this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2026
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Socialism

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If this concept were rewritten, from the ground up, without any thought toward prior versions of it:

I think it would start with:

How much land, exactly, at a minimum, does every single person need, to sustain themselves? This amount of land should be given to every single human born, for free. The amount of land is actually small: it’s only the amount of land needed for a sustenance garden. Or, a sustenance garden, a few animals, a bed, a toilet. This is a very small amount of land. It’s certainly not even an acre or a half acre. In the middle ages, a sustenance garden was about ten feet by fifteen feet, and usually was filled with giant turnips because these were the most efficient use of a sustenance garden. Anyway, the basic kit provided to each newborn human by their worldwide fellows should be: just enough land to sustain themself as a native, and, just enough farming education and seeds and baby animals, and basic supplies for a bed, a small shelter (single enclosed small room simple shelter), simple basic toilet/plumbing/running water and/or outhouse system. A basic minimum size of land for each person. Maybe a quarter acre each? A third acre?

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[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 11 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Are you trying to reinvent socialism in the current day, without looking at prior theory and history? Or are you trying to see what types of socialism would exist pre-Marx, or other prominent socialist thinkers? If the former, this type of agrarian utopianism is contrary to proletarian class philosophy, if the latter there are good books on the utopian socialists like Robert Owen. One of the best pamphlets is Friedrich Engels' Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, which explores prior utopianism and contrasts it with proletarian, scientific socialism.

[–] Edie@lemmy.ml 5 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

I do want to thank Archon for this, they have pushed me to complete my copy of SUS (amogus) which I had actually gotten far into.

Also sitting there going "Archon should read this."

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 8 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Positive! Yea it's one of my favorites for how concise and important it is. It's a single-sitting explanation of scientific socialism, really helped develop my understanding!

[–] frisbird@lemmy.ml 9 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

That would be the least efficient system possible. In the middle ages, there were famines every few years. It is not a standard by which we ought to build a society.

You're not even talking about primitivism. You're talking about a world governing system that essentially atomized every single human being into a disconnected island that must fend for themselves. It's utterly ridiculous.

What would immediately happen is a group of people with a modicum of basic foresight would pool their resources together to achieve economies of scale. This would happen hundreds of times all over the world. A few of them will decide to start coercing their neighbors into subservience the first time a famine hits. Then some people will deliberately cause crop failures to drive more people to their service. They would have sufficient economies of scale that a portion of them could become warriors and go out and steal from others. The best of these would build defenses to prevent others from doing it back to them

Congratulations, you just recreated the exact conditions of the middle ages.

You know what comes after that? Capitalism!

[–] Archon_Warslut@lemmy.world -4 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

"in the middle ages there were famines every few years" nope and my system would obviously prevent that

[–] frisbird@lemmy.ml 8 points 18 hours ago

Beyond the Great Famine, other notable periods included severe shortages in 1304, 1305, 1310, 1330–1334, 1349–1351, 1358–1360, 1371, 1374–1375, and 1390.

Your system would obviously exacerbate it because you've described individual subsistence farming.

[–] 5ibelius9insterberg@feddit.org 5 points 18 hours ago
  • How do you make sure everybody gets land of the same quality?
  • What du you do when every piece of land in an area is given away and then a new child is born?
  • What if children grow up and want their own house somewhere else?
[–] bouh@lemmy.world 5 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

That is the opposite of communism, because you are thinking on the basis that everyone should be able to live alone, by itself, on its own property. You're describing some kind of libertarian nightmare here.