But "capital" itself is a social relationship, something any communist society would have to do away with as a pre-condition.
The same applies to the "economy." The economy is exactly what we have to do away with.
I mean, I think I know what you mean to say, but I can't help being pedantic about terms like "capital" and "economy." I think anthropologizing social phenomenon that only exist with a society of generalized commodity production, and trying to project them backward and forward in time as human universals, is something we should avoid.
But I think you and Doug are both saying that a large-scale organization of human society presents logistical difficulties, which I don't disagree with.
I couldn't agree more with all of this. These logistical difficulties appear unbelievably immense when we conceive of them as one large project that must spring fully armed from our heads at a particular moment in time, that instant at which we make the revolution and when we must all suddenly start living like communists. Such a project boggles the mind for good reason, it is indeed utterly impossible.
What should instead happen is that we start living our lives and talking and doing as communists and start organising along those lines now, not at some unspecified future date. What makes the communist project so difficult to conceive is precisely this wandering from one false alternative to another, projecting our hopes onto one saviour after another, onto some politician or culture hero or whatever (or even the national soccer team). We just don't want to do anything outside of the framework of the value relation or the framework of the state. It constantly amazes me to see how young people of each generation are brought back into line by a finely inculcated sense of 'realism' and cynicism about anything that is not either branded or official. And yet ... we all do live as communists to some extent; it's just that we are prepared to live that way in an incredibly small and restricted sphere, basically within our households and/or circle of friends (and not always even there!). No-one is willing to even find ways of extending that kind of relationship to the neighbourhood or some other larger group; always the broader relationships (whether in pubs, rock concerts, cafe culture or whatever) are mediated through businesses of some kind, never completely free spaces. But until we learn to do that at a micro level, communism at the macro level will always seem like some impossible project.
This is why I personally prefer - and at least this is a live debate at the moment - the idea of a social movement to that of a political party. The latter always has to validate itself with reference to the state, to present itself as the state in waiting, which leads to all forms of pragmatism and notions of 'electability', etc.
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