Many anti-communists are under the impression that communism is utopian and divorced from reality. I.e. on that dumbass sub enoughcommiespam, they say that having robots do janitorial work is idealistic and that there needs to be a division of labor for society to function. How do yall respond to that?
These people don’t read about AES and their problems. Of course it’s not utopian, thinking longer than 5 seconds will bring you to that conclusion. People still have to work in supermarkets, factories, do heavy labour, do jobs they might not like etc. and it will bring with it some new problems.
Michael Parenti, in his book Blackshirts and Reds, gives an example of work related problems in the Soviet Union. Workers were sometimes discouraged to do their work out of boredom and since employment, food and housing was taken care of by the state, you’d find some of them slacking. Turns out that if you do not have to worry about unemployment, starvation or losing your house, you are less likely to work your ass off for rude customers for example. People would sometims leave their jobs in the middle of the day to go shopping, leaving lots of customers behind at the store. Factoryworkers would work until their quotas were reached and did not go any further, because then they would receive new quotas and have to work harder.
Communism will bring real problems that require real solutions. But I’d rather have to find a solution for boredom than having to find a solution to issues that capitalist ideology brings, like homelessness, food insecurity, unemployment etc.
In no way will communism be an utopian society where no problems exist at all. That’s a foolish point of view.
That’s a tactic anticoms will often use. They’ll try to bog you down in very specific whatif scenarios and then drive you to saying something that sounds like a utopia.
I find it helpful to point out how their whatif scenarios are not achievable under capitalism and hence not realistic or serious arguments even from their own point of view.
Exactly, you have to stay grounded in material reality. Capitalism has had 300 years to get its shit together. Why do our everyday lives suck? Show them drone flyover videos or walkthroughs of Chengdu. Tell them that Vietnam legalized social transition for transpeople and has a land grant program for indigenous people. A better world is already becoming possible right now without reaching for utopianism.
Well to this particular argument i would say that contemplating something that will probably not happen and surely not in the forseeable future they are 100 times more idealist, not to mention is derailing tactic from real issues.
Why labour division even came into the discussion? It’s not something you are for or against it, it is something that historically happened and won’t disappear until we either get rid of entire civilization or get rid of entire labour, therefore it won’t and shouldn’t disappear. I think it was Proudhon that wanted to get rid of the labour division in socialism and got absolutely demolished by Marx in “The Poverty of Philosophy”.
