I quoted Nathan Personas comment here regarding dispelling the illusion of the state, family, church, etc., having no economic function on my wall, and included the following postulate: The material conditions necessary for communism already exist. No further economic development under capitalism is necessary or desirable. The development we have now is horribly uneven, but in the aggregate, its more than sufficient to meet everyones basic material needs (food, clothing, shelter, entertainment, etc.). A friend replied: ok, grant that theres more than enough food produced, more than enough water etc: ie the subsistence requirement is satisfied through our current means of sustenance production. further grant that therere means to house everyone on the planet in some manner [god knows theres enough space]. whether its done without money or with money, if were at the stage where the control of people has been replaced by the administration of things, the major sticking point is distribution. in particular, how the hell would global logistics be organized without creating a class hierarchy - administrative vs non-administrative classes? while now weve got power coinciding with the accumulation of abstract wealth, in this scenario - at least without money - power resides with those who control the distribution of goods. do you need guns at the community soup kitchen or what? This is the $64,000 question. But, as he put it, answering this question solves communism, and thus I dont expect that we can answer fully, but I think some discussion to sketch out possible solutions to this problem would be useful.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 03:33:42 +0000
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