Communism
Discussion Community for fellow Marxist-Leninists and other Marxists.
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Yes, but how are any sort of regulations, rights, laws, or etc, going to be enforced on the communes?
There are federal sized entities for a reason, and using the United States for example, doing everything that the USDA, Corp of Engineers, CDC, FDA, Department of Commerce, Department of Education, and so on, would be next to impossible for a commune sized government.
For example, lets say the commune makes money in a socialist state by selling food products. How will they react when government inspectors roll in to make sure that food safety standards, workers rights, hygiene, and regulations are all being followed?
Another example, let’s say that there is a streamlined and standardized curriculum and learning standards for children in the country, operated by state run public schools with teachers on public payroll. How will education standards be maintained in the communes? How will literacy, education, and so on be enforced?
There would need to be government overreach and “intervention”, to maintain even the simplest of standards. So while it’s not “direct control”, a commune would still need to bend in some regards to a central power, something I doubt anarchists would like at all.
This exactly, how would anything work large scale at all?
The same simple question arises. Where are they getting medicine from?
Or are they going to treat stage 3 cancer with herbs and remedies?
The same way it does now - everyone doing their small part in service of a greater goal. At present, people are motivated by money - someone has money and will give you some if you do some small part in service of their greater goal. Imagine if, instead of that, people did things in service of a greater goal that benefits everyone, and in return, instead of money, they receive a share of that greater goal back to them - in the form of all of their needs being met.
People can organise very effectively and dynamically to achieve goals without coercion. For example, the entirely of the open source movement. Some of the largest, most complex software projects in the world are designed by consensus.
Why is the goal to force things onto people, instead of building things by consensus that works for everyone? If you have standards and rights that are actually made for the benefit of everyone, what reason would communes have to disregard them?
For your example: anarchists run food co-ops today and they manage to meet standards of hygiene and safety just fine under capitalism, so I don’t know why you feel like it would be any different under any other system.
Anarchists also homeschool very commonly in co-operatives, and in my experience the quality of education is significantly better, and almost more importantly, the kids are way better socialised and confident because of the number of trusted adults they have around to interact with and who help them.
I don’t think most anarchist would have a problem with the rights and health of people being put before their own freedom. The problem anarchists have is that states inevitably have led to oppression - the likelihood of a transitional state actually succeeding in implementing communism is pretty low, so understandably they are hesitant to support the creation of a transitional state.
I spoke of after the revolution, not before.
Also,
The issue is the revolution is not an instant snap to full communism. There will need to be structures in place to prevent the slipping back into capitalism, and the undermining of the new proletarian state by internal and external forces. This means things like police, military, and government, but fundamentally different as the structure of the society they serve will not be designed to protect the wealthy. The transition from revolution to full stateless, classless, moneyless communism will take an unknown amount of time.
Do you think that a revolution creates instant communism?
You realize that it might take centuries for a socialist nation to fully become communist?
Do you think the USSR was a communist country? Or China?
Also independent is a complete oxymoron in this situation. You cant be independent from all aspects of the grander society.
Is the commune going to have its own power grid? How about a fully fleshed out hospital? How are they going to get materials and resources they legitimately have no way of acquiring on their own?