talk of me "dancing around the question". How about you trying to directly answer the question I posed: how can a market exist in the context of a free access system and how, therefore, can a so called capitalist enclave possibly exist without a market to produce for?

There would be absolutely no utility for a market or monetary system in a society where goods and services are free and abundant. There's your answer. But that's not what the original question was about; it's asking if capitalists would be allowed any autonomy in under communism. If it suits you, for the sake of the hypothetical, assume that said capitalists are insane masochists who wish to practice capitalism for ascetic religious purposes. The answer is they couldn't because legal title to land and productive equipment is not recognized under communism.

No doubt there would be people who would want to play capitalist but who the hell would play the worker in the an-cap society? I don't think it could happen even if we let it.

Assuming that there would actually be a material incentive to opt out of a classless society (which I can't imagine there would be), the recreation of capitalist relations would require that common property is converted into private property once again, either by force or by the will of the community. Furthermore it also requires the existence of a section of the population that has no other means of securing a livelyhood than wage-labour, so the at least partial generalisation of private property and commodity production is a requirement as well. I think it's doubtful at best that a community would voluntary give up its land and means of production to a private individual as this would make it entirely subject to the will of this person.

So no. Property relations aren't a matter of will, they can't be established, reestablished or invented in a whim. By gradually eroding the contradictions between the individual and society as a whole (i.e. abolishing class society), the working class also erodes the material preconditions for class society. Class society is based on the premise that individual advance is at the expense of the collective, but in classless society the interests of the individual become identical to the interests of the collective. Of course that's hard to imagine in capitalism, where everyone is a potential competitor and where your own material gain necessitates the impoverishment of others.

Well the assumption all along here has been that capitalism would be less productive than communism, in this little pluralistic world we are imagining. Obviously this is highly contentious. If capitalists can provide better incentives than communists, workers might start to 'switch teams'. Assuming there wasn't a 50 ft high wall with barb wire stopping them, of course.

Free access, on one side (though this might in general be modified by forms of rationing - and here I need to add that rationing doesn't presuppose an institution which can be called a state), and on the other, wages and ridiculous oppression for the sake of primitive accumulation. Yeah, sounds great.

I'm with Malatesta, as quoted in my sig. Just to point out that that means no capitalism, neither state-capitalism, nor liberal capitalism, nor stateless capitalism ("an"-cap).

Legal title held but individuals to land and other means of production is NOTessential to capitalism. It is wholly possible for capitalism to be entirely operated by the state, for instance - state capitalism - something that both Marx and Engels recognised

Let me quote here something I posted on another thread - from Andrew Kliman - which is relevant in a way:


Everyone is entitled to define socialism however he or she wishes––including Karl Marx. The notion that socialism equals state planning, ownership, and control was alien to Marx’s conception of socialism. More precisely, it was alien to his conception of what he called communist society, both its initial phase and its higher phase.

Let me first address the issue of state ownership and control.

Of course, Marx called for the abolition of private property. But what makes property private, in his view, is not individual ownership, but the separation of the direct producers, workers, from the property they produce. Thus, in the German Ideology, he and Frederick Engels noted that “ancient communal and State ownership … is still accompanied by slavery,” and they referred to the communal ownership of slaves as “communal private property” (emphasis added).

In volume 2 of Capital, Marx wrote, “The social capital is equal to the sum of the individual capitals (including … state capital, in so far as governments employ productive wage-labour in mines, railways, etc. and function as industrial capitalists.” Similarly, in his notes on Adolph Wagner’s critique of Capital, Marx wrote that “[w]here the state itself is a capitalist producer, as in the exploitation of mines, forests, etc., its product is a ‘commodity’ and hence possesses the specific character of every other commodity.”

Most importantly, in volume 1 of Capital, he implicitly addressed the issue of what would happen if the state’s role as capitalist producer expanded to such a point that it completely crowded out other capitalists. He argued that the tendency toward monopoly, the process of centralization of capitals, “would reach its extreme limit … [i]n a given society … only when the entire social capital was united in the hands of either a single capitalist or a single capitalist company.” As Raya Dunayevskaya noted, Marx’s text implies that such a society “would remain capitalist[;] … this extreme development would in no way change the law of motion of that society.” Engels thus seems to have been stating Marx’s view as well as his own when he wrote, in Anti-Dühring,

“state ownership … does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. … The more [of them the state takes over], the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians.

http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative...ves-to-capital

My objection to the way you phrase the question of whether "capitalists would be allowed any autonomy in under communism" is that it seems to convey the impression that the absence of capitalist enclaves is something that would be ensured by force by virtue of the fact that wannabe capitalists would be denied legal title to land. That seems to imply some body - a state? - that abjudicates in the matter and decides that legal entitlement to land and productive equipment should be denied to these individuals.


That is not the way I see it at all . These wannabe capitalists would be free citizens of a communist society exercising common ownership over the means of production just like everyone else. Any scenario envisaging the restoration of capitalist relations of production ipso facto implies the imposition of private property - the sectional appropriation of means of production by some individuals and the corresponding alienation from those means in the case of others (as Klimans point about private property makes clear and as you acknowleged by accepting that capitalism cannot operate without private property).


Let us be clear then that it is not from a free and stateless communist society that coercive force would emanate. On the contrary it could only logically arise from those seeeking to impose their own private claims to commonly owned means of production in order to exclude others from ownership of these means.

In other words, capitalist enclaves if they were to hypothetically emerge in a communist society could only come about through the use of force - the forcible alienation of others from the means of production. Coercion would come in the first instance from those who wished to establish such enclaves and not from the mainstream communist society in which such ensclaves might seek to install themsleves


After all we both agree that a price system cannot possiibly compete against a system based on free access since no one is going to buy something that they can simply take for free in a communist society. Ergo, for a price system to establish itself in enclave fashion within a communist society requitres that such goods should no longer be made free at the point of access. That in turn implies the means of production are no longer commonly owned amd this could only have happened by force since why otherwise would people submit to an arrangmenent where they have tio pay for things when they could have got them for free in the first place?

Legal title held but individuals to land and other means of production is NOTessential to capitalism. It is wholly possible for capitalism to be entirely operated by the state, for instance - state capitalism - something that both Marx and Engels recognised

Let me quote here something I posted on another thread - from Andrew Kliman - which is relevant in a way:


Everyone is entitled to define socialism however he or she wishes––including Karl Marx. The notion that socialism equals state planning, ownership, and control was alien to Marx’s conception of socialism. More precisely, it was alien to his conception of what he called communist society, both its initial phase and its higher phase.

Let me first address the issue of state ownership and control.

Of course, Marx called for the abolition of private property. But what makes property private, in his view, is not individual ownership, but the separation of the direct producers, workers, from the property they produce. Thus, in the German Ideology, he and Frederick Engels noted that “ancient communal and State ownership … is still accompanied by slavery,” and they referred to the communal ownership of slaves as “communal private property” (emphasis added).

In volume 2 of Capital, Marx wrote, “The social capital is equal to the sum of the individual capitals (including … state capital, in so far as governments employ productive wage-labour in mines, railways, etc. and function as industrial capitalists.” Similarly, in his notes on Adolph Wagner’s critique of Capital, Marx wrote that “[w]here the state itself is a capitalist producer, as in the exploitation of mines, forests, etc., its product is a ‘commodity’ and hence possesses the specific character of every other commodity.”

Most importantly, in volume 1 of Capital, he implicitly addressed the issue of what would happen if the state’s role as capitalist producer expanded to such a point that it completely crowded out other capitalists. He argued that the tendency toward monopoly, the process of centralization of capitals, “would reach its extreme limit … [i]n a given society … only when the entire social capital was united in the hands of either a single capitalist or a single capitalist company.” As Raya Dunayevskaya noted, Marx’s text implies that such a society “would remain capitalist[;] … this extreme development would in no way change the law of motion of that society.” Engels thus seems to have been stating Marx’s view as well as his own when he wrote, in Anti-Dühring,

“state ownership … does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. … The more [of them the state takes over], the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians.

http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative...ves-to-capital

My objection to the way you phrase the question of whether "capitalists would be allowed any autonomy in under communism" is that it seems to convey the impression that the absence of capitalist enclaves is something that would be ensured by force by virtue of the fact that wannabe capitalists would be denied legal title to land and prpductive equipment. That seems to imply some body - a state? - that abjudicates in the matter and decides that legal entitlement to such land and productive equipment should be denied to these individuals.


That is not the way I see it at all . These wannabe capitalists would be free citizens of a communist society exercising common ownership over the means of production just like everyone else. Any scenario envisaging the restoration of capitalist relations of production ipso facto implies the imposition of private property - the sectional or private appropriation of means of production by some individuals and the corresponding alienation from those means in the case of others (as Klimans point about private property makes clear and as you acknowleged by accepting that capitalism cannot operate without private property).


Let us be clear then that it is not from a free and stateless communist society that coercive force would emanate. On the contrary it could only logically arise from those seeeking to impose their own private claims to commonly owned means of production in order to exclude others from ownership of these means.

In other words, capitalist enclaves if they were to hypothetically emerge in a communist society could only come about through the use of force - the forcible alienation of others from the means of production. Coercion would come in the first instance from those who wished to establish such enclaves and not from the mainstream communist society in which such ensclaves might seek to install themsleves


After all we both agree that a price system cannot possiibly compete against a system based on free access since no one is going to buy something that they can simply take for free in a communist society. Ergo, for a price system to establish itself in enclave fashion within a communist society requitres that such goods should no longer be made free at the point of access. That in turn implies the means of production are no longer commonly owned amd this could only have happened by force since why otherwise would people submit to an arrangmenent where they have tio pay for things when they could have got them for free in the first place?

there are no rules after the state is dissolved

1. Why might there be a need for rationing?

2. How might such rationing occur?

No. There would not be better incentives. Free wins all the time. The better incentives come from the direction of the consumer, not the worker. There is no reaon for the latter to work for the capitalist toilet paper manufacturer when the people's plant supplies all that is needed.

Due to concerns such as that of resource availability and management, coupled with the deleterious effect on the environment. This is one possibility.

How it might occur? I don't know. I suppose that the network of institutions whose function is to provide for the society wide planning process might put forward a program or distribution ("rationing") which would then be sanctioned.

1. In what ways might resources not be available?
I am unclear as to what "management" means in the your context.

2. So the workers in a particular industry will NOT be the ones deciding whether rationing is needed? Rather pre-existing institutions will due so.

3. Is the term "distribution" synonomous with the term "rationing" in the socialist community?

It is quite conceivable that some form of rationing for some goods might exists alongside free access for others. Marx somewhat unenthusiastically promoted the idea of labour vouchers as a form of ratioining in what he called the lower phase of communism. This would not constitute money since these vouchers could not circulate and would apply to all consumer goods. Labour vouchers would disappear and be replaced by free access in higher communism

I personally think the labour voucher proposal is bureaucratically unwieldy and morever that there is a need to discriminate between consumer goods in terms of their relative scarcity which the system of labour vopuchers does not allow for. That scarcity will be a function of decisions made at the point of production concerning the allocation of resources. One important consideration affecting this allocation process will be the perceived utlity of the end products in question. Where a particular factor is scarce it will be allocated according to what society itself considers more important among rival end products. High priority goods which will almost certainly be things like food, sanitation, decent housing etc will therefore tend to be produced in abundance and accordingly distributed on the basis of free access. Low priority goods, on the other hand, such as certain luxury items will as result automatically tend to be produced in quantities insufficient to meet consumer demand and here is where some form of rationing can come into play - in respect of these goods only


This is a rough and ready approach admittedly but it is important to have in place the basic insititutions that enable a resolution of the problem of allocation. It is the direction of decisionmaking that counts ; the precise destination of perfect allocation is always going to be something that will elude us under any system.

There is something about the likely mechanisms involved here

http://socialistcommonwealth.webs.co...capitalism.htm

In particular look at the article "The “Economic Calculation” controversy: unravelling of a myth

As for the process of rationing itself I favour one which disciriminates on the basis of the perceived quality of housing stock, using a points system. The advantage is that we already have such a system in place for the purpose of local tax collection. Housing stock is assessed on the basis of certain criteria and housing units are then placed in one of several bands. This system of physical assessment can be adapted to a communist society although of course there will be a no taxes to collect in such a society

Since housing is such a major component of one's quality of life and since a communist society at least in its early period will inherit huge inequalities in respect of the quality of housing stock which cannot quickly be eliminated, it makes intuitive sense to ground a system of rationing in quality of housing stock. Its what I call the "compensation model" of rationing. Those living in relatively poor quality housing stock can by way of "compensation" be granted priority access to rationed goods.

There are of course all sorts of ways in which this might be done but for the moment it is important to grasp the basic principle at stake