Who distributes resources then?
Comment on What’s the difference between communism and socialism?
SalamenceFury@piefed.social 16 hours agoThere is no state in a communist society.
bobzer@lemmy.zip 16 hours ago
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 16 hours ago
We had 65,000 years of communism here in Australia. It was a gift economy. People lived with their families. They hunted food for their families, made tools for their families, constructed shelter for their families, made farms for their families. Reciprocity is one of the fundamental Indigenous values. You give what you can, you take what you need.
If you have a society where people’s work is valued, then they take pride in giving. Look at Linux, look at Wikipedia. People do great things for each other because kindness is a fundamental human trait. Capitalism is the source of our modern greed and selfishness.
CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
I always ask myself “could this ideology produce a world class hospital” when thinking about if I agree with an ideology. Do you think a gift based communist economy could produce one? Not being snarky, I’m genuinely on the fence on one hand I say no but on the other hand, from an altruistic perspective a world class hospital is in everyone’s best interest so… maybe, yeah, it feels at least possible if you got a lot of other stuff right?
GuyIncognito@lemmy.ca 14 minutes ago
Future communism (as opposed to primitive communism, the mode of production of hunter-gatherer bands that preceded agriculture) is a completely theoretical mode of production that is theorized to come after socialism. Basically, the idea is that the state will eventually wither away. How exactly this occurs is a problem for later, but it doesn’t preclude any form of organization, just no state.
linguinus@lemmy.zip 3 hours ago
I think your approach for evaluating political economic systems is sound, and it’s worth pointing out that, despite decades of unimateral embargo from the us, Cuba has some of the best doctors in the world. They developed their own covid vaccine. From Wikipedia:
Cuba provides more medical personnel to the developing world than all the G8 countries combined.
I think it makes a strong case that a political system oriented towards common good can overcome crippling material restrictions imposed by a hostile neighboring superpower to provide free, high quality, universal healthcare.
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 13 hours ago
I’m not convinced a hospital is the best place to heal the sick. Indigenous health outcomes got a lot worse after colonisation, even when Indigenous people weren’t classed as fauna. A lot of Indigenous people get diagnosed with a serious illness, travel hundreds of kilometres to a hospital, and die there. Because at the hospital, they’re isolated from their family, their community, their home, their country. I grew up in white culture, and I still find hospitals to be isolating places as a patient. It’s gotta be way worse for someone who didn’t grow up in that kind of environment.
Instead, imagine a travelling doctor service where the doctor has hours to get to know you while they treat you, where you feel valued as a patient. The biopsychosocial benefits should be obvious. There’s just one problem: patient volume.
Fortunately, communism has some great solutions to the patient volume problem. For example:
- No more tobacco companies
- No more gambling companies
- No more financial incentive to push hard drugs
- No more financial barriers to preventative medicine
- No more 80 hour workweeks to support your family
- No more dangerous working conditions in the name of profit
- No more fossil fuel companies
- No more car pollution
Capitalism makes people sick in the name of profit, and then sells them the cure. In a communist system, doctors would have more time to treat their patients like people.
cecilkorik@lemmy.ca 13 hours ago
What you’re describing sounds more like communitarianism than communism. Despite the confusingly similar name they are actually very different ideologies. (though they also have some similar precepts at the same time)
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 12 hours ago
It’s both.
bobzer@lemmy.zip 15 hours ago
Ok… lithium is mined in Australia and is needed in factories in China and India. Who decides where it gets sent?
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 15 hours ago
The clan or tribe who cares for the land where the lithium is mined will meet for a yarning circle. At the yarning circle, they’ll talk about the foreigners’ need for lithium and whether the foreigners make for good neighbours. The foreigners’ gifts to the clan will be judged. The totem holders of the impacted species will speak on sustainability issues.
They’ll reach a consensus on whether the foreigners are good neighbours, whether they need the lithium, and how much damage the mine will do to the land. The clan will make a decision together. Then the mine will be approved or denied.
nullify3112@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
That’s an anarchist society
SalamenceFury@piefed.social 5 hours ago
At that point it’s potato, potay-toh. Marx and pretty much every communist philosopher defined it as stateless.
nullify3112@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
This makes me very confused because I believe there was nothing stateless about the USSR, even early on following the October revolution. The red army, the new economic policies, the food seizures, forced conscription, the supremacy of the politburo… weren’t they literally banning strikes in factories by claiming all the social issues had been resolved through the soviets, when it wasn’t the case at all (the small bourgeoisie/managers came back and we’re still somewhat in charge)? When I look at it, the power of the Soviet state was omnipresent. But maybe I’m not knowledgeable enough?
SalamenceFury@piefed.social 1 hour ago
The USSR was not communist. They had a communist ideology, sure, but the definition essentially comes down to a communist society being stateless while also being a dictatorship of the proletariat (that is, ALL the workers are essentially the leader at the same time and they make decisions collectively through direct democracy). And the USSR could only barely fit that definition for about one or two years before Lenin essentially steered it into a regular autocratic dictatorship with communist aesthetics.