this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2021
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u/Lenins2ndCat - originally from r/GenZhouOk so the planet is a poor comparison. I should use a peer planet instead. Earth 2.0 if you like.
Let's say that a colony ship arrives at Earth 2.0 and instead of being able to develop it with resources taken on the colony ship they have to start from scratch. No tools no nothing.
These humans will still skip several stages of development because they will seek to industrialise as quickly as they can. Right? They're not going to go through the same limiting factors of the stone/bronze/iron-ages or subsequent industrial revolutions. They're going to jump as far ahead as they possibly can based on existing available resources.
My point doesn't have to rely on idealism. Human knowledge, not ideas but factual-knowledge of science, industry and production is a material thing, not an idealist thing. Humans today have knowledge of industry, science and production that humans of the past did not. Developing that knowledge base was a limiting factor in production and the material conditions.
What I'm trying to get to is that if you take humans from today and plonk them in resource-less earth-like conditions they are going to jump ahead to the technology and production-level that they know. That their knowledge-base is a material factor. That they will immediately aim to build the society they know of and using the technology and production methods they know underpin that society.
By the same token, let's say 300 years from now in a truly socialist earth, the humans then will have knowledge of science and production we do not right now. If you take those humans and plop them on a foreign planet without resources, they are going to immediately seek to build up to the productive point that they know. They will skip ahead because their knowledge of technology, logistics and production is a material factor that shouldn't be dismissed.
On the other hand, if all you have are skill less humans with very poor political, scientific and social education? The result is probably going to be deteriorate into much older versions of society as these humans will be forced to regress to older methods with no idea how to build ahead again.
u/Angel_of_Communism - originally from r/GenZhouSorry no.
Other than an 'office of planning society on earth 2.0' i can tell you i know a good bit more about this subject than most, having done this scenario in planning sessions, stories and game writing.
Either the colonists from earth land on earth 2.0 with enough tech to skip some or all of the production issues, or they do not.
If they lose it all, then no, they MUST go through the stone age etc.
No amount of knowledge will get you steel tools without the infrastructure to build them. Which is: coal mining or coke production, charcoal production, iron ore mining, the tools to mine iron ore, and the key part: enough surplus food to support a group of people who break rocks all day, and do not hunt or farm.
If you want a personal demonstration, go play minecraft.
Read all the wiki pages about spells and diamond armour.
Then play the game, start with nothing and jump to diamond armour without passing through the 'wooden pickaxe' phase.
Can't be done.
Because the infrastructure must be built first.
With a head start, such as advanced hydroponic greenhouses, and power, and computerized education, and tools, a colony can jump some of the steps.
But to make it sustainable, they will need the infrastructure.
Feudalism needed the infrastructure of iron & steel. Which required coal, iron mining, and iron tools to mine it, and someone to make that, and also enough surplus food to support the people to do it. Which can only happen when the farming technology has advanced enough to allow that.
Industry needs more of the same. Only advanced agriculture and the like can support masses of people working, and not farming.
And coal for steam power.
Socialism needs even more advanced infrastructure. So much food and other material stuff that society can survive even with nearly everyone else NOT making food and such.
such a colony would only be able to survive with massive imports of food & material from the motherland, and with a huge population base. Essentially dropping a small country on a planet.
u/aimixin - originally from r/GenZhouWhile having knowledge of future technology can help you industrialize faster, you still have to go through the process of industrializing. It is incredibly idealist to think of people who had knowledge of advanced economies were teleported back to the feudal era that they could just bring advanced socialism into existence in one stroke.
The society would be backwards by thousands of years. Nobody would even know what they were talking about. Even if they could beam the knowledge directly into people's heads, while they might develop faster, it would still take a long time, because they still have to develop. It could still take centuries to move from the feudal system to a socialist system even with full knowledge of it.
I mean, the entire point of Marxism is to try to create a theory of development so we can predict future developments in order to help us develop faster. But Marx makes it clear you still have to develop towards it, and says explicitly a ruling communist party cannot simply abolish private property by decree but only in proportion to its development, so it should rapidly develop the economy as fast as possible to facilitate this transition.
The claim that material conditions don't matter is absolutely idealist no matter how you spin it. You still have to go through the steps of material development even if you know what is next.
The analogy also is rather useless to us because we don't live on a planet 300 years from now where this technology has been invented. You and the other person are talking explicitly about implementing a fully planned economy now independent of the material conditions and independent of even having knowledge of what this would look like since no economy has ever developed productive forces high enough that all the means of production have been socialized.
We don't have a future person from 2321. We are still figuring out stuff here and now, all we have is predictions from Marxian economics which helps us to know what direction we have to go and a general idea of what the process would look like. But we have to continue focusing on development as rapidly as possible to ever actually get there. The claim you can just implement full planning by fiat is idealist. There is no way to spin this otherwise. It absolutely is idealist in every way, shape, and form. It is literally the entire conception of "idealism" that Marxism was attacking in The German Ideology.