Incentives under communism?

[Crezth]

A few here pretty much outright stated that they're Marxist, and most people have been arguing here with preconception that communism means Marxism unless said differently. Okay.

At least since Lenin, but IMO even since the Communist Manifesto, Marxism and its derivates have been "How to sucker people into establishing your own dictatorship". The goal is ill-defined and without substance, the early steps involve establishing totalitarian regime, and once that happens there is no incentive structure to make the controlling party, which also controls public discourse and has virtual monopoly on all it desires, progress toward the system that would make them gradually lose control. The addition of vanguard party under Leninism is the final nail in the coffin.

Even if we drop the premises of Marxism, the question raised here remains. One of defining characteristics of communism, in general, is that basic needs of every person are met, without any ties to their actual role to the society. In developed countries with decent social safety net, there is growing problem with people outright refusing to take dirty jobs, even if it means subsisting on minimal welfare. How do you incentivize people to do these jobs without using force?

And I'll add a couple of my own. How does your system deal with people who, for whatever reason, do not want to conform to it?
And how do you incentivize the transition without reaching for force, without doing the same thing Lenin did and establish your private little dictatorship?

I have never heard satisfactory answer. There were attempts, but they fell apart under critical scrutiny.

Lexicus told you "well I'm not a marxist" and your response here is still more begging the question of "but if marxism is wrong, communism won't work?" And now you are arguing that the only way dirty jobs will get done is if you force people to do them. So what is the anticommunist position here? Is it bad or good to force people to work, or...?

Like far away from communism you just made the argument that a social safety net itself in a social democratic capitalist regime - which you've previously argued is the ideal/desirable form of capitalism - is still bad enough to create an issue with people not doing certain jobs. Presumably you accept that capitalism has to force a certain number of people into a desperate enough situation that they can't refuse those jobs. But why is that? Isn't it really just because there are bash-out-your-head easy jobs that they'd rather take, that anyone would rather take, that pays thousands of times more? I'm not sure it has to do with the work itself and you haven't demonstrated that either. Instead you just keep beg, beg, begging the question. It's almost like you're trolling.

 

[Farm Boy]

We do "give away" food. It's over half the farm bill. We also subsidize production, because otherwise it'd be even more expensive. Agriculture is far more of a communal effort than most things, though the constant drive to make food cheaper leads to policies that do indeed centralize more and more in the hands of fewer and fewer. We could certainly do more small hold farms. But then we'd need to compensate more farmers and farmers are also a political enemy in the eyes of those who consider them... what term did the man behind the thread use? Hidebound. I think.

I'd like to see the bleach-pouring thing. Sounds like something you'd do to prevent rodent and insect infestation from rotting piles of yet to be transported spoilage.

 

[Sarin]

Lexicus told you "well I'm not a marxist" and your response here is still more begging the question of "but if marxism is wrong, communism won't work?" And now you are arguing that the only way dirty jobs will get done is if you force people to do them. So what is the anticommunist position here? Is it bad or good to force people to work, or...?

Like far away from communism you just made the argument that a social safety net itself in a social democratic capitalist regime - which you've previously argued is the ideal/desirable form of capitalism - is still bad enough to create an issue with people not doing certain jobs. Presumably you accept that capitalism has to force a certain number of people into a desperate enough situation that they can't refuse those jobs. But why is that? Isn't it really just because there are bash-out-your-head easy jobs that they'd rather take, that anyone would rather take, that pays thousands of times more? I'm not sure it has to do with the work itself and you haven't demonstrated that either. Instead you just keep beg, beg, begging the question. It's almost like you're trolling.

I'm asking HOW would it work. The question is what started this thread. Nobody seems to be able to give me an answer. Communism can't work if this crucial question isn't answered. "Use your imagination"...bah, we're not talking about details but crucial aspects of whole spectrum of ideologies.

Zaard was right. You have never worked any such job. Would you willingly deal with human refuse, day after day, or do the jobs that carry high risk of significantly shortening your lifespan if you could, instead, subsist on welfare? I would not. The issue I've cited shows that far too many people share that sentiment. Capitalism has a way of pushing some people into them. Not a nice way, I'd argue it's just one step removed from showing a gun in one's face like under Marxism, but it is. And so far, those jobs are necessary. The most coherent answer I've heard is "technology will solve it", but until the tech is here, what are you going to do?

 

[Crezth]

We do "give away" food. It's over half the farm bill. We also subsidize production, because otherwise it'd be even more expensive. Agriculture is far more of a communal effort than most things, though the constant drive to make food cheaper leads to policies that do indeed centralize more and more in the hands of fewer and fewer. We could certainly do more small hold farms. But then we'd need to compensate more farmers and farmers are also a political enemy in the eyes of those who consider them... what term did the man behind the thread use? Hidebound. I think.

I'd like to see the bleach-pouring thing. Sounds like something you'd do to prevent rodent and insect infestation from rotting piles of yet to be transported spoilage.

Smallhold farming with laws against land appropriation or speculation is exactly the model pursued by the Occupation government of post-war Japan in their land reform policy. In short, the policy was successful both at breaking the power of the landowners and elevating the position of the peasantry. Agricultural yields in the coming decades would eventually surpass the entire world on a per-hectare basis (although that wouldn't last, and for instance a rice shortage in 1993 forced the country to import rice for the first time since this paradigm shift), and the wealth generated in peasant households is thought to have accelerated the growth of Japan's own consumer base.

 

[Crezth]

I'm asking HOW would it work. The question is what started this thread. Nobody seems to be able to give me an answer. Communism can't work if this crucial question isn't answered. "Use your imagination"...bah, we're not talking about details but crucial aspects of whole spectrum of ideologies.

No, you are begging the question and saying "It doesn't work, so how will it work?" You've ignored more than a dozen posts addressing your questions directly.

Zaard was right. You have never worked any such job. Would you willingly deal with human refuse, day after day, or do the jobs that carry high risk of significantly shortening your lifespan if you could, instead, subsist on welfare? I would not. The issue I've cited shows that far too many people share that sentiment. Capitalism has a way of pushing some people into them. Not a nice way, I'd argue it's just one step removed from showing a gun in one's face like under Marxism, but it is. And so far, those jobs are necessary. The most coherent answer I've heard is "technology will solve it", but until the tech is here, what are you going to do?

I think everyone should clean a toilet now and then. Builds character, y'know?

Those jobs are not really necessary, however. They're only "necessary" because some people would rather not do any of it, and want to be paid six figures for increasing the prices of prescription drugs. There are a great many parasites in capitalism whose existence is predicated on not doing any necessary labor, but getting paid for it anyway. Now, under socialism, those put-upon classes call the shots, and those guys who used to be getting paid six figures now have to scrub toilets every now and then.

The difference is these decisions are made socially, by democratically-organized workplaces, instead of by private commissions of bosses and their gangsters.

 

[gay_Aleks]

A few here pretty much outright stated that they're Marxist, and most people have been arguing here with preconception that communism means Marxism unless said differently. Okay.

At least since Lenin, but IMO even since the Communist Manifesto, Marxism and its derivates have been "How to sucker people into establishing your own dictatorship". The goal is ill-defined and without substance, the early steps involve establishing totalitarian regime, and once that happens there is no incentive structure to make the controlling party, which also controls public discourse and has virtual monopoly on all it desires, progress toward the system that would make them gradually lose control. The addition of vanguard party under Leninism is the final nail in the coffin.

On the opposite. Most CPs in Eastern Europe stayed in power as long as they provided healthcare, services, etc to the people. Again: people want to live in a functioning society and have bread. They do not give a single damn about how and why it happens. If it did, people would be breaking down farms to free the enslaved illegal immigrants who are being superexploited. Your bread, my friend, has blood on it. Yet no one is doing anything, the sun goes on, and the equally totalitarian rule of capital goes on. I think - this is a personal opinion - I would prefer a totalitarian party on my side than an impersonal capital willing to drain blood out of every stone.

You're free to disagree.

Better watch out for that blood, though. It's everywhere

Even if we drop the premises of Marxism, the question raised here remains. One of defining characteristics of communism, in general, is that basic needs of every person are met, without any ties to their actual role to the society. In developed countries with decent social safety net, there is growing problem with people outright refusing to take dirty jobs, even if it means subsisting on minimal welfare. How do you incentivize people to do these jobs without using force?

That's basically a strawman; who has said that their basic needs would be satisfied without any actual ties to society? How can you even have no ties to society? Living in a cave, perhaps. I'll just note that most countries under neoliberalism have gotten rid of the "decent social nets", with very little outliers still remaining (Scandinavia; fed by fossil fuel extraction and imperialism abroad.) as the need for extra-cheap, extra-desperate labour increases. So, the force has always been applied by capital, at all times; the "decent social nets" were a mild detente to prevent a full-blown revolution in the so-called developed countries. You're looking at the wrong things, the wrong question, my friend.

And I'll add a couple of my own. How does your system deal with people who, for whatever reason, do not want to conform to it?

Find out why and how they don't want to 'conform' to it. Pretty simple, as a responsible system would do. (For an example, if you're disabled and you don't want to conform to the capitalistic desire for paid labour, they just turn off your disability benefits until you conform. Fine work!)

And how do you incentivize the transition without reaching for force, without doing the same thing Lenin did and establish your private little dictatorship?

Awesome, so, in the post that you have very conveniently ignored, I have initially figured to place in a little bit of an overview of the very early parts of Soviet agriculture, as a primer of what has, historically, happened. Of course, this will likely not be of interest to such an erudite, smart and critical person; but should there be any interest, the answer is...

There is no way not to use force. Remember, the expropriation of the commons under capitalism was not a peaceful process. Do you think the peasantry in England gave up their landholdings peacefully? No - it was a horrible, protracted process, lasting about three hundred years (at least).

But I will be told I'm engaging in whataboutism (even though the facts are there). So: let's look at the NEP. Soviet Russia, after the end of the Russian Civil War, was not in a good place, as you're likely aware. The economy was in shambles, but the issue was that the policy of requisitioning - what you can call open force - was quickly becoming an outright failure and this was recognised by the entirety of the Party. There were peasant rebellions, but more importantly, the peasants refused to collaborate for what was, not incorrectly, thought to be a pretty crummy deal. What to do? Well, the NEP was essentially a way to try and put the peasant onto the market, which he or (very rarely) she could sell to the cities. In a lot of ways, this was a lightening of the regime; the hope of the Party was that, if the peasant is allowed to more-or-less have his way, he will accede to Soviet power, and eventually, all will be well. After all, at least it's not the Whites, right?

Tragically, Lenin was wrong. The peasant did not come with an open hand, giving his grain in exchange for currency or industrial goods and whatnot. Instead, very soon, what occurred was hoarding, hiding grain, outright belying the authorities' quotas, demanding exorbitant sums, breaking the law openly, etc, etc. I could go on. But let me let you in on a little secret: this was something capitalistic societies had faced in their infancy. Not the same issues, not in the same way - Soviet Russia was unique in a lot of ways - but consider that much of what the Russian peasants was, in a lot of ways, the basic ways that feudal societies have resisted a local lord or a central government. Or is the Ottoman Empire now also socialistic? The point here is that the struggles of transition are that: struggles. Brutal.

Let's step in Soviet Russia one more time. What struck me, as a student of the period from 1923-1928 is that the enormity of the issue with the peasantry - the ways it was differentiated, the fragile link between the urban proletariat and the rural peasants, that was realised as early as 1920, if not earlier. Yet, yet, what one sees in this five year period is not some kind of ruthless action, rapid devastation of all that's been established; you know, the tropes about Lenin and Stalin and Trotsky and et al. No: what's seen is dithering; compromises, half-steps, a bizarre dance before what now seems totally unavoidable and enforced: forced collectivisation. The need to try and sustain urban cities required a different tact, because the Party would be otherwise overtaken by the landowners, and Russian landowners were quite the evil lot, let me tell you. There are some stories from there that are simply unbelievable. So.

There's that. No one ready-made formula, but there'll be never a peaceful transition.

I hope you will engage with this post.

 

[Angst]

snippin'

At least since Lenin, but IMO even since the Communist Manifesto, Marxism and its derivates have been "How to sucker people into establishing your own dictatorship". The goal is ill-defined and without substance, the early steps involve establishing totalitarian regime, and once that happens there is no incentive structure to make the controlling party, which also controls public discourse and has virtual monopoly on all it desires, progress toward the system that would make them gradually lose control. The addition of vanguard party under Leninism is the final nail in the coffin.

marx was more concerned with the inherent problems of capitalist industry and power consolidation than actually envisioning what post-capitalism would look like. his musings basically end at "this and that which obviously isn't working will fail and be gone". capitalist model of money would be gone, governments as we currently understand them (with all that PPP GDP stuff intrinsically tied to projected force) will be gone, because either inevitably self-implode (and yes, sorry, they do - currently to be replaced by others, but they do implode)

Even if we drop the premises of Marxism, the question raised here remains. One of defining characteristics of communism, in general, is that basic needs of every person are met, without any ties to their actual role to the society. In developed countries with decent social safety net, there is growing problem with people outright refusing to take dirty jobs, even if it means subsisting on minimal welfare. How do you incentivize people to do these jobs without using force?

this is two points not really related. ok so
first point, capitalist incentivization and the supposed failure of incentive even within capitalist systems to get people to do the hard stuff.
in developed countries with safety net and such, there is a problem with people refusing to take dirty jobs. sure. here's the thing. within a market the solution is to pay them more. if you can't afford a worker's time, you can't afford the worker, and you won't get the job done.
is it unfair if a janitor or cleaner or garbage man gets a high salary seeing the labour is "unskilled"? not really if we follow the logic of capitalist coin. supply-demand logic extends to the workforce. keeping the pay low atm is literally backed by force

so on the second point of yours. how to incentivize people without coin and without force. marxist theorists have a bunch of disagreements as to what to do here. eg syndicalists seek small groupings of production with personal bonds keeping people responsible to participate - something that's again and again already natural behavior in capitalist society outside the logic of coin. it's universally human. it's the basic logic of family structures in the home, it's easily present in clubs and at parties, at my folk high school (danish thing) we helped cleaning and helped in the kitchen, and if it gets too urban uppity to some people, i know plenty of craftsmen (carpenters and blacksmiths and such) that organize in such a way while not being monetarily connected to each other. however the problem with syndicalism is that macro scale organization is more of an open question, not in regards to a functioning method of production, but rather that there's not much of a macro solution if a foreign power shows up with a big gun. which is why some communists abhor that basic idea.

i want however to dwell on a small quip you said there - meeting the "basic needs of every person", "without any ties to their actual roles to the society". so uh. what does "actual roles" entail here, and how in the world should it detach people from being allowed their basic needs? even within capitalism. what is the tier of societal roles that should excempt people from eating?

 

[Lexicus]

Lexicus told you "well I'm not a marxist"

I wouldn't say 'Marxist' primarily because 1) it triggers people Iike Sarin and 2) I don't like arguing over ownership of that term with MLs and MLMs. The term "Marxian" is fine.

But Marx is a massive influence on my political thinking, more than any other single thinker with the possible exception of Karl Polanyi, though I also owe a lot to the pre-Marx "utopian" socialists, especially Robert Owen. But I think Marx was just a guy, not a prophet.

Even if we drop the premises of Marxism, the question raised here remains. One of defining characteristics of communism, in general, is that basic needs of every person are met, without any ties to their actual role to the society. In developed countries with decent social safety net, there is growing problem with people outright refusing to take dirty jobs, even if it means subsisting on minimal welfare. How do you incentivize people to do these jobs without using force?

Incentives under communism?

You repaid the debt by becoming one of the most pro-SS nations in Europe, and the most "ardent" in the physical destruction of Eastern European Jewry; only Croatia has the impressively dubious honour of "matching" Baltic nations' bloodthirst for Jewish blood. EDIT: Mods please do not 1984...

forums.civfanatics.com

I mean, the real answer is I think communism is perhaps centuries away and I can't predict how it will work with any certainty, any more than someone in 1750 could tell you how society would look in 2020. But I do think this question is a bit odd because the critique of society now is that society is organized for profit and that is a large part of what makes a lot of jobs undesirable in the first place! To the extent that jobs are "objectively" undesirable and not made so by the social relations surrounding production, the answer is you pay more until people are willing to do the job. When production is not organized for profit the obstacles to simply paying more largely disappear.

Though I am curious about this supposed problem of people refusing to take "dirty jobs". Can you quantify the problem and talk a little bit more about it? Presumably this is an issue in Czechia?

And I'll add a couple of my own. How does your system deal with people who, for whatever reason, do not want to conform to it?
And how do you incentivize the transition without reaching for force, without doing the same thing Lenin did and establish your private little dictatorship?

I have never heard satisfactory answer. There were attempts, but they fell apart under critical scrutiny.

This is an interesting question because I think it is coming from certain assumptions about communist society that may not be valid. My answer is that I do not require conformity.

As for the transition, I am probably more Fabian in my outlook than some of my compadres here (who no doubt consider me a liberal/social democrat/traitor/CIA dupe, but I'm at peace with that*). I know what policies I want to implement now in the context of the states and political cultures we have in the world today, and I have a broad outline of what communist society might look like sometime in the future, but I do not have a programmatic step-by-step plan to get us from where we are now to some specifically-defined endpoint. I think defining the endpoint too specifically risks devolving into a totalitarian program as you try harder and harder to make everything conform to the specific plan.

I have stated some of the policies I support that I consider to put us on the road to communism in the future, but I also probably differ from my compadres here in that I do see us heading slowly in the right direction already (not necessarily in a straight line - we have had 50 or 60 years now of stagnation at best or even some backward movement, and if the resurgent fascist right succeeds in taking over in the US, we risk seeing almost all the progress in the last 150 years thrown away with society cast into the abyss). I believe we are arguably in the early, barbaric stages of socialism already, where we have the rudiments of socialism in the form of large publicly traded corporations, economic regulation (in theory) in the public interest, a trade union movement that's more-or-less robust, the beginnings of a new global consciousness spurred by climate change, and other things that I'm probably forgetting. This is basically just applying Marx' idea that the relations of production that are revolutionary at one historical moment become fetters on the continued development of productive forces in the next historical moment. And this also goes back to the point that our societies are still basically organized around the hierarchies of European manorialism (or, more sinisterly, the hierarchies of the New World slave plantation - or the Nazi extermination camp, for the most unfortunate).

This is not a Whiggish idea that there is some World Spirit guiding us toward the good end-state, but that I think living free and as equals is in human nature, and try as they might the would-be masters of the universe cannot ever fully stamp out the part of the human mind that desires to live in freedom among equals. Working people can and will act collectively to advance their interests, not necessarily in the ways that Marxists and other left-wing thinkers of the past thought, but this again just goes back to the point that no one can fully predict (let alone plan out) the future.

however the problem with syndicalism is that macro scale organization is more of an open question, not in regards to a functioning method of production, but rather that there's not much of a macro solution if a foreign power shows up with a big gun. which is why some communists abhor that basic idea.

*laughs in Global Defense Council from HOI4*


*I'm just lightly teasing

 

[Zardnaar]

Helping people.

Anyhow, stop moving the goalposts. You asked me if I were willing. I said yes. You pretended I didn't say that and then claimed I'd starve. I told you again, I'm willing.

Now you're pivoting to "incentive". I'm willing to do the work. The incentive doesn't matter, silly. I answered your question, and more besides.

It's hard work. You can gelp people now by doing the drudge work. Most people don't do those jobs for they have a choice or can find anything better.

He'll a big criticism here is capitalists exploit8ng migrants to fill those positions.

Once aga8n you have essentially evaded the question. Why would I bust my vales to to that type of work if there's other types of work available?
What's my actual incentive? No helping people isn't it we can do tgat tight now under capitalism and when they are struggling to fill those jobs without "exploitation ".

How do you improve that. You'll do tgat work to not starve. You've somewhat answered the question mone of the others have what you would want to do post revolution.

You're willing to do tge work d9 you want to do the work post revolution. What's your ideal tye of work. Mine would be to design RPGs or board games in the capitalist world I don't really have the required skills and it's really hard to make money even I did.

How do you run the farms and what does it mean to seize the means of production with farms. Who owns what and how does young Zard get compensated. Do you seize the farms and then expect the former owner to run them.

Practical solutions here not political doggeral.

Capitalism for example we can regulate it, tax the rich and organize distribution of food to countries that need it basically expanding existing programs.

It wasn't that long ago alot of capitalist countries did exactly tgat. Cradle to grave welfare states.

That's not a hypothetical example and we used to do that. We can improve on that.

Your turn explain to me how you produce food under communism and who runs, owns and works said farms. I can feed myself working on a farm idk how to run it.

With the right amount of lan and tools I can feed my family and produce a small surplus.

 

[Ajidica]

Tragically, Lenin was wrong. The peasant did not come with an open hand, giving his grain in exchange for currency or industrial goods and whatnot. Instead, very soon, what occurred was hoarding, hiding grain, outright belying the authorities' quotas, demanding exorbitant sums, breaking the law openly, etc, etc. I could go on. But let me let you in on a little secret: this was something capitalistic societies had faced in their infancy. Not the same issues, not in the same way - Soviet Russia was unique in a lot of ways - but consider that much of what the Russian peasants was, in a lot of ways, the basic ways that feudal societies have resisted a local lord or a central government. Or is the Ottoman Empire now also socialistic? The point here is that the struggles of transition are that: struggles. Brutal.

This strikes me as a fancy way of saying "besides, they were kulaks and deserved it".

 

[Lexicus]

This strikes me as a fancy way of saying "besides, they were kulaks and deserved it".

It seems like a way of saying that the underlying processes of capital accumulation in the Soviet Union was actually not too different from how it was carried out in England: massive repression of the rural population.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Thank you for the studied contribution. As always.

 

[Lexicus]

Once aga8n you have essentially evaded the question. Why would I bust my vales to to that type of work if there's other types of work available?

Why would anyone go to the effort of answering your questions when you can't be bothered to make the effort to make your posts legible?

edit: sorry, I don't mean to be an ******* with that question and I don't care if you spell every word right and use proper grammar, but having so many typos that I can't tell what you're trying to say is a different matter.

 

[Ajidica]

It seems like a way of saying that the underlying processes of capital accumulation in the Soviet Union was actually not too different from how it was carried out in England: massive repression of the rural population.

Who would have thunk it, people who are unaccountable and have guns are going to do what they will whether they have a red banner or white banner.

I see no particular reason to act like the English peasants totally had it coming for not sharing their grain with people who clearly knew better than them.

 

[Hygro]

I mean I think it's a bit of an odd question because I don't think communist society is without money and the answer is pay people well. Like, the people who need to answer who's gonna do the crappy jobs are the ones whose solution to the job being crappy is "get a better job", not the people who are saying we should pay everyone a living wage and treat everyone with dignity etc.

You and I agree, “well, pay them.” We can get pretty equitable with a continuation of progressive reforms in the current logic of “money for work.” Progressive taxation, workweek shortening, taxing and subsidizing negative and positive externalities respectively.

So as it stands, the only root level, no black market distortion causing, no extra authoritarianism, mechanistic incentive suggested for communism in this thread is “pay money to offset marginal disutility of labor”.

 

[Lexicus]

I think my suggestion was more for socialism than for communism.

 

[Angst]

*laughs in Global Defense Council from HOI4*

had to google that. i don't play hoi4. so i'm unsure how much you're kidding here; i'll engage with it seriously and just ask straight.

from paradoxwikis

The Global Defense Council is a formable "nation", that can be created by the Regional Defense Council of Aragón through a National focus of the same name in the Anarchist path for Republican Spain.

Since an anarchist society is inherently incompatible with the way Nation-States are represented in HoI4, the Global Defense Council cannot be treated as a regular nation, state, or country like all others in the game. Instead, it consists of a myriad of local anarchist communes governed through direct democracy, where everyone is equal and there are no higher leaders or other positions of power. Instead of having an actual army to speak of, the anarchists simply focus on arming the people themselves, relying on self-organized militias and paramilitaries.

The "Global Defense Council" part of this "nation" simply exists because the anarchist communes have decided to band together for security and defense and the Global Defense Council itself is merely an organization formed for the purpose of coordinating the collective military actions of the anarchists.

The Global Defense Council possesses the unique ability to generate cores on any state in the world if it can occupy it and raise compliance high enough as in that case, the local population will simply organize into their own anarchist communes and join under the umbrella of the Global Defense Council. This makes the Global Defense Council the formable "nation" with the most possible cores. The only states that cannot be cored are "colony" states without any cores, as resistance and compliance mechanics do not apply to those states. Notably, The Global Defense Council is not allowed to create collaborationist governments.

The ability to dynamically core any state comes at the expense of all other countries becoming hostile towards the GDC and will actively take steps to destroy it. The GDC cannot form or join factions and other nations will be hostile toward it. The GDC essentially stands alone against the entire world. A bug however allows other nations to form factions with Global Defense Council.

so... self-organized paramilitias. even assuming no infighting and literal chaos of directive, how is that really going to compete with a modern army? the closest equivalent examples of the real world don't really bode well for this situation, any succesful examples i can think of ended badly after the fact, specifically because even after a conflict, you now have an armed military structure within an area. the reason i said that it was a macro problem is because the relations syndicalism rely on are kind of located to the site of production. macro becomes a problem, then, if you depend on internal relations and now suddenly all of the external sites are armed, as you are.

or were you kidding?

 

[Lexicus]

100% kidding
I played HOI4 and set up the global defense council once (it's pretty hard, you have to game the Spanish Civil War pretty hard to first get the anarchists to take over the Republican side and then actually go on to defeat the fascists, then the real challenge begins). I occupied a lot of territory in Africa and was able to core some of it before the peace treaty with the Axis reverted it back to colonial rule, but I was importing almost all my resources from the US.

 

[Angst]

100% kidding
I played HOI4 and set up the global defense council once (it's pretty hard, you have to game the Spanish Civil War pretty hard to first get the anarchists to take over the Republican side and then actually go on to defeat the fascists, then the real challenge begins). I occupied a lot of territory in Africa and was able to core some of it before the peace treaty with the Axis reverted it back to colonial rule, but I was importing almost all my resources from the US.

ah ok <3 sounds like a fun playthrough. the game never really compelled me though

 

[Hygro]

I think my suggestion was more for socialism than for communism.

Sure, and yet it’s the closest to answering the OP.