I think when we discuss the inevitability of socialism, we ultimately imagine this inevitability arriving at the same speed, regardless of how we get there. I think that isn’t really true, though. A movement with socialism at its core cuts the down the travel time, and softens the landing when we arrive. A movement without socialism at its core will take much longer to get there, and the landing will be hard. I think even over a long enough span of time, even without a socialist understanding or a workers’ movement, socialism will come. By that time, though, all our imaginary lines will have faded from memory.
Socialism isn’t the implementation of a new social and economic order. It is the re-implementation of a long forgotten social and economic order. The level of industrial capacity and sophistication in which Socialism is implemented is entirely dependent on how we arrive at the shore.
There was a time, where people lived in a more egalitarian way, and where humans productive output went from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. The people who could have taught us that way of life were obliterated by colonialism.
If we have a compass to guide us, we’ll arrive with all the supplies, people, and tools we require. If we don’t, we will arrive with only the necessities, having likely lost a large portion of institutional knowledge along the way.
I don’t subscribe to the notion that greed is a natural or productive aspect of human nature, or that “human nature” is much of a monolith at all. I do think, however, that our success and dominance as a species through our history can be greatly attributed to our communal tendencies. Likewise, I believe that given the opportunity, those tendencies would thrive, and that in itself is the core contradiction within the capitalist system that leads to its ultimate undoing. We simply recontextualized this desire for communal life and communal organization as a “Worker’s Movement”.
Primitive / Pre-Marxist / Pre-Industrial Communism is simply Communism before we knew what it was called. It formed organically, without the need for pamphlets, books, essays, or theory. A world that was both post-scarcity but also pre-surplus.
I think when we discuss the inevitability of socialism, we ultimately imagine this inevitability arriving at the same speed, regardless of how we get there. I think that isn’t really true, though. A movement with socialism at its core cuts the down the travel time, and softens the landing when we arrive. A movement without socialism at its core will take much longer to get there, and the landing will be hard. I think even over a long enough span of time, even without a socialist understanding or a workers’ movement, socialism will come. By that time, though, all our imaginary lines will have faded from memory.
Socialism isn’t the implementation of a new social and economic order. It is the re-implementation of a long forgotten social and economic order. The level of industrial capacity and sophistication in which Socialism is implemented is entirely dependent on how we arrive at the shore.
There was a time, where people lived in a more egalitarian way, and where humans productive output went from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. The people who could have taught us that way of life were obliterated by colonialism.
If we have a compass to guide us, we’ll arrive with all the supplies, people, and tools we require. If we don’t, we will arrive with only the necessities, having likely lost a large portion of institutional knowledge along the way.
I don’t subscribe to the notion that greed is a natural or productive aspect of human nature, or that “human nature” is much of a monolith at all. I do think, however, that our success and dominance as a species through our history can be greatly attributed to our communal tendencies. Likewise, I believe that given the opportunity, those tendencies would thrive, and that in itself is the core contradiction within the capitalist system that leads to its ultimate undoing. We simply recontextualized this desire for communal life and communal organization as a “Worker’s Movement”.
Primitive / Pre-Marxist / Pre-Industrial Communism is simply Communism before we knew what it was called. It formed organically, without the need for pamphlets, books, essays, or theory. A world that was both post-scarcity but also pre-surplus.