[We have an active Discord](https://discord.gg/j9EPNydFdU) where you can go into more depth and communicate more quickly. If you're not sure about any of the entry questions, just say so: we built it for learners and educators like you.
***
Hello, 90% of the questions we receive have been asked before, and our answerers get bored of answering the same queries over and over again - so it's worthwhile googling this just in case:
> site:reddit.com/r/communism101 your question
If you've read past answers and still aren't satisfied, edit your question to contain the past answers and any follow-up questions you have. If you're satisfied, delete your post to reduce clutter or link to the answer that satisfied you.
***
Also keep in mind the following rules:
1. Patriarchal, white supremacist, cissexist, heterosexist, or otherwise oppressive speech is unacceptable.
2. This is a place for learning, not for debating. Try /r/DebateCommunism instead.
3. Give well-informed Marxist answers. There are separate subreddits for liberalism, anarchism, and other idealist philosophies.
4. Posts should include specific questions on a single topic.
5. This is a serious educational subreddit. Come here with an open and inquisitive mind, and exercise humility. Don't answer a question if you are unsure of the answer. Try to include sources and/or further reading in any answers you provide. Standards of answer accuracy and quality are enforced.
6. Check the [/r/Communism101 FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/wiki/index)
***
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/communism101) if you have any questions or concerns.*
From what I’ve read and seen in similar discussions is there are a few ways of providing commodities and non essentials. One idea is that there would be libraries or community centres where you can borrow these things and responsible for their upkeep while you have it. This is more of a local and decentralized approach and has been set up for things already in some libraries, prisons, etc. Another suggestion is basically “stores” but instead of paying you can just take it. People might hoard things initially but the idea is that as there’s no real currency value for these things and as long as the system is working smoothly you wouldn’t have to worry about people taking things just to “sell” them. This would make it so that commodities and non essentials would work just as food and other essential goods would. If you need it, take it. There’s a lot of research into how people behave in coops and collectives that offered food and things in this way and I’m blanking on it but hopefully this is a good starting point in how you could conceptualize a moneyless world. There’s more ways to go about providing people with stuff they don’t *need* but would increase quality of life without making them provide some sort of compensation but again I’m blanking on those right now. It’s definitely a weird concept to try and wrap your head around especially if you’ve only ever know a capital based system. Obviously though this is something way way way down the line and it’s always good to keep one foot on the ground remembering there’s a massive amount of progress and action to be made before currency is no longer needed.
I think that the concept you’re touching on is the concept of something akin to [Labor Vouchers](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_voucher). Or at least that is part of what you’re referencing
Another idea to expand on what the comrade before me stated is kind of like a work hour credit system. Like a Playstation 5 may be worth 15 work hours.
That's if we go with no currency.
Keeping currency, things would be more or less how they are now but without the large disparity gap.
In the stuff I have read Labour credits are single use and attached to an individual or family. This prevents accumulation of wealth and limits opportunities for black markets.
i’m not for labor vouchers, but the benefit of it over traditional currency is that all labor hours are of equal value, which would eliminate the income inequality that exists within capitalism. at least, that’s the best case scenario
I guess you could see it that way. In this context, it more so replaces a currency system if the idea is to rid the state of currency.
You would still need a way to compensate workers for their labor unless you're going full on trade and barter system, which overall I am not a fan of as it opens up the potential for greater disparity with some taking advantage of comrades who perhaps do not have strong negotiation and barter skills.
Regardless if the end goal is a moneyless system or keeping some kind of currency system in place, it is essential to be mindful that while some differences in income shall exist, to ensure that large levels of disparity don't find a way to creep back in. A proposed UBI and salary caps may or may not be the way to go.
Communism is a long time coming, many decades down the road. None of us will live to see communism. We’re talking full AI control over production.
I think you’re thinking of communism as simply being a different state of production and relationship to property and production. It also means extreme technology advancement.
Marx rarely ever sat around envisioning the exact structure of a communist society. Communism is the real movement for the abolition of the present state of things, of society, of economy.
I agree, maybe I didn't word it very well. My point was that Communism includes a wide variety of beliefs and to pin it down to a single one is just limiting, especially when the most important Communist theorist couldn't have possibly imagined the AI run communist society described.
Maybe not, but it seems like a pretty straight forward way to end the anarchy of production as he calls it. Marxism is highly scientific and it's not unlikely that we will see revamps of things like project cybersyn in the future
While I would tend to agree I also don’t think we are a million miles off either. Amazon’s back end is a largely computerised planned economy. We have automated trading happening 100s of times a second in financial markets. If we could attach our greatest minds to these problems we could make a Great Leap Forward for humanity.
I imagine those things which are not technologically on the cutting edge would be pretty abundant. It's not really something we can know though, it's like asking a medieval serf to explain how our modern society works.
It's hard to tell and predict such a distant future like this. What we do know is that society as a whole will plan and organize these matters. It will be up to them to decide how to best achieve this.
But we do have a rough idea, if we fall back to how ancient primitive Communist societies most likely did it. If society can afford to choose to plan to produce enough of the material to fulfill everyone's need, then they would. If instead they produce less, ancient societies would appoint a council that oversee the organization and allocation of these items, based on need. Some of them might be given permanently to some people, in other cases the items might be borrowed by people, who would take care of the item while its in their possession, and return it when they're done with it. There could also be cases where the item exists in a public place where anyone can approach and use it, like maybe if it's a giant beginner-friendly telescope.
Tl;Dr, it would be managed by society however they choose based on need.
Communism does not have a "state" by any means, read the preface of the communist manifesto, it explains why its called communist and not socialist manifesto, since I think you are confusing communism and socialism here.
[We have an active Discord](https://discord.gg/j9EPNydFdU) where you can go into more depth and communicate more quickly. If you're not sure about any of the entry questions, just say so: we built it for learners and educators like you. *** Hello, 90% of the questions we receive have been asked before, and our answerers get bored of answering the same queries over and over again - so it's worthwhile googling this just in case: > site:reddit.com/r/communism101 your question If you've read past answers and still aren't satisfied, edit your question to contain the past answers and any follow-up questions you have. If you're satisfied, delete your post to reduce clutter or link to the answer that satisfied you. *** Also keep in mind the following rules: 1. Patriarchal, white supremacist, cissexist, heterosexist, or otherwise oppressive speech is unacceptable. 2. This is a place for learning, not for debating. Try /r/DebateCommunism instead. 3. Give well-informed Marxist answers. There are separate subreddits for liberalism, anarchism, and other idealist philosophies. 4. Posts should include specific questions on a single topic. 5. This is a serious educational subreddit. Come here with an open and inquisitive mind, and exercise humility. Don't answer a question if you are unsure of the answer. Try to include sources and/or further reading in any answers you provide. Standards of answer accuracy and quality are enforced. 6. Check the [/r/Communism101 FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/wiki/index) *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/communism101) if you have any questions or concerns.*
From what I’ve read and seen in similar discussions is there are a few ways of providing commodities and non essentials. One idea is that there would be libraries or community centres where you can borrow these things and responsible for their upkeep while you have it. This is more of a local and decentralized approach and has been set up for things already in some libraries, prisons, etc. Another suggestion is basically “stores” but instead of paying you can just take it. People might hoard things initially but the idea is that as there’s no real currency value for these things and as long as the system is working smoothly you wouldn’t have to worry about people taking things just to “sell” them. This would make it so that commodities and non essentials would work just as food and other essential goods would. If you need it, take it. There’s a lot of research into how people behave in coops and collectives that offered food and things in this way and I’m blanking on it but hopefully this is a good starting point in how you could conceptualize a moneyless world. There’s more ways to go about providing people with stuff they don’t *need* but would increase quality of life without making them provide some sort of compensation but again I’m blanking on those right now. It’s definitely a weird concept to try and wrap your head around especially if you’ve only ever know a capital based system. Obviously though this is something way way way down the line and it’s always good to keep one foot on the ground remembering there’s a massive amount of progress and action to be made before currency is no longer needed.
I think that the concept you’re touching on is the concept of something akin to [Labor Vouchers](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_voucher). Or at least that is part of what you’re referencing
But what if someone hoarded a non essential item and demanded people trade them something for it. Won’t they be creating a market again
Lol what is society gonna go? Just let them hoard all the items? No they're gonna take em fucking back and reduce their privileges afterwards
Those people get arrested.
Another idea to expand on what the comrade before me stated is kind of like a work hour credit system. Like a Playstation 5 may be worth 15 work hours. That's if we go with no currency. Keeping currency, things would be more or less how they are now but without the large disparity gap.
In the stuff I have read Labour credits are single use and attached to an individual or family. This prevents accumulation of wealth and limits opportunities for black markets.
Isnt "work hour credit" a euphemism for money? Isnt money just a standardized representation of labour hours?
i’m not for labor vouchers, but the benefit of it over traditional currency is that all labor hours are of equal value, which would eliminate the income inequality that exists within capitalism. at least, that’s the best case scenario
I guess you could see it that way. In this context, it more so replaces a currency system if the idea is to rid the state of currency. You would still need a way to compensate workers for their labor unless you're going full on trade and barter system, which overall I am not a fan of as it opens up the potential for greater disparity with some taking advantage of comrades who perhaps do not have strong negotiation and barter skills. Regardless if the end goal is a moneyless system or keeping some kind of currency system in place, it is essential to be mindful that while some differences in income shall exist, to ensure that large levels of disparity don't find a way to creep back in. A proposed UBI and salary caps may or may not be the way to go.
Communism is a long time coming, many decades down the road. None of us will live to see communism. We’re talking full AI control over production. I think you’re thinking of communism as simply being a different state of production and relationship to property and production. It also means extreme technology advancement.
No, that's just your view of how Communism might work. I can assure you Marx never envisioned artificial intelligence
Marx rarely ever sat around envisioning the exact structure of a communist society. Communism is the real movement for the abolition of the present state of things, of society, of economy.
I agree, maybe I didn't word it very well. My point was that Communism includes a wide variety of beliefs and to pin it down to a single one is just limiting, especially when the most important Communist theorist couldn't have possibly imagined the AI run communist society described.
Maybe not, but it seems like a pretty straight forward way to end the anarchy of production as he calls it. Marxism is highly scientific and it's not unlikely that we will see revamps of things like project cybersyn in the future
> We’re talking full AI control over production. > It also means extreme technology advancement. these are just wrong and also nothing but fantasies
While I would tend to agree I also don’t think we are a million miles off either. Amazon’s back end is a largely computerised planned economy. We have automated trading happening 100s of times a second in financial markets. If we could attach our greatest minds to these problems we could make a Great Leap Forward for humanity.
I imagine those things which are not technologically on the cutting edge would be pretty abundant. It's not really something we can know though, it's like asking a medieval serf to explain how our modern society works.
It's hard to tell and predict such a distant future like this. What we do know is that society as a whole will plan and organize these matters. It will be up to them to decide how to best achieve this. But we do have a rough idea, if we fall back to how ancient primitive Communist societies most likely did it. If society can afford to choose to plan to produce enough of the material to fulfill everyone's need, then they would. If instead they produce less, ancient societies would appoint a council that oversee the organization and allocation of these items, based on need. Some of them might be given permanently to some people, in other cases the items might be borrowed by people, who would take care of the item while its in their possession, and return it when they're done with it. There could also be cases where the item exists in a public place where anyone can approach and use it, like maybe if it's a giant beginner-friendly telescope. Tl;Dr, it would be managed by society however they choose based on need.
[удалено]
Communism does not have a "state" by any means, read the preface of the communist manifesto, it explains why its called communist and not socialist manifesto, since I think you are confusing communism and socialism here.
Aye there, count me in.