Where is the line here? Art, music or writing fiction? Anything that isn’t needed to keep 20 people alive? Or are we talking a society that is more than just surviving? Want to keep people tired and dirty, that’s a good way make them shut up and submit I guess. I’m making my own commune, with black jack and hookers.
Entertainment can be labor. If someone is explicit and consistent about a tarot reading being just a game of make-believe then I suppose it’s fine, but I doubt most people who would do tarot readings professionally would be about to pull it off with at least winking at their audience.
Entertainment (and the arts) would probably not have a large central component. I imagine many more people would engage with arts than today thanks to shorter work weeks. Set building and performances and the like would probably occur on a more local level.
There’s definitely something cool about seeing a blockbuster movie with special effects, or an artistic film that makes deep points while showcasing actors at peak talent.
However, humans had oral tradition and just like people in robes acting for a long time. Our brains are probably better off with some storytelling that requires a little internal imagination and thought.
I guess what I’m getting at is, on my ideal commune the arts would be hobbies for everyone to enjoy and play a part in as they wish, not a “job” that constitutes pulling one’s fair share.
Yeah, I’ve always liked the idea of a town where we mainly just pool resources together. Buy products we can’t make on our own in bulk. Communal resources. Provide services within the commune for some kind of metered access to the resources, or live basically, etc. Still have your regular remote slog, have some sort of income pooling. Definitely seems like some kind of idealist utopia though, and the bigger it gets, the more complicated it gets, and the potential to represent some of the worst parts of society increases, like HOAs, government, insurance, etc.
communism works if you take out the human element. otherwise you’re always going to have someone that inherently does “more” work than someone else and complains that they don’t get back what they put in.
That’s just… what your average county/municipality/local government already does, except with higher income tax/wealth redistribution.
Well, except that in reality you can’t ignore externalities and that quickly makes the “leftist commune” look a lot less like an idyllic hobbit village. Everybody must pitch in for national rail and highways, even if they aren’t the ones benefiting. Cities generate a LOT more wealth/capita and almost incalculably more wealth/km² than rural areas, are way more resource efficient and don’t contribute as much to the erosion of natural habitats, yet they are utterly dependent on rural areas. How does a hypothetical “small government communist” society deal with this fairly so that urban and rural communes don’t literally go at war with each other?
Here in Belgium the municipalities are, in principle, legally obligated to provide a certain amount of subsidized low-income housing. That’s exactly what you’re advocating for, and it’s great! … Well, except for the part where many rich municipalities simply refuse to build any such housing out of NIMBYism and would rather pay the fines. Making government “local” does not, unfortunately, lead to the left-wing utopia that some people think it would. This is not “big guberment” or “capitalism” or corporate lobbying, it’s the mundane evil of your average citizen voting against the interests and wellbeing of their less fortunate (would be) neighbors.
Sadly once a society atomizes and a very strong sense of individuality of property rights emerges it is difficult to reassume a communal lifestyle where someone doesn’t try and exploit it for singular gain. It’s also really difficult to try and make it work without the social interconnectivity required because this
individualist stance long ago fractured the family from community and a certain it requires work to maintain those social connections… Work that people generally don’t want to do anymore. It also tends to lock people in place as your support doesn’t extend as far to strangers so unless your community is nomadic moving basically breaks the bonds.
People have a really hard time even picturing a society without money and a lot of people believe that it just looks like a barter system ecconomy…which is kind of a capitalist lie. Barter isn’t really true to what we know of communal life from modern study of the few places that capitalism has spared. It’s more like social credit. It’s more like how we behave with our friends. You give because I do and when someone asks you give you do it because when you ask they give. You don’t keep mechanical score but if you feel like they aren’t reciprocating generally you stop being generous. A lot of societies that work/worked on this principle didn’t make it super complicated. Wealth and resource redistribution was more ritualized. Your success and standing as a community was measured by how generous you could be to your society not by how much you individually hoarded.
It’s not so much a utopia as it requires entirely different things from you. We have a hard time working backwards from that because capitalism demands a hierarchy based on numbers and once you’ve been trained to keep exact score people become very bitter about everyone putting in the exact same amount and kind of resource to play properly which makes for weaker social bonds.
Where is the line here? Art, music or writing fiction? Anything that isn’t needed to keep 20 people alive? Or are we talking a society that is more than just surviving? Want to keep people tired and dirty, that’s a good way make them shut up and submit I guess. I’m making my own commune, with black jack and hookers.
Entertainment can be labor. If someone is explicit and consistent about a tarot reading being just a game of make-believe then I suppose it’s fine, but I doubt most people who would do tarot readings professionally would be about to pull it off with at least winking at their audience.
Entertainment (and the arts) would probably not have a large central component. I imagine many more people would engage with arts than today thanks to shorter work weeks. Set building and performances and the like would probably occur on a more local level.
There’s definitely something cool about seeing a blockbuster movie with special effects, or an artistic film that makes deep points while showcasing actors at peak talent.
However, humans had oral tradition and just like people in robes acting for a long time. Our brains are probably better off with some storytelling that requires a little internal imagination and thought.
I guess what I’m getting at is, on my ideal commune the arts would be hobbies for everyone to enjoy and play a part in as they wish, not a “job” that constitutes pulling one’s fair share.
In a way, modern tabletop gaming has filled that niche for a lot of people
What will be the controls on quality though? More doesn’t always mean good.
That’s the beauty of communes. It’s up to the group to define what’s acceptable.
that sounds like a government but without the extra steps. i’m in
Except that you can’t just grab your stuff and leave your country to go join another country at will.
If there’s a version of communism that works, it’s definitely at the scale of a town or smaller where you can voluntarily leave whenever.
Yeah, I’ve always liked the idea of a town where we mainly just pool resources together. Buy products we can’t make on our own in bulk. Communal resources. Provide services within the commune for some kind of metered access to the resources, or live basically, etc. Still have your regular remote slog, have some sort of income pooling. Definitely seems like some kind of idealist utopia though, and the bigger it gets, the more complicated it gets, and the potential to represent some of the worst parts of society increases, like HOAs, government, insurance, etc.
communism works if you take out the human element. otherwise you’re always going to have someone that inherently does “more” work than someone else and complains that they don’t get back what they put in.
That’s just… what your average county/municipality/local government already does, except with higher income tax/wealth redistribution.
Well, except that in reality you can’t ignore externalities and that quickly makes the “leftist commune” look a lot less like an idyllic hobbit village. Everybody must pitch in for national rail and highways, even if they aren’t the ones benefiting. Cities generate a LOT more wealth/capita and almost incalculably more wealth/km² than rural areas, are way more resource efficient and don’t contribute as much to the erosion of natural habitats, yet they are utterly dependent on rural areas. How does a hypothetical “small government communist” society deal with this fairly so that urban and rural communes don’t literally go at war with each other?
Here in Belgium the municipalities are, in principle, legally obligated to provide a certain amount of subsidized low-income housing. That’s exactly what you’re advocating for, and it’s great! … Well, except for the part where many rich municipalities simply refuse to build any such housing out of NIMBYism and would rather pay the fines. Making government “local” does not, unfortunately, lead to the left-wing utopia that some people think it would. This is not “big guberment” or “capitalism” or corporate lobbying, it’s the mundane evil of your average citizen voting against the interests and wellbeing of their less fortunate (would be) neighbors.
Sadly once a society atomizes and a very strong sense of individuality of property rights emerges it is difficult to reassume a communal lifestyle where someone doesn’t try and exploit it for singular gain. It’s also really difficult to try and make it work without the social interconnectivity required because this individualist stance long ago fractured the family from community and a certain it requires work to maintain those social connections… Work that people generally don’t want to do anymore. It also tends to lock people in place as your support doesn’t extend as far to strangers so unless your community is nomadic moving basically breaks the bonds.
People have a really hard time even picturing a society without money and a lot of people believe that it just looks like a barter system ecconomy…which is kind of a capitalist lie. Barter isn’t really true to what we know of communal life from modern study of the few places that capitalism has spared. It’s more like social credit. It’s more like how we behave with our friends. You give because I do and when someone asks you give you do it because when you ask they give. You don’t keep mechanical score but if you feel like they aren’t reciprocating generally you stop being generous. A lot of societies that work/worked on this principle didn’t make it super complicated. Wealth and resource redistribution was more ritualized. Your success and standing as a community was measured by how generous you could be to your society not by how much you individually hoarded.
It’s not so much a utopia as it requires entirely different things from you. We have a hard time working backwards from that because capitalism demands a hierarchy based on numbers and once you’ve been trained to keep exact score people become very bitter about everyone putting in the exact same amount and kind of resource to play properly which makes for weaker social bonds.
I mean also it has to actually work sustainably, or else it’ll just collapse and everyone will diasporate to other communes lol
How does the community decide who gets to make art and how has to work making food and other tasks necessary for survival?