Under capitalism, a lot of the time, highly dangerous jobs are also highly paid. Kind of a balance that the individual decides to engage with. Same idea behind getting an advanced degree in STEM or law. I think of my job by example, I’m a power plant operator at a large combined cycle plant. No fucking shot I’d be doing this if the pay wasn’t good. I’m around explosive and deadly hot shit all day.
Let me try this in levels.
Under the transitionary phase between capitalism and communism, there is still currency/money, there is still commodity production, there are still bank accounts. So, for things that society needs but people are less willing to do, the answer is compensation. Communist parties have always compensated people for their work, yes even prison laborers, and for the work that fewer people are qualified for or fewer people desire to do, that compensation is increased to create incentives.
When we reduce that to simplest form, the answer is incentives.
Before capitalism, people still did dangerous work and difficult work. They didn’t do it because they were going to get rich (they weren’t), they did it because the consequences of not doing it were dire.
In feudal and slave societies, this is because the consequences, though they might be social, we’re personalized by the oppression of lords and masters. Lords and masters beat, tortured, and killed serfs and slaves to incentivize them to do dangerous and difficult work.
But what about before those societies? In nomadic societies, people did difficult and dangerous work because it needed to be done, and the consequences of not doing it were felt by the whole tribe. People weren’t tortured and murdered to incentivize them to do the dangerous work. In fact, people got together and tried to make the dangerous work less dangerous.
Reducing those things down, we have an understanding of what “difficult and dangerous” work really is - socially necessary work.
We also understand how it can be solved without incentives - socially collaborative problem solving.
So, in the transition between capitalism and communism, we still incentives and we still have socially necessary work.
Why do we call it a transitionary period? What is happening to make a transition?
The transitionary period is the period of socially collaborative problem solving to make socially necessary work both less voluminous and less risky (which includes risk of harm as well as risk of understaffing and risk of knowledge loss). No one knows that communism looks like yet. But we know what contemporary experiments exist in reducing the volume and risk of socially necessary labor - robotics, real-time systems monitoring and feedback, new construction methods, new chemical science, new applications of physics, etc.
As it turns out, sedentary lifestyles are also incredibly dangerous and lead to huge numbers of premature deaths. So it’s unlikely that communism will go the same direction capitalism seems to go, with huge numbers of people sitting in office chairs or couches for decades on end.
That was a shocking amount of writing that didn’t really say anything.
Edit~ sorry for being a dick
Read closer. It said:
we don’t know the exact forms and processes that communism will take as it is still being built for the first time in modern history
during the transitionary phase, which all communist countries you can name are in and no country has ever yet left, incentives are and have been compensation, meaning money
prior incentives from pre-capitalist societies were violence
prior incentives from primitive societies were the outcomes of doing the work
without monetary incentives, primitive societies didn’t wonder about how to incentivize people to do dangerous work, they wondered about how to make dangerous work less dangerous
as communism is built from capitalism, compensation is the incentive that will be used while society also works on reducing the need for incentives by making dangerous work less dangerous or making it obsolete. A communist society will be one where the incentives are sufficient to get the work done without being so large that they create an upper class of rich people
I also should have said the richest among us under capitalism have never done dangerous work and that people who do dangerous work rarely become capital owners anyway.
There is nothing contradictory about people who do more difficult or dangerous getting special privileges (which is all extra salary really amounts to) under communism.
Was any of it
capitalismcommunism? It still reads as being focused on the transition and basically using resources, pride and threatsEdit: Corrected “capitalism” to be “communism” 🤦♂️I probably should just get off the internet for the day
I’m not sure I understand your question. Was any of what capitalism?
Yes allocation of resources is essentially how a large number of human needs are met and that would not be different under connunism. Only the system of resource allocation changes, not the basic science of how humans operate. Need chemicals, need energy, can’t do that without allocation of resources.
I don’t think I mentioned anything resembling pride, but I also don’t know that pride is a sustainable way to run a society. Threats are also sort of universal regardless of system. They exist in all societies. It would be the system of threats that would change
🤦♂️ Sorry, I meant communism and wrote capitalism. I’ve probably made larger errors here though so don’t feel the need to respond
But for “pride” I meant a very broad generic doing it for others / prestige / feels good / vision / ideology.
It would be better to say that all of it was the movement for communism but none of it was a communist economy. In that way I think it becomes clear. It’s like training for football. Is any of the physical training “football”? No. But all of it is towards football and the actions are specific to the movement for football.
Similarly, all of what we call communism in our day to day discourse is the actual communist movement working on the process of bringing about a communist economy (or just “communism”) but, since communism hasn’t been achieved yet, it’s still very experimental and unknown. Every step produces new empirical learning which gets studied by communists all over the world to analyze what works and what doesn’t.
I see you didn’t mention anything like that. I just assumed a “carrot” to your mentions of “sticks”
I will read and respond to this properly by adding an edit to this comment. Im busy at the moment but I do want to genuinely thank you for putting the amount of time and effort into your answers in this thread. I know I’m answering in a kind of snarky way to most comments. Don’t take the snark as disdain for you, just a skeptical and generally snarky guy.
Edit~ thank you for the response and all the time you took crafting it. What I understand from your response is essentially the following. We do not necessarily know what compensation for less appealing/dangerous/years of specialization jobs will look like. However, it’s likely there will likely be a quantifiable difference in quality of life. I accept that answer as its the most reasonable I’ve seen in this thread. The people saying things like “some people just enjoy a hard days work” still infuriate me though…
Question: what incentive is there?
Answer: incentives! (But in plural)
I mean, would you rather I say that in general communist incentives are specifically this? There’s no way to answer that question. Prior to the abolition of money, the incentive is money. If the society moves to vouchers, the incentive is vouchers. That’s why I said “compensation”.
I also said reduction in work volume and reduction in work risk.
That’s three specific incentives.
Did you want me to say “you can get a super soaker or a stuffie at the ticket counter”?
If there is no way to answer that question you could have started saying so and then explain why, that would have been a much better answer.
Your theory is very pretty and seducing. According to my relatives who lived in 2 different communist countries during the war, there is no incentive to do anything and most people sat on their asses because nothing makes a difference. And that’s why they escaped this communist heaven you mention (escaped, because you don’t leave communism without having problems).
Thanks for the laugh.
Last but not least, in communist countries you have to put locks everywhere, especially in the kitchen, because your neighbors will steal your food. But I guess it’s not mentioned in your book “Communism for Dummies.”
Which war? You have realtives that were alive and living in the USSR during WW2 and they tell you stories about their time there?