"He reflected that the communist countries before World War Three had never gone this far. Here, everything was government property. The system didn't call itself communism, naturally, but it was, and probably there was no choice. Private enterprise demanded a fairly large economic surplus, which simply did not exist on Venus.
"Well, it wasn't his business to criticize their internal arrangements. He had never been among the few fanatics left on Earth who still made a god of a particular economic set-up."
-Poul Anderson, "The Big Rain" IN Anderson, The Psychotechnic League (New York, 1981), pp. 201-280 AT p. 208.
WWIII has ended most fanaticism. City governments on Venus are called Technic Boards! The Polesotechnic League in the Technic History; the Psychotechnic Institute and Technic Boards in the Psychotechnic League History.
What will happen when the economic surplus becomes so large that private enterprise becomes unnecessary as a means of production and distribution? Some people think that an unoppressive and liberating "communism" becomes possible but this leads us back into familiar old arguments. Meanwhile, we move forward through the twenty first century which has been the setting of so much science fiction.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Assuming a "post scarcity" economy is possible, I would remain absolutely opposed to any kind of communism, if you mean by that the STATE, whatever it might call itself under whatever form, controlling all the means of the production and distribution of property, etc. I would distrust any human beings having that kind of power!
Sean
Sean,
I envisage the end of a need for a state in the sense of an instrument of coercion, instead a population both individually and collectively free managing its own affairs as we currently do in, e.g., a household, monastery or commune. But the extension of such relationships to society as a whole can be dismissed as a utopian/anarchist fantasy and usually is!
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And REALISTICALLY, I cannot envision any such society as being possible. So, yes, I would have to consider ideas such as these as an impossible "utopian/anarchist fantasy."
Any reasonably sound society and state has to be based on human beings as they ARE, not as we would like them to be.
Sean
Sean,
We become.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But I STRONGLY doubt in the most emphatic way possible that we will become that much BETTER.
Sean
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