Here’s a little thought experiment I came up with: let’s say the population of a large city under a communist government was suddenly transported back to prehistoric times. None of their technology came with them, only the knowledge in their brains. Let’s assume they survive, would they be able to keep living under some sort of Marxist-leninist/communist ideology? In the complete absence of technology, do you think a large scale communist society can be maintained, or would it necessarily have to dissolve into something more akin to “tribal communism”? Would the tribes they revert into start warring with each other for resources like actual prehistoric tribes did? Do you think the people in this situation would be able to hold on to communist ideals from a mental perspective, or would people start wanting a capitalist or other system?
deleted by creator
we can have co-operative work. the wage can be only the worker share of the wealth created by them, and not a form of plus value extraction. what is fundamental is, the means of production are de jure or de facto provarem owned? a full communist society need very developed productive forces, but if we are talking about time travel, we are talking about preserving the tribal communism while developing productive forces. a hunting gathering society have not the concept of wage, because all tribe benefits from work done. we can have a non monetary society, where workers build things, and request things from a administration, without money, for instance.
deleted by creator
communism is different from pos scarity. but yeah, work sucks, being a human in a brutal environment socks, and communism can end alienation of work, but not the human condition.
Disclaimer: I have no way of proving any of this.
I think because of cultural inertia it would not be necessary to regress to a pre-communist form of social organisation. Plus I think with some tweaks a communist society would be better equipped to rebuild the means of production to raise the standard of living. I feel the current way of resorting to some aspects of capitalism to build up productive forces exists only because we live in a world where the capitalist countries have a hegemonic chokehold on the rest of the world. It would be important for the people as a collective to have a clear understanding of the history of political economy.
Communism, at least in a modern consumer goods producing society, does need a level of technology to be able to compute labor time values for all goods and services. Luckily we reached that level a few decades ago, and now even our smartphones could compute those values for any given economy.
we only need to compute labour time values if we want a monetary system. in a primitive communist society the goods needed are socially hunted/gathered/cultivated/built and shared by all. if you add your modern knowledge you will improve comfort and reduce the needed labour, but if you don’t change the economic system, thee needed goods will be communal, as before, and no need to calculate value.
if you arrive at a communal society, and don’t taught them about private property, but taught them about technology, they will improve quality of life, but not change their economic system. so, the question is about what is needed to maintain the tribal communism while increasing the productive forces. building elective councils to manage the social life, instead of putting the power on priests or military leaders is a good star on my opinion. as the productive forces increase, we need to manage large stocks of food, raw materials and coordinate labour division. if one person or a small group of lifelong leaders do this, we have the gradual privatisation of the communal goods.
