Marxism is a scientific theory of societal development, not a dogma. Insisting that we should abandon all theories of social development and that we can get to socialism just by believing hard enough and if they don’t believe, we can purge unbelievers in a Cultural Revolution, that is dogma.
I think you are being a little dogmatic comrade.
One aspect of this I would argue is that historical materialism explains how contradictions of hierarchy rewrite society through revolution over and over again until the contradictions are eliminated.
This however does not mean that all societies must start as some feudal monarchy and evolve through all stages of societal development in order to reach capitalism. By the same token, all societies do not need to start at the beginning in order to reach socialism.
People that already know what they are developing can skip straight to the system they intend to implement, with some degree of tightening the belt in-between due to resources. The fact that they skipped straight to their intended system does not guarantee failure of those societies at all and by the same token I don’t think you should hold to the idea that you must absolutely force yourself through stages before you’ll reach your intended target.
I see historical materialism as the natural process by which contradiction resolves itself through class struggle over and over again, driving forwards reorganisation of society. This natural process will inevitably reach socialism if given a long enough timeline to play out, but that does not mean that you can not proceed with intent just as any society could be started on Mars tomorrow with the intent of being capitalist.
Just to add – this isn’t a refutation of the Chinese approach. I support what they’re doing as it’s necessary in the current conditions to prevent isolation and destruction by the bourgeoisie. I just don’t think it’s right to say that any stages are requirements.
You think I’m going to respond positively when you legitimately start off calling me dogmatic for criticizing the huge side of leftists who think material conditions aren’t relevant?
One aspect of this I would argue is that historical materialism explains how contradictions of hierarchy rewrite society through revolution over and over again until the contradictions are eliminated.
The “hierarchies” result from the relations of production, which are determined by the productive forces. Not the other way around.
“…social relations between the producers, and the conditions under which they exchange their activities and share in the total act of production, will naturally vary according to the character of the means of production. With the discover of a new instrument of warfare, the firearm, the whole internal organization of the army was necessarily altered, the relations within which individuals compose an army and can work as an army were transformed, and the relation of different armies to another was likewise changed.
We thus see that the social relations within which individuals produce, the social relations of production, are altered, transformed, with the change and development of the material means of production, of the forces of production. The relations of production in their totality constitute what is called the social relations, society, and, moreover, a society at a definite stage of historical development, a society with peculiar, distinctive characteristics. Ancient society, feudal society, bourgeois (or capitalist) society, are such totalities of relations of production, each of which denotes a particular stage of development in the history of mankind.”
— Karl Marx, “Wage-Labour and Capital”
.
This however does not mean that all societies must start as some feudal monarchy and evolve through all stages of societal development in order to reach capitalism. By the same token, all societies do not need to start at the beginning in order to reach socialism.
People that already know what they are developing can skip straight to the system they intend to implement, with some degree of tightening the belt in-between due to resources. The fact that they skipped straight to their intended system does not guarantee failure of those societies at all and by the same token I don’t think you should hold to the idea that you must absolutely force yourself through stages before you’ll reach your intended target.
While it is technically true that it would not violate the laws of physics for someone to win a war using incredibly outdated battle tactics not actually suited for modern day weaponry, it would not only be an incredibly inefficient of winning that war but they significantly increase their likelihood of losing.
I see historical materialism as the natural process by which contradiction resolves itself through class struggle over and over again, driving forwards reorganisation of society. This natural process will inevitably reach socialism if given a long enough timeline to play out, but that does not mean that you can not proceed with intent just as any society could be started on Mars tomorrow with the intent of being capitalist.
This is not what historical materialism is.
Historical materialism comes back to the material. The class struggle originates in contradictory relations of production, but the relations of production originate in the level of the productive forces.
Class struggle does not develop into anything if it is static. Marx’s entire purpose of writing Capital was to analyze how the development of the productive forces in capitalism leads to changes in the relations of production.
The development of capitalism socializes production, brings workers out of competition and into cooperation, lays the infrastructure for central planning, and constantly reduces the number of capitalists will constantly increasing the number of workers.
Hence, the relations of production inevitably change as a process of the development of the productive forces in a way that is constantly giving workers a stronger position, so eventually it will topple over for the workers.
But that does not mean you can just implement socialism by decree “if you know what you are doing”. Why is it all you extreme dogmatists who never read a word on historical materialism come here pretending to be experts and saying everyone who disagrees must be the “dogmatist”?
You have an idealist view of economics where the economic system is simply a reflection of human ideas and not based in material conditions, and therefore in your mind, you conclude that the most developed economic system is merely a reflection of the most developed ideas, hence you state this quite blatantly, “People that already know what they are developing can skip straight to the system they intend to implement”.
To you, having the knowledge of the system is enough. Just having the most developed ideas is enough. When this is quite literally the opposite of what Marx argues. Economic systems are not a reflection of a certain level of development in human ideas. It is the opposite. Human ideas are a reflection of a certain level of development of the economic system.
“we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life.”
— Karl Marx, “The German Ideology"
“In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.”
— Karl Marx, “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”
You have no understanding of this topic at all. Historical materialism is not simply about “hierarchies” contradicting therefore making socialism “inevitable”. It is about the material basis of society ultimately and in the last instance determining the superstructure of society.
Just to add – this isn’t a refutation of the Chinese approach. I support what they’re doing as it’s necessary in the current conditions to prevent isolation and destruction by the bourgeoisie. I just don’t think it’s right to say that any stages are requirements.
You objectively could not have implemented a feudal economy in primitive hunter-gatherer times. You objectively could not have simply implemented capitalism by fiat in early feudal times. You could not even have abolished slavery by fiat in early ancient times. This required certain technological innovations to improve agricultural production, such as the spinning jenny. These were things that required a certain level of development of the productive forces.
“it is only possible to achieve real liberation in the real world and by employing real means, that slavery cannot be abolished without the steam-engine and the mule and spinning-jenny, serfdom cannot be abolished without improved agriculture, and that, in general, people cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity. ‘Liberation’ is an historical and not a mental act, and it is brought about by historical conditions, the development of industry, commerce, agriculture, the conditions of intercourse.”
— Karl Marx, “The German Ideology"
You say you can just ignore the level of development of the productive forces and implement whatever system you want willy-nilly as long as you “you know what you are doing”.
Let’s take a look at what Friedrich Engels had to say about ancient slave-based societies.
“It was slavery that first made possible the division of labour between agriculture and industry on a larger scale, and thereby also Hellenism, the flowering of the ancient world. Without slavery, no Greek state, no Greek art and science, without slavery, no Roman Empire. But without the basis laid by Hellenism and the Roman Empire, also no modern Europe…In this sense we are entitled to say: Without the slavery of antiquity no modern socialism. It is very easy to inveigh against slavery and similar things in general terms, and to give vent to high moral indignation at such infamies. Unfortunately all that this conveys is only what everyone knows, namely, that these institutions of antiquity are no longer in accord with our present conditions and our sentiments, which these conditions determine.”
u/Lenins2ndCat - originally from r/GenZhou
Ok so, I agree with some parts of this and disagree with others but I’d rather come at this from an angle that doesn’t put us in combat with one another because I don’t think that’s particularly productive, especially on reddit.
Let’s assume humans are starting a new colony on Mars but they’re starting from a point of limited resources. Let’s say they’re starting without any tools at all for the sake of argument. Given what we understand about production, society and development how do you picture this playing out? Do you expect feudal society to develop? If you don’t, why?
u/aimixin - originally from r/GenZhou
Feudalism would not develop on Mars because the material conditions of an early Martian society would be nothing like the material conditions of an early feudal society.
Under feudalism, countries were very big, yet the government was very weak, what Adam Smith described as “feudal anarchy”. The king was only the largest baron of many, who he had very limited control over and would constantly war with each other.
Feudal peasants were also self-sufficient. The king did not need to control them. They could grow food on their own land and maintain themselves, even if isolated from everyone else. The king mainly would just provide some level of protection when possible and collect taxes in kind.
Feudal society was also based in very limited agriculture. Technology beyond agriculture was also very limited, most things were built from the ground-up by hand by people who specialized in it in guilds. You did not get your swords from a sword factory, but from a swordsmith, who made it himself.
A Martian colony would require an incredibly high level of economic development to even begin to implement since so much tech will be required to get humans not to die on Mars. These colonies would start out incredibly small so that they could be tightly controlled, quite the opposite of feudal anarchy. Nobody could be self-sufficient, there would be no clean air, clean water, food, clothing, etc, without people specifically creating them, because none of this appears naturally on Mars, unlike on earth. These colonies could eventually expand in size, but only as far as you could carefully plan every operation of that expansion and scale up the technology.
A Martian colony would be similar to the inside of the International Space Station. It would necessarily have to be carefully planned down to every single small detail or else everyone dies. The colony could only scale in size in proportion to an expansion of the technology and planning. It would also be too limited to be a democratically planned economy, it would necessarily have to be a technocratically planned economy, because the slightest slip-up and everyone dies.
I’m not sure you can compare a Mars colony to early human society or even to something like the British colonies in North America. The material conditions are quite clearly wildly different and the idea they’d form the same superstructure is incredibly far-fetched.
u/Lenins2ndCat - originally from r/GenZhou
Ok so the planet is a poor comparison. I should use a peer planet instead. Earth 2.0 if you like.
Let’s say that a colony ship arrives at Earth 2.0 and instead of being able to develop it with resources taken on the colony ship they have to start from scratch. No tools no nothing.
These humans will still skip several stages of development because they will seek to industrialise as quickly as they can. Right? They’re not going to go through the same limiting factors of the stone/bronze/iron-ages or subsequent industrial revolutions. They’re going to jump as far ahead as they possibly can based on existing available resources.
My point doesn’t have to rely on idealism. Human knowledge, not ideas but factual-knowledge of science, industry and production is a material thing, not an idealist thing. Humans today have knowledge of industry, science and production that humans of the past did not. Developing that knowledge base was a limiting factor in production and the material conditions.
What I’m trying to get to is that if you take humans from today and plonk them in resource-less earth-like conditions they are going to jump ahead to the technology and production-level that they know. That their knowledge-base is a material factor. That they will immediately aim to build the society they know of and using the technology and production methods they know underpin that society.
By the same token, let’s say 300 years from now in a truly socialist earth, the humans then will have knowledge of science and production we do not right now. If you take those humans and plop them on a foreign planet without resources, they are going to immediately seek to build up to the productive point that they know. They will skip ahead because their knowledge of technology, logistics and production is a material factor that shouldn’t be dismissed.
On the other hand, if all you have are skill less humans with very poor political, scientific and social education? The result is probably going to be deteriorate into much older versions of society as these humans will be forced to regress to older methods with no idea how to build ahead again.
u/aimixin - originally from r/GenZhou
While having knowledge of future technology can help you industrialize faster, you still have to go through the process of industrializing. It is incredibly idealist to think of people who had knowledge of advanced economies were teleported back to the feudal era that they could just bring advanced socialism into existence in one stroke.
The society would be backwards by thousands of years. Nobody would even know what they were talking about. Even if they could beam the knowledge directly into people’s heads, while they might develop faster, it would still take a long time, because they still have to develop. It could still take centuries to move from the feudal system to a socialist system even with full knowledge of it.
I mean, the entire point of Marxism is to try to create a theory of development so we can predict future developments in order to help us develop faster. But Marx makes it clear you still have to develop towards it, and says explicitly a ruling communist party cannot simply abolish private property by decree but only in proportion to its development, so it should rapidly develop the economy as fast as possible to facilitate this transition.
The claim that material conditions don’t matter is absolutely idealist no matter how you spin it. You still have to go through the steps of material development even if you know what is next.
The analogy also is rather useless to us because we don’t live on a planet 300 years from now where this technology has been invented. You and the other person are talking explicitly about implementing a fully planned economy now independent of the material conditions and independent of even having knowledge of what this would look like since no economy has ever developed productive forces high enough that all the means of production have been socialized.
We don’t have a future person from 2321. We are still figuring out stuff here and now, all we have is predictions from Marxian economics which helps us to know what direction we have to go and a general idea of what the process would look like. But we have to continue focusing on development as rapidly as possible to ever actually get there. The claim you can just implement full planning by fiat is idealist. There is no way to spin this otherwise. It absolutely is idealist in every way, shape, and form. It is literally the entire conception of “idealism” that Marxism was attacking in The German Ideology.
u/Angel_of_Communism - originally from r/GenZhou
Sorry no.
Other than an ‘office of planning society on earth 2.0’ i can tell you i know a good bit more about this subject than most, having done this scenario in planning sessions, stories and game writing.
Either the colonists from earth land on earth 2.0 with enough tech to skip some or all of the production issues, or they do not.
If they lose it all, then no, they MUST go through the stone age etc.
No amount of knowledge will get you steel tools without the infrastructure to build them. Which is: coal mining or coke production, charcoal production, iron ore mining, the tools to mine iron ore, and the key part: enough surplus food to support a group of people who break rocks all day, and do not hunt or farm.
If you want a personal demonstration, go play minecraft.
Read all the wiki pages about spells and diamond armour.
Then play the game, start with nothing and jump to diamond armour without passing through the ‘wooden pickaxe’ phase.
Can’t be done.
Because the infrastructure must be built first.
With a head start, such as advanced hydroponic greenhouses, and power, and computerized education, and tools, a colony can jump some of the steps.
But to make it sustainable, they will need the infrastructure.
Feudalism needed the infrastructure of iron & steel. Which required coal, iron mining, and iron tools to mine it, and someone to make that, and also enough surplus food to support the people to do it. Which can only happen when the farming technology has advanced enough to allow that.
Industry needs more of the same. Only advanced agriculture and the like can support masses of people working, and not farming.
And coal for steam power.
Socialism needs even more advanced infrastructure. So much food and other material stuff that society can survive even with nearly everyone else NOT making food and such.
such a colony would only be able to survive with massive imports of food & material from the motherland, and with a huge population base. Essentially dropping a small country on a planet.
u/Lenins2ndCat - originally from r/GenZhou
I’m not disputing most of that, other than the assumption that you can not construct those things under a socialist ideology rather than a slave, feudal or capitalist ideology. We are using the capitalist organisation of production to construct what we need to transition into socialism in several countries right now while maintaining proletarian control and the communist ideology.
My point here is that our understanding of society is a science, and that does not need reconstructing as it can not be lost unless we fail to educate in that new society. We wouldn’t necessarily construct a feudal society again because why would communists sent to a new planet create kings and nobility? I don’t think they would. They might design production in a feudal way but without the hierarchy. A proletarian society(in character) with a feudal level of production.
u/Lenins2ndCat - originally from r/GenZhouI think you are being a little dogmatic comrade.
One aspect of this I would argue is that historical materialism explains how contradictions of hierarchy rewrite society through revolution over and over again until the contradictions are eliminated.
This however does not mean that all societies must start as some feudal monarchy and evolve through all stages of societal development in order to reach capitalism. By the same token, all societies do not need to start at the beginning in order to reach socialism.
People that already know what they are developing can skip straight to the system they intend to implement, with some degree of tightening the belt in-between due to resources. The fact that they skipped straight to their intended system does not guarantee failure of those societies at all and by the same token I don’t think you should hold to the idea that you must absolutely force yourself through stages before you’ll reach your intended target.
I see historical materialism as the natural process by which contradiction resolves itself through class struggle over and over again, driving forwards reorganisation of society. This natural process will inevitably reach socialism if given a long enough timeline to play out, but that does not mean that you can not proceed with intent just as any society could be started on Mars tomorrow with the intent of being capitalist.
Just to add – this isn’t a refutation of the Chinese approach. I support what they’re doing as it’s necessary in the current conditions to prevent isolation and destruction by the bourgeoisie. I just don’t think it’s right to say that any stages are requirements.
u/aimixin - originally from r/GenZhouYou think I’m going to respond positively when you legitimately start off calling me dogmatic for criticizing the huge side of leftists who think material conditions aren’t relevant?
The “hierarchies” result from the relations of production, which are determined by the productive forces. Not the other way around.
.
While it is technically true that it would not violate the laws of physics for someone to win a war using incredibly outdated battle tactics not actually suited for modern day weaponry, it would not only be an incredibly inefficient of winning that war but they significantly increase their likelihood of losing.
This is not what historical materialism is.
Historical materialism comes back to the material. The class struggle originates in contradictory relations of production, but the relations of production originate in the level of the productive forces.
Class struggle does not develop into anything if it is static. Marx’s entire purpose of writing Capital was to analyze how the development of the productive forces in capitalism leads to changes in the relations of production.
The development of capitalism socializes production, brings workers out of competition and into cooperation, lays the infrastructure for central planning, and constantly reduces the number of capitalists will constantly increasing the number of workers.
Hence, the relations of production inevitably change as a process of the development of the productive forces in a way that is constantly giving workers a stronger position, so eventually it will topple over for the workers.
But that does not mean you can just implement socialism by decree “if you know what you are doing”. Why is it all you extreme dogmatists who never read a word on historical materialism come here pretending to be experts and saying everyone who disagrees must be the “dogmatist”?
You have an idealist view of economics where the economic system is simply a reflection of human ideas and not based in material conditions, and therefore in your mind, you conclude that the most developed economic system is merely a reflection of the most developed ideas, hence you state this quite blatantly, “People that already know what they are developing can skip straight to the system they intend to implement”.
To you, having the knowledge of the system is enough. Just having the most developed ideas is enough. When this is quite literally the opposite of what Marx argues. Economic systems are not a reflection of a certain level of development in human ideas. It is the opposite. Human ideas are a reflection of a certain level of development of the economic system.
You have no understanding of this topic at all. Historical materialism is not simply about “hierarchies” contradicting therefore making socialism “inevitable”. It is about the material basis of society ultimately and in the last instance determining the superstructure of society.
You objectively could not have implemented a feudal economy in primitive hunter-gatherer times. You objectively could not have simply implemented capitalism by fiat in early feudal times. You could not even have abolished slavery by fiat in early ancient times. This required certain technological innovations to improve agricultural production, such as the spinning jenny. These were things that required a certain level of development of the productive forces.
You say you can just ignore the level of development of the productive forces and implement whatever system you want willy-nilly as long as you “you know what you are doing”.
Let’s take a look at what Friedrich Engels had to say about ancient slave-based societies.
Was Engels a dogmatist?
u/Lenins2ndCat - originally from r/GenZhouOk so, I agree with some parts of this and disagree with others but I’d rather come at this from an angle that doesn’t put us in combat with one another because I don’t think that’s particularly productive, especially on reddit.
Let’s assume humans are starting a new colony on Mars but they’re starting from a point of limited resources. Let’s say they’re starting without any tools at all for the sake of argument. Given what we understand about production, society and development how do you picture this playing out? Do you expect feudal society to develop? If you don’t, why?
u/aimixin - originally from r/GenZhouFeudalism would not develop on Mars because the material conditions of an early Martian society would be nothing like the material conditions of an early feudal society.
Under feudalism, countries were very big, yet the government was very weak, what Adam Smith described as “feudal anarchy”. The king was only the largest baron of many, who he had very limited control over and would constantly war with each other.
Feudal peasants were also self-sufficient. The king did not need to control them. They could grow food on their own land and maintain themselves, even if isolated from everyone else. The king mainly would just provide some level of protection when possible and collect taxes in kind.
Feudal society was also based in very limited agriculture. Technology beyond agriculture was also very limited, most things were built from the ground-up by hand by people who specialized in it in guilds. You did not get your swords from a sword factory, but from a swordsmith, who made it himself.
A Martian colony would require an incredibly high level of economic development to even begin to implement since so much tech will be required to get humans not to die on Mars. These colonies would start out incredibly small so that they could be tightly controlled, quite the opposite of feudal anarchy. Nobody could be self-sufficient, there would be no clean air, clean water, food, clothing, etc, without people specifically creating them, because none of this appears naturally on Mars, unlike on earth. These colonies could eventually expand in size, but only as far as you could carefully plan every operation of that expansion and scale up the technology.
A Martian colony would be similar to the inside of the International Space Station. It would necessarily have to be carefully planned down to every single small detail or else everyone dies. The colony could only scale in size in proportion to an expansion of the technology and planning. It would also be too limited to be a democratically planned economy, it would necessarily have to be a technocratically planned economy, because the slightest slip-up and everyone dies.
I’m not sure you can compare a Mars colony to early human society or even to something like the British colonies in North America. The material conditions are quite clearly wildly different and the idea they’d form the same superstructure is incredibly far-fetched.
u/Lenins2ndCat - originally from r/GenZhouOk so the planet is a poor comparison. I should use a peer planet instead. Earth 2.0 if you like.
Let’s say that a colony ship arrives at Earth 2.0 and instead of being able to develop it with resources taken on the colony ship they have to start from scratch. No tools no nothing.
These humans will still skip several stages of development because they will seek to industrialise as quickly as they can. Right? They’re not going to go through the same limiting factors of the stone/bronze/iron-ages or subsequent industrial revolutions. They’re going to jump as far ahead as they possibly can based on existing available resources.
My point doesn’t have to rely on idealism. Human knowledge, not ideas but factual-knowledge of science, industry and production is a material thing, not an idealist thing. Humans today have knowledge of industry, science and production that humans of the past did not. Developing that knowledge base was a limiting factor in production and the material conditions.
What I’m trying to get to is that if you take humans from today and plonk them in resource-less earth-like conditions they are going to jump ahead to the technology and production-level that they know. That their knowledge-base is a material factor. That they will immediately aim to build the society they know of and using the technology and production methods they know underpin that society.
By the same token, let’s say 300 years from now in a truly socialist earth, the humans then will have knowledge of science and production we do not right now. If you take those humans and plop them on a foreign planet without resources, they are going to immediately seek to build up to the productive point that they know. They will skip ahead because their knowledge of technology, logistics and production is a material factor that shouldn’t be dismissed.
On the other hand, if all you have are skill less humans with very poor political, scientific and social education? The result is probably going to be deteriorate into much older versions of society as these humans will be forced to regress to older methods with no idea how to build ahead again.
u/aimixin - originally from r/GenZhouWhile having knowledge of future technology can help you industrialize faster, you still have to go through the process of industrializing. It is incredibly idealist to think of people who had knowledge of advanced economies were teleported back to the feudal era that they could just bring advanced socialism into existence in one stroke.
The society would be backwards by thousands of years. Nobody would even know what they were talking about. Even if they could beam the knowledge directly into people’s heads, while they might develop faster, it would still take a long time, because they still have to develop. It could still take centuries to move from the feudal system to a socialist system even with full knowledge of it.
I mean, the entire point of Marxism is to try to create a theory of development so we can predict future developments in order to help us develop faster. But Marx makes it clear you still have to develop towards it, and says explicitly a ruling communist party cannot simply abolish private property by decree but only in proportion to its development, so it should rapidly develop the economy as fast as possible to facilitate this transition.
The claim that material conditions don’t matter is absolutely idealist no matter how you spin it. You still have to go through the steps of material development even if you know what is next.
The analogy also is rather useless to us because we don’t live on a planet 300 years from now where this technology has been invented. You and the other person are talking explicitly about implementing a fully planned economy now independent of the material conditions and independent of even having knowledge of what this would look like since no economy has ever developed productive forces high enough that all the means of production have been socialized.
We don’t have a future person from 2321. We are still figuring out stuff here and now, all we have is predictions from Marxian economics which helps us to know what direction we have to go and a general idea of what the process would look like. But we have to continue focusing on development as rapidly as possible to ever actually get there. The claim you can just implement full planning by fiat is idealist. There is no way to spin this otherwise. It absolutely is idealist in every way, shape, and form. It is literally the entire conception of “idealism” that Marxism was attacking in The German Ideology.
u/Angel_of_Communism - originally from r/GenZhouSorry no.
Other than an ‘office of planning society on earth 2.0’ i can tell you i know a good bit more about this subject than most, having done this scenario in planning sessions, stories and game writing.
Either the colonists from earth land on earth 2.0 with enough tech to skip some or all of the production issues, or they do not.
If they lose it all, then no, they MUST go through the stone age etc.
No amount of knowledge will get you steel tools without the infrastructure to build them. Which is: coal mining or coke production, charcoal production, iron ore mining, the tools to mine iron ore, and the key part: enough surplus food to support a group of people who break rocks all day, and do not hunt or farm.
If you want a personal demonstration, go play minecraft.
Read all the wiki pages about spells and diamond armour.
Then play the game, start with nothing and jump to diamond armour without passing through the ‘wooden pickaxe’ phase.
Can’t be done.
Because the infrastructure must be built first.
With a head start, such as advanced hydroponic greenhouses, and power, and computerized education, and tools, a colony can jump some of the steps.
But to make it sustainable, they will need the infrastructure.
Feudalism needed the infrastructure of iron & steel. Which required coal, iron mining, and iron tools to mine it, and someone to make that, and also enough surplus food to support the people to do it. Which can only happen when the farming technology has advanced enough to allow that.
Industry needs more of the same. Only advanced agriculture and the like can support masses of people working, and not farming.
And coal for steam power.
Socialism needs even more advanced infrastructure. So much food and other material stuff that society can survive even with nearly everyone else NOT making food and such.
such a colony would only be able to survive with massive imports of food & material from the motherland, and with a huge population base. Essentially dropping a small country on a planet.
u/Lenins2ndCat - originally from r/GenZhouI’m not disputing most of that, other than the assumption that you can not construct those things under a socialist ideology rather than a slave, feudal or capitalist ideology. We are using the capitalist organisation of production to construct what we need to transition into socialism in several countries right now while maintaining proletarian control and the communist ideology.
My point here is that our understanding of society is a science, and that does not need reconstructing as it can not be lost unless we fail to educate in that new society. We wouldn’t necessarily construct a feudal society again because why would communists sent to a new planet create kings and nobility? I don’t think they would. They might design production in a feudal way but without the hierarchy. A proletarian society(in character) with a feudal level of production.