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.
Under Maoism or Stalinism, aka the dictatorship of the dictator pretending to act for the proletariat? You are ordered to do it, for your own good and the good of the Party. If you don’t follow orders, you just get shot; and your family is put in a prison camp, your children raped and beaten and forced to labor.
Under real stateless, classless communism? Nobody knows, because that hasn’t existed yet. Anyone claiming to know exactly how it might operate is talking out of their hat. Marx is pretty clear on that.
This is a caricature of how socialism has functioned. In socialist states, people were compensated for their labor, and necessities were heavily subsized or otherwise free.
To the contrary of your depiction, the USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about, and today we have Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance to reference.
When it comes to social progressivism, the soviet union was among the best out of their peers, so instead we must look at who was actually repressed outside of the norm. In the USSR, it was the capitalist class, the kulaks, the fascists who were repressed. This is out of necessity for any socialist state. When it comes to working class freedoms, however, the soviet union represented a dramatic expansion. Soviet progressivism was documented quite well in Albert Syzmanski’s Human Rights in the Soviet Union. This expansion in humanitarianism actually carried onto the judicial system, documented by Mary Stevenson Callcott in Russian Justice, written in 1935.
Reducing the tremendous gains made by socialist countries to the whims of Stalin or Mao is extremely reductive. It means every single victory gained by the working classes, such as free healthcare and education, massive literacy campaigns, huge increases in equality among the sexes, and more were in fact the exclusive whims of their leadership. It also reduces all of their problems, struggles, and flaws to personal failings of their leadership.
This kind of analysis is very flawed, and gets in the way of analyzing what went right and what went wrong in existing socialism. Simply painting a prettier picture of socialism in our heads and rejecting all existing socialist projects for not measuring up to that picture means we will be hopeless when we run into similar problems when we ourselves begin building socialism.
I was talking about Maoist and Stalinist dictatorships, not socialism.
“Communism” was the brand name that these dictatorships used for their artificially red-dyed flavor of fascist mass murder. This name was stolen from the original Communists, and falsely & deceptively used by the fascist mass-murderers. Neither Stalin nor Mao had any intention of ever living in a classless society. Like all fascist leaders, they demanded obedience beyond that accorded to feudal kings, and erected new forms of hierarchy and class for their servants to populate — while they murdered the common people in whose name they claimed to rule.
The “dictatorship of the dictator pretending to care about the proletariat” murdered the proletariat by millions.
However, when people today say “Communism” — as in the title of this post — they are often referring to those dictatorships, and not to the earlier Communism of Marx and Engels, whose name the fascists misappropriated.
Hence my response, which distinguished Maoist and Stalinist fascist dictatorships from the theoretical communism of Marx and Engels.
Do not bother making excuses for fascist mass-murderers. There are none.
I was talking about Maoist and Stalinist dictatorships, not socialism.
Marxist-Leninist countries, such as the USSR, PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, DPRK, Laos, etc. are all examples of socialism, and have robust systems of democracy. Again, Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance goes in-depth in many of these countries, explaining the intricacies of socialist democracy, as well as what’s been general across all socialist states and also particular to each.
These are all definitely socialism. The large firms and key industries, at a minimum, are publicly owned and run. Public ownership is the principle aspect of their economies, and the working classes in charge of the state. This is what the “dictatorship of the proletariat” means, the control of the state by the proletariat.
“Communism” was the brand name that these dictatorships used for their artificially red-dyed flavor of fascist mass murder. This name was stolen from the original Communists, and falsely & deceptively used by the fascist mass-murderers.
This is easily verified as false, though. Fascism is a violent protection of private property rights and capitalism, and happens in decaying capitalist countries. From Spain to Germany to every other fascist state, capitalists were entrenched by the state and communists murdered. Meanwhile, in socialist states, the working classes gained control, oppressing the fascists, capitalists, Tsarists, slavers, etc, and collectivized production and distribution.
Neither Stalin nor Mao had any intention of ever living in a classless society. Like all fascist leaders, they demanded obedience beyond that accorded to feudal kings, and erected new forms of hierarchy and class for their servants to populate — while they murdered the common people in whose name they claimed to rule.
This is more Orwellian fan-fiction than reality, though. With the advent of socialism, socialist states brought tremendous democratization. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about.
The PCUSA made a handy graphic, here (though I’m not a member of the PCUSA):
Further, on top of the dramatic democratization, socialism has been tremendously uplifting. When it comes to social progressivism, the soviet union was among the best out of their peers, so instead we must look at who was actually repressed outside of the norm. In the USSR, it was the capitalist class, the kulaks, the fascists who were repressed. This is out of necessity for any socialist state. When it comes to working class freedoms, however, the soviet union represented a dramatic expansion. Soviet progressivism was documented quite well in Albert Syzmanski’s Human Rights in the Soviet Union.
Healthcare was dramatically expanded, made free and high quality. Housing rates skyrocketed, jobs were assured, education was free and high quality, women’s rights dramatically expanded. Literacy rates jumped from 20-30% to 99.9%. Life expectancies doubled:
The “dictatorship of the dictator pretending to care about the proletariat” murdered the proletariat by millions.
They didn’t, though, unless you’re counting deaths from unintentional famine as “murders.”
However, when people today say “Communism” — as in the title of this post — they are often referring to those dictatorships, and not to the earlier Communism of Marx and Engels, whose name the fascists misappropriated.
When people say “communism,” they refer to Actually Existing Socialism, such as the socialist states we are talking about, and to the societies Marx and Engels wrote theory to arm the proletariat to fight for. I already explained why calling communists “fascist” is wrong, so I won’t retread old ground.
When Marx and Engels spoke of the beginnings of communism, the transitional stage of socialism, they spoke of the working classes siezing control of the state, replacing it with a socialist one, and gradually collectivizing production and distribution. This requires violently oppressing the fascists, Tsarists, capitalists, kulaks, slavers, etc. The transition to the communism spoken of by Marx and Engels begins with socialism, as exists in real life.
Hence my response, which distinguished Maoist and Stalinist fascist dictatorships from the theoretical communism of Marx and Engels.
Your response didn’t have much of Marx or Engels, nor much respect for historical fact, though. When I gave clear sources showing how you were under the wrong impression about existing socialism, you ignored them and just re-asserted your original, incorrect claims. Marxism-Leninism is a genuine continuation of the work of Marx and Engels today, and has successfully established socialism in real life.
Do not bother making excuses for fascist mass-murderers. There are none.
I’m not making excuses, I’m correcting the record. Socialist states and socialist leaders have all been flawed, and have all made mistakes, including major ones. They’ve done so because they are real, not imaginary, perfect ideas of communism. It’s very common among westerners to use this ideal picture of socialism in our heads as a club against existing, real socialism for not being as perfect as our fantasies, but this works against us. If we in the west established socialism, we would too make mistakes, errors, and face struggles, because like presently existing socialism, we would be building it in real life, not just in our heads.
Socialism in real life is genuinely real, flawed, and progressive. It’s impefect, under constant siege, and blemished. It also has been tremendously uplfiting for billions of workers and peasants, and to fight against that and continue spreading debunked, outdated Red Scare mythos prevents us from meaningfully building solidarity with the global south, and sets ourselves up for failure when we refuse to learn from our comrades.
“Dictatorship of the dictator” lol anything’s possible when you make shit up kiddo
I don’t think communism means “everyone gets paid the same regardless of work”.
Also capitalism doesn’t mean that people get paid more or less depending on type of work.
Capitalist means that means of productions are privately owned by capital. While in communism means of production are owned by work.
At least that’s the theory.
I see this definition of communism more lately, but the dictionary definition of communism absolutely does not rewards based on work. It rewards based on need. To the point where money can be abolished altogether. What you describe sounds like socialism, where the distribution of goods is based on contribution, rather than need.
I feel like a lot of discussions surrounding communism have this issue, where people do not have the definition of communism aligned properly. Where did you learn your definition of communism? And where can one read about it? What I have been taught aligns very well with Wikipedia.
a theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs.
You mean this dictionary definition (Oxford)?
Needs differ, hence compensation differs. The needs of one involved in hazardous work tend to be a bit higher than those involved in baking croissants.
Why would the needs of someone doing more hazardous work be higher? What do they need more food/housing/entertainment/luxury for? I guess more healthcare needs, but I don’t think that is going to convince someone to do the hazardous work.
As soon as you reward because of the hazardous working environment, it is nolonger distribution based on needs of the individual, but based on demand for the job. Rewarding based on supply and demand is capitalistic, not communistic.
Note that I’m no supporter of either (or any) Ideology. I believe we should apply the concepts of different ideologies where they make the most sense. In this case, applying capitalism to attract people into undesirable jobs, makes sense.
Have you done hazardous work? It fucks with your brain.
Alright, so, could you adress my question though? I know that sounds cunty, but, I’m not sure how else to respond.
They did answer your question. Same way in a “capitalist” society: those who take more responsibility or risk earn more benefit. More/better food, more rank, more commission, more salary, better housing, better medical care, etc.
There are plenty of examples of this happening and also not happening under both capitalism and communism. Is there a trend? That’s a very long debate.
So, a cast system…
It’s spelled “caste,” and castes are (critically) hereditary. Leaving a caste you were born into is virtually impossible.
People who do more/harder work can get compensated an appropriate amount. Note that this runs at odds to the current system where a CEO makes 1000x their employees salary despite not working 1000x as hard.
Ayeeee got me. I still don’t see how that doesnt just create the same type of class based system we already have.
Because everyone would have access to the same opportunities and same schools etc. Those with better talents or a better work ethic will probably make more money. Instead of today where families hoard wealth through generations.
So different levels of society make different levels of money, allowing them to afford better qualities of life. You’re talking about capitalism.
Without subversive profit incentives, the incentives become to make necessary-but-undesirable jobs more safe/pleasant/automated. Without worrying about their next paycheque, people can spend time on the issue.
This requires a post-scarcity society that is fairly well developed, before they try to convert to communism.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that capitalism pays dangerous or unpleasant jobs well, though. Some do, but lots don’t.
For some people they choose these fields out of a sense of duty to the community but this is rare and not likely to fill the required productive capacity. The end goal should be automating these fields and a communist society run by workers would inherently work towards this goal. However in the mean time incentives like an early retirement and reduced working hours would likely boost numbers significantly. This is a sacrifice though as it means more people are required to do the job and these workers stop contributing to society at an earlier age, depending on the material conditions and specific stage of development this could be much harder to accomplish in which case that sense of duty would have to be reinforced by culture. The socialist transition is no paradise, it requires dangerous work and personal sacrifice to create a better world. There are likely other incentives that could be implemented more easily but these are the first two I thought of.
Thats a pretty pragmatic answer, I like it!
You get more stuff, more status, etc. Or alternatively, penalized, threatened, etc. Whatever it takes to motivate people to do the job. Even if paper money isn’t a thing in communist societies (which it still is), money’s just a symbol for debt. You’re going to get something, somehow, for a job people greatly desire to be done without enough doers and they’ll become “indebted” to you disproportionately for doing it.
In Soviet society for instance, you might be provided a nice apartment in central Moscow if you were doing something “important”. This assignment would be via your government-controlled employer and their agreements with some other government bureau that officially managed the buildings to dole them out to select people.
So, same deal as anywhere else, just a different mechanism. Higher ration, bigger dacha, jump to the front of the line to get a car, etc.
Compensation is usually not much about how dangerous a job is, though. It’s more about how many people are willing to do it for any number of reasons. Some people are just not very risk-adverse, and figure they’re going to be fine at a job that is more dangerous. And they’ll be compensated at a normal level as long as there are enough such people to fill the need.
For advanced STEM degrees, there are people who just enjoy learning that sort of thing and applying their knowledge.
In the same vein, some folks are just attracted to dangerous and difficult jobs because they get a sense of purpose or identity from it.
Others it’s community. I knew a guy who did 20 years active duty military, then joined the national guard, then took a job for the same national guard unit as a DoD civilian and stayed on until they forced him to retire. They had practically drag the guy out. He never did anything but bitch and complain about the work he spent more than 40 years doing, he sounded like kinda hated his job, but he liked being a part of the military.
Short answer: We don’t know
Longer answer: We hope technology will be fully developed by then to do that stuff for us
One of my favorite answers so far, thank you!
Communism doesn’t mean no money, undesirable labor will always have to be incentivized. I think most people would prefer to be incentivized with the promise of access to luxuries, higher pay, more vacation time, recognized status in the community, rather than the threat of your survival, housing, healthcare, education, etc. You would still have taxes, but critical infrastructure would be owned by the laborers and the state.
Ideally, because there would be no individual ownership of infrastructure or the means of production. So, again ideally, the profits are equitably distributed through labor instead of shareholders. One of the goals of this kind of system would be the elimination of class. Not because people can’t make more money and have more luxuries, but because everyone has the same opportunities. Whereas most of the world today you can just pay for those opportunities.
Now, how exactly do you pull this off? Idk, other than a massive cultural shift. I’m sure someone with a reply telling me what I got wrong will have that answer.
This isn’t entirely accurate. What you described is a ‘socialist’ community, the so-called ‘lower stage of communism’. In this stage, there would still remain incentive based structures for labour. It employs a policy of “from each according to his ability to each according to his works”. Inequality still exists as explained by Marx here:
This equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation… one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another… Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal share in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another. — Critique of the Gotha Programme
It is during this lower stage that the transformation of social relations and productive forces gradually alters the motivations for labor to a more virtue-based one.
The problem most communism skeptic people have with communism is that they reason within the current modes of subsistence and assume it is impossible.
“What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.” — Critique of the Gotha Programme
Marx also stated that he expected us to remain in the lower stage of communism for centuries, but it is during this stage that we prepare the productive forces to sustain communism and start producing goods for their use-value rather than for their exchange value, so that we can achieve the higher stage of communism which employs 'from each according to their ability to each according to his needs. This higher stage is truly classless because we would supposedly have solved scarcity, it would be stateless because people would organize communally to meet their needs, and it would be moneyless because the means of production and means of subsistence would be free for all to access.
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor… has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want… only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully left behind and society inscribe on its banners: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!’ — Critique of the Gotha Programme
Prestige and desire, likely.
You would probably also see the state require some labor from people in order for society to function; I imagine that certain classes of skilled and or dangerous labor would get them from having to contribute to some manual tasks.
Same for people who maintain septic systems, like diving in lakes of feces. I’m not sure how that would look
There’s definitely motivation outside of pay. People can value doing jobs that are critical for society knowing that they’re helping
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:
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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
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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
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prior incentives from pre-capitalist societies were violence
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prior incentives from primitive societies were the outcomes of doing the work
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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
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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.
was any of it communism?
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…
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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).
No one knows that communism looks like yet.
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?
Not to pry but what do you consider “good pay” for those conditions?
Around 55 an hour on average in my field but lots of fluctuation based on location.
So you evaluated that 114k a year is worth a chance at your life? What’s the lowest you’d go?
The biggest problem is that’s not really a considerable sum of value compared to what the upper 1% makes. There’s ALOT of wealth to go around that has been systematically stolen from you. I wouldn’t doubt a socialist society could provide you, and most people actually, the same level of luxury you are afforded today.
I don’t care what other people make though, millions of people work significantly more dangerous gigs for significantly less and millions of people work completely safe gigs for way more. I do this because I love it AND it pays well.
Isnt this a little contradictory to your earlier statement? Your income is what everyone has to make to live comfortably, a state which could easily be provided by many systems, and now you say you love it even though the luxury it affords you is around the same as an experienced flight attendant. Would that mean you’d work the same job for any system that provided for you? Considering your affinity for the job?
So I guess that answers your questions. In a socialist society you’d probably have the same material wealth and could work the same job
Fair enough
I think this is a bit like the question at the other end of the scale for desirability: Who gets resources that there is competition for (like prime real-estate)?
I don’t think communism is logically consistent in a pure form to handle it. I think that’s why most governments are a mis-mash with some social support and some capitalism. I think its kind of like that Churchill quote:
Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…
None. But highly dangerous and specialized fields were always something the creative explored regardless of the ideology.
Pioneers will always exist whether capitalism or communism.
So the creative pioneers are going to work in the steel mills, okay.
In socialist societies, more dangerous jobs are usually compensated by higher pay or reduced working hours. Such was the practice in the USSR, as an example. The USSR was a top competitor in the field of science, managing to go from semi-feudalism to space in merely half a century, so the idea that socialism stalls progress is faulty.
In communism, when all of production and distribution have been collectivized, and the productive forces themselves have been sufficiently advanced, people still work for their own fulfillment and to obtain personal enrichment for still-scarce non-necessities.
If you want to learn about Marxism-Leninism, I wrote an introductory reading list you can check out.
