I guess I'm not well versed enough on communist principles but how does this work even on the simplest level? Work has to be done for a person to have shelter, food, etc and that is pretty much unavoidable for now.

How can people both be not obligated to provide anything to the community, while the community is obligated to provide things for them? Is it just assumed that enough people will still want to work to keep the system sustainable?

[–] LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Automation and efficient machinery have made most labor significantly easier and require significantly fewer people. The rise of corporate desk jobs and call centers pretty well represents this. A huge portion of society is already doing meaningless work that only serves capitalist interests.

This means a couple things. First off, far fewer working hours are required to maintain a community. People don't have to work 40 hour weeks just to get by. Secondly, people can rotate what jobs they're performing based on how they feel like investing their efforts. I'm an anarchist, not a communist, so my beliefs surrounding division of labor are different from, for example, a marxist-leninist.

Western society is far too indulgent with many things that cost massive amounts of resources and provide very little in the way of human benefit. Public transportation should be the norm everywhere for instance, because cars and roads are wildly resource intensive for really no reason. Every human being does not need to possess a personal vehicle. It does not actually serve our interests. It just pushes the cost of transportation onto the workers, instead of the ruling class funding actual comprehensive functional public transportation. This is just one example, but the way we approach food is also extremely flawed. Instead of primarily relying on our host ecosystems and local food production to feed ourselves we ship food all around the world at another massive resource cost. We are also over-reliant on resource intensive livestock, when much less resources intensive options exist.

Put all things together, and it becomes firstly apparent that we are wasting the majority of our resources on stuff that has no actual real world benefit to us. So we could stop wasting those resources, and thusly not need to invest as many labor hours into production. So far fewer people need to work than currently do. And labor should be invested locally, into things that directly benefit you your family and your community. Instead of the present case where the majority of your labor hours are invested into things that have little to no tangible benefit for yourself or your community. So its much harder to see how your work is actually helpful.

Part of the propaganda you're fed by capitalism is that cooperation can never work because everyone is selfish and uncooperative and "exploitation is just human nature". Those things are not true. Exploitation is not human nature. Humans are naturally social and community oriented. We are naturally codependent and have adaptations for functioning within a community. Capitalism, and more broadly consolidation of power into a ruling class, has upset humans natural tendency to cooperate. Capitalism puts mortal pressure on our ability to expend labor hours for capitalists. You cannot help anyone else because it risks your own personal life, any time you spend money you're spending your own survivability. It's what means you can live at all. So people do not want to help anyone else. We are taught through propaganda that being homeless is a personal failing. That being poor is a personal failing. This is specifically to prevent human cooperation from expanding into a genuine desire to improve life for all workers.

So people don't feel like they can cooperate, which leads to the general perception of human nature as being selfish. The idea that people will work to better the lives of everyone in their community is a completely normal idea.

[–] jscummy@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

While there's a lot I agree with there, it seems like there's some assumptions made that are doing a lot of the heavy lifting. I guess it's more of a difference in philosophy, but it seems like a core part of your statement is "people given the opportunity to cooperate without risk to themselves would provide enough for everyone, and whatever they don't end up providing is unnecessary."

It's fair to say that there are a lot of things we don't need, but it seems a bit flippant to say those things are completely useless. I'm all for strong safety nets that allow people to give to others without having to sacrifice their own wellbeing, but it seems like you're talking about a quality of life decrease for a large number of people in order to achieve that.

[–] LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

True, in some senses I am definitely expecting a relative decrease in some aspects of quality of life for the middle class and upper middle class. Like decreased access to some food types that aren't local to a community. Significantly reduced transportation and a much heavier reliance on a more robust public transportation system. Less access to new luxury goods and more recycling of technology and resources.

To homeless people, the mentally ill who cannot work, the disabled who cannot work, and to the severely impoverished - to all of them this would result in a huge increase in their quality of life.

Its also not like there would be no pressure to work, simply that you don't face homelessness starvation and death if you are not capable of work. In that event I do believe most people would willingly work to provide for themselves and their communities.

Also, its only a quality of life decrease from our present perspective. The way our society currently functions will eventually result in total failure of supply chains as the climate crisis that we are causing continues to unfold. Which means people will have to depend on their local community to provide for them anyway. But even without that, I believe a society that consumes far less and is consequently much more effective at providing needs for everyone is possible.