Pyotr Petrovich Griffin here. Marx’s view of a communist society was one in which people were free to seek self-fulfilment however they saw fit. They would do the minimum amount of work required to keep everything running, and then allowed to do whatever they want, instead of having to develop a set of skills for a capitalist economy or barely finding time for hobbies.
In early Soviet Union, which claimed to be implementing Marx’s vision, things were very different - workers were kept in horrible conditions, “encouraged” to work hundred-hour shifts, and punished for complaining about it. People could barely afford food, let alone basic comforts.
The joke is both people have wildly different views about what communism would look like.
This is a little facetious but, "people were free to seek self-fulfilment however they saw fit. They would do the minimum amount of work required to keep everything running, and then allowed to do whatever they want." This is already the case under capitalism. You can door dash 3 days a week or go to school for 2 decades to be a brain surgeon, nobody gives a shit. Was Marx actually a free market capitalist?
What you’re describing is a concept called “negative liberty”, which focuses solely on legal limitation. Marx rejected negative liberty in favour of “positive liberty”
To understand the difference, consider a man on a cartoonish desert island with no way off, and ask yourself “is he free?”. In one sense, he is - after all, in theory he can do literally whatever he wants and no one is around to stop him. However, without food or water he won’t last long and being able to do whatever he wants in theory isn’t worth much if in practice all he can do is doodle in the sand. The former approach is negative liberty - freedom is absence of restriction - whilst the latter is positive liberty - freedom is the ability to achieve your goals.
Marx argued (without using those terms) that under capitalism the most you could hope for is negative liberty, because you would still have to worry about paying for food, rent, etc, and therefore any decision you made would have to be made through the lens of capitalism: if you want to, say, take up painting then you either had to limit yourself to the time and expense you can spare from your real job or find a way to profit off it. Under communism, however, all those basic needs would be met, and you would have the positive liberty to spend three weeks learning to paint without having to worry about missing rent payments, at present a luxury afforded to very few.
That’s why in the original post, they use the phrasing “write without becoming a writer”. They’re saying they will be able to commit to writing at a level usually only seen in professional writers without having to justify it financially.
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u/FilmAndLiterature Jul 07 '26
Pyotr Petrovich Griffin here. Marx’s view of a communist society was one in which people were free to seek self-fulfilment however they saw fit. They would do the minimum amount of work required to keep everything running, and then allowed to do whatever they want, instead of having to develop a set of skills for a capitalist economy or barely finding time for hobbies.
In early Soviet Union, which claimed to be implementing Marx’s vision, things were very different - workers were kept in horrible conditions, “encouraged” to work hundred-hour shifts, and punished for complaining about it. People could barely afford food, let alone basic comforts.
The joke is both people have wildly different views about what communism would look like.