What is to be Done?(Part one: Primitive Commune-ism)
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by Fredrick Engels
In my last article I said," I will write in the future on the economic actions I believe the communes should take," and today I plan to do that. I will be covering the epoch where the communes are just being born, or as I like to call it "Primitive Commune-ism". This epoch has already proven to be a success with many communes working today. So let's just jump into the beginnings of the socialist/communist economy.
The first thing needed is an organization which will cost 5 gold. I would also advise that before making any organizations and companies that you already have people ready to be employed and that know what they're getting into. I would hate to spend my gold and then realize nobody wants to be part of it. So after you buy the org you buy a company which is 20 gold. The company I would advise buying is a grain company, this worked out great for the Socialist Freedom Party. After that employ the workers and set the wages at the minimum wage.
Once you have grain sell it on the market at the lowest price. You can afford to sell it at that price because you don't have to pay for high wages. So once you've sold the grain put some of the profits away to pay for wages and then buy enough food for all the workers. Once you're done distributing food save the rest of the profits. Do this until you can buy a food company, this took the SFP's commune about a week or two to do.
Once you've bought a food company it's smooth sailing, so here's what you do. You buy the grain from the organization and donate it to the food company. The food company can then make the food, distribute it to all the workers in both companies, and sell the rest on the market. Part of the profits go to the wages and the rest should be saved up. Now you have a self sustaining commune. You do this until you could either expand into another company or upgrade your current companies.
For this example we'll expand into, let's say, oil. Now you are doing basically the same thing as above but now the food also has to cover the oil company. If you don't produce enough food you could sell your oil on the market to buy food for them. Once you gain enough profits from your food and oil companies you could expand into a ticket company, and boom, you have tickets for your workers, once you have the basics down it gets pretty easy.
But now I want to put these communes into their context of being in the epoch of primitive commune-ism. As you can see when they're in this epoch this organization has very little effect on the capitalist economy, on politics, and it basically exploits the capitalist system. It exploits the capitalist system because in the capitalist economy the workers have to be payed higher and higher wages depending on skill, wellness, etc, etc, and the capitalist has to sell his products for a profit so the commodities on the market have to sell for higher prices than if the whole world went to the commune economy. Because the communes don't have to pay high wages they make a greater profit from the fact that the capitalists try to get greater profits.
But what happens when the commune starts to become a greater part of the economy? That will be the subject of my next "What is to be Done?"
-Fredrick Engels
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Great article Fredrick!
Thanks, I think I'll bring this to a few different countries when I'm done with all the parts.
Voted... subscription pending... 😛
I'll give you this, you have been writing a lot of articles lately, I might not agree with them, at all, but your working hard.
I subscribed.
Baiscally it isn't communism for it all isn't being controlled by one leader, but instead you are basically like a cooperate company that is supplying its employees with everything it needs but with a cheap price.
@John C.
Thanks for subscribing. What I don't get is how, as a mechanist, you don't agree with the commune system. Even if you don't want a huge commune economy, something like what I wrote about above will gain more profits and if it's just a game, who cares if you get paid one USD?
@Donovanator's Industries/Bank
Communism in real life and in this game can not be achieved by a dictator. And yes the workers decide things cooperatively, get everything provided for, and only get paid minimum wage.
Very clear and concise explanation. Will be interesting to see if folks outside of the socialist and anarchist communities pick up on it.
The classic textbook definition of communism is something like stateless anarcho-syndicalism, isn't it? The "withering away of the state" and all that? Obviously, never achieved in the real world.
And while "socialism" has many different definitions, one of them would be something like "movement towards communism". A neat thing about the commune idea in eRepublik is that it offers an experimental model for a "socialist road" that has little or nothing to do with state power.
Yeah basically the only thing different between Marx and Bakunin was the transitional stage. Marx thought it would be capitalism---->socialism---->communism, while anarchists like Bakunin thought it would be capitalism---->communism. That's the real difference I can find between Marxists and left wing anarchists.
That's what I like about the communes though, there doesn't have to be state power, it can almost be anarchist. The only reason to have state power is to change taxes on various things to help the communes, and that would most likely only be on import and export taxes. You don't need to tax someone making 1 USD a day.
The only problem with that is buying an oil company since oil is so useless now with travel killed with citizenship.
Are you looking to start one of these? Also, now that the business is making profit, what happens to that money? How do the workers making such low wages benefit further from what should be a highly profitable company?
@undergeneral
I've actually used about 9 tickets this week.
@Zanmor
No this is first off a guide showing how things are run in a commune. It's also part one of a larger theory. This is the part of the theory that's actually been realized so I thought I would talk about that first. That profit is being saved up to expand communes, upgrade communes(Which means better Q products), and doing whatever you could do with money. You should take a look at the thread before this one that explains the politics of it, how it would be run.
Basically the workers control the profits and all that good stuff. They are the ones all the profit goes to basically, they're the deciders.
nice article. voted!
You are doing it the wrong way.. in my mind. This will have little effect on the system as a whole. This will fail when you can't expand because no one want to work for little to no wage.
The thing is to give the workers maximum wage. More than the capitalist ever can. The profit should be shared equally to all the workers on the cooperative. The capitalist will have two choises.. to raise the wage and get no profit or to lay down business.
Everyone would like to come and work in this cooperatives. Thus everyone will be owning the means of production and socialism will occure.
As the consumer power rise it would be advicealbe to have state runned cooperatives too. To keep the inflation low. The product prices would in other cases also rise.
I don't agree with everything in this article. Depending on the market conditions in your ecountry, you may want to consider different strategies.
This article didn't contain economic democracy either. Economic democracy isn't just about electing a manager, voting about a new company or any other "larger" action. It's also about what the movement should produce, which is the foundation for Soviets / workers' councils.
AL Mehdi, I don't think the commune idea revolves around increasing the power of the consumer. In fact, it pretty much aspires to eliminate the 'consumer'--what need is there to consume when the community provides its own food and other supplies? The idea certainly isn't popular, but then, if even just one commune is successful to the point that it can supply itself with Q5 supplies and sell excess, any intelligent person will wonder how they can get involved. On this sort of thing I would suggest the book Tipping Point (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tipping_Point), specifically concerning the idea of 150.
Chuikov, what exactly do you mean as far as what the movement should produce? What is the political aim of starting communes? Do they need an aim outside the (what appears to me to be obvious) benefit they serve to those within them?
These questions about the purpose of the communes gets to a central question about the game as a whole. Why are we here? That maps very closely to the same question in real life. What's the object of the game? What are your goals in the game and in life? And how does the commune satisfy them? So far, by staying in the game, we accumulate some wealth by just showing up and working every day. If we build a system in which we build our society and help each other, we all have exactly what we need.
But going without some means of self-defense, whether we call it a commune or a state, is suicide. If we abolish eNational taxes, how do we fun our self-defense? If nobody attacked us, all would be well, but winning wars is a way to earn gold, so someone out there is going to buy weapons and fight us. I like the idea of joining a commune, though. This could be an interesting experiment.
Great article Engels. You're getting yourself a good fan base. Interesting and Informative.
"AL Mehdi, I don't think the commune idea revolves around increasing the power of the consumer. In fact, it pretty much aspires to eliminate the 'consumer'"
Yes, that is correct Zanmor the Cooperative is all about increasing the power of the working class. Ie. Socialism. If the workers control the production the capitalist will become obsolete. All systems will have consumers (You will always need to eat).
Money is not evil.. It's just a way of exchanging items. Much more effective than swapping cows.
Minimum wage:
You could try to convince the worker that your system is better and hope they will join up. Everyone will not choose this as they want to play capitalist. This could also lead (a very small chance but still) to a blowback and eventually make the worker more exploited. (ie. Someone change the password of the org and take it all him self).
Or
Maximise wage:
You could force the capitalist out no matter what the worker decide. You take the control and there is little to no point of playing capitalist. The capitalist could still exist but be very poor. You could always try with minimum wage later when the capitalism is abolished. The risk of failure is very small.
Part Two coming soon?
Hopefully, I've been really busy lately, this last week was mid terms so I was studying all week. On Monday maybe I'll start part two up.
Sounds like an fn plan man. where do i sign up?
I agree with Medhi and Engels. I think that this is a really good idea but it can work two ways. Either you donate free food to your workers or you share the profits with them through higher wages. I think higher wages would be more desired...
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