If Communes Stay Smart for v2, They Will Be Stronger than Ever
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by Benedict James
I want to respond to this article:
Communes v2 Ideas and a Proposal
The v2 transition will put some intellectual strain on commune company owners to decide what would be in the best interest of the military. I have no doubts that commune company owners are smart enough to work this out well in advance (as I'm sure they already doing).
What I want to make clear, however, is that the biggest change that is going to come to the commune system is the new class system.
If you wish to revisit this concept, I encourage you to read my old article here.
A strong commune will understand these distinctions and the inability of the soldier to be both an excellent soldier and an excellent worker. Accordingly, they will designate some of their soldiers as "full-time workers." It is unclear how many full-time workers will be needed to support the army; however, the principle is clear: some soldiers will have to become full-time workers in order to ensure both the strength of soldiers and the ability to arm them. Within these commune systems, the full-time workers play a vital role in ensuring that the soldiers get the guns they need to fight well.
If communes choose to go this route, they will be strong. Therefore, it is important not to import our notions of "full-time workers," as weak and selfish, into v2. On the contrary, we must abandon those notions and hail full-time workers as vital components of a well-functioning military machine.
For this reason, the author of the article referenced above fails to understand that the strength of armies comes from dedicated workers, that any attempt to "collect" workers into an international organization is an attempt to emasculate armies, and that, therefore, such attempts, despite their innocuous nature, should be considered acts of subterfuge and war.
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for me:
people who are little above 2 clickers , but can understand instructions and obey become full time workers for the military, because you dont need to login 5x per day and stay on 8hours per day to simply work and study
and the really active people become full time soldiers, because wasting them on working is a baaad idea, especially when it seems that you need to be on irc looking for orders for each battle
good points
The point about full-time workers and full-time soldier is a good one.
However, the referenced article in SF Press is not about military communes. It is about exploring ways to get more goodies into workers' hands via international economic solidarity.
The whole idea of communes originated in the e-socialist movement. Various armies and militias have adopted them because they are efficient. (See the previous edition of SF Press for a detailed history of the SFP model for communes.)
How communes are used is a political question. Many militaries use them -- obviously -- for war. Is it really a surprise that e-socialists and e-anarchists would (continue) to finds ways to use them to combat alienation and exploitation?
As for "subterfuge"... pffft. There would be nothing to prevent an OCTO worker from participating in whatever battles he or she wants to.
The logical conclusion of this argument, it seems, is that ANY company that's not a military commune "emasculates armies" (which, btw, is a pretty funny way to put it). And oddly enough, that's basically a Stalinist viewpoint.
Now... IF something like OCTO took off and IF its members chose to form an internationalist workers militia and IF that militia had enough firepower to change some outcomes, then perhaps the best way to deal with it would be to develop policies and to pick battles that would win the support of the workers battallions...