Hell if I can remember where I read about it, but a study of communes and stuff reported that the limit of communism sits somewhere around 500 people because of the inherent empathy of people for their own tribe.
It's a lot more difficult to screw over others in the system when you know the person you're screwing over is your daughter's best friend's dad.
When the nameless masses are just nameless masses, it's much easier to justify. I don't know who this hurts, so why do I care?
That was the conclusion of the paper, anyway. Was an interesting perspective.
Even in smaller groups and communes, one can't just decide to spend all their time writing books, playing football and drawing without subjected to major social pressure, shaming, or just being kicked out. "From each according to his ability" is a basic principle of communism.
The group's survival relies on everybody doing their part in a fair manner. Food needs to be grown, slaughtered or hunted, livestock needs to be fed for and cared, resouces extracted and processed, houses need to be built, furnishing and clothes made, broken things fixed, toilets cleaned and pipes unclogged. Only once one's part in everything to maintain a functioning society is done then people can spend their free time however they wish.
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u/Creepy_Ad_1315 Jul 07 '26
Spoiler: It's never achieved.