Conversations with Communists
By: Bj Campbell
Tags: Politics, Culture War, Culture, Communism, Economics

The Smart Libertarian doesn’t think voting matters. The Smart Libertarian realizes that the politic is just a TV show, with replaceable, disposable figureheads who take the fall for the failures of the actual power structures within a country. The Smart Libertarian realizes that voting is a sham, and politics almost literally does not matter. The Smart Libertarian realizes that the ritual of voting is one we undertake to instill an illusion of choice once every four years, to make the peasants think they have a say, to keep them from revolting. It’s way easier to “vote harder next time” than it is to “kill your masters.”

The intelligencia within the Anti-Facistic Left sees this, but blames the ineptitude of The Republic on a disproportionate influence of The Factory, and concludes that the solution is to burn down capitalism and have some flavor of Marxist revolution. The intelligencia within the Alt-Right sees this, blames the ineptitude of The Republic on disproportionate influence of The Bureau, and concludes that the solution is to burn down The Republic and go back to having kings and such. The Smart Libertarian looks out his window and says, “shit, dude, this place I’m living in ain’t a bad place to fuck and make babies, historically speaking. I ain’t dying for a cause. Let’s make babies.” But the Smart Libertarian also realizes he has absolutely no control over what The Cathedral pushes, how the Bureau enacts it, how the Factory does Factory Things, or how the Castle does Castle Things.

The Smart Libertarian however definitely looks out his window, and definitely plans for the future.

Herein, a lonely Smart Libertarian anticipates a communist revolution, and asks communists what the world is going to be like after it happens, so the Smart Libertarian can prepare. I present to you, a friendly dialogue I had with actual modern pop communists in 2018. As you read along, be charitable and realize that different interlocutors have different expectations of what communism will look like. The entire dialogue revolves around teasing apart what “seize the means of production” means to them.

The Dialogue With Communist #1

Me: (“The Opener” for all dialogues below)

Communist revolutions tend to happen, historically, when the rich squeeze too much juice out of the grape and piss the poor off enough that they revolt violently. I could definitely see how that might happen here, and if it does, I’d be powerless to stop it, so I’m increasingly of the mind to start preparing for it. So I need to know the rules about this whole “seize the means of production” thing, in the new United Communist States. (UCS) Help me understand it, through a simple example, and some follow-up questions.

I understand there are different flavors of socialism/communism/etc, so for the purposes of the discussion, presume that the UCS has adopted a flavor whose motto is “Seize The Means of Production.” You may extrapolate the details from there as you see fit, and qualify any of your answers based on your own personal extrapolation.

Example:

I’m a carpenter. I buy or otherwise obtain wood. I use my tools in my garage to make the wood into chairs. My neighbor is a brewer. He buys or otherwise obtains the ingredients for beer. He uses the tools in his kitchen to brew beer. I like his beer, he likes my chairs, we mutually choose to barter chairs for beer.

Questions:

Is obtaining wood or beer ingredients now illegal? If so, who enforces that law, and how? If legal, am I allowed to choose what sorts of wood I can obtain, and is he allowed to choose what sorts of beer ingredients he can obtain? And how are they acquired? See also Q3. Do I still own my power tools? Does he still own his pots and pans? If not, who comes to take them away from us, and how would we go about getting permission to use them? Is choosing to barter chairs for beer now illegal? If so, who enforces that law, and how? Extend this question to wood and ingredients, may we barter for them as well? Presuming bartering is legal: If my brother volunteers to help me build the chair in my garage, or his wife volunteers to help him brew the beer in his kitchen, does that change the legality of the barter transaction? If so, who enforces that change? If I have chairs and he doesn’t currently have beer, or visa versa, can we choose to barter for an IOU? Am I allowed to give my brother some of the bartered beer in return for his help? Am I allowed to give my brother a portion of the beer IOU from question 5 in return for his help? Does the UCS have legal tender, and if so may I substitute this for an IOU in the above scenario? May I substitute a neighbor, or a man off the street, for my brother in the creation of chairs? May I substitute more than one neighbor?

I don’t want this conversation to be about what’s “right” or “wrong” in the new UCS. I merely want to understand what the rules are once “the means of production have been seized,” so I can plan accordingly.

C1:

we mutually choose to barter chairs for beer.

While its possible for barter to occur in communist society it depends on the context of how the exchange goes down that determines if its “bad” (capitalist) or not.

For example if I offer to mow my neighbors lawn and they let me borrow their hammer later on or give me a handjob for it or something, that’s not necessarily capitalistic. However if I mow their lawn and expect to get paid in “handjob credits” that I can cash in at any time and trade with my friends so they can get handjobs at any time while I come away with a profit, that’s fucking capitalist. We’re against the latter not the former and yeah I’m pretty if you decide to create capital in a socialist the reaction won’t be pretty. Same way if you decide you have rights as a free producer and human being as a prole in capitalism it won’t be pretty either.

Me:

Okay good deal. This is the threshold I need to get my head around. This is a perfect example to expand on, and thank you very much for the response.

So I can mow my neighbor’s lawn for hand jobs. But you’re saying I have to get the hand job right then, and not later, like for instance after I’ve had a shower or a few days later when my wife won’t give me a hand job? (credits)

And me and my brother can both collaborate to mow her lawn for hand jobs, but I can’t let him collect on my handjob if he’s single? (trade credits)

So what if I could spend time and effort finding other ladies in my neighborhood or other neighborhoods with unkempt lawns willing to give out handjobs for getting them mowed. Can I collect a handjob for the service of connecting them with other people willing to mow for handjobs? Or is that considered “profit on someone else’s labor?” I’m doing some labor making the connection, after all.

I’m just trying to get a handjob without getting arrested here. Need to understand the rules.

C1:

Well I mean I was kinda joking when I said you can get handjobs but it doesn’t have to be immediate it, it can happen later. But there’s a difference between a sort of delayed gift exchange like that and turning mowing somebodies lawn or handjobs into a commodity. When it’s utilized in a way to create a profit and to commodify (like asking for hand job “credits” you can sell to your friends) only then can it become capital. It becomes a commodity when its exchanged for profit not when it’s an agreement between mutual parties.

And me and my brother can both collaborate to mow her lawn for hand jobs

Uh know you can’t force anybody to give you anything if you do work for them since you can only compel yourself to work. The point isn’t about getting handjobs its about gift exchange and mutual aid and if you end up getting a handjob for it well then good for you. But your never entitled to one so you should never act like you are.

but I can’t let him collect on my handjob

This isn’t a business transaction so this logic makes no sense in a gift exchange.

Can I collect a handjob for the service of connecting them with other people willing to mow for handjobs?

Why would anybody agree to that? Like on a social level why would anybody agree to this?

Me:

It becomes a commodity when its exchanged for profit not when it’s an agreement between mutual parties.

I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “profit,” as it’s not meshing with what I understand “profit” to mean, as a current small business owner. Are you saying I can run a massive multi person multi layer lawncare-for-handjobs operation as long as I don’t retain any of the handjob IOUs indefinitely?

Why would anybody agree to that? Like on a social level why would anybody agree to this?

So I’m at the Government Issue Bar exchanging my Government Labor Credits for Government Beer the other day, and I mention to my comrades that I got a handjob for mowing this lady’s lawn. And she told me that she was at the Government Knitting Circle the other day, and met like ten ladies who all have terrible lawns and would be totally okay with giving handjobs to get their lawn mowed, but I simply can’t mow that many lawns, nor could I possibly enjoy that many handjobs without some serious chaffing. So my Government Issue Bar friends are all like, “Hey, can you hook me up? I’d happily mow two lawns for one handjob. I’ll give you one of the handjobs in ‘gift exchange’ if you can get me two lawns to mow.” And I’m like “sure, no sweat.”

Is that “profit?”

Uh know you can’t force anybody to give you anything if you do work for them since you can only compel yourself to work

We operate on the honor system of course. If I arrange to mow lawns with the help of my brother in return for handjobs and someone doesn’t give us the prior agreed upon handjob, then we add their name to a list. We call it the “Equibation” list. Or maybe “Experijobs.” Not sure yet. Anyway, this list indicates everyone who failed to abide by the honor system when getting their lawn mowed for handjobs, so future lawn mowers who aren’t us also know not to expect a handjob after mowing their lawn. If a lady only skips out once on the handjob, then maybe it doesn’t hurt her Handjob Score much, but if she’s doing it all the time her Handjob Score craters and we never mow her lawn anymore.

Then, since handjobs can be gifted, we offer to share the list with other folks who are mowing for handjobs, if they gift us one handjob. They can also add their handjob experience to the list.

Yeah, I think this could work great.

C1:

I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “profit,”

Accumulation of capital or, you know, profit.

Are you saying I can run a massive multi person multi layer lawncare-for-handjobs operation

I mean I guess you could but nobody would really be obligated to compensate you so if they don’t give u a handy your shit outta luck.

my Government Labor Credits

Labor credits are capitalist not socialist.

Is that profit?

No because its still an exchange between mutual parties. Its just between a group of lawnmowers and neighbors instead of one lawnmower and a neighbor. Now if you get paid in hand job tickets and get the government issue bar (isn’t that just a pub?) to sell you booze under the table and then you sell that booze underground for other commodities to sell and extract profit off of them then yeah that’s capitalism.

Me:

Accumulation of capital or, you know, profit.

That’s not actually what profit means, but I’m fine with going with your definition. I just needed to know what your definition was. For the purposes of this line of inquiry, “accumulation of capital” is “profit.”

I mean I guess you could but nobody would really be obligated to compensate you so if they don’t give u a handy your shit outta luck.

If they break a the handjob promise then their handjob credit goes down and they’re shit out of a mowed lawn. I can get a handjob somewhere else, from one of the other ladies who needs their lawn mowed.

No because its still an exchange between mutual parties. Its just between a group of lawnmowers and neighbors instead of one lawnmower and a neighbor. Now if you get paid in hand job tickets and get the government issue bar (isn’t that just a pub?) to sell you booze under the table and then you sell that booze underground for other commodities to sell and extract profit off of them then yeah that’s capitalism.

But if I do all that and at the end of the day accumulate no handjob tickets, then I’ve made no profit on any of the mutual exchanges and I’m at no risk of the gulag, right? It’s wealth accumulation that’s the evil?

C1:

That’s not actually what profit means

Well to be more specific its extraction of surplus value but you know what I mean.

It’s wealth accumulation that’s the evil?

No but I guess you could say exploitation and suppression of the working class is what’s “evil” about capitalism. Wealth accumulation is just a necessary side effect of the system.

Me:

Exploitation in what way? Keeping too much of the fruits of their labor in return for providing them the place to ply their trade? I mean, if that’s where you’re going then I agree it’s a problem, I just think we probably have vastly different solutions in mind.

C1:

Exploitation in what way?

In the literal sense of the word….

Keeping too much of the fruits of their labor in return for providing them the place to ply their trade?

What? What does this even mean?

Me:

Wow. If you knew at all how the marketplace works, you’d probably be able to be a better communist.

Let’s say I’m an entry level civil engineer. I can’t simply ply my trade out of my house, because no client is going to hire an entry level engineer solo when it takes 5 of them to finish a project, and at least one of the 5 needs experience, and the 5 ideally have a history of working together to complete other projects on time on budget.

So I go work for a company. They pay me a salary which converts to approximately $40/hr for my time, and they bill the client $120/hr for my time, and they keep the rest.

Freeze.

This is what you guys think of when you say “exploitation of the worker.” “Worker must seize his own means of production.” Etc. It’s right there in the business numbers, I’ve seen it, I know it, I can point to it. It’s why I don’t mind listening to you guys. The companies keep two thirds of the labor.

But you need to understand that the company isn’t pocketing all of that $80. That $80 pays for my computer, my phone, my miserable cubicle, my boss’s salary, the marketing department, my boss’s boss’s salary, office rent, and debt service on the money they had to borrow three years ago during a market lull. Also the investors rake like 5% or something.

Now once I get enough experience as an engineer, and I think I have enough clients that will follow me, I can ditch that company like a $3 whore and start my own business, where I bill out $120 to the client and I keep the entire $120. If I do that, I have literally seized control of my production. I am a one-man proletariat movement. Woot. But I’ll have to buy my own computers, phones, internet, office, do my own marketing, do my own IT, etc. Or I’ll have to hire someone else to do some or all of those things for me, and pay them out of that $120/hr I’m raking in. So how much do I pay them? If an IT guy comes in and sets up my engineering software for me, does he then get to claim that I’m exploiting him by not giving him all the money I made? No, he takes a predetermined cut, and nobody’s “exploited.”

The only way the evil big corporation I used to work for could be “exploiting” me is if I don’t have the freedom to quit. In communist countries, you do not have the freedom to quit. Communism is the same thing as a big company, it’s just that there’s one company, and that one company runs everything, and you’re not allowed to quit your job.

C1:

Dude Wth are you talking about?

In communist countries, you do not have the freedom to quit.

Like who? They never forced ppl to work in anarchist Ukraine so who are you talking about saying they forced ppl to work.

Me:

Like who?

In the USSR they would assign you a job. Sometimes you got to choose, sometimes you didn’t, and if your job was deemed “essential” by the government then quitting your job was treason. There was only one employer, the government, and you could not shop for a different employer within your career if you felt you were not being paid commensurate with your talents. People in free countries made tremendously more money for doing the same tasks. If you were in a non-essential field, you could conceivably quit your job, but if they gave you another job and you didn’t take it, you were тунеядец and they threw you in the gulag.

Their system was basically “everything is one big company and you have no power over your own employment.”

If you tell me “The USSR wasn’t communist” then we are done here.

C1:

The ussr was fascist, not socialist dude. You literally just described how fascism works.

Me:

And we’re done.

The Dialogue With Communist #2

Me:

Same opener from above

C1:

I will answer as though the Revolution has just happened, guided by FALGSC.

(1) No. For the time being, wood will be rationed so that the majority of wood production goes to the production of livable housing for the homeless and for people that live in inadequate housing. But, some wood will be set aside for private purchase. Yes, you can still buy whatever kind you want, or at least whatever kind is available. Buying is done not with money but with ration points which are distributed to people according to their basic human needs, and are on a blockchain system that is regulated by algorithms. Same goes for beer ingredients. You get them the same way as before, except the distribution centers are publicly and not privately owned.

When communism is achieved, production of wood, beer ingredients, and everything else will be fully automated, so it won’t have to be rationed nearly as much and won’t cost anything. You’ll be able to order as much as (total wood production in kg/population) kg of wood. Again, same for beer ingredients.

(2) Yes and yes. This is because they are owned by the worker who is using them to produce things.

(4) No. Exchanges of material goods that YOU YOURSELF produced with your own labour are fine. However, you cannot claim ownership over something someone else has produced in exchange for ration points, because ration points are not transferrable from one person to another. This prevents wealth from accumulating in the hands of individuals who didn’t work to produce it.

(4) No.

(5) That’s your business. However, you can’t enforce debt repayments through violence, and there is no formal system of regulating debt; if you take out an IOU with someone else, then it is entirely between you and that person. Also, since ration points are non-transferrable, you can’t loan them.

(6) Yes. But you can’t pay him in ration points. Also, once communism is achieved, any help he could give you could be done by robots, unless he just wants to help.

(7) Yes, but again, debts are not guaranteed by the system; they are entirely on the honour system.

(8) No.

(9) Yes.

Me:

If ration points aren’t transferable, but goods I and others get from the GI Warehouse are barterable, I can accumulate more stuff from the GI store by getting other people to use their ration points on stuff I want, and then trade them chairs for it, right? And I can get extra wood and whatever else I need for my chair operation doing the same thing, right?

And if me and a lot of other people cook up our own system of managing and swapping IOUs, it sounds like that’s totally okay under your system, since any use of that exterior IOU Swapping System would be voluntary and we wouldn’t be transferring or accumulating ration points. Right?

This system sounds a lot like a world where the dollar goes away, and all that’s left is (food stamps) and (bitcoin). I can live with that. I’ll just need to focus on accumulating bits of IOU Proxy instead of dollars.

C2:

But there’d be no point in that. You could get all the chairs and beer you want, exactly the same or better than those made by the humans, for free from the robots.

Me:

So barter is still legal? And barter proxies are still legal? I’m just making sure, for when I run out of Robot Overlord Food Stamps.

(This conversation ended here)

The Dialogue With Communist #3

Me:

Same opener.

C3:

Communist revolutions tend to happen, historically, when the rich squeeze too much juice out of the grape and piss the poor off enough that they revolt violently.

Not really, historically they’ve happened after a nation completely bungeled a war, leaving the government disgraced and the workers pissed.

I’m a carpenter. I buy or otherwise obtain wood. I use my tools in my garage to make the wood into chairs. My neighbor is a brewer. He buys or otherwise obtains the ingredients for beer. He uses the tools in his kitchen to brew beer. I like his beer, he likes my chairs, we mutually choose to barter chairs for beer.

The production you manage in a kitchen and a garage, respectively, are probably not large enough for anyone to really give a shit.

Same goes for questions 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.

A quote from Marx/Engels, The German Ideology, 1845:

on the other hand, makes it easy to discover a contradiction in communism, since after the abolition of ( actual ) property it is, of course, easy to discover all sorts of things in communism which can be included in the concept “property”. In reality, of course, the situation is just the reverse. In reality 1 possess private property only insofar as I have something vendible, whereas what is peculiar to me [meine Eigenheit ] may not be vendible at all. My frock-coat is private property for me only so long as I can barter, pawn or sell it, so long [as it] is [marketable]. If it loses that feature, if it becomes tattered, it can still have a number of features which make it valuable for me, it may even become a feature of me and turn me into a tatterdemalion. But no economist would think of classing it as my private property, since it does not enable me to command any, even the smallest, amount of other people’s labour. A lawyer, an ideologist of private property, could perhaps still indulge in such twaddle.

This quote doesn’t fit perfectly with your example where you’re producing something which could realistically be classed as private property, the point is it’s not capitalist production, which is understood to be characterized by several relations which are missing from your example, by any means.

Here’s a thread that explains it better than I could.

https://www.reddit.com/r/marxism_101/comments/7k3vun/does_communism_involve_the_abolition_of_use_value/

Is obtaining wood or beer ingredients now illegal?

No, the whole “free association of producers” thing kind of implies that you’d have free access to such materials.

And how are they acquired?

From a community warehouse which would basically supplant the supermarket, you’d probably have to go to some specialist place to get the ingredients for beer, though.

Does the UCS have legal tender, and if so may I substitute this for an IOU in the above scenario?

No legal tender exists under communism, except maybe labour vouchers, seeing as how your example is divorced from any meaningful production you wouldn’t be allowed to substitute an IOU for labour vouchers.

May I substitute a neighbor, or a man off the street, for my brother in the creation of chairs? May I substitute more than one neighbor?

The addition of more workers implies that production is expanding, which signifies to me that it’s becoming more and more capitalistic. Capitalist production would not be tolerated but the substitution of one person for another would, again, be reacted to with indifference.

Me:

So individual barter is okay but bartering in groups gets me thrown in jail?

What if I barter for a large amount of beer, more than I could drink, and give the beer out to other friends who occasionally help me with chair making?

C3:

So individual barter is okay but bartering in groups gets me thrown in jail?

Establishing an enterprise in which all the characteristics of capitalist production exist isn’t okay.

Mowing some nice old lady’s lawn in exchange for an apple pie is fine.

What if I barter for a large amount of beer, more than I could drink, and give the beer out to other friends who occasionally help me with chair making?

Another way to word this would be: Taking my friends out for a drink after fixing some chairs. Yeah, it’d be fine.

Me:

Establishing an enterprise in which all the characteristics of capitalist production exist isn’t okay. Mowing some nice old lady’s lawn in exchange for an apple pie is fine.

Good deal. I’m more interested in just the free trade aspects. I don’t really care so much about loans and interest and all that snaz, as long as I can live off the government teet for the same crappy standard of living as anyone else, and accumulate my wealth by underground barter proxy.

(This conversation ended here, although it’s worth pointing out that “accumulating wealth via underground barter proxy” is the exact sort of system that appeared in Venezuela and Vietnam.)

The Dialogue With Communist #4

Me:

Same opener.

C4:

Any effort to “seize the means of production” has to be coordinated worldwide, since the commodities consumed in the US are produced worldwide. So, there wouldn’t really be any UCS after everything has been seized by the international proletariat. Nation-states emerged alongside capitalism due to its tendency to centrally accumulate vast wealth. So in a world without capitalism, and therefore without centralized accumulation of wealth, people wouldn’t be split up into different nations.

At least in Marx’ conception, communism only makes sense as a worldwide movement of workers once the capitalist market itself becomes worldwide (as is increasingly the case today). From The German Ideology:

Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples “all at once” and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with communism. Moreover, the mass of propertyless workers — the utterly precarious position of labour — power on a mass scale cut off from capital or from even a limited satisfaction and, therefore, no longer merely temporarily deprived of work itself as a secure source of life — presupposes the world market through competition. The proletariat can thus only exist world-historically, just as communism, its activity, can only have a “world-historical” existence.

Also worth mentioning: small business owners and other petty-bourgeois operations would be the last priority since, individually, they only control a negligible proportion of world economic activity and have little to no influence over institutions of power.

Me:

worldwide movement

That’s fine as a qualifying assumption. Rephrase the question to “Unified Communist World Government” if you like, and then tackle the questions. I’m just planning ahead.

small business owners and other petty-bourgeois operations would be the last priority

I assume folks would get around to them eventually, though, right? Or is there a fixed cutoff for annual revenue generated where the little guy is still allowed to barter?

C4:

There really isn’t much point in speculating what economic production would look like after the hypothetical revolution. Marx conceived of socialism as the process driven by an international workers’ dialectic as all remaining internal contradictions of production are resolved. Communism is whatever lies at the end of the dialectic.

At some point during the process, ownership of a company and company revenue will become obsolete social relations. Carpentry after the revolution would be restructured accordingly, along with all other industries.

Me:

Well if it’s inevitable, it would seem to me like this is a tremendously important thing to prepare for, and I can’t prepare for it without having an idea how it’s going to work.

C4:

I don’t think its inevitable, or at least I don’t think it’s imminent. It seems likely to me that capitalism will hang around for at least another couple centuries. And if capitalism eventually disappears, it might not be a workers’ dialectic that takes over. What happens after revolutions is virtually impossible to predict.

If a workers’ dialectic does take over, then the best way to proceed is to join the dialectic through the carpenters’ union or whatever organizing body lets carpenters and craftspeople collaborate (rather than compete) with one one another.

Me:

But then I have to pay out a portion of my labor to the dialectic. I’d rather seize my own means of production and get beer for it instead. I love beer, way more than the other members of the dialectic do.

(This conversation ended here. I guess he doesn’t like beer.)

The Dialogue With Communist #5

Me:

Same opener.

C5:

Is obtaining wood or beer ingredients now illegal?

Depends on the scale. Plan on chopping down that tree in your backyard or local woods? Not a problem. Want to chop down every tree in Yellowstone? Probably not going to happen.

Do I still own my power tools?

Yeah, unless you start engaging in commodity production that the community deems a problem.

Is choosing to barter chairs for beer now illegal?

I don’t know about “illegal”, but a truly communist society would definitely not have commodity production/exchange. Want to trade your chair for your neighbor’s sofa? Probably not going to be a problem, and I seriously doubt anyone’s going to have an issue with that. Make a business of producing chairs and trading them for sofas? There’s probably going to be an issue there.

It’s also worth asking why would your neighbor barter with you to get items in the first place? I mean, it seems like your neighbor is very interested in brewing ingredients and whatnot, so why specifically barter with you when they could work with society in general? This just isn’t something that would really happen in communism. There would be little reason for individual exchange beyond small gifts and whatnot.

Me:

Depends on the scale. Plan on chopping down that tree in your backyard or local woods? Not a problem. Want to chop down every tree in Yellowstone? Probably not going to happen.

What about a friend’s yard? Can I barter him chairs for a tree?

It’s also worth asking why would your neighbor barter with you to get items?

He likes my chairs, I like his beer, we choose to barter. Are we allowed to make that choice, or is that choice prohibited? If the latter, prohibited by whom?

Want to trade your chair for your neighbor’s sofa? Probably not going to be a problem, and I seriously doubt anyone’s going to have an issue with that. Make a business of producing chairs and trading them for sofas? There’s probably going to be an issue there.

So is there an entity in the UCS that establishes a threshold of how much barter is permitted? What happens to me if I exceed their barter threshold?

C5:

What about a friend’s yard? Can I barter him chairs for a tree?

Why though? Theoretically, in a communist society, you’d both produce things and both have rights to the fruits of your collective labor (you and your neighbor and society). In other words, labor and the results that come from it are socialized. So why would you specifically go out of your way to exchange chairs for your neighbor’s trees?

He likes my chairs, I like his beer, we choose to barter.

Ok, so you can look for his beer and he can look chairs in the community warehouse each week. Alternatively, he could tell you his beer recipe and you could teach him how to make your chairs. You can both receive what you want and make what you want, but you could also have access to what others produce.

So is there an entity in the UCS that establishes a threshold of how much barter is permitted?

Sort of…? Obviously one of the main points of communism is to get rid of private property and the relations that stem from it. It’s just something that society would gradually move away from and commodity exchange would lose it’s usefulness/relevance.

Me:

Ok, so you can look for his beer and he can look chairs in the community warehouse each week.

But other people keep taking all his beer before I can get there, and they scoop up all my chairs too. He and I would like to choose to barter our beer and chairs. Are we prevented from making this choice? And if so, by whom?

It’s just something that society would gradually move away from and commodity exchange would lose it’s usefulness/relevance.

But are we allowed to do so? If we are not allowed to do so, who prevents us? And if we are allowed to do so, may we do so for IOUs? etc.

C5:

But other people keep taking all his beer before I can get there, and they scoop up all my chairs too.

This isn’t exactly a major flaw like you would think it would be. Why not just make a deal with the community members to allow others to get the beer? Why not learn your neighbor’s recipe to make more? Why not get to the warehouse before the others?

But are we allowed to do so?

Depends on the scale of such a thing. I doubt it’s that big of a problem on a small scale, but if it grows into a large business then there might be problems.

If we are not allowed to do so, who prevents us?

The community? Whoever sees a problem with the bartering?

Me:

How do they do that?

Why not just make a deal with the community members to allow others to get the beer?

Why bother when my neighbor and I can just barter chairs for beer? In any case, your question doesn’t matter. Am I allowed to make that choice or not? I choose to barter for whatever reason I like … who is going to stop me from doing so, and how exactly are they going to stop me?

Depends on the scale of such a thing. I doubt it’s that big of a problem on a small scale, but if it grows into a large business then there might be problems.

Who decides “the scale” at which barter becomes “problematic?”

C5:

Seize your private property? Tell you to stop? It depends.

who is going to stop me from doing so, and how exactly are they going to stop me?

The community? By force?

Me:

With guns?

The community? By force?

So in your version of UCS, is bartering with my neighbor is a jailable offense?

C5:

Perhaps, if you pose a threat yourself. It really depends on the situation.

So in your version of UCS, is bartering with my neighbor is a jailable offense?

The UCS wouldn’t exist in a communist society, and it’s up to the community to decide your fate. Daydreaming about what this future communist society is like is pointless.

Me:

They tell me to not barter chairs for beer, but I really want a beer, so I barter a chair anyway. Guns?

The UCS wouldn’t exist in a communist society, and it’s up to the community to decide your fate. Daydreaming about what this future communist society is like is pointless.

I’m not daydreaming, I’m preparing.

C5:

Meh, it’s probably not that much of a problem if you just do it small time with your neighbor. This whole situation presupposes that you really want to barter for some reason, though, so I doubt this would actually be a problem in a communist society.

Me:

If you’re sure that nobody would have any want or need to barter, why put any restrictions on it at any scale?

C5:

Because it can lead to capitalism and private property

Me:

Why would it, if people would prefer not to have it? If you’re right that nobody would want capitalism and private property, why prohibit it at all?

C5:

If nobody wants to murder or rape, why prohibit it at all?

Me:

It’s bad to want to murder or rape. Murder and rape hurt people.

Is it bad that I want to barter?

C5:

It’s bad to want to murder or rape. Murder and rape hurt people.

Same thing applies to bartering and private property.

Is it bad that I want to barter?

Inevitably it can (and most likely will) lead to the expansion of capital, private property, and eventually capitalism. This is (partly) how capitalism was born in the first place.

Me:

Inevitably it can (and most likely will) lead to the expansion of capital, private property, and eventually capitalism. This is (partly) how capitalism was born in the first place.

Am I hearing you correctly, that capitalism was born because people wanted to barter?

C5:

Am I hearing you correctly, that capitalism was born because people wanted to barter?

It was a progression from feudalism and class struggle, but bartering didn’t exactly create capitalism. Small-time bartering turned into long-time commodity production, and the rest is history.

Me:

Do you draw a distinction between “capitalism” and “free markets?”

Free markets were born out of barter at the dawn of agriculture, as people who farmed traded pots of grain with people who didn’t farm, who were providing some other good or service to the farmer. Such as the pot maker. The pot maker gives the farmer ten pots, and in return the farmer gives the pot maker one pot of grain. That was the birth of labor specialization, well before feudalism was on the scene. Eventually someone invented a proxy for one pot of grain, so folks didn’t have to carry the pots around. They called it the “shekel.”

Now “capitalism” as I would define it, is when someone with a lot of shekels would loan shekels to someone else who needed them, in return for more shekels later. That’s basically rent-seeking on money, and it’s at the root of many of the things communists like to complain about. But I draw a line between the two, because the latter is not necessary for the former to function.

(This conversation ended here.)

The Dialogue With Communist #6

Me:

Same opener.

C6:

Is obtaining wood or beer ingredients now illegal

no

If legal, am I allowed to choose what sorts of wood I can obtain, and is he allowed to choose what sorts of beer ingredients he can obtain?

depends on how production got set up. options can be made available if consumers decide that is a useful expenditure of societal effort.

And how are they acquired?

from the universal logistic systems. demand will be set by what consumers determine they need, with producers producing to fit that demand as best they can.

Do I still own my power tools? Does he still own his pots and pans?

if you use them frequently enough, having access to power tools or pots/pans onsite should be a goal of the system. no reason to replace things people already have, unless they aren’t using it.

Is choosing to barter chairs for beer now illegal?

why do you need to barter? the universal logistics system is for fulfilling needs.

… the rest of your questions pertains to the specifics of bartering, which i’m not sure why you’re doing other than being stuck in a capitalist mindset that will likely have to change before such a system gets established, so i’m not sure they are actually relevant beyond your hypotheticals, which likely don’t represent how a mindset within such system functions.

Me:

universal logistics system

Are the things I want in endless supply, or are they metered somehow? If the latter, who meters them specifically? The government? Or someone else?

why do you need to barter?

I choose to barter. Why I make that choice is immaterial. Is that choice permitted or prohibited in the UCS? I need an answer, for planning purposes.

C6:

Are the things I want in endless supply, or are they metered somehow? If the latter, who meters them specifically? The government? Or someone else?

depends on the production systems.

if we scale back society a bunch, say down to like a billion people, i’d imagine future production systems might very well be able to produce pragmatically unlimited supplies for what an individual can realistically use, for at least common kinds of materials.

it’d still likely be metered, and tracked, for logistically/analytical purposes. and social infrastructure/’the government’ would do that kind of stuff.

I choose to barter. Why I make that choice is immaterial.

wrong. why you make the choice is entirely determined ‘materially’ within your brain/mind, which includes your ideaology/mindset

Is that choice permitted or prohibited in the UCS? I need an answer, for planning purposes.

part of the social change over will be undoing capitalist indoctrination. does your planning take that into account? could your planning even take that into account?

Me:

if we scale back society a bunch, say down to like a billion people

Should I expect genocide and/or eugenics? Just trying to plan here. If so, how do I make sure I’m above the genocide bar so I can keep building chairs and bartering for beer?

C6:

Should I expect genocide

no. the only form of morally acceptable scaling back is massive scale family planning. some/many individuals will need to forego having children.

and perhaps willing mass suicide if those doing so have zero coercive influence, but we’d have to be really careful to be presenting a fully truthful picture of the situation such that we aren’t dishonestly manipulating, intentionally or unintentionally, them into killing themselves. and i’m not certain such measures will ever be necessary.

and/or eugenics?

i have no problems with and fully support eugenics at birth. no reason to let people with serious genetic defects be born.

how do I make sure I’m above the genocide bar

there’s no genocide bar.

Me:

some/many individuals will need to forego having children.

Who prevents them from having children?

C6:

look man. Real Communism(TM) basically doesn’t work if people don’t agree to go along with it, of their own volition. there’s no coercion here that i’m advocating for. i’m not advocating for your traditional system of governing where the government sets the rules and others follow.

we need a new a style of mass governing which convinces people to do the right thing, of their own volition, because it’s necessary for a) a better tomorrow and b) survival of the human species.

if humanity can’t get their shit together enough to do cooperative mass scale family such that we can consciously scale population up or down, to allow for a high amount of individual wealth, while staying with the physical constraints imposed upon us by the nature law of physical systems, then this dumbass species will rightly go extinct.

Me:

Those physical constraints have widened a hundredfold in the past century due to technological advances, and if we maintain the current level of technological advancement, I see no reason we’ll ever reach that limit, because the limit will keep expanding. Oceans. Arctic. Moon. Space.

Gotta pin our capitalist ears back and get there, though. The postulate of abundance is achievable, we just need markets to get us there. My raw opinions, and you can feel free to disagree.

C6:

Those physical constraints have widened a hundredfold in the past century due to technological advances

no they haven’t. maybe 10 fold. and we haven’t proved sustainability over 1000s of years, just decades.

if we maintain the current level of technological advancement, I see no reason we’ll ever reach that limit, because the limit will keep expanding. Oceans. Arctic. Moon. Space.

and look man. if humanity could physically keep up it’s current growth rate (~1.11%) for the next 8600 years, it would consume every particle in the known universe. within 4200 years we’d consume the mass of the solar system. and within 2500 years we’d consume the mass of the earth. with just our bodies, not including physical support infrastructure. we cannot physically keep growing like this long term.

you’re just making wild claims without understanding there are definitely hard limits to how much humanity can grow.

The postulate of abundance is achievable, we just need markets to get us there. My raw opinions, and you can feel free to disagree.

markets are your god and you follow them blindly, assuming they can just do anything like provide mythical levels of infinite growth

my argument is that drastic population reduction is necessary for humanity to save itself from climate related ecology collapse and subsequent extinction. and that communism will be needed to morally implement that reduction, without massive casualties, because waiting for capitalism to produce the magical unicorn that will save us all is getting quite retarded.

Me:

Well you’re probably right that the only good way to implement euthanasia and genocide on a national or global scale is with communism. And if you think that population growth is going to doom the planet, then I can see how you would choose communist euthanasia and genocide as an alternate.

So let’s get back to the point of the thread. When the United Communist States get rolled out and start euthanizing and genociding, what do I need to do to make sure I’m not on the chopping block? Party loyalty? Donate more of my labor to the party boss?

I need to plan ahead.

C6:

i don’t see genocide as an option. and likely more existentially suicidal, than doing nothing, so i can only support doing nothing if such a dilemma presented itself. if saving humanity requires being immoral, humanity is not worth saving. wake up sheeple

as to euthanasia on a mass scale? only if the idea is good enough to achieve universal consensus of all of humanity. which means you would have to, of your own volition, support consensus as well, for it to be meaningful in reality, so i see no reason for you to oppose this kind of ideal …

what do I need to do to make sure I’m not on the chopping block?

see this idea of being forced into something you don’t consent too is not an accurate depiction of the socialism i can envision for this reality. whatever change communists envision as both moral or necessary, must be so damn good that it doesn’t require use of immoral force to cause happen.

Party loyalty? Donate more of my labor to the party boss? I need to plan ahead.

i realize capitalism is all about, for the vast majority of people, sucking the cock of those wealthier, politically or economically, than you, but the whole point of socialism is to not create such situations. i have no plan for such situations because there will be no true socialism until we build social system that guarantee perfect resistance to immoral corruption … by making all social state, including financial/logistical/economic/political decision making as specifically only socially valid if the entire processes is auditable by literally everyone else. no privacy => no corruption. and this goes exponentially so for the government. allowing government privacy was one of the major fatal mistakes of previous communisms, allowing hierarchy was the other … they must be built without those.

Me:

see this idea of being forced into something you don’t consent too is not an accurate depiction of the socialism i can envision for this reality. whatever change communists envision as both moral or necessary, must be so damn good that it doesn’t require use of immoral force to cause happen.

So if socialism is voluntary, can I simply choose not to participate in the United Communist States?

C6:

can I simply choose not to participate in the United Communist States?

united communist states of earth doesn’t get established until you choose to participate.

you’re presupposing your mind can ultimately resist the memes/ideas that will build such a system into existence.

if socialism is voluntary

it will be voluntarily involuntary

Me:

wat

C6:

people will voluntarily accept the involuntary need, imposed the wanton disregard of both moral and sustainability considerations by the current system, to establish an underlying consensus communist based economic system.

or our species will rightfully go extinct.

which i have no problems with happening. if saving humanity requires being immoral, then humanity is not worth saving.

(This conversation ended here. It appeared, at that point, that my individual willfulness to engage in barter was going to end human life as we know it, and therefore there wasn’t much to prep for generally speaking.)

Discussion

These were not dialogues with top flight intellectual Marxists, they were dialogues with baseline modern communists. But they were good faith discussions, and these discussions are more valuable than those with intellectual elites because they express what the overall idea of communism looks like by the time it filters down to the ground.

They represent a pretty broad if not totally inclusive cross section of the state of modern pop communism thought. Many modern communists are postulating what’s sometimes referred to as “fully automated space communism,” something like we might see on Star Trek. Most presuppose that people simply wouldn’t want to barter, because the system would provide everything everyone needed without the need for it.

From a laser focused, Smart Libertarian prepper standpoint, the thing to do should you fear communism erupting because of an intellectual shift in the actual power structures of your neighborhood, seems to be to establish alternate currencies in which to barter, establish skills to create products worth bartering, and establish a network of like minded people with which to barter.