How about (instead of communism) aiming for an economy made up predominantly of co-operatives, like in the Basque country in Spain? The Mondragon federation of co-ops.
That way money is distruted quite evenly but you don't have to get into the whole politics thing.
Communism is just people trying to create heaven on earth but without God.
The description of the first primitive church in Jerusalem is very close to an ideal anarchist commune.
Sadly... that doesn't really track with Christianity.
I mean you can add the overall benefits of everyones needs are automatically met. There's no talk of toiling for food etc...
But on top of the automatic fact that angels clearly have a hierarchy, god is clearly a full power ruler, there's tons of verses that talk about people that will be the least in heaven, or greatest in heaven (Matthew 5:19). On top of building treasures in heaven (Matthew 6:19) etc...
The thing to understand about Christianity is that it was originally a reaction against the Roman empire and then got co-opted and integrated into it. As a result, ever since like the 4th century Christianity has been about basically the opposite of what Jesus talked about. It turns out all that stuff about turning the other cheek stops being relevant if the emperor has his soldiers paint crosses on their shields while they're out conquering and enslaving the Gauls. Of course, you can keep all the mythological stuff, who cares, but anything relevant to politics or the material world mysteriously seemed to reverse once they entered the halls of power.
The carrot of being accepted into the empire was matched with the stick that if you didn't go along with the imperial-approved form of Christianity you'd be burned at the stake as a heretic. Any sects still clinging to anti-imperial sentiment get hunted down and exterminated just like when they were being fed to lions, but it's the Christians doing it to each other now, so you don't even have to get your own hands dirty. This approach worked way better at suppressing dissent than just trying to ban Christianity altogether.
Of course, a lot has changed over the centuries. And originally it wasn't perfect or anything either. But imo, it was when Rome Christianized that Christianity Romanized, and ever since its real values have had more to do with Rome than with Jesus. The meme's, "moneyless, classless, stateless" ideal of heaven is a relic of the original teachings that gets shunted off to the purely mythological side, where it not only doesn't matter, but also occupies a place in their brain that could have otherwise been sympathetic to making good things happen in the material world. That's already resolved, there's no need to worry about it, there'll be pie in sky when you die.
They didn't keep the mythological stuff, that got edited out too as needed once it started disagreeing with the State and the Church.
Oh it makes sense now, recuperation is not a capitalist concept, it is an imperialist concept!
That's because there are no brown people in their version of heaven.
Ah now it all makes sense
And no one has to work, they are provided with everything they need. Almost like a universal basic income or something.
More like post-scarcity. I don't think even the wildest leftist thinks we're quite there yet.
On calories housing and most everyday things we are post scarcity if we ignore distribution. In fact we over commission and under deliver all these things. We over produce food by a factor of around 1.5, housing is much less transferable but even there we're unbelievably wastefull, energy is basically the only thing that isn't outright overproduced but really only because when we have cheap energy we just tend to use it, often to produce more stuff.
So imo we are by bookkeeping standards post scarcity, delivery/distribution is just fucked and partially because of that we are creating tons of waste.
We could all live in comfort and those who want to could work less, and none of this would break. The real world economy(things, energy, housing , food, water, logistics capabilities...) is so large and secure it could support the world population. If not for the barriers and assumptions, the intrinsic I've got mine fuck you of the systems.
For me that is being there, and I hope that even if you can't agree on that point, it at least illustrates that we are incredibly close to post scarcity.
Heaven was literally [re]invented to be a description of utopia specifically so that toiling workers wouldn't get distracted trying to create it on Earth.
"oooh heaven is a place on earth" take that shit literally, fam
Even the more devout Christians I know (who actually have opinions about different theological positions) believe Earth and human society should not be modeled on heaven and attempts to do so will fail due to humans being inherently / essentially Fallen. This is part of how they rationalize their resistance / apathy towards movements for justice, at the very least they believe it is futile to seek justice in this life.
This is part of how they rationalize their resistance / apathy towards movements for justice, at the very least they believe it is futile to seek justice in this life.
Sounds like bullshit an unjust leader would feed them.
It is religion ...
“Not like that!” My dads response when I tell him Jesus was a communist.
Well, something that the Mormons have is they tried out communism. They called it the law of consecration. They had some fun times with trying to handle being productive and redistribution and poligamous. They ultimately concluded that they weren't ready for it yet so they went back to default capitalism with tithing and poor/fast offerings.
Tl;dr: Mormons believe in a kind of communism in heaven, and they go hungry for 2 meals (24 hrs) to remember to give generously to the poor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_consecration?wprov=sfla1
‘They’ didn’t decide they weren’t ready. It was used to fleece the pathetic true believers for a short period until the inner circle felt sufficiently capitalized.
I don't think communism is a moneyless system. Pretty sure people paid money for things in the USSR. Have there been any communist countries without money?
Yes, which is why the USSR never once in its history claimed to have built communism. The best they claimed was "developed socialism" with promises to build Communism someday
Communism is a post-Socialist society, it must be global, highly developed, and have full public ownership, or close enough to those. The Soviet Union was, instead, Socialist, ie an economy where public ownership is the principle aspect. That being said, there were attempts at Cybernetics, and moving beyond money. These are actually incredibly interesting, and anyone interested in Socialism should look into those attempts.
If you want to learn more about Socialism and Communism, I recommend checking out my introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list.