Opting out of communism?

[robbo203]

This implies that t.here is a 'distribution store' that has these pre-ordered goods in stock though. That implies 'someone' managing the stock in the store - ie, the commune/community.

I dont think that is what liberlict was getting at. He or she was implying that you first have to get some form of permission from the commune/community in order to get the stuff you want i.e that the commune/community directly polices the consumer habits of individuals. This is how I read his/her statement
In a communist society you have to run your requirements by the commune every time you want something". I think that idea is complete nonsense

[Blake's Baby]

I dont think that is what liberlict was getting at. He or she was implying that you first have to get some form of permission from the commune/community in order to get the stuff you want i.e that the commune/community directly polices the consumer habits of individuals. This is how I read his/her statement
In a communist society you have to run your requirements by the commune every time you want something". I think that idea is complete nonsense

I agree that if liberlict means 'you have to ask the community meeting every time you run out of toothpaste' then it's nonsense.

But the commune runs the 'store' - in that sense it's the commune's responsibility to provide the toothpaste, so you'll get it from the commune.

It seems pretty obvious that things like toothpaste and apples and bread and such like - whatever are the basic necessities - will be 'stocked' (or even 'stored') by the commune, so in effect there is an assumption that a certain level of these things will be needed (let's say per week) and the commune will 'automatically' supply these goods. But other things won't be, and I think requests for these will have to go through the commune directly. Probably. It may make a difference if it's something you need permanently or if it's something you're going to 'borrow' (a dialysis machine v a helicopter, for example).

[robbo203]

I agree that if liberlict means 'you have to ask the community meeting every time you run out of toothpaste' then it's nonsense.

But the commune runs the 'store' - in that sense it's the commune's responsibility to provide the toothpaste, so you'll get it from the commune.

It seems pretty obvious that things like toothpaste and apples and bread and such like - whatever are the basic necessities - will be 'stocked' (or even 'stored') by the commune, so in effect there is an assumption that a certain level of these things will be needed (let's say per week) and the commune will 'automatically' supply these goods. But other things won't be, and I think requests for these will have to go through the commune directly. Probably. It may make a difference if it's something you need permanently or if it's something you're going to 'borrow' (a dialysis machine v a helicopter, for example).

Yes thats correct and its why I have been banging on about the need to distinguish between different classes of goods. The great bulk of goods in my view - ordinary run-of-the-mill everyday items which we all need, from toothpaste to a bag of potatoes - will be "automatically" supplied as you say - though not necessarily by the "commune" itself (by which I take you to mean the "local community") unless you are advocating the extreme localisation of production which I dont think you do. It could very well be supplied by producers further afield. In fact, the uneven distribution of primary resources such as mineral ores alone makes that more or less inevitable.


This "automatic" process of supplying goods is what i call a self regulating system of stock control using calculation in kind which in my view is absolutely central to a communist system oif production and distribution. Indeed it is to any advanced industrialised society including capitalism, but in the case of capitalism you have another system of accounting that operates alongside calculation in kind - namely monetary account - which is the real determinant of what gets produced. In communism there exists only calculation in kind and it is our own self defined needs that determines what gets produced - not what can be sold at a monetary profit

A self regulating system of stock control goes hand in hand with the concept of communist free access - the one more or less logically entails the other. However there is another class where it becomes somewhat problematic to talk of straightforward free access by individuals acting on their own self defined needs and where some kind of institutional or community mediation may be required. The examples you give of a dialysis machine or a helicopter are cases in point. It will presumably be the local medical services that will seek to ensure the provisioning of dialysis machines on your behalf. You cant exactly turn up at your local store and ask for one! These community or institutional=based requests will constitute another layer of demand that will makes itself felt through the self regulating system of stock control and in fact will play a key role in determining the allocation of resources in conditions where you face resource bottlenecks and you have to decide which end use is to get priority. I would imagine insititituional needs such as this will get priority over purely individual needs

Of course this class of goods that you are referring to - like dialysis machines - is still concerned with what you as an individual need . But there is yet another class of goods which might be called public goods which are intended to serve the needs of many individuals as opposed to just one individual. I gave the example earlier of libraries and nurseries


So there are at least 3 different classes of goods that we are talking about here though the boundaries between them are not necessarily as sharp and clear cut as I have suggested. It could be case of one merging gradually into the other. In any event , we need to take all three of them into account if we want to develop a more sophisticated and nuanced model of decisionmaking in a communist society

[Baseball]

I dont think that is what liberlict was getting at. He or she was implying that you first have to get some form of permission from the commune/community in order to get the stuff you want i.e that the commune/community directly polices the consumer habits of individuals. This is how I read his/her statement
In a communist society you have to run your requirements by the commune every time you want something". I think that idea is complete nonsense

From each according to his ability, to each according to need.

How does the commune achieve this lofty objective? How does it allocate resources
f it is indifferent to the goods the people in its commune actually use?

[liberlict]

I agree that if liberlict means 'you have to ask the community meeting every time you run out of toothpaste' then it's nonsense.

But the commune runs the 'store' - in that sense it's the commune's responsibility to provide the toothpaste, so you'll get it from the commune.

It seems pretty obvious that things like toothpaste and apples and bread and such like - whatever are the basic necessities - will be 'stocked'

This seems obvious to me as well. Even allowing for the inefficiency of central planning/ stock control, I don't imagine things like toothpaste and shampoo would be hard to over-supply. But scarcer items would have to be rationed somehow.

[liberlict]

Two points

1) In capitalism you may want or need something but that is no guarantee at all that you will get it. Capitalism is only concerned with effective demand - demand that is backed up by purchasing power. As far capitalism is concerned a starving beggar has no need for food. The system is simply not geared to register or recognise our needs. These are only satisified incidentally or indirectly in the course of producing commodities with a view to making a profit. No profit means no production.


2) Who says "In a communist society you have to run your requirements by the commune every time you want something". If I want a bag of potatoes or a new toothbrush am I going to run it past what you call the commune? Of course not. The idea is balmy. Its a recipe for bureaucratic madness. What you do instead is you pop down to your distribution store and simply pick up the items in question without payment at all. Its what is called "free access". Collectively, all of us will be doing this routinely in a communist society and the information about what we are taking from the stores will then be transmitted to the suppliers of these goods - who will, of course, also be us as well since we will all be both producers and consumers - in the form of requests for more stoick. In that way the producers will have a pretty good picture of the pattern of consumer demand to guide their productive activity with a view to satisfying it.

Where it might become not only useful but vital to run our requirements past the commune is when we are talking about social goods or large scale projects. I dont find that in the least "scary". In fact how else are you going to solicit the cooperation of others to produce these sorts of things in the first place? Are you going to build a public library or a nursery school single handed?

Sounds lovely. Everything is free. But it's scarcer items that make it problematic. Health care? Yachts? Hard drugs? Iphone7? Bleeding edge plasma? How are you going to distribute these? Does a person have to work for them? To achieve equality you're going to have to match supply with demand in all cases, and give doctors and miners the same credit at the commune store as a person who sits on their ass and smokes pot today. Sounds great to me, mind you; I'd love to chill on my yacht in the French Riviera smoking weed all day, and just sail in to jump in my Lamborghini and drive to the commune warehouse to pick up some fresh supplies of weed and beer and pornography and potato chips before heading back out to sea. So I'm eager to be convinced. I'm just not convinced it can work.

[Blake's Baby]

Yes thats correct and its why I have been banging on about the need to distinguish between different classes of goods. The great bulk of goods in my view - ordinary run-of-the-mill everyday items which we all need, from toothpaste to a bag of potatoes - will be "automatically" supplied as you say - though not necessarily by the "commune" itself (by which I take you to mean the "local community") unless you are advocating the extreme localisation of production which I dont think you do. It could very well be supplied by producers further afield. In fact, the uneven distribution of primary resources such as mineral ores alone makes that more or less inevitable...

Yes, absolutely. 'Commune' is a bit abstract (they don't exist yet) but no I don't mean 'self sufficient community', I mean 'nexus of local community councils' - they could be factory councils or neighbourhood councils or something similar. But whatever the exact form of organisation, 'local community organised differently to how local communities are organised now'. It is the 'commune' I think that has the primary responsibility to its members to source stuff which is not locally-produced (and also to distribute the commune's production to other communes) so it is the commune as a whole that the individual applies to for satisfaction of wants. Suppled, not necessarily produced, is what I'm trying to get at here.

...
This "automatic" process of supplying goods is what i call a self regulating system of stock control using calculation in kind which in my view is absolutely central to a communist system oif production and distribution. Indeed it is to any advanced industrialised society including capitalism, but in the case of capitalism you have another system of accounting that operates alongside calculation in kind - namely monetary account - which is the real determinant of what gets produced. In communism there exists only calculation in kind and it is our own self defined needs that determines what gets produced - not what can be sold at a monetary profit...

But who sets up and manages this 'automatic' system? Who makes sure the electricity works at the 'store', who makes sure trucks go and pick up the necessary things to keep stock levels where they should be, who decides what levels of stock are appropriate and where it should be put? 'The Commune', I'd say.

...A self regulating system of stock control goes hand in hand with the concept of communist free access - the one more or less logically entails the other. However there is another class where it becomes somewhat problematic to talk of straightforward free access by individuals acting on their own self defined needs and where some kind of institutional or community mediation may be required. The examples you give of a dialysis machine or a helicopter are cases in point. It will presumably be the local medical services that will seek to ensure the provisioning of dialysis machines on your behalf. You cant exactly turn up at your local store and ask for one! These community or institutional=based requests will constitute another layer of demand that will makes itself felt through the self regulating system of stock control and in fact will play a key role in determining the allocation of resources in conditions where you face resource bottlenecks and you have to decide which end use is to get priority. I would imagine insititituional needs such as this will get priority over purely individual needs

Of course this class of goods that you are referring to - like dialysis machines - is still concerned with what you as an individual need . But there is yet another class of goods which might be called public goods which are intended to serve the needs of many individuals as opposed to just one individual. I gave the example earlier of libraries and nurseries ...

I gave the example of helicopters. My using a library or nursery (or a road, another similar example I was think of) wouldn't prevent someone else using it, in the same way that my using a helicopter would. One has to 'borrow' a helicopter from some sort of central transport pool presumably, as my guess would be that most communities (if you prefer) won't have an abundance of helicopters. But no-one needs a 24-7 helicopter so you'd borrow it and give it back to the pool.

...
So there are at least 3 different classes of goods that we are talking about here though the boundaries between them are not necessarily as sharp and clear cut as I have suggested. It could be case of one merging gradually into the other. In any event , we need to take all three of them into account if we want to develop a more sophisticated and nuanced model of decisionmaking in a communist society

Yeah, at least 3, arguably 4, possibly even more.

From each according to his ability, to each according to need.

How does the commune achieve this lofty objective? How does it allocate resources
f it is indifferent to the goods the people in its commune actually use?

What do you mean by 'indifferent'? If people use something (potatoes) get more. If people don't use something (poison hats) don't get them.

Why's that hard?

Sounds lovely. Everything is free. But it's scarcer items that make it problematic. Health care? Yachts? Hard drugs? Iphone7? Bleeding edge plasma? How are you going to distribute these? Does a person have to work for them? To achieve equality you're going to have to match supply with demand in all cases, and give doctors and miners the same credit at the commune store as a person who sits on their ass and smokes pot today. Sounds great to me, mind you; I'd love to chill on my yacht in the French Riviera smoking weed all day, and just sail in to jump in my Lamborghini and drive to the commune warehouse to pick up some fresh supplies of weed and beer and pornography and potato chips before heading back out to sea. So I'm eager to be convinced. I'm just not convinced it can work.

You do understand what 'from each according to his ability' means, don't you?

If we all sit around smoking doobie all day, nothing gets done. There are no yachts, there are no Lamboughinis, there's no petrol to put in them, hell there isn't even any weed. So, your weed-smoking lifestyle lasts about 4 days. Then you realise you actually have to help. The rest of society is not your mum. We're not going to wash your socks for you and pick up your shit. You have to be a grown-up.

[Blake's Baby]

sorry DP

[liberlict]

You do understand what 'from each according to his ability' means, don't you?

If we all sit around smoking doobie all day, nothing gets done. There are no yachts, there are no Lamboughinis, there's no petrol to put in them, hell there isn't even any weed. So, your weed-smoking lifestyle lasts about 4 days. Then you realise you actually have to help. The rest of society is not your mum. We're not going to wash your socks for you and pick up your shit. You have to be a grown-up.

If we all are lazy nothing gets done. If it's just me that's lazy, though, I just free-load and enjoy the life.

[Blake's Baby]

If we all are lazy nothing gets done. If it's just me that's lazy, though, I just free-load and enjoy the life.

I say again:

You do understand what 'from each according to his ability' means, don't you?

Robbo might disagree but I think 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs' means that if you don't contribute '... according to (your) ability' then you don't get '... according to (your) needs' either. And I very much doubt the commune will sign off on the yacht and the Lambourghini (or even the weed) if you do nothing to contribute. We're still not your mum.

[liberlict]

I say again:

You do understand what 'from each according to his ability' means, don't you?

Robbo might disagree but I think 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs' means that if you don't contribute '... according to (your) ability' then you don't get '... according to (your) needs' either. And I very much doubt the commune will sign off on the yacht and the Lambourghini (or even the weed) if you do nothing to contribute. We're still not your mum.

Yeah I get it. I just think there is too little accountability. I also doubt that people with high ability will be motivated to use it when they know they won't be able to keep more of the fruits of their labour from themselves and their children. It's a recipe for corruption and cronyism. The yachts most likely would go to the bureaucrats.

[Baseball]

I say again:

You do understand what 'from each according to his ability' means, don't you?

Robbo might disagree but I think 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs' means that if you don't contribute '... according to (your) ability' then you don't get '... according to (your) needs' either. And I very much doubt the commune will sign off on the yacht and the Lambourghini (or even the weed) if you do nothing to contribute. We're still not your mum.

Why would the.commune be in the position to sign off on a person getting a yacht? Use a yacht "get another" yacht. What is so difficult to understand?

[Baseball]

What do you mean by 'indifferent'? If people use something (potatoes) get more. If people don't use something (poison hats) don't get them.

Why's that hard?.

It is self-evident that a used sack of potatoes was a wanted sack of potatoes.
But it is not clear if it was a needed sack of potatoes.

The distinction between need and want seems to be of vital importance in a socialist community.

[liberlict]

I'd like to know how big the communes are going to be as well. There's six billion people in the world and counting. Presumably it's not going to be one big democracy, but a whole bunch of regional Soviets. How do you coordinate the distribution from more "able"/productive economic areas to less productive areas?

[robbo203]

Sounds lovely. Everything is free. But it's scarcer items that make it problematic. Health care? Yachts? Hard drugs? Iphone7? Bleeding edge plasma? How are you going to distribute these? Does a person have to work for them? To achieve equality you're going to have to match supply with demand in all cases, and give doctors and miners the same credit at the commune store as a person who sits on their ass and smokes pot today. Sounds great to me, mind you; I'd love to chill on my yacht in the French Riviera smoking weed all day, and just sail in to jump in my Lamborghini and drive to the commune warehouse to pick up some fresh supplies of weed and beer and pornography and potato chips before heading back out to sea. So I'm eager to be convinced. I'm just not convinced it can work.

Ah, yes, the old "luxury yacht" bogeyman/straw argument. Now why is it that i just knew this was gonna crop up? People who routinely bring it up do so almost in a manner of self conscious irony. Its their way of provocatively "testing the system" to its conceptual limits when they have run out of arguments. If necessary they will even volunteer themselves for the role of professional sponger who doesnt care a toss about others but insists on living out some kind of egoistic infantile fantasy dream. In reality of course they are nothing like the image they project - hence the irony - but, still ,its all grist for the mill when trying to argue the case against a rational communist society. The underlying assumption seems to be if its not perfect, its not feasible.


Well Ive got news for you, liberlict. If there did exist , in a communist society, hypothetical individuals such as the undoubtedly false image of yourself that you project, then they are going to be deeply disappointed. There is just no way a communist society is going to provide everyone with a luxury yacht and a lamborgini. It would be madness even to attempt to do so.

That apart, from where would craving for such status symbols arise in a free access economy? See, in this society we are living in - capitalism - there is a certrain logic to having a status hierarchy based on the consumption of wealth. Thorstein Veblen's seminal work Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) briliantly dissected and disclosed the class dynamics behind that kind of status hierarchy where your prestige in the eyes of others depends on your conspicuous consumption of wealth. Status systems tend to reflect the mode of production in which they are grounded.

The competition-fuelled tendency for capital to expand without limit has its reflex in the mumbo jumbo gibberish of bourgeois economists with their prattle about "insatiable wants". The "buy buy buy" mentality of the modern consumer slave is all of a peice with the self expanding character of capital. Capital can only expand if there are consumers willing to buy and so we are relentlessly indoctrinated from early childhood into a way of thinking that attaches immense importance to the possession of objects, going way beyond any sensible reason for having them. We accumulate for the sake of accumulation or, rather, for the sake of clawing our way up the capitalist status hierarchy in the hollow belief that we have somehow become a better person for being a wealthier one.

Communism sweeps away all this delusional crap, once and for all. In fact, in communism the drive for status - and I do believe that in any kind of society people have a need to feel esteemed and respected - can only take the form in which you gain status through your contribution to society not what you take out of it. Free access to goods and services completely undermines the rationale for a system of status acquisition based on the possession of wealth


A majority who had consciously and democratically established a new kind of society that will operate in the interests of everyone - not just a parasitic minority- are not going to jeopardise what they had worked so hard to achieve. Social systems tend to institute mechanisms that enable the system to function on its own terms and the prevailing form of status differentiation is one of these.


No doubt in a communist society yachts will continue to be built and who are we to begrudge others the pleasure of yachting on the high sea? But yachts are one of that class of goods that I very much suspect will be communal property. You will be free to make use of one of your local community's yachts on an "as and when" basis much like you would make an appointment to see a barber or a dentist.


Apart from anything else, this is much more efficient use of resouces - sharing them. I often wonder why people buy expensive 3 section extending ladders which they hang up in their garage for almost the entire year and only use to clean out the roof gutters once or twice in the Autumn. Why not have a local communty supply which individuals can borrow from whenever they want? You would only need to produce a fraction of the quantity of ladders that are produced today when everyone wants their own private ladder. The same could be said for all sorts of other household equipment. From a purely practical point of view communism would be vastly superior in so many ways


I have no problem with the idea of making yachts available on an "as and when" basis in a communist society. What I have a problem with is the kind of attitude that fetishsises the posssession of a yacht for one's own exclusive use as some kind of status symbol to be moored up in Marbella harbour 360 days a year because, well, that is where the super-rich hang out along with the "Towie" crowd or whatever it is they are called.


And finally to answer one or two of your remaining points - no, you emphatically dont have to "match supply with demand in all cases" in order to achieve equality. Quite the contrary. A communist society will and, of neccesity, must have some kind of system of production priorities. It needs this to guilde the allocation of resources in cases where there are resource bottlenecks. If there 10 units of resource X and 3 end-uses A B and C that all require 4 units of X , then one or possibly two of these end-uses is going to have to go without what it fully needs, Which one is this to be? Having some sense of what should take priority helps you decide. Ive touched on this matter before (see post 167)

It may well be that yachts occupy a rather lowly position in society's hierarchy of production goals. Thats does not mean that yachts will not be produced; it just means that, quite rightly and sensibly, other more important end uses will have first claim on resources if these are limited. But of course there are always ways around resource limitations such as "technological subsititution" using some other more abundant subsititute resource

Here then is another massively important difference between communism and capitalism. It is the community that decides what is important and what should take priority. It is the same people who consume what is produced who produce it. There are no separate population groupings called "consumers" and "producers". This is a bourgeois constuct that arises out of the myth of "consumer sovereignty"

In capitalism what is produced depends on market demand. The golden rule of capitalism is that those who have the gold make the rules. So luxury yachts will be produced in order to be shamelessly flaunted in Marbella harbour for most of the year while homeless beggars sit in the streets around the waterfront with outstretched hands, denied even the simple dignity of a roof over their head in a country like Spain where there are approximately 6 million empty homes as we speak (if you include also second, third or even fourth homes).

So much for capitalism's system of priorities. It sucks, frankly.

[Blake's Baby]

Yeah I get it. I just think there is too little accountability. I also doubt that people with high ability will be motivated to use it when they know they won't be able to keep more of the fruits of their labour from themselves and their children. It's a recipe for corruption and cronyism. The yachts most likely would go to the bureaucrats.

What bureaucrats? Are you not thinking of capitalism here? Everything you deride as a failing of socialism you also think is a success of capitalism.

So, in capitalism, there are people who do nothing but drive Lambourghinis and sail around in yachts, they don't necessarily smoke weed however, but they fail to contribute society while sponging off the work of others. You think this a good thing in capitalism (where's the 'accountability' there? 'Oh, you think Richard Branson is a tit, well don't work for him then'? Brilliant). But you think it's a bad thing if it were to happen in socialism because there's no 'accountability'; but the commune (ie democratic community control) is the system for ensuring this accountability, which is blatantly lacking in capitalism.

[robbo203]

I say again:

You do understand what 'from each according to his ability' means, don't you?

Robbo might disagree but I think 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs' means that if you don't contribute '... according to (your) ability' then you don't get '... according to (your) needs' either. And I very much doubt the commune will sign off on the yacht and the Lambourghini (or even the weed) if you do nothing to contribute. We're still not your mum.

No, what you are talking about here is "from each according to their ability to each according to their work". That is not the same as "from each according to their ability to each according to their need" which applies to a system based on free access and volunteer labour i.e. Marx's higher stage of communism


I would remind you that you also said:

"I agree that if liberlict means 'you have to ask the community meeting every time you run out of toothpaste' then it's nonsense.

But the commune runs the 'store' - in that sense it's the commune's responsibility to provide the toothpaste, so you'll get it from the commune."


If you are linking what people are able to consume with their contribution to society then, of course, what you are doing is setting up a quid pro quo situation. You can only have access to the goods in question if it can be demonstrated that you have done your share of the work . That in turn implies some kind of intermediary monitoring body that assesses whether you have carried out your work obligations. In which case what is the difference between that and Liberlicts suggestion that you would have to get permission from the community to gain access to consumer goods?


For myself, I consider that communism completely breaks the link between your productive effort and your consumption. It therefore also completely does away with the immense bureaucracy involved in the maintenance of such a link. Where some goods may still need to be rationed (because they are in short supply) there are far more effective and simpler ways of doing this than on the basis on one's labour inputs. My clear preference is for the compensation model of rationing which I outlined earlier

Of course, in no way is this to do deny that level of consumer goods available to people in a communist society will depend on their productive input. But that productive input will be harnessed and channelled via a system of generalised reciprocity and not one in which any kind of quid pro quo exchange plays a role. The whole idea of quid pro quo interactions will, I suggest, wither and die in a communist society along with the atomistic model of society as a collection of competing egos, each in pursuit of their own interests at the expense of others...

[Blake's Baby]

It is self-evident that a used sack of potatoes was a wanted sack of potatoes.
But it is not clear if it was a needed sack of potatoes.

The distinction between need and want seems to be of vital importance in a socialist community.

No, it's really the distinction been agreed and not agreed.

A very hypothetical an abstract demonstration of process:

Revolution... Day One. The community has gathered in the Big Hall to decide its priorities. Food, water, electricity and housing are the basic needs of the moment. Several people also talk of medical care. Even those not sick agree that this is a priority. The community agrees that all of these are 'needs'. One man says he needs a Lambourghini. No-one else believes him.

Day Two in Revolution Hall. The subcommittes tasked with communicating with the Power Producing Commune and the Water-Workers' Council report that the community is now reconnected to the Grid and has clean water. Several agricultural communes are supplying a variety of foodstuffs. Medical staff from the District Medical Union have agreed to set up a clinic in the community. The community itself has agreed to supply both cabbages and furniture to several neighbouring communes. One man says he needs a Lambourghini. No-one else believes him.

If everyone (or even a majority) agreed that the guy needed a Lambourghini, he' stand a better chance of getting one. That agreement might in practice be more easily obtained if he worked hard for the commune - 'oh, Steve's been really busy sorting out that problem with the irrigation system, let's give him a break and OK that Lambourghini he's always banging on about' (though to be honest it would likely be more like hiring it for the weekend rather than being given it I suspect) as opposed to 'Steve? Who's he? Oh, the guy that never does anything but always bangs on about needing a Lambourghini? No, the guy's a total lazy arse, fuck him and his stupid requests'.

That's how I figure it'll go, anyway.

[Jimmie Higgins]

From each according to his ability, to each according to need.

How does the commune achieve this lofty objective?

It's not that lofty, this is how people lived for most of history, however it was enforced through mutual lack; everyone needed to contribute because there was little surplus and so if you wanted to be able to hunt, other people also had to gather and vica-versa... people had to contribute what they could.

The difference now is that a tiny amount of people can produce the world's food supply; auto-workers can produce more cars per day than they could ever use themselves. In other words modern production and capitalism have created the possibility of world surplus. The contradiction of capitalism is that this surplus is held by a few and maintained in a system which insures that we have to keep working or starve; and when capitalist surpluses and manufacturing get too good, it also causes problems in profit-making leading to crisis and mass hardships for no objective material reason outside the logic of profits.

This seems obvious to me as well. Even allowing for the inefficiency of central planning/ stock control, I don't imagine things like toothpaste and shampoo would be hard to over-supply. But scarcer items would have to be rationed somehow.

Scarse and even abundant commodities are essentially rationed through pricing now - so the real question is are rare or hard to produce items democratically used or is their use determined by profit motives? And I don't think the profit motive is efficient at anything but seeking profits: unless we think that banks kicking people out of houses and then sitting on the houses until market prices go up again is efficient; that firms selling basically identical commodities competing with eachother is efficient; if having to maintain permanent navys and air-forces to ensure trade and imperialist relations is efficient; if maintaining a fossil fuel system at the cost of a future is efficient.

All economies are planned to an extent (and capitalism has used a lot of large-scale state planning for the last 100 years) but how are things planned, by whom and on what basis?

[Blake's Baby]

No, what you are talking about here is "from each according to their ability to each according to their work". That is not the same as "from each according to their ability to each according to their need" which applies to a system based on free access and volunteer labour i.e. Marx's higher stage of communism...

No, I'm not - "from each according to their ability to each according to their work" surely means 'you x-amount of work, you are entitled to x/y-amount of social product, where y=amount necessary for non-productive social expenses'. On the other hand "from each according to their ability to each according to their need" means 'If you work according to your ability you can have access to your needs, and if you do not, you can't'.

... The whole idea of quid pro quo interactions will, I suggest, wither and die in a communist society along with the atomistic model of society as a collection of competing egos, each in pursuit of their own interests at the expense of others...

I agree. You know however we disagree about how 'instantaneous' this would be. I think there would, for a time, continue to be arseholes who act in the way liberlict claims he will do after the revolution. While I don't think the 'free-rider problem' will be as serious as it is under capitalism (where we call free-riders 'the bourgeoisie' and give them vast wealth for doing nothing) I think it will exist; I also think that communities will have the right to say 'if you don't contribute, you won't get to access social goods'. Otherwise we could just abandon 'from each according to their ability' and say that the guiding principle would be simply 'to each according to their needs'.