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what if? (files.catbox.moe)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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[–] 7 points 3 years ago (5 children)

We will do it because we benefit ourselves from having this infrastructure. Certainly the people who first conceived of these systems were passionate about sewer maintenance, no?

The difference is we will not need to coerce people into working 8 or 12 hour shifts, so we would also have more time to devote to other interests and become more well-rounded individuals than we are under capitalism. We see things like sewer maintenance as undesirable drudgery because of how that work manifests under our current system.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago* (3 children)

    And there would also be people that benefit from the infrastructure and get the same benefits from everything while doing easier jobs. That doesn't sound like equality to me.

    Also, not liking being in the middle of literal crap as your job is not because of our current system. It's because it sucks.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    You're thinking about all this from a capitalist point of view, in which we have to be coerced into being productive. You're failing to see this through the lens of an actual anarchist/communist society. You assume the same inequities would just carry over. The whole point is to eliminate these hierarchies altogether.

    And yes, I do think people would be willing to do these things. I'm not above it myself.

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  • [–] -1 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    I'm not seeing through the lens of a capitalist, I'm seeing through the lens of a person.

    I guess in an anarcho-communist society there would be no formal governament and each person would have to contribute to the discussion. If there is a though job and one person does it for the bennefit of the whole, if they see someone else slacking off not doing work or doing an "easy job" they will get resentful.

    This isn't something that happens because we are used to exchange money for goods. This is because that's the nature of human relations. Heck, this is something common to pretty much all animals.

    The same can be said from hierarchies. If you remove the current ones, humans will form new ones eventually. It's our nature and in the nature of pretty much everything.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    I don't subscribe to this cynical view of human nature, nor do I subscribe to the belief that hierarchies are natural or inevitable. Even the classic example of hierarchies in nature -- wolves -- only exhibit hierarchical behavior in captivity. Moreover, we are uniquely intelligent animals who don't need to be bound by the same shortcomings that lesser intelligent animals exhibit instinctually.

    Hierarchies are certainly not desirable and create more problems than they are able to solve.

    The resentment you described is also a product of our current system and is the very sort of thing that anarcho-communism would address, and which state-based systems and capitalism invariably fail to do and even exacerbate.

    there would be no formal governament and each person would have to contribute to the discussion

    This is not to say there would not be people with specific training, expertise, experience, and interests. For instance, I wouldn't see a piano tuner to treat a gaping wound. One false assumption I often see people make is that expertise = hierarchy, which is simply not true.

    Also consider that the nature of infrastructure may look different than what we have now. Many of our current models are highly wasteful and inefficient.

    No one expects any of this to happen overnight by the way.

    If you're really interested, I found this to be an excellent read and surprisingly easy to grasp, even for someone like me: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread

    You can honestly just scroll to the sections that concern you. I had many of the same concerns that you had, but the more I read, the more I see how this could really work. (I'm not a political expert by the way, so I may not be describing all this as well as someone else could. I've also been trying to learn more about anarcho-primitivism, which has its own answers to these questions. Regardless, I think most of us agree that the current system is bad, so we're looking for better alternatives.)

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