Labour Vouchers & Alienation

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989

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Communism btfo
I'm glad you were exposed as a brainlet though.
Read some more Marx.

Communists are for abolishing the current state of things. Communism is indeed possible, but we focus on our present material conditions to try and transcend capitalism. To so definitively say what aspects this new society will be like is utopian.

not an argument

I'm always confused at people making the distinction between Socialism and Communism, which is going on a lot in this thread. Did Marx ever make a distinction?

The terms are from Lenin, "socialism" is supposed to be the transitional period that Marx talks about, but he doesn't use the terms socialism and communism in this way

Your "argument" is something I'd expect from a liberal, not a comrade. And
What a strawman. When did I say "communism will always be reached if some people just try"?
How dishonest do you have to be to BTFO le dumb communists?

Marx stopped using the word socialism because it had already at that time become deeply associated with bourgeois ideology.

I'm definitely not making the case that communism is impossible. My point is that 1) we can't know for sure that society will eventually reach full communism and 2) it doesn't even matter because the struggle we need to carry out is the transition from capitalism to socialism. Neither you or me will ever see full communism, hence why I said it shouldn't be our main preoccupation. Honestly I don't see why you think i'm some kind of traitor to marxism for stating this, I don't even think these are very controversial statements among people on this board.
you literally said it's "not difficult" to reach. Which might be true in a world where it can freely develop without constantly being hindered by internal and external capitalist opposition, but that wasn't the case with 20th century socialism, and it's utopian to think this will be the case in the future. With "we don't know if it will be possible" I don't mean I doubt the idea of communism is a priori possible. I mean that we can't know if it will be possible practically speaking i.e. if the right material conditions will be reached before, for example, it gets reverted to capitalism.

Ok
It absolutely does matter. My worry about socialists is exactly that your lack of conviction, your lack of commitment to the communist struggle, will be the cause of this revert to capitalism.
I don't know what the fuck socialism means anymore, no one does. It's a catch all phrase that any radical can latch onto without having to actually read.

Full communism is the abolishment of alienation. Labour vouchers are not full communism.

The point of the labour voucher system is that it empowers us directly to control how we work and what we make, rather than relying on the aggregate of unaccountable competing groups. This allows us to solve issues and work towards full communism.

Eh, yes.

I wasn't implying that we should not commit to the "communist struggle". But that's a matter for after socialism has been established. Right now, the concrete and practical goal to have in mind is socialism, even if we obviously want to strive towards communism ultimately (which from my understanding could only come into existence in a post-scarcity society). Even though I can see your point that socialism shouldn't become a "goal in itself", it's the thing to focus on right now. When socialism gets established that will encourage the people who strived for it to keep striving for communism.
Yep, this is a problem

No that is the point. It is a matter for HOW we establish socialism. Socialism without communism is not the same as socialism without capitalism and so on and so on.

Surely socialism should be established in a way that's in all respects as fertile as possible to continue building communism, if that's what you're aiming at.

So then what even is the fucking point of calling yourself a socialist?

I use it as synonymous for communist. Jesus, is that what you were freaking out about this whole thread?

The question is not whether "communism is possible," but whether communistic social relations of classless production for use and distribution for need are capable of being established in large, complex societies. Especially if these societies are still inculcated with capitalist ideology and customs. It is in this environment that an intermediary step of rationing/labor tickets/whatever is implemented as a way of establishing communist social relations, which slowly become less and less important as these relations are accepted and developed.

It is NOT synonymous with communism, is what I'm freaking out about, which is more and more true today.
And you absolutely started this with your cheeky "full communism™". And your continious "it cant happen within 100 years" which is just defeatist rambling.

Duh, there's crypto-liberals calling themselves "communists" too. You can't use any terms anymore if you think like that.
please stay butthurt
I guess it's technically possible within 100 years on the condition that capitalism could get eradicated globally and society can become post-scarcity. Allow me to be sceptical on these things (especially the first one) although I'll be happy if they do come true

Scarcity continues to exist. As long as anything is scarce, and labour has to be preformed to get it, there is no guarantee that the work people will spontaneously do will fulfill all the needs people would have. Until that time, work people don't want to do needs be rewarded appropriately so enough of it continues being done. There is no guarantee we will ever get to a point where this is not the case, unless you're part of the cult of the singularity or another brand of tech-utopian.

So is this the shitpost thread?

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Deflecting by refusing to read is Zig Forums, go away.

Scarcity is literally only a product of market mechanics. Anything essential can be made abundant in no time.
Automation is not by any stretch a necessity for post scarcity or communism.

Unless you find gold a necessity it more likely than not won't matter to most people and it will be put to good use by being invested into technology and not art, at least in communism's early stages.

This is simply not true. Any kind of living standard we have come to expect requires astounding amounts of social labour being preformed. All the "abundance" that you can wallow in is in fact the product of a whole lot of necessary labour being shuffled off on people you don't have to see and think about. But it's still socially necessary labour.

This is childish naivete. I'm not even talking about wild luxuries here. Maintaining sturdy houses for everyone, maintaining utilities, roads, city infrastructure, schools and hospitals, furniture and appliance industries, energy extraction - all of this basic, non luxury stuff requires vast amounts of labour still. This idea that we can just turn on le fully automated gay space communism meem and live the rest of our lives as jolly bohemians is totally divorced from material reality.

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Did I say they require no labour? No. That is something YOU deduced because you think communism=no labour.

That's my point retard, it's entirely possible– no guaranteed that those things can all be mass produced with current means of production.

The only things not possible yet are personal decisions of luxury like I said but later on it's also guaranteed they'll be made available.

You do pretend like it can be provided for in full communist fashion without a need for remunerated (alienated) labour. And that's simply not true. The amount of unpleasant labour that has to be preformed is too great, and to ensure its proper rationing a system of labour vouchers is a necessity.

It can be produced with the current MOP (though likely not quite if you take in the entire thrid world also, that will require an expansion of the MOP on the scale of the five year plans). But it won't be provided for in some sort of voluntarist "contribute what you want and take out what you need" utopia. The quantity (too great) and quality (too grueling) of the work needed to be preformed does not allow it.

That's not how it works nor what is needed, but if that's still what you think then sure.

You seem to have misunderstood the conversation. user implied that this scarcity was something that would be difficult to overcome to reach communism, and I implied a concentrated state effort would solve these problems easily for a transition to communism.
You can't do unpleasant labour under communism?

Why would you, absent a reward, or a threat of deprivation? Maybe a kind of corvée system can be imagined, butI don't see why that would be less alienating than labour vouchers.

Because it needs doing?

And it makes mommy proud.

Just because it needs doing doesn't mean that I will do it. I've lived in a co-housing setup, and as anyone who ever has will tell you, passing the buck is not just a concept in international relations theory. "It needs to be done so someone will do it" means turning the conscientious into the serving class of the slothful.

Nope

Well, I somewhat agree with you, but I really don't think co-housing "passing the buck" can be compared to a communist society. We are not passing our hard earned alienated McDollars, we are labouring directly for our community.

Marx did not make a distinction, because communism and socialism were so to speak, dialectically the same movement, but the social characteristics the movements took were, and are even more so today, different.
From the preface of the English edition to The Communist Manifesto
"Yet, when it was written, we could not have called it a socialist manifesto. By Socialists, in 1847,
were understood, on the one hand the adherents of the various Utopian systems: Owenites in
England, Fourierists in France, both of them already reduced to the position of mere sects, and
gradually dying out; on the other hand, the most multifarious social quacks who, by all manner of
tinkering, professed to redress, without any danger to capital and profit, all sorts of social
grievances, in both cases men outside the working-class movement, and looking rather to the
“educated” classes for support. Whatever portion of the working class had become convinced of
the insufficiency of mere political revolutions, and had proclaimed the necessity of total social
change, called itself Communist. It was a crude, rough-hewn, purely instinctive sort of
communism; still, it touched the cardinal point and was powerful enough amongst the working
class to produce the Utopian communism of Cabet in France, and of Weitling in Germany. Thus,
in 1847, socialism was a middle-class movement, communism a working-class movement.
Socialism was, on the Continent at least, “respectable”; communism was the very opposite. And
as our notion, from the very beginning, was that “the emancipation of the workers must be the act
of the working class itself,” there could be no doubt as to which of the two names we must take.
Moreover, we have, ever since, been far from repudiating it. "

Maybe I'm too pessimistic, but I don't think we can speak of community when we talk about production anymore. This is actually something I've been brooding on for a while now when thinking about the way technology and capitalist development have shaped our life world.

Our production is social and globalized. We all preform very specific task the benefits of which are dispersed over potentially the entire world, usualy as part of a large team or entity (a company, a government agency, …). Unless you are in a direct service industry, very few of us today preform a task that directly benefits what any of us would think of as our direct community. And the benefits of this high degree of specialization and socializing of our labour are too big to simply jettison; it is just these things, as first studies by Smith, that have given us this incredible development of the productive forces that we can even contemplate things like post-scarcity of certain use values.

It's not all bad of course. Now that I can connect to people all over the world conveniently and rapidly via the internet, I kind of start to form a community with them. But any labour I do, unless it targets these people directly as in commissioned art and whatnot, it again dispersed over this amorphous "the whole economy".

The idea of "you have to put in what you take out in labour time" seems like the most elegant workaround.

I think you are a bit entrenched in capitalist ideology here. Most of the existing globalization and specialization serves nothing but capital movement. Our communist society will necessarily be far more localized and self-sustainable, because it is no longer profitable to produce commodities in taiwan and ship them halfway across the globe.
I imagine there will be some centralized mega factories for medical supplies and other such things that need expertise to be handle, but most other basic supplies will probably be produced locally. A factory on every hill top and in every valley.
Another thing to considder is the lack of acces to the global economy during the revolution. A movement will need to be able to supply itself with most basic necessities.

Could you also maybe elaborate a bit on which benefits from an alienated economy are too big to jettison?

Almost every industry works like this now, it is not a phenomenon for niche products. Efficiency gains from vertical and horizontal concentration of industry are enormous, as are those of specialization. We already have factories in every valley and on every hill, to use your bucolic phrase, only they all specialize in a very small part of any one supply chain, and are usualy geographically clustered per industry (with disruptions as transportation becomes easier and costlier, the goods are bulkier, and so on). There are no "factories for basic supplies", never were and never will be.

The benefits of an "alienated" economy, specialized and concentrated, is precisely in this: it is efficient. And efficient is not here a capitalist obfuscation, it is a real concrete efficiency. It allows more stuff to be produced for less collective hours worked. And that is not something to be discarded.

Widespread, localized production means you need many, many copies of capital that is expensive to produce and maintain, using up resources that could instead be used for producing capital structured towards producing other goods of use. Shipping things halfway across the globe is in part efficient because of the sheer amount of materials costs you save on by not needing to worry about the intermediate steps of production.

Yes and no.
I'd argue he did, but in different terms, namely that he said that the first stage of communism will still be marked by being created and formed from a capitalist order, which is to say, socialism as it's commonly thought of today. It'll free itself of such trappings and enter a second "fully communist" stage, that is, communism as we usually think of it.

Yeah specialization is useful. As a specialized worker, You produce one part of a product along a mechanical assembly, which is faster than artisanal production. Geographically specialization clusters relevant expertise and facilities together in one space where they are accessed easily.

Marx didn’t draw a distinction between communism and socialism, he used these terms interchangeably. Stop repeating this Leninist nonsense about how socialism and communism are two separate modes of production and how the former historically precedes the latter.

I've had some ideas for a transitional period that I think would be most effective:

the idea is to keep things as simple and as efficient as possible. please give thoughts/criticism

Why wouldn't the workers use actual currencies instead? You know, like USD or euros instead of some crippled coupon system.

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That's what happened in Latin America and Eastern Europe

how about actually researching labour vouchers and understanding what they do?

Labor vouchers are, from a user perspective, crippled money. They're not as flexible as currencies we are using.

Also, the whole idea of having vouchers expire is just reinventing inflation.

That's the fucking point. They're "crippled" in order to prevent private transactions and capital accumulation.

Given that many products have a limited shelf life and need to be thrown out after a certain amount of time, as well as there being a certain degree of unavoidable wastage (not all products end up being consumed), there would be an excess of labour vouchers relative to products that could be purchased. This could potentially lead to shortages later on if not corrected.

If you have a product that has certain features and then you remove those features, then the users will find another product with the old features intact.
For instance, if a toilet paper company comes out with toilet paper that doesn't work with urine, then people are going to use the competitors' toilet paper instead.

About inflation: the point about labor vouchers expiring is that it doesn't distribute the loss evenly.
With inflation, everyone's money lose value over time, so we carry that burden collectively.
With labor vouchers, you get punished as an individual. Is that really socialist policy?

...

To see how silly the comparison between currency and consumer products is, just ask yourself: How come there are so many currencies used in the world that are very different in respect to their stability? If consumers of the "product" currency just want simple stability, shouldn't competition of currency producers drive all existing currencies to pretty much the same sort of stability? But competition doesn't drive out inflation, why? Do you think the people who use a more inflationary currency just have completely different expectations about its future market value? Get real.

When it comes to currency and labor vouchers, the features "money consumers" like are for the most part not physically located in the token. A nation's state apparatus that issues its own currency enforces its use through the monopoly of power, it can force you to pay fines and taxes, and it can restrict payment so that it only accepts its own tokens (or it also accepts some other thing considered valuable in society at large and fixes some rate between it and the tokens, and so the tokens become valuable through that).

Suppose the state is the only landlord or it's the landlord's landlord, leasing land and always only taking regular payment in its own tokens for that, never ever outright selling the land. It would then be advisable to have the tokens to pay your own rent or to get somebody else to do something for you, so that he can pay his rent. Such tokens could have an expiration date and people would still be eager to obtain them. It is not even necessary to control other transaction, there might be other payment methods in use alongside it, people would still use the tokens. In a labour-voucher socialist economy, there would be more control over exchanges obviously. So, the regular payments for your flat would use labour vouchers, an online service similar to Amazon would require them, and public transport and so on. And storage rooms today have cameras in them, so black-market activity can be drastically reduced compared to 70s Russia or whatever.

Source:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimbabwe

Why do you think Zimbabwe has USD as its official currency?