hatchet
Thank you for the detailed answer, but it created a lot of new questions for me. I think the most important one is the question of how communist society can react to conflict and “evil” without a state.
I get the impression from your answer that in communism, having a military is possible:
So you come up with a reason why you think your neighboring country might invade, and then you test it by diplomacy or war.
Also, from these statements, I gather that it’s possible under communism to actually limit somebody trying to seize power or just effectively start doing “organised crime”:
If the people who want to exploit others don’t have armies or wealth or positions of power, then they can’t do much.
It’s up to a communist society to recognize their own contradictions and resolve them before they cause crisis.
But how is it possible to have a military or to limit unjust behavior within society if there is no state?
I think I’m not so much worried about overthrowing, as I am about corruption, organised crime, etc.
I am trying to imagine a society where people are living in a well functioning global society, where the planet’s resources are shared between all in a sustainable way. Are there any mechanisms in communism to prevent “egoists” in such a society from taking more than they need, either overtly, or covertly through corruption, lying, etc?
But what is incentives and rewarded is greedy, shitty, alienating behavior in the absence of true and proper solidarity.
Can you elaborate a bit more what you mean by this? Is the lack of this solidarity really caused by how our economy works? For me, it seems more intuitive that the lack of such solidarity is in general caused by a lack of interpersonal relationships and links between the vast majority of humanity. As you said:
In my day to day encounters with people, I’m reminded of the enduring power of love and small acts of kindness and solidarity that power our daily lives even in this hellworld.
I totally agree with this. Even the most hateful people have shown that they can change their views about groups they hate if they just spend some time together. But how can such solidarity be built between complete strangers who will never meet each other? Can changing the economic system really be enough for this?
I’ve seen several comments on hexbear (I can find links if you haven’t seen them) along the lines of “I’m not pro-Putin… BUT we should give him what he wants in order to end the war quicker”, and as an outsider, I think for sure these comments are actually seen as totally pro-Putin by non-hexbear users, due to how trying to appease dictators has ended for Europe in the past.
If you search for Russia on hexbear, you find comments like this quite quickly, like:
https://hexbear.net/comment/3738463
Peace looks like guaranteeing Ukrainian neutrality by taking NATO membership off the table and likely ceding the DPR and LPR to the Russian federation at this point.
https://hexbear.net/comment/3765816
We also get a lot of shock at the fact that some of us think, in that situation, Ukraine would have to give independence and security guarantees to the Donbas & Crimea. Many of us think that given the realities of the civil war there over the last 8 years or so, plus this conflict, it’s probably the only way to prevent retributory ethnic cleansing in the region. It has nothing to do with ideas of fairness or sovereignty or any other nebulous concept; it’s about what’s least worst for the working class there.
I’ve seen many other such comments in the past week lurking here, so it definitely comes up every now and then. I can also see the logic behind these comments, even if I don’t agree with the logic myself.
I find it absolutely awesome, the game has the same “just one more quick adventure… oops 5 hours have passed” effect as TES games, but in space. I think I’ve also spent 3-4h in the ship editor at this point.
I’m probably a very boring person
