Post #1455577

2026-04-16 19:38 UTC

@riley I think it was in Debt: The First 5000 Years. He described families as communist. The USSR and Red China had spotty and occasional communal ownership of some things, but mostly they were just totalitarian regimes. My point was that real communism can be a good thing at small scale, statewide communism cannot. It's an interesting anomaly at FOSS scale.

Replies (2)

@riley@toot.cat 2026-04-16 19:45

@mralancooper I have read it. I think your initial statement is misleading: he described the 'communism of the family', but he did not ascribe that to anything related to software communes.

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@riley@toot.cat 2026-04-17 18:55

@mralancooper I suspect the difference you're looking at might not be of scale, per se, but of the scope of the services needed. Software, for now, is mostly facultative. It's okay if it helps somebody. But a properly functioning Communist societal infrastructure is supposed to help everybody, and potentially all the basic needs of some people. Virtually all the everyday examples of small-scale communism resemble, not always but most of the time, the facultative model more than the model where high availability and reliability are paramount.

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