NationStates

UAWC wrote:Just because there is trade doesn't necessarily constitute capitalism. The capital is collective public property, and nobody is getting necessarily more than anybody else.

"Collective property" within a commune, or of all communes together. And if the latter, wouldn't that mean there is only one commune?

Commune A has lots of wheat, but not a lot of iron. Commune B has lots of iron, but not a lot of wheat. They trade their excesses and everybody's happy.

That's what a free market is.

My family is a dictatorship.

Damn it.

Maybe your house was like a commune growing up but I don't think you can generalize like that and say they all were. In the household I lived in things were much different. It was not the "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need," world that Marx dreamed up. Things were not decided democratically. My father's word was law. Things were not shared equally between everyone. My family life was based on more of a "from each according to his ability, to each according to his ability" world. When I was a senior in high school I was top of the class so I had no curfew, a credit card with no limit, and got to go on trips to Mexico for Spring Break and the beach for graduation. After college graduation I was also given a new car. My brother on the other hand was a terrible student and a screw up. He had a strict curfew, was put on a tight budget, and didn't get to take trips. As kids to get my brother and I to work in the yard or in the house we had to be paid our allowance (direct monetary payment). I realize this is probably not the normal way people grew up but I also don't believe that most people grew up in a family where everything was shared equally and no money was ever exchanged.

America-Rosewood wrote:I realize this is probably not the normal way people grew up but I also don't believe that most people grew up in a family where everything was shared equally and no money was ever exchanged.

Hmm. I guess I did. We never got paid for chores, and we always got treated equally, regardless of me being a much better student and much less of a pain than my brother.

Neu Leonstein wrote:How many of you live with families, or share accommodation with friends in a family-like way?

How close do you think is this household-internal life to libertarian communism, if you ignored the outside world? Do you share things? Do you decide things democratically? Do you find ways to distribute labour that does not involve direct, monetary payment?

And if the difference is not that great, then isn't our current system basically a large collection of communes, which relate to each other materially through trade? Wouldn't two more reasonable ways of improving the current setup be to encourage more people to move into your home (provided the place is big enough, etc) or to merge households, and secondly to improve the efficiency of and freedom to engage in these trades with other households?

I agree. Most people live in communes either with oneself, or with SO, or with a friend or friends, or with family and extended family.
[ i once lived for three years in large flat with 5 friends. it was awesome commune].

And yes, the society is large collection of communes, that government calls 'households'.

And for your suggestions - for first, it would be economically rational to increase the size of households, however, as neither people nor me are entirely rational, we probably value our privacy/intimacy/image higher than the material gains. And for second, that is entirely good suggestion - and that's what most countries try to achieve - freer trade and more globalization.