Hi there, I’m not trying to start a political argument or anything, I’m just curious what people here think about this often repeated claim that the Federation is a socialist or even communist utopia? I know Strange New Worlds did say in dialogue it is socialist but I was wondering if people here think that’s accurate? I’m not a communist or a marxist or anything like that, but I’ve had people who identify as such tell me the Federation basically is communist. So anyway, what’s your thoughts?
Post-scarcity is a socialist term. It came about from futurist elaborations on Marxist materialist ideology. The reduction of labour to the minimum necessary in a society is one of the tenets of communism in order to reach post-capitalism. Certainly by technology, but also by diverting the products of labour, not for the profit and enrichment of the capitalist class, but for the provision to the needs of all society via free distribution of goods and services to all. According to Marx socialism is a necessary stage to reach communism, but communism doesn’t mean the disappearance of socialism.
Hmm, I guess there is post scarcity - everyone works and everyone has what they need, there is no scarcity of resource.
But then there’s post-scarcity - everything you need to live is created instantly by replicators so no one even needs to work unless they want to. Maybe that has a different term.
It’s the same thing. Post-scarcity doesn’t mean no scarcity. The point is, though, that people are not compelled to work under risk or threat of death, hunger, poverty, cold, homelessness or illness. If you can’t or don’t want to work, you are not doomed or socially shunned. Even if you do work, that’s no guarantee that you’ll not suffer from the occasional hardships of reality like there’s not enough chocolate this month due to a drought, or avocados went extinct or whatever, but you won’t die of starvation with millions of tons of food hoarded on a warehouse because a capitalist pig decided to rack up the price of rice.
I’m having a hard time convincing myself that the term automatically implies on universal access.
And if it did, it was just a historical accident. It could be much more promptly derived from Keynes than from Marx. Also, Keynes work leads to a working theory for how a post-scarcity economy would work, with or without universal access to it.
If some people are starving due to artificial (economically induced) scarcity of food. As in, there’s enough food and means to distribute it to feed everyone but we don’t. Then it is not post-scarcity. Post-scarcity is about universal access to resources. Not about the material accumulation of the resource in a spreadsheet. As I said, small and circumstantial scarcity can occur under post-scarcity, it doesn’t mean no-scarcity. But gross artificial scarcity is automatically a disqualification.