this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2025
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Communism
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You can not award people equally for different tasks.
You and I are tasked with digging holes for a day, I dig 10 you dig 30 we both go home with enough to feed our families for the day.
Great, but tomorrow you wonder why you dig 3 times as many holes as me and get the same share.
Then we both stop and look at the bloke telling us to dig holes, he's getting exactly the same as you and me but for zero holes.
Fuck that. We deserve to be paid for the fruits of ourlabour.
Further more; its great we all own the factory and get a share of the profits, but bil he calls in sick every 2nd day and when he is at work his productivity levels are so far below anyone else's. Sure we help him for the first year he's having a hard time, that's what community is about.
Then James cottons onto the idea and starts doing similar things being lazy hardly helping. It certainly doesn't bother him, he still gets an equal share from our collective labour.
Don't get me wrong, capitalism is certainly the wrong choice for basically the same reasons except Bill and James are CEO's.
We need a meritocracy and if you don't pull your weight you're out.
Then you will be interested to hear that Marx railed against the "equalitarians" (see this excerpt from Critique of the Gotha Programme), and that Marxists (communists) do not want "perfect equality" and to award people equally for different tasks.
I don't think I'm saying much that hasn't already been said better, but I don't wanna fuck off without replying.
Communism doesn't have to mean that everyone always has and gets exactly the same.
Also, at the moment, the factory is being owned by someone, or many people, who likely don't labour much at all. Is that preferable to the possibility of someone getting unfairly rewarded for too little labour? If the factory isn't state-owned but directly worker-owned, what stops the other workers from voting out a colleague who they feel is taking advantage of them?
Does you're out mean out in the streets, starving? Does meritocracy mean that people who don't sell enough of their life-time don't deserve food, housing?
What if the person isn't lazy, but disabled? Where is the border between lazyness and something like adhd?
Lol, looking back im kinda overdoing it with the questions, but I just typed down what occurred to me while reading.
Regarding your last sentence, I assume you are thinking exclusively of able bodied people, correct? Otherwise it seems like you're defending letting handicapped people "out" (aka die without resources)
And how would you achieve a meritocracy when the family you are born into and luck have such a high impact on your economic outcomes?
Btw would you agree with the old saying "from each according to it's abilities, to which according to its needs"? Or would you prefer "from each according to it's abilities, to which according to its labour"?
in this example, do you struggle to dig 30? or you're working at a comfortable pace? why does it matter to you that someone weaker or somehow less capable works less? also someone has to oversee and plan where to dig the holes, should they not get paid for their mental work?
there are many jobs to be done, if somebody doesn't want to do x, they can try y. or of there's a mental problem, they could see a therapist about it, because it wouldn't be tied to health insurance
if everyone was working to cover everyone's needs, instead of filling ceos' pockets, no one would need to work even 5 days a week. overall productivity is way over even just the middle of the 1900s, but we throw away almost half of the produce