(Reposted in this community cuz I didn’t get any responses in the original community that I posted this under)
This is how I understand the communist utopia: Workers seize means of production. Means of production thus, start working for the proletariat masses rather than the bourgeoisie class. Thus, technological progress stops being stifled and flourishes. Humanity achieves a post scarcity-like environment for most goods and services. Thus, money becomes irrelevant at a personal level.
In all this, I can’t see how we stop needing a state. How can we build bridges without a body capable of large scale organisation? How would we have a space program without a state for example? I clearly have gotten many things wrong here. However, I’m unable to find what I’ve gotten wrong on my own. Plz help <3
Edit: Okay, got a very clear and sensible answer from @[email protected]. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to link their comment. Hence, here is what they said:
Depends on how you define “state”. IIRC, Marx drew a distinction between “state” and “government”, where the former is all the coercive institutions (cops, prisons, courts, etc). In this framework, you need a “government” to do the things you refer to, but participation in that government’s activities should be voluntary, without the threat of armed government agents showing up at your door if you don’t comply.
All of that is the fruit of people living for generations under oppressive hierarchical power structures.
Just like we can’t say humans “naturally are greedy” we also can’t say they “naturally will give themselves over a ‘populist leader’”.
In less hierarchical societies, people naturally are more skeptic of authority and populism.
Like when the North American native peoples of the North East first encountered Europeans, and couldn’t possibly understand how the sailors had “bosses” who “told them what to do”. The idea of following a leader like that didn’t make much sense to them at all.
Jumping in with a curiosity question. Can you give an example of an effective, non-hierarchical, society. Particularly one able to remain stable above Dunbar number for humans (around 150-200 members). I’ve not heard of any groups that have remained stable beyond that, which don’t lean on the “super-tribe” mentality (with it’s inherant us vs them). That tends to collapse towards authoritarianism of some sort, at least when something of value can be extracted from it.
The Zapatistas in Chiapas. The Hill peoples in eastern India. Rojava in Kurdistan. The vast majority of native peoples in Asia and the Americas before colonisation. The pirate societies, and related to that the Zana-Malata of Madagascar.
I suggest you to also read some of the articles and books by David Graeber. Like any. Egalitarian societies were his specialisation.