This, too ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chivian Communism, I suppose…
I came to the rather last-minute decision just the other night while listening to Caetano Veloso and leaning on a bar over which a pretty bar girl was handing me Żubrówka (Polish bison-grass vodka banned in the US) that I won by failing to guess what card she was holding, and just before she mixed something bizarre (and equally free) and admitted to being way too drunk to do her job. If I don’t extend my visa, that’ll be replaced by hunching over a paid-in-full pint with Liam, listening to Dolly Parton and whatever else he’s put on the jukebox, and pissing him off with the evening’s –who am I kidding?- afternoon’s third story-about-Australia. No offence meant. That all has its value, ‘s just not the same, eh? ;) Anyway, I’ve been lately thinking about my politics, I suppose, partly because Kimberly was asking me stuff about communism, partly because I have half a memory of arguing with a Leninist in an inner-city car park after an alternative theatre thingi. I thought that maybe I’d try to set-out, well, where I’m up to, so far. It’d probably be easier to subscribe to an existing dogma, but I’m a difficult bastard and I like to think that I can do things better than anybody else in history, evidently. Mh. Well, you don’t have to read this, I’ll change my mind about a lot of it, in time, anyway, I’m sure. First off, I’m a communist –please don’t tell immigration- and a little tired of qualifying that with, “but not a Marxist”. I can’t really understand how Marxists exist, because, surely, to be Marxist you have to first read Marx. And, if you’ve read Marx, you should have understood –as he did- that he’d argued himself into a hole, and that he spent his last years in failed attempts to dig UP, stupid! I’d have run into trouble with the Cheka if I’d been around even in the Leninist-years of the USSR, and I’m pretty sick of hearing how great it would have been if Trotsky had gained power in Stalin’s place. The Bolshevik fuck sent the Red Army against communists and had anarchists and socialists shot. The evident fact of Marx’s wrongness should not in any way detract from communism, being as for fuck’s sake, Marx did not invent communism! The term arose in France while Marx was a mere whippersnapper, and, since communism, socialism, and anarchism are just different ways of talking about the only way that has ever been right to live and relate socially, it has always existed in unpracticed, unwritten theory. I’m also sick of hearing socialism referenced as a stepping-stone to communism. In Marxist theory Marxist-socialism is a stepping-stone to Marxist-communism, but that’s all. All right, so, I’m a communist-socialist-anarchist, ‘s all good. Maybe it would be easier to talk about a fictional land and how it goes, a bit like Utopia but not as well written. So, a bit like Voyage en Icarie, without the C19th idiocy. All right, so, erm, welcome to the Chivian Soviet Commonwealth! Yeah, communism can exist in one country, or could if Marxists didn’t keep fucking everything up for everyone. The flag’s red, the anthem was written (about same) by an Irishman (oh, another peeve, that’s not, ‘the Labour Party song’ just because the Labour Party used to use it), and we don’t have either a head-of-government or a chief-of-state. We may have a giant statue of Terry Wogan in Soviet Square, but that’s neither here nor there. Oh, if we have a motto it’s probably ripped-off from the French and finished with a gender-neutral camaraderie. Communism needs communities People, by and large, live in communes, which I gleefully title pantisocratic phalansteries. Each commune probably houses about fifteen hundred people… thousands of years ago the human brain was set up to deal with no more than 150 familiar peers, but, since the rise of cities, that has begun to change, with a minority of the population (I’m pretty damn sure this includes our Alexy friend) developing greater coping skills. Best, I think, to continue pushing evolution by having significantly more than 150 residents. Anyway, the pantisocratic phalansteries are varied and epic in design, and probably are raised by public-works employing large numbers of people temporarily, lead by experts who actually know what they’re doing. Some resemble the palace at Versailles but house hundreds of ordinary citizens, some may be laid-out like old villages. Creativity of design is encouraged and prospective residents likely vote on a number of proposals before one is erected There are dormitories and private rooms, various communes tending to one arrangement or the other. There’s a great dining hall and kitchens. Mass meals are held at agreed-upon times, and the kitchens are open twenty-four hours for those who’re too busy to attend and those who just don’t want to dine with everybody else. Many phalansteries employ chefs and cooks, some rely on volunteers from within the community, some rotate responsibility. All Power to the Soviets! There is a Soviet Chamber at every commune. Duties necessary to the operation of the phalanstery are discharged by elected officers who, in some cases, have the power to appoint assistants. One such officer is the Master-at-Arms who looks after a weapons locker and defence school, and appoints a second to help him maintain racks of Molotov cocktails and rifles that fell off the back of a lorry in Bulgaria. We’re expecting reactionary and/or conservative regimes to come after us like they came after Yugoslavia, because they can’t make any money out of us. All able citizens are enrolled in the National Guard, possibly some 40% of the populace, and likely a third of these have at some point and to some degree bothered to take advantage of available training facilities. The defence school reminds attendees what happened to Paris, Kronstadt, Yugoslavia, Chile, et cetera, why it happened, and how. “…so the bastards tunnelled through the walls of houses adjacent to the barricades and then shot everybody in the back. Best not to forget that when the Marines come.” Still, far from creating a climate of fear-enabled repression, the Chivian Soviet Commonwealth does not even maintain an army. The whole state is run in the same fashion. Being as the Commonwealth has expanded to include tens, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands of communities it is now necessary to elect regional, state, and national delegates to Soviet bodies established at those levels, but all remain subject to immediate recall and all of their legislating is exposed to the same powers of democratic correction. Try to tell me that Switzerland is an unworkable fantasy, if you like. Professional such as surgeons, of course, aren’t elected from the general public, but they can be removed from their work if the people take a dislike to them. The Commonwealth’s Intranet shares the minutes of all public meetings, details all public works, records the actions of all public servants, and is openly accessible from computer halls at every phalanstery. It’s the economy, stupid Ah, the work-in-progress. Commonwealth citizens tend to work shorter hours than foreigners. They job-share in a 24-hour society. If there is a rate of natural unemployment it is probably close to zero. Those who don’t work careers at least help-out around the commune, because, if they don’t, their peers will vote to enact some manner of penalty, be it out-right expulsion or perhaps denial of a particular luxury dish that the head-chef prepares every week. In fact most citizens work more or less part-time hours on a flexible basis and then also carry-out some particular duty around the commune. Most phalansteries have a vegetable patch, a green house, a chicken run, or some such that needs tending but doesn’t require a full-time investment. There are businesses at each commune and businesses in the university cities, which are hubs based around vast centres of learning and containing large public amenities from national theatre branches to solar power stations and hospitals. Most communes have small-forms of what’s required –a wind turbine and solar cells on the roof to provide basic power, a vegetable patch to provide either staple or specialty foods (the latter of which may be exchanged for the particular specialties of a neighbouring commune), a clinic- while the big daddy versions –a power station to drive industrial needs, surrounding farmland to provide the bulk of food requirements, a fully-furnished hospital- rest in the city hubs. All enterprises are run by their workers. We get to use words like, “samoupravljanje” then, and we all know how much I enjoy pretending-to-be-Yugoslavian. Where necessary workers elect management, which remains accountable after the fashion of public servants. There are regular meetings of the Workers’ Soviets, be they daily, quarterly, or whatever seems necessary after experience. Business decisions are made at these meetings. Most enterprises profit share. There is no minimum wage, per se, and there is clear incentive. A percentage of profit is allocated to each position, but not every position receives the same share. Another ridiculous misconception about communism exploded, there, no thanks to the Marxist-Leninists of the world. Workers’ Soviets decide what percentages are appropriate to each post, and graduation respects seniority –encouraging loyalty- and complexity of task, amongst other things. Since workers are in charge of voting on the graduations nobody has much cause to grumble when, elected as manager of a large factory, they earn only, perhaps, twice what the caretaker takes home. There is no secret ballot in issues such as this, because if somebody’s trying to vote themself a massive pay increase his co-workers have the right to know about it and stop the fucker (or not, if they happen to think that he or she deserves it). In these soviet enterprises there is less competition than co-operation. If you work harder, you end up with more money. If your colleague works harder… you end up with more money. It makes sense to help your comrades, not back-stab them, because the company’s productivity reaches you through profit-sharing. There is still a ladder to climb if you’re so inclined, but, once at the top, you lack much opportunity to shit on people. There can be no absentee ownership. Nobody employs anybody else. You can afford to do-up your rooms at the phalanstery and drive the latest hybrid car rather than tootling about on the tram or in one of the available electric share cars, though. ‘s not hurting anybody, eh? Now, importantly, people buy things. Pretty wacky concept, I know. The Commonwealth’s is not a command economy, in the main. There are public works, and there is a public sector, but it exists only where competition makes no sense. Public transport is public-owned and public-run. Since the end of British Rail and the privatisation of the UK’s railways services have decreased in frequency and coverage, safety standards have become increasingly suspect, and tax-payer subsidies of the network increased so that some random fuckwits can make bigger profits. Er, by stealing. Legally. Chivian trains go everywhere, more or less on time, usually without crashing, and they don’t cost very much because nobody’s taking home a multi-million dollar pay packet, and profits are being re-invested instead of squandered or squirreled-away. Competition makes no sense when only one train can run a given service (the 5:15 rush-hour express to Gumblethwick Exchange, for example), and this applies to several sectors that are state-owned and managed day-to-day by their employees (arguably the only employees in the country) and over-all by associated public servants in the main elected body of government. Public works are also employed in USSR-reminiscent plans to tackle particular challenges. Barren or otherwise under-developed regions are attacked by armies of labour and brought up to date. Volunteers, part-timers, and state employees lead the way, and these projects can have massive impact. They are all isolated happenings, though, and daily economic life is not centrally planned. Command economics have massive power, but they do not work brilliantly over long periods of time as imbalances in supply and demand pull them apart. Modernising particular areas or items can be done in a command fashion, and that’s as far as it goes for the Chivians. The government, perhaps we’ll say the Soviet Commune, does have a hand in the rest of the economy. Unlike old Eastern Bloc governments it does not tell the people –tell industry- what and how much to produce. Nor does it leave it to chance, to self-serving fat-cats, to invisible forces that nobody completely understands. The government, however, does set prices in an effort to simulate market forces without having to surrender to them. When the Commonwealth lacks sufficient coal the government increases the price of coal to encourage mines to produce more of it, when the Commonwealth is collapsing under mountains of the stuff it lowers the price to discourage production and encourage consumption. Oh, figs. I want to continue but the internet café’s closing. Oh well, maybe I’ll get back to it, I dunno. 6:55 p.m. - 2007-06-25 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||