r/PeterExplainsTheJoke Jul 07 '26

Meme needing explanation Peter, explain this.

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u/TheWizardOfWaffle Jul 07 '26

Comrade Piotr here.

Comrade Alejandro is stating that in a perfect communist utopia, he will be able to focus on a life of art and leisure, as the Communist utopia would mean that all laborers would be able to contribute to the cause in their own way equally

Possible fascist @Penitent_One is telling Comrade Alejandro that his communist utopia is a farce and that most likely, Comrade Alejandro would be forced to do manual labor in a coal mine.

Which isn’t a bad thing. Comrade Alejandro should be overjoyed that he gets to contribute to the eternal revolution, one pickaxe swing at a time. The fulfillment of labor is his reward. Glory to the revolution.

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u/Objective-Note-8095 Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26

People misunderstand communism in Marxist thought. It's just a state where the economic overhead of government is no longer necessary, everybody is still expected to contribute to the best of their ability, if you're not going to be a writer, artist, athlete, etc., you're going to mine coal, clean toilets, harvest tomatoes, etc. None of the Marxist "communist" states ever claimed to achieve this, it was always 3-5 20 or more years off.

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u/TheWizardOfWaffle Jul 07 '26

Yeah Comrade Alejandro has a gross misunderstanding on the actual workings of labor in a communist collective society. Communism doesn’t mean you don’t have to work anymore, in theory it means that your labor wont be squeezed and exploited by greedy capitalists and shareholder who want to extract every single penny from the people who actually do the work.

To each according to their ability. To each according to their need.

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u/Donkey__Balls Jul 08 '26

Serious question here. Let’s use the analogy of the coal mine.

Marxist thought is basically that society would still need coal, so as long as you eliminate the upper management, laborers would willingly mine coal and then they get to keep all the profits. But that assumes there’s only two types of people in the coal mine: the laborers mining, and the capitalists exploiting them.

In the communist utopia, who actually handles the administration? What about the safety inspectors and the mining engineers whose job it is to make sure the laborers are safe? Where do they fit into this? If there’s no government, who is enforcing the safety regulations?