There’s a fact that a lot of people commenting here are overlooking. Marx himself admitted that in the lower stage of communism, wages will have to exist until people’s mindset on labor changes. It’s simply not true that communism will not work because ‘people don’t like working’.
Not really? Organization around mutual aid exemplifies time and time again people’s willingness to do all kinds of labor without pay as well as capital’s antagonistic response to the act.
Wages only have to exist until people are provided an alternative means of well being and self empowerment. That they can observe the value of labor is intrinsically tied to survival and well being, rather than extrinsically and arbitrarily.
This far in the future, you can find someone like me who would willingly design sewer-cleaning robots. My labor is being wasted on pointless billionaire projects.
Fuck I’d be happy to clean sewers if I had a stable high quality of life and I knew that my work was directly contributing to the community and its health. (In fact, most sanitation workers currently have that perspective - sanitation work is care work, and something to be very proud of).
What prevents me from working a few months, getting enough money for a computer and internet, and then have food and housing for free and don’t work for the rest of my life?
There’s a fact that a lot of people commenting here are overlooking. Marx himself admitted that in the lower stage of communism, wages will have to exist until people’s mindset on labor changes. It’s simply not true that communism will not work because ‘people don’t like working’.
edit: grammar
Not really? Organization around mutual aid exemplifies time and time again people’s willingness to do all kinds of labor without pay as well as capital’s antagonistic response to the act.
Wages only have to exist until people are provided an alternative means of well being and self empowerment. That they can observe the value of labor is intrinsically tied to survival and well being, rather than extrinsically and arbitrarily.
Also, in the higher stage of communism, labor that is necessary but not preferred — cleaning the sewers, for example — could be done in turn.
This far in the future, you can find someone like me who would willingly design sewer-cleaning robots. My labor is being wasted on pointless billionaire projects.
Fuck I’d be happy to clean sewers if I had a stable high quality of life and I knew that my work was directly contributing to the community and its health. (In fact, most sanitation workers currently have that perspective - sanitation work is care work, and something to be very proud of).
What prevents me from working a few months, getting enough money for a computer and internet, and then have food and housing for free and don’t work for the rest of my life?