For communism and against foreclosure on the future (revisited)

Note: This is the second in my revisited series. I’m reposting old articles worked over and expanded with new thoughts and ideas I’ve had since first writing them.

I

By communism here I mean a system in which the principle of:

All things are to be owned in common, and people are to receive from the common stock of goods in proportion to their need

Is implemented as the principle of economic distribution.

There has never been an advanced communist society- only societies that aspire to communism in the long run. Money still existed in the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba. The state paid some people more than others, and not on the basis of their extra need. It is not clear that there has ever existed an advanced society that even had the capacity to build communism.

There are I think two main objections to the possibility of a technologically advanced communist society, in the broad sense that distribution aims to be directly on the basis of need, viz:

1. The incentive problem

2. The calculation problem

The incentive problem is the problem of making sure the work gets done, especially boring, dangerous, and stressful work. If everyone gets paid on the basis of need rather than effort, why would anyone want to do these kinds of work?

The calculation problem is more technical; you can read about it here.

These are tricky problems. One way to respond to these difficulties is to give up on communism- for years I did just that, in favor of social democracy or democratic socialism. Another response comes, ironically, from a libertarian I knew in university.

II.

I was putting to this libertarian the technical problems with anarcho-capitalism. These include the provision of public goods and management of externalities. I argued that these problems showed anarcho-capitalism was either impossible or undesirable. His response to this was twofold:

1. A) Anarcho-capitalism is a regulatory ideal- an organizing concept for political action. Something can serve as such an ideal even if we don’t yet know if it is possible.

2. B) The world we live in would have been unimaginable throughout most of history. To foreclose on the possibilities of the future would be foolish. Tremendous changes in technology and social institutions await. We should take the outside view on our own radical ignorance of the possibilities of the future.

Although I’m certainly no anarcho-capitalist, I think this is not a bad defense of aspiring to anarcho-capitalism, despite the technical difficulties.

These days, this is how I feel about communism. There are forces that push in the direction of communism. Communism is a good regulatory ideal for those forces. It unifies the most radical progressive tendencies in society. Will it ever happen? Predicting the direction of social and technical advances in advance is impossible so it would be foolish to rule it out. Insomuch as it centers human needs in the productive and distributive process it is a good aspiration. Although the future is unknown, I would consider especially, advances in AI and transhuman enhancement as relevant.

We need to be exact about what is being proposed here. I’m not arguing “No one can prove communism is impossible, hence we should believe that it is possible.” That would be to substitute faith for reason. Instead, the idea is that “We don’t know whether communism will ever be possible but it may well be. Moreover, there are reasons to think it is desirable, and we can take steps to try and approximate it better in the present, so it is right to aspire to it.”

The danger of an aspiration like communism is that it can overwhelm more specific social plans for the coming decades. So long we avoid this danger, we can happily regard ourselves as communists. The main thing that has changed since I first wrote this essay is that I have become increasingly concerned about this point. I worry that the idea of communism, rather than acting as a hopeful North star, substitutes for serious thinking about what is possible now, and the question of institutional design. Though hard thinking about political-economic engineering is not opposed to the very idea of communism, generations of rhetoric and history have bifurcated the left between those who talk in terms of communism, and those who speak about economic design. This needs to be reversed.

III.

I wanted to talk about another issue that is quite logically distinct, but which I regard as emotionally linked: reform vs revolution. What I say here will not be new to anyone who has thought about this for a few years, but I remember that there was a time that I didn’t understand it, so maybe it will be helpful for some.

There is no absolute divide between revolutionary and reformist strategies. There are only degrees.

The most obvious reason this is true is that winning reforms can increase revolutionary morale and organization. Conversely, the threat of revolution can win reforms.

The deeper, often missed point is that winning elections can create legitimacy for an anti-capitalist movement. If the deep state then responds through a coup, a revolution can happen in the defence of an elected government- revealing and hopefully defeating the true nature of the repressive apparatus. If successful, such a revolution can then dismantle the existing capitalist state. For this reason, revolution and electoral victory shouldn’t be counter-posed strategically, at least not in an absolute sense.

Engels describes how revolution can be a defensive option, once the state represses legal methods:

“[…] Be that as it may, for the time being it is not we who are being destroyed by legality. It is working so well for us that we would be mad to spurn it as long as the situation lasts. It remains to be seen whether it will be the bourgeois and their government who will be the first to turn their back on the law in order to crush us by violence. That is what we shall be waiting for. You shoot first, messieurs les bourgeois.

No doubt they will be the first ones to fire. One fine day the German bourgeois and their government, tired of standing with their arms folded, witnessing the ever-increasing advances of socialism, will resort to illegality and violence.”

To the preceding, I would now add: But all this means something more. In the final instance, there is no useful distinction between the revolutionary and the reformist. Certainly, there will be a fact of the matter as to whether, in the activist’s mind, they envisage revolution or reform as the ideal outcome of their and their organization’s work, but this mental image need not correspond to anything and often doesn’t. Many are the firm revolutionaries who, having a hint of success, fall into the deepest of class collaborationism. The inverse- the nominally liberal figure who never compromises her soul with the establishment, and in practice would keep pushing even if it meant going through a revolution or bourgeoise- also exists. This is also all true of organizations, their character is far more complex than the abstractions ‘revolutionary’ or ‘reformist’.

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