[FoRK] Special Circumstances

[Luis Villa]

On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 10:47 AM, Jeff Bone <jbone at place.org> wrote:
>
>  On Apr 4, 2008, at 2:15 AM, Stephen Williams wrote:
>
>
> > I don't see how the end of scarcity could possibly mean communism.  I
> believe Communism was mainly motivated by the belief, or at least the
> advertised belief, that no one should have too much lest they take away
> "unfairly" from someone else.  I think they believed that anyone that got
> ahead would automatically have an unfair "network effect" to the
> disadvantage of others.  As we have noted, Communism seemed to assume a
> zero-sum game with plenty of scarcity.  Perhaps true of Russia for a while,
> but not the modern world.  When everyone has "too much", Communism becomes a
> nullity.
> >
> > I'm not sure that I agree with plentiful utopias being considered
> collectivisms.  In interpersonal boundaries and the commons there is a need
> to cooperate in sophisticated ways, however when those concerns aren't an
> issue, the operating mode can be pretty much king-like individualism.  More
> god-like at some point.
> >
>
>  I don't necessarily disagree.  In fact, shortly after I'd read my first
> Culture novel several years ago, I came across an article somewhere that
> referred to the envisioned society as being "communist" --- and I was quite
> taken aback, as I hadn't seen Banks' society as being communist at all.
> After reading more of his novels, and in particular after reading multiple
> interviews with him, it's quite clear that that's how *he* sees the Culture,
> he actually uses that language in describing it (or, alternatively,
> "socialist.")  And this is a sub-theme in several of the works, too;
> there's a sort of epidemic helplessness and ennui among the human
> participants in the Culture, at least those for whom the limitless decadence
> and "staged purpose" is not fulfilling... there's a kind of restlessness
> among many of the human protagonists in his stories that stems from being so
> far removed from the real decision-making core of the Culture, the Minds.
> The economy, while not centrally planned per se, is entirely in the hands of
> the Minds both individually and collectively.
>
>  So perhaps "communism" or "socialism" is not an entirely appropriate term,
> but one wonders;  if the power gradient (and hence the control of resources)
> in some future post-scarcity world is as steep as is envisioned by Banks,
> then isn't that effectively a kind of collectivism?  Or is it more a kind of
> feudalism?  Is there some better term we can come up with?

I think the words you're looking for are "doctrinaire Marxism", albeit
with a Mind instead of a collective decision-making process.

Luis