Anarchism

Not an anarchist but a revolutionary Marxist, and I don't really have any Anarchist literature to share on this topic but here's how I understand it:

Essentially, both Anarchism and Communism operate within "production for use", which sees things being manufactured for use and to satisfy people's needs rather than for profit as commodities to be sold on a market, and so this necessitates economic planning - after all, how else would the community know what and how many goods they need to produce/trade for?

Anarchist economic planning is done communally via local assemblies with them also communicating their productive capacities (like what they can make and the manpower) and needs they cannot fulfill locally with other communes, creating a regional federated network of sorts. These federations would then coordinate with other federations globally which is where all the transportation networks and production chains requiring continental and planetary integration get handled.

How I imagine this would play out in reality is essentially an order based system, where factories making certain component would make X amount of goods, ship them over to their next step of assembly where they would be further developed or turned into a complex finished product and distributed to the corresponding communities.

And to address some of the comments I see here - the whole idea of "everyone producing as a hobby" or "everyone does work only when they feel like it" is absolute bs and is a surefire way to peoples needs not being met. If you've been told that you need to produce something like 100 tools or 100kg of grain as your quota to meet the needs, then it doesn't matter if you feel like it or not - you gotta produce it, especially if its an essential good like food. Do not be detached from reality voluntarist utopian, read economic books like Marx or Kropotkin and whoever else Anarchists have - ground your claims in coherent doctrine.

I imagine it will look something like the DIY trans healthcare infrastructure that already exists in places where it has been banned, banned for new patients, or effectively banned.

What you're essentially asking is, "how will industry work in an anarchist society?"

It's a very, very wide question, methinks - and a lot of the answer is going to depend on what it is you actually define as an anarchist society.

If you were to ask me how aspirin will be made in an anarchist society, the answer is simple - the same way we make aspirin now. But if you were to ask me how the raw materials needed for aspirin manufacture will be sourced in an anarchist society... well, now things start getting more interesting.

Aspirin is easy - thermo-nuclear weapons is difficult.

I've been waiting to reshare this link!!!

https://fourthievesvinegar.org/

Its very, very out there, but they have developed solutions for manufacturing cure for hep B, etc cheaply and effectively using stuff you can get cheaply - or steal. They also have a full suite for, exploring production pathways and refining them. They do a lot and at some point I'll put together a Lemmy post about them and what they do, if you are a scientist/developer they really need those skills!

This, unlike other examples which will be posted in this thread, is a good example of direct action. And I feel looking at examples like this is a much better way to understanding anarchist societies, since we seek to build a new world inside the old - and eventually supersede the old one.

What is it that you think would be a barrier? anarchism isn't when you're not organised. It's when you're not forced.

People can still be organised, everyone needs medicine and sees it's benefit. Would you help? whether that's growing or gathering precursor materials, managing inventories, doing synthesis, maintaining and building machines, hosting educators and specialists, or transporting goods. The work involved isn't different from what everyone already does.

People can, and have, and still do organize completely without any kind of hierarchy/leadership. So... Likely exactly the same way they do now, with the exception that they wouldn't have some pencil pusher who doesn't know medicine from dogshit telling them how, when, where, and what to make so that he can show some sycophants a line going in an upward direction.

Is this a 'how can we do complex production without capitalism' question or a 'how can we motivate people to do work without capitalism' question?

Former: Catalonia ran entire industries while at war. Something needs doing and it isn't getting done? Volunteer, find people to help you, etc.

Latter: I dunno, ask your mom how she cleaned and fed you for decades without financial compensation.

Bonus: a significant portion of drug research at least in the US is (or was anyway) funded by the US government, so capitalists aren't exactly doing all the work themselves.

Depends on the medicine. You can make a lot yourself, check out Michael Moore's books. (Not that one, the other one). For pharmaceuticals you had better study your chemistry and bio. Many things are not so hard, but difficult to scale, and expensive depending on the drugs. You're going to have to have a pretty driven and skilled collective to make it happen.

Silk road baby!

Jkjk

I think one thing people need to think about is that if we succeed in abolishing capitalism, then all medicines become public domain, no more proprietary formulas, and no more profit motive.

So instead of a few dozen or hundred scientists and business-persons figuring out production of medicines strictly constrained by maximum profit (industrialized automation, single point of manufacture, distribution, etc), instead, we'd have potentially millions of people looking at the science and working on sustainable, local, and easy-to-produce formulations that put people, not profits, first.

We need to understand that the reason medicines currently require complicated expensive machinery and huge supply chains is due 100% to the profit motive. That reality ceases to exist post-capitalism. We HAVE to learn to think outside of the confines of "capitalist realism."

Read The Dispossessed.

A lot of pharmaceutical production is moving from complex chemical processes to utilizing genetically modified microorganisms to produce the substances more or less directly. This makes it about as complex as a modern beer brewery.