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I don’t get why it’s so controversial that people should be able to survive without a job. It doesn’t need to be glamourous, but nobody should be unhoused or unfed. We are blessed with plenty and we should share. And before it sounds like I’m religious, no, I’m not saying churches should be responsible for that, government should. (Though obviously I have no problems with any religious groups feeding and housing people as well.)
You don’t sound religious at all, so I’m not sure why you mentioned that, but im completely against churches feeding and housing people because they impose rules upon the recipients. I don’t believe in charity, so that’s part of it.
The argument is mostly that if nobody has to work, too few people will choose to work, and then the quality of life for all will deteriorate. It is still true that our modern society requires an enormous amount of upkeep just to keep the quality of life where it is now. That’s work and if nobody does it then services will stop functioning.
Technically speaking, one could theoretically survive solely on homeless shelters and soup kitchens right now in the modern day, without the need to work. This would keep you biologically alive, but for most people, this is a degrading, unfulfilling existence. Which motivates people to work (or steal).
Technically speaking, one could theoretically survive solely on a single job right now in the modern day. This would keep you biologically alive, but for most people, this is a degrading, unfulfilling existence. Which
Removing consumers from a consumer economy does what exactly to that economy?
Capitalism, the system where we allow poverty to exist
There was rampant poverty in the USSR too. As there is in China. They don’t seem too winning in N Korea either.
Nice whataboutism there. But as you seem to be under the illusion that these countries are not capitalist (and presumably therefore communist, considering the countries you chose and the usual dogma that comes with them) let’s have a look.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
First, let’s define communism. Luckily the world wide web has done that already for us.
Communism (from Latin communis ‘common, universal’)[1][2] is a political and economic ideology whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products in society based on need.[3][4][5] A communist society entails the absence of private property and social classes,[1] and ultimately money[6] and the state.[7][8][9]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism
The legacy of the USSR remains a controversial topic. The socio-economic nature of communist states such as the USSR, especially under Stalin, has also been much debated, varyingly being labelled a form of bureaucratic collectivism, state capitalism, state socialism, or a totally unique mode of production.[260]
some leftists regard the USSR as an example of state capitalism
Maoists also have a mixed opinion on the USSR, viewing it negatively during the Sino-Soviet Split and denouncing it as revisionist and reverted to capitalism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union#Legacy
So the USSR was not communist, but rather somewhere between capitalist and its own thing.
Modern-day China is often described as an example of state capitalism or party-state capitalism.[290][291]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China#Economy
Not communist by any stretch of the imagination.
North Korea is a totalitarian dictatorship with a comprehensive cult of personality around the Kim family.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea
Not communist.
Capitalism is a shit system for vast swathes of the population and results in poverty, exploitation, and death.
Is communism the answer? I don’t know, it’s never truly managed to take off anywhere without either being corrupted from within or attacked from without. But capitalism most certainly needs to go in the bin.
The Soviet Union was capitalist. Right-o.
By the way, congratulations on finally getting Wi-Fi on your planet.
The “Lucy” argument isn’t as compelling as some tankies seem to think. We’ve had plenty of communist regimes. They’re all abominable. No good holding the football out and saying “but this time it’s real communism”. Communism is rancid because people are rancid.
They are still capitalist societies
That makes it sound like it’s just a passive side-effective and not a critical tool in the elite’s arsenal in keeping the working class subjugated by holding the promise of suffering over our heads if we choose not to spend a third of our lives generating wealth for them.
It wasn’t my intentions to make it sound like that and hoped that it would come across as you stated it
Hobbies are also a thing. Even if they don’t work, at least they won’t be criminals. Poverty is a major predictor/pre-requisite for criminal activities.
There’s a fact that a lot of people commenting here are overlooking. Marx himself admitted that in the lower stage of communism, wages will have to exist until people’s mindset on labor changes. It’s simply not true that communism will not work because ‘people don’t like working’.
edit: grammar
Yep, every existing socialist society past and present requires labor, and paid for it. We can’t jump from A to Z, we have to build socialism and build communism, and we have to continue developing. Wage labor as the sole motivator for labor in society is something that gets phased out as work becomes more for satisfying needs than profits for the few.
Also, in the higher stage of communism, labor that is necessary but not preferred — cleaning the sewers, for example — could be done in turn.
Fuck I’d be happy to clean sewers if I had a stable high quality of life and I knew that my work was directly contributing to the community and its health. (In fact, most sanitation workers currently have that perspective - sanitation work is care work, and something to be very proud of).
Claim is ok, the unspoken “so everything will collapse” is bullshit. In the end, Hampton is right: “work (do what someone else wants) or starve” is not how anyone should live
On the other hand, if nobody would work, or even want to do the dirty jobs like trash removal, we wouldn’t be able to have a functioning society.
These sort of comments are almost a non sequitur as they just take ridiculous ideas from capitalism.
Capitalism is fine as long as it’s controlled well. Any system that doesn’t have the right laws in place to limit it would be abusive within minutes. Put laws in place to restrict how much wealth each single person can have, for example, that would be way more productive than writing up nonsense like this
You think that you personally ought to be threatened with starvation, illness, and homelessness?
No, because I have a job
Do you really expect food to magically materialize out of thin air in your home that also just popped into existence?
If nobody works, how do you exactly.expect humanity to survive?
or even want to do the dirty jobs like trash removal
Not to nitpick, but I don’t think that would be the case. We’re ultimately talking about building a society where everyone’s needs are met regardless of what they do, end game communism. And I think you’d still see people like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JahXgey1sK4
For the lazy, it’s a group called Pedal People. They go around collecting trash in their city on bicycles with bike trailers, and they haul a respectable quantity of trash, recyclables, compost, etc. They do get payed, around $33 an hour, and it’s a co-op.
Even in a true communist society with no money and all needs met, people like this would still exist. These people legitimately enjoy their jobs collecting trash on bikes, sustainably, even in the snow and heat. And it’s not the money that’s the only point for them. They’re doing a good service, getting exercise, have direct control over their labor, etc.
Replace that paycheck with a society that respects their work with ample food, shelter, healthcare, etc and they probably would still be doing this. People like to be useful and helpful, we’re social creatures that evolved to live in communities.
We just need communities that don’t threaten each other, and instead let people do what they can do to be useful.
I’m going to be honest here, I am extremely confident that even if free housing in something like a homeless shelter and free cheap basic food was provided on a universal basis free of charge by the state, thus eliminating the “work or starve” situation by ensuring everyone’s basic biological needs can be met without labour, the people who make posts like this one would then claim that “work or eat boring food” counts as coercion.
The state has the capability to keep people alive. That’s not the issue. People are generally not content will merely being kept alive and not sick. They want to live enriched lives with access to air conditioning, video games, cell phones, hamburgers, and national parks. All of that takes an enormous amount of labour to produce.
the people who make posts like this one would then claim that “work or eat boring food” counts as coercion.
The food doesn’t need to be boring. But even under that assumption, it would still be less coercive, and therefore better.
All of that takes an enormous amount of labour to produce.
It sure does, but we live in a time of historically unheard of automation and excess. Over a century ago Kropotkin calculated a 5 hour work day/300hr work year to be the minimum needed per worker. And we’ve had a shit load of technicological advances since then. Even with the increases in amenities I’d be shocked if the true current number isn’t drastically lower.
And your examples are all examples of things that people would genuinely like to work on. For example Mr. Technology connections is obsessed with heat pumps. I’m working on open source games, even while currently living under the coercion of capitalism. And I wouldn’t mind putting significant time into working to maintain a nation park, so long as it didn’t mean that it fucked with my food, shelter, and healthcare.
Of course, I don’t think that food served to the needy (or to the vagrant, in this scenario), should be boring on purpose, and of course those in charge ought to endeavour to provide whatever variety is possible, but it just so happens that the types of food that can be most easily produced, and thus the most efficient in terms of converting hours of labour into calories, tend to universally be judged as boring. I’m guessing it will be a lot of grain, maize, potatoes, and soybeans.
I absolutely am not going to take someone’s word on the notion that 300 hours of labour per annum (which is a one hour work day) is sufficient to maintain the current standard of living.
I think yours is the non-sequitur, or at least whataboutism. You’re introducing a “counterexample” that isn’t actually all that related to the original point. The original comment is just pointing out how capitalism is based on coercion, which is just a statement of fact.
Unless you assume people will work out of goodness of their hearts, every system has to somehow coerce people to work. You can’t fulfill everyone’s basic needs without workers.
And yes, maybe people would do some types of work anyway, but good luck finding people who find working in sanitation as an interesting hobby.
Making sure everyone has basic needs doesn’t mean you don’t pay people to work. People would work because they want the other things you get from money aside from survival.
So you are in favor of keeping an underclass of people that you can threaten with death to force them to work?
Having an underclass and (monetarily) coercing everyone to do their fair share of work to meet everyone’s needs are two very different things. If I need to spell that out for you, you may want to think about these things and how they would look in practice a bit more for yourself before discussing them.
A billionaire’s family isn’t under threat of dying if they don’t get a job. They already have what something like UBI would give to everyone else. The only way to use pay to force labor is to have people so poor that not having an income would lead to their death.
That is called an underclass.
Everyone refusing to work would always lead to everyone’s death. Blame God for making reality this way. People must be coerced to work when needed.
But you immediately jumping to the opposite extreme case as if there were only two options shows you have no interest in actually understanding what I am saying. Can’t teach someone who doesn’t want to learn. So I think we are done here.
People must be coerced to work when needed.
This right here is where you go wrong. It is simply untrue. You’re just using it to disguise how much you want to advocate for slavery.
How is it untrue? And how is working to secure your own needs slavery? Are you living in a fairytale world?
Feigning ignorance? Okay, slaver.
I think that people need a purpose and I think in a society not based on maximization of profit, people would have the ability to choose what that is and not have to do “whatever pays the bills”
Imagine a society where your doctors want to be doctors and your musicians want to be musicians.
In my experience watching my father retire and just living as an adult, people get squirrely when they dont have something to work on.
Work doesn’t have to be what capitalism values to be work, it can ve creation, it can be gardening, it can be helping others.
Id argue people do fundamentally have drive to work as they have drive to have purpose. Work just isn’t necessarily the suffering capitalism has led us to believe it is.
Yes and no. There fundamentally are jobs that are both necessary and unpleasant. It is easy to talk about things like gardening and art, but we need sanitation. Even some level of bureaucracy. There are many kinds of work people may be willing to do for free or cheaply, but also many types of work almost no one would.
PS: You can actually see this in volunteer driven open-source software projects. There are many volunteers to develop features or even fix bugs, but they sorely lack management roles and work on important but niche features (unused by most volunteers) like accessibility for blind people.
Adding another comment to address this PS.:
There are many volunteers to develop features or even fix bugs, but they sorely lack management roles and work on important but niche features (unused by most volunteers) like accessibility for blind people.
Those volunteers are still volunteers inside a capitalistic system that have to get by somehow. Of course they’re going to spend their extremely limited free time on the things that benefit them directly (features they need, bugs that affect them). The incentive structure is set up against them. That would be very different if they didn’t have the pressure of keeping afloat in spite of their volunteer work.
Perhaps, but whether it is by knowing my self or people I work with, I kinda doubt that.
Also, what exactly is it that you would need to bootstrap a group like this? Does it involve coercing people that want to keep capitalism to participate?
Idk I know nurses and janitors that actually enjoy that work. Some people do enjoy doing sanitation and we should let those who enjoy it do it and get their needs met for it. Perhaps the unpleasant jobs should get more incentive? (Currently that’s not the case)
Anyway my main point is incentive instead of coercion. People should all play their part in society but should have their needs met no matter how they choose to play that part. Society not based on maximization of profit would value different jobs than our current Society.
Well, then make those jobs come with benefits proportional to their unattractiveness
Ok, where do you get those benefits from? Someone needs to work on those, and they will also require benefits. If people don’t have to work, some portion will inevitably either not work or work hobby like jobs (that don’t usually produce very attractive benefits). So you have less things being produced and require more things to guarantee everyone’s needs and significant benefits for working peoples on top of that.
You seem to be under the impression that everything that’s being “produced” right now is of actual value and must be kept up or replaced under a non-capitalistic system. I’d argue the contrary. There is so much braindead wasted labor being performed and energy wasted in the current system that would be completely freed up if our main economic goal were to change from “growth and competition at all cost” to “ensure a good life for everyone”. At the same time, our ever increasing ability to automate work and solar energy becoming incredibly cheap means that less and less of the necessary production actually requires human labor.
Add to that that most people like to have community and purpose, and would be happy to give back to a society that guarantees their wellbeing for rather modest reward, and I really don’t think finding enough people to do the actually necessary work would be a big issue at all. Kids that stock up their pocket money by mowing lawns are basically already making that exact deal.
Ok, as long as I don’t have to participate in this “utopia” of yours and can keep living as I do, go for it. Of course if you need to coerce others to participate, you may have lost the plot somewhere.
Someone would probably engineer a new sanitation machine or system that doesn’t need as much human labor or exposure with unsanitary stuff as an interesting hobby. But yeah, people would have to build communities and the sense of community, and come to a consensus on how that community would want to divide labor; i.e. the community could vote to take turns doing undesirable jobs, or allow people to in undesirable jobs to work less hours or something.
Now that I think of it, things could be radically different if everyone is exposed to the undesirable work. Communities would probably opt for composting and less or compostable packaging in lieu of having to do a lot of trash work. They’d probably opt to eat less meat rather than working at a slaughterhouse.
It’s interesting but you did not answer the issue. What do you do when someone refuses to do the work assigned to them. Do you coerce them (so same as capitalism) or do you just let them off and encourage more people to refuse as well, because why should they do it if others don’t.
You reward those willing to do the hard jobs. Coercion’s ethical cousin is called “incentive”.
Capitalism also calls salary incentive.
Calling a Nazi a socialist doesn’t make it one. Calling me a duck doesn’t make me one.
They’d be hurting their family, friends, and community, and risk becoming ostracized. That should keep most people on the shared vision. Everybody having a say from voting or some shared consensus gives people ownership over decisions and should increase cooperation. There would likely still be some people who wouldn’t cooperate, in which case they can leave or be voted out of the community and try to join another, which I suppose is coercion. I suppose there could also be lighter consequences for not doing what the community agreed upon (sanitation duty or peeling onions or whatever) that the person could choose to do if they wanted to stay.
I should say that in these hypotheticals I’m envisioning an anarcho-syndicalist or perhaps market-socialist type of society made up of a network or federation of smaller communities. I don’t think this would work very well if it was one nation-sized “community,” because people likely wouldn’t care as much about the plights of people on the other side of the country.
So an even stronger type of coercion. Since in capitalism, you can earn money in any way you like and are able to. Here it is what you are assigned or banishment. It’s nice you throw in words like community, but this is a very authoritarian regime at it’s core.
You get banished from your employer under capitalism, and don’t have a vote on anything the employer does. I don’t typically think of truly democratic systems as authoritarian; everyone comes to a consensus to what work everyone is “assigned” to do.
There are 10s of thousands of employers and you can often be self employed as well. There isn’t a one employer that can banish you. But yes, in many cases, employers do have some amount of power over you. However, what you describe already exists. It’s called working for the government. How well is the democracy working out for government employees?
Preach. We are so deep into capitalism that we forget how we could do things “the human way”
I agree with this philosophy, but it does require you to admit that before civilization we were all slaves to nature. I think this is true, but some people might object that this meaning of “slave” is different from the conventional meaning.
Serious question, how can we provide everyone’s basic needs without some work? Food doesn’t harvest itself. Tools don’t maintain themselves.
Labor will always be required on some level though it does not need to be exploited.
The premise is that without coercion people won’t work. Which is just not true, people will do the work they want to do. It’s just that the work people want to do isn’t necessarily the work capitalists want them to do. Which means less exploitation and profit for the capitalists.
Yeah the work people “want to do” and the work that needs to get done do not align IRL. Not enough people want to deal with waste systems or sanitation yet those are critical to any society.
This isn’t Star Trek. We don’t live in a magical future where all the dangerous yet necessary work is automated.
Not enough people want to deal with waste systems or sanitation
No one has “shit purger” as their favorite way of passing their time. That doesn’t mean that no one would pick the job and leave themselves and everyone else waddling in two inches of it
The people that want waste systems do
That also assumes that once people have what they need to survive they would give up on the things that they want. I’d love to have things like the necessities taken care of but I wouldn’t expect them to pay for my video games and movie tickets, so I’d need a job to pay for that. Not only that, but I’d be able to work towards a career that I actually want instead of being forced to work a dead end job because I have to be constantly employed or else be homeless. The way the system works now makes it difficult to change careers or go to school later in life because any risk of being unemployed or lapse of time in our income could literally ruin our lives in a matter of weeks.
They are also admitting they would happily live off the work of others and feel no need to contribute to society or make the world better in anyway if their needs were met.
If you meet people’s basic needs, they do not cease to care or aspire.
A lot of the issue is “bullshit jobs” and being forced to do one. Work needs to be done, but we could be just as productive and maintain higher quality of life if we all worked less or for a shorter part of our lifespan.
Folks are happy to do a job that helps others, but they’re less inclined to do a job to make a few bastards rich.
Bullshit jobs (=> jobs that are doing unnecessary work) are certainly part of that, but shit jobs (=> jobs that you would really not want to work) are another part of the equation.
Shit jobs make up a huge amount of the jobs that actually do stuff we depend on (e.g. food industry, retail, agricultural, garbage, …). So the question is how do you get people to do these jobs? Without some form of coercion, that might be difficult.
Coercion isn’t necessarily the problem - in a society that produces for needs, what if there’s not enough people who want to produce furniture for instance? What about agriculture? If you don’t meet the quotas, people’s needs won’t be fulfilled, so some degree of coersion would be necessary.
Maybe, maybe not? I find that your point is probably more valid on big scales encompassing tens or hundreds of millions of people. But I believe that in a “real society” - one where you mostly know and care for other members - people would be much better inclined to spend part of their time fulfilling others’ needs. Ultimately I believe that most humans are ok with taking “someone has to do it” jobs and will do them well and with pride, as long as they can see the impact of their work. And trade will always be a thing for “fulfilling needs” across different societies
Yeah, and for things to be traded, they need to be first produced somewhere. If it’s a necessary item like insulin or electronics or whatever and lots of ethnostates that you describe need them, then the producers would need to meet a quota or else there’d be shortages.
That’s where coercion might come into play that I was previously talking about - what if there are jobs that are required to fulfill people’s needs, but there’s not enough people who want to do them? You have to somehow force or persuade enough people for everyone’s needs to be met and for society to function, and my coercion I don’t just mean “threaten with violence” or “make them starve”, it could also be more peaceful methods like having some cultural status for being so noble or something.
ethnostates that you describe
Whoa buddy, please adjust your reading glasses. I’ve never talked about ethnicity because my idea of society/community does not involve it. In fact it is quite diametrically opposed to an ethnostate. I do not appreciate you transforming my definition of “where you mostly know and care for other members” into something I am opposed to.
You keep saying “quotas” like something that must exist, and I simply disagree with that. This might be interesting reading.
and my coercion I don’t just mean “threaten with violence” or “make them starve”
FWIW, I believe that “labor” as I’ve described here can be fair and acceptable. I would be ok with working in a chem lab or electronics fab for a part of my day if the “compensation” (loosely) is fair and I believe it is a decent use of my time to improve the world around me.
peaceful methods like having some cultural status for being so noble or something.
I wouldn’t give a fuck about being made an aristrocrat, and sounds like you’re just describing bribery anyway
Work toward what? Because it isn’t just work to create the things they need.
Infinite profit is a capitalist feature not a “USA problem” the media never fought for the working class because it seeks profit as well, the capitalist can buy it the working class cannot
