[AFAIK]

In capitalism scarce resources are rationed by wealth. This leads to the whims of the wealthy being well catered for whilst lower classes are expected to suffer any shortages in silence and are greeted with force when they're complaints grow too active.

How would resources be distributed by communists? How are disputes over the use of resources mediated and resolved?

[mikema63]

The short answer is democratically, the long answer is that it would depend as it would evolve from the particular conditions of the time, place, people, and culture where it developed.

[U184]

whilst lower classes are expected to suffer any shortages in silence and are greeted with force when they're complaints grow too active.

Those people are then silenced, via introduction to the grave, thus freeing more resources and solving the complaints at the same time.

[AFAIK]

So basically you want to make economic decisions democratically. How much autonomy would an individual have in this system? Can someone own a business by themselves if they don't employ anybody?

[PennVoorhees]

In capitalism scarce resources are rationed by wealth. This leads to the whims of the wealthy being well catered for whilst lower classes are expected to suffer any shortages in silence and are greeted with force when they're complaints grow too active.

I don't know. I thought Capitalism allocates resources based on the price system (which also has supply & demand with it).

[mikema63]

And the wealthy can afford the price.

So basically you want to make economic decisions democratically. How much autonomy would an individual have in this system? Can someone own a business by themselves if they don't employ anybody?

If I were the personal god making this happen then people would have lots of autonomy, I prefer businesses to be owned and managed by the workers who work there and they would allocate resources on a government exchange, automated as much as possible and using predictive mathematic models that take requests for products as inputs.

Someone could own a business in such a model if it were just them and their labor.

If I were a god anyhow, I would caution against asking for all the future details of our system since we advocate for something that would grow and evolve. We cannot see the future.

[AFAIK]

Thanks for offering some insights Mike.
Could you give me an overview of the democratic process?

[mikema63]

I think TiG has some good stuff on how the ussr ran its democratic stuff in the beginning, otherwise I can only really offer you theory.

[Coyote]

In capitalism scarce resources are rationed by wealth. This leads to the whims of the wealthy being well catered for whilst lower classes are expected to suffer any shortages in silence and are greeted with force when they're complaints grow too active.

How would resources be distributed by communists? How are disputes over the use of resources mediated and resolved?

I fundamentally disagree with the premise.

In capitalism, aren't resources generally made less scarce?

[AFAIK]

Non renewable resources are finite and thus scarce by definition. Land space is scarce and this scarcity is felt very acutely in some areas.

Renewable resources are only renewable if the rate of production matches or exceeds the rate of consumption. This is why whales are now protected from the profit motive. Reduce demand in an attempt to ensure a supply is maintained.

[lucky]

In capitalism scarce resources are rationed by wealth.

They are not "rationed by wealth". Wealth is by definition the access to resources, so the statement that wealthy people have more resources is a tautology that is true in every system.

[AFAIK]

Some cities ration access to road space by allowing vehicles whose plates end in an odd or even number access on different days. Some institute tolls. Some deny access to all except pedestrians. Some deny access to all using personal transport (ie cars) with the exception of the disabled.

Which is the most egalitarian?
Which is the most elitist?

[The Immortal Goon]

Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor. The phrase "proceeds of labor", objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning.

What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form.

Hence, equal right here is still in principle -- bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the average and not in the individual case.

In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor.

But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only -- for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.

But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

...Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. The latter distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of production itself. The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of nonworkers in the form of property in capital and land, while the masses are only owners of the personal condition of production, of labor power. If the elements of production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution of the means of consumption results automatically. If the material conditions of production are the co-operative property of the workers themselves, then there likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one. Vulgar socialism (and from it in turn a section of the democrats) has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution. After the real relation has long been made clear, why retrogress again?

[AFAIK]

Thanks for the block of text. I imagine the answer will be buried in there. I think this is what I'm looking for;

What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

I think I would be motivated to log many hours of work and do little work during those hours. How would society motivate me to contribute effort as well as time?

But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only -- for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.

That passage made me go cross eyed and feel dizzy but it appears that Marx acknowledges inequalities between those performing labour and their demand for consumption.

Vulgar socialism (and from it in turn a section of the democrats) has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution

Is vulgar socialism what I would call social-democracy? Or is it a welfare system.

[The Immortal Goon]

I think I would be motivated to log many hours of work and do little work during those hours. How would society motivate me to contribute effort as well as time?

I imagine that your fellow workers would make sure you didn't have a job and you'd get no, "certificate from society" as you would have furnished virtually nothing an amount of hour. Personally, I would be surprised if you left with your teeth intact. I don't know if you've ever had a job, but there's nothing that endears you less to people that signing up to take their money (or resources or whatever) and doing absolutely nothing but getting in the way while they do the actual work. Immediately after a revolution when workers had successfully taken the factory from their masters and were working for themselves, I'm guessing they'd be in no mood to allow free-loading scum to exploit them further.

That passage made me go cross eyed and feel dizzy but it appears that Marx acknowledges inequalities between those performing labour and their demand for consumption.

This is true. It is something that will be worked out as the material conditions change and we can begin to accommodate value on something aside from money based on time.

Is vulgar socialism what I would call social-democracy? Or is it a welfare system.

Social-Democrats will say it's social-democracy.

Stalinists will say it's what the Soviet Union was.

All other Marxists would say it is a system initially after the overthrow of the bourgeoisie in a global context—capitalism itself being a global system.

[AFAIK]

I have worked in several labour intensive jobs. My favourite was working as a shelf stacker at a supermarket because I worked by myself and didn't have to talk to anyone. I also had an enjoyable level of autonomy. I also volunteered at a charity bookshop operated by Oxfam. I found the work dull as there wasn't enough going on to allow me to perform a diverse range of tasks and it lacked structure due to the lack of a profit motive motivating the manager to motivate me. It didn't particularly matter if and when the work got done.

If the management or co-workers in the supermarket kept checking up on me and threatening to punch me in the face if I failed to complete the workload within the appointed time I would quit and seek work with another retailer. Capitalists compete for labour and are unable to treat their workers like shit if the demand for labour is greater than supply i.e no unemployment. Even with unemployment the cost of seeking, hiring and training new workers as well as the oppourtunity costs in the meantime promote the retention of workers.

If the workers would be so quick to resort to violence then I'd prefer to work for a capitalist who would provide training and motivation rather than threats and punches. I don't want to have a positive right to a job. I want to have negative rights to my teeth.

[The Immortal Goon]

If what you say is true, that shelf stacking was something you did reasonably well and didn't need anybody there in order to get it done, I don't think you'd have much to worry about. But you also mention you need a manager to motivate you at your next job, so I'm not sure what you'd be looking for.

Regardless, you find no motivation in getting paid (the "certificate from society"); and presumably no motivation in democracy; and no motivation in not fucking over your workers and their livelihoods; and no motivation in living up to the most basic expectations of adulthood; and instead you'd only be motivated to, "log many hours of work and do little work during those hours", I'm not sure what kind of motivation you are expecting from a capitalist. Do you know of a job right now that people love doing that has nothing to do with paying workers, social justice, or helping people that would pay you to do nothing?

And, quite honestly, I've worked plenty of jobs in capitalist areas where people that show up with a deliberate attitude to screwing over everyone around them and logging, "many hours of work," while doing, "little work," has ended in a beating.

Nonetheless, there have been arguments made for socialism because a restructured social condition would greatly ease the work everyone would have to do. If you are interested in doing as little as possible despite whatever value you have in yourself or others feel about you, there's always what Marx's son-in-law wrote in support of Marx (but which probably didn't go far to impress his father-in-law:

The Right to be Lazy.

[U184]

^ I hold to, if you do not work, you do not eat. It is not just a saying, its a fact of life.

[AFAIK]

It depends on the nature of the work. If I enjoy doing something I look forward to it and take pride in the results and I prefer to work alone without supervision. I had plans to become a train driver when I lived in England because it appealed to me.

I've read accounts of collectivism in China that could be glibly summarised, "The people pretended to work and the state pretended to pay." A British visitor described his trips to restaurants that were "closed for lunch" or hotels that had "no vacancies". He would march upstairs and open doors until he found an empty room to sleep in. The employees were paid to spend time in the building. They got the same wages regardless of how many customers they served so why invite someone to come and make a mess of the room? He'll create more work for them without providing any income as the state would acquire 100% of the guest's payment. How do you propose we overcome the issue of incentives?

Do I get to choose the work I perform? If everyone is able to gravitate to tasks that they find inherently enjoyable there would be less need for coercion.

Edit- I think I lack initiative rather than motivation. I work more productively in a defined setting than when left excessively to my own devices. I like to have a goal or a deadline to work towards otherwise I will just put off the work till later. Like a schoolchild who leaves his homework untouched for days and finally starts working the night before it is due.

[The Immortal Goon]

Well, as most people will say, China's not really a socialist system.

On the one hand, there's the whole divide amongst Marxists as to what a socialist system is. Stalinists may indeed call China "socialist," though almost every other Marxist would say it's, at best, a workers' state.

As far as if you get to choose what you do, I have no idea what your life would look like after a hypothetical revolution or what nature that would take. Sorry.