How do communists claim they will solve the problem of scarcity?

Economics Economics Questions
1

The way I understand communism theory is that you go from capitalism, to socialism or directly to communism. The idea is to have an unlimited amount of goods for an unlimited human wants before you go directly to communism. Human experience would have us believe that our wants are scarcely always satisfied. But communists would claim to be able to satisfy all human desires- after they go off capitalism. How could they claim to solve the problem of scarcity- when resources are limited- and humans always tend to want something new? What would happen in their society when something new comes up that wasn’t around before? Would they go back to capitalism to produce something for the masses- rather than stay true to communism, because communism is inefficient for the means of production?

Do they deny the problem of scarcity altogether? Can someone explain to me the position that communists have taken when they haven’t denied it? What they’ve said they will do?

2

Maybe this will help:

The Death Wish of the Anarcho-Communists

3

A marxist once told me that the communist society will have a plentiful stock of products because production will be plentiful… seriously.

4

Some communists deny scarcity by saying it is little more than a “bourgeoise conspiracy” in order to reap profits. The only reason we can’t have infinite amounts of anything we want is because the capitalists artificially limit the supply in order to extract money and labor from us.

It’s easy to see the flaw with this: If the capitalists really do have an infinite amount of every type of good and resource to distribute, but merely elect to not do so, then what do they even want with our money and labor in the first place?

As for the communists who don’t deny scarcity, they give some argument that collectivist production will be more “efficient” somehow than capitalistic production. The reasons for this vary greatly, but the calculation problem destroys them all.

5

The problem of what?

6

There’s no one position on it given how much they vary but from what I’ve gleaned they believe private property creates “artificial scarcity” and many of them subscribe to the tripe the likes of Galbraith Sr spouted, e.g. about wants being instilled in consumers etc. They don’t necessarily ignore scarcity so much as argue that capitalism exacerbates it. Hence the whole focus on communism fulfilling “needs” and directing production towards that end. There are those who do deny it and argue that there’s enough food to feed the world etc. and only profit-motivated enterprise limits it. They’re called “idiots”.

7

SilentXtarian, what communists have said they would do, and what they would probably do is this.

Although private property will be eliminated, the system of production must mimick the capitalist system of production as closely as possible. There must be the same managerial techniques, the same enterprising, and the same financial planning that entrepreneurs in capitalist economies perform.

The allocation of resources too would mimick the similar allocation that private property demands.

Communism, of the 19th century kind, demands a complete shift away from central planning. As Karl Marx said to Hegel, “It is crack-brained meddling by authorities that aggravates an existing crisis.”

Hence, all the communes must be decentralized and independently run. However, resources of the community must be held collectively, and the community must organise itself properly to deal with problems of scarcity by mimicking the private property capitalist system.

However, the communists, like Oskar Lange, believed that they would create a pricing system using modern technology and calculation that would allocate these resources perfectly without the need for private property. The system that mimicks private property is a brief placeholder.

The result was that Lenin ended up implementing market reforms, various other British and Viennese communists ended up being converted to free markets after they thought it to be the only efficient way, and another lot of men like Stalin ended up demanding a complete authoritarian state, because it would be a kind of communism whose nature Marx had never predicted.

I can’t comment on Asian-style communism of Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, and Mao Tse Tung - they were influenced by French communists of a different kind and motive, and I don’t know much about what their plans were exactly.

8

By getting people to settle for less and performing mass murder such that there are fewer shares in collective wealth? That might explain the observed results of various communist collectives.

9

This is my distillation from conversations I’ve had::

“Needs” are different from “wants”. Needs are necessary (bread, water, bed, etc). Wants are being artificially infused into the masses by capitalists via propaganda (marketing) so there’s always scarcity of “wanted” things. In communism, (“From each according to their abilities, to each according to their NEEDS” – emphasis on “needs”) both “abilities” and “needs” would be determined by a council (decree) and they both would be made acceptable to the masses via vigorous propaganda so, of course, there would be no scarcity. Societal “needs” (Ferrari, everyone?) would only be allowed to grow if everyone’s abilities are also decreed higher (Work 22 hours a day, no weekends. Still “need” that Ferrari?). Weird, weird, stuff.

Z.

10

what is scarcity?

As capitalism matures, fewer and fewer needed goods are scarce. Today; far more food gets thrown out or wasted in the U.S. than would be needed to feed every single hungry person. So hunger is not caused by any real scarcity of food in our society, like it might be in Africa - the only problem is misallocation. There’s currently a glut of houses on the market - there are many more empty housing units than there are homeless people in America. Homelessness is not caused by a “scarcity” of housing. Again, it’s all misallocation of resources. If people in a region want an average of 1 cell phone per person, and that region’s factories can produce 2 cell phones per person running at full capacity, then are cell phones a scarce commodity in that region? Yes, the newest and best models will always be, but that only proves that the best quality cell phones are scarce, not that cell phones themselves are a scarce commodity. If you ask me, if economics is the study of how to allocate scarce resources, then there needs to be a study of how to distribute non-scarce resources.

Yes, ‘luxury’ or premium quality goods of all kinds will always be scarce, but that doesn’t necessarily mean those categories of goods themselves are scarce - there will always be a scarcity of mansions, but there is no scarcity of basic-level housing or food in America; there’s the opposite of scarcity, a glut and an oversupply.

A reverse question might be, “is there any level of productivity at which capitalist society will abolish homelessness and hunger?”

11

It studies both a) how economies deal with scarcity and b) allocate and coordinate the production process.

12

Stalin said that once a man is dead, the problem is also solved.

No wonder he killed over 40 million people and the whole communist economies rely on mass militarization.

13

“If you ask me, if economics is the study of how to allocate scarce resources, then there needs to be a study of how to distribute non-scarce resources”

If a good is not scarce, then it is free, or as Rothbard calls it a “general condition of human welfare”. There would be no question of disribution because anyone who wanted it would be able to appropriate as much as they wanted. Unfortunately, food and housing do not yet fall into this category.

14

To be honest, I’ve talked with a few commies in my day, and they just don’t care about scarcity. It doesn’t matter to them. Any discussion they devote to it is simply a placeholder.

15

Scarcity is resolved because of the heightened state of capitalist production. Constant capital has been increasing under the capitalism system which is pushing down variable capital [ labor power ]. So at the fruition of capitalism, which is the start of communism, all necessary capital for basic standards of living will be in place for the proletariat.

16

“If a good is not scarce, then it is free,”

Balderdash. If there’s a tax on going down to the ocean and evaporating some water to derive the salt, then sea salt is never free for anyone who obeys that law, but neither is it scarce in any real sense, although it may be in markets which adhere to this tax. If I had the ability to “appropriate as much as I wanted” of the worlds supply of diamonds, and I used this ability to acquire two-thirds of the diamonds in the world and lock them in a warehouse, the price of the remaining diamonds would go up in global markets, even though the total quantity of real existing diamonds did not change or become more scarce at all. Diamonds did not become more scarce through my action, diamonds only became more scarce in markets, because scarcity in markets and scarcity in fact do not necessarily directly correlate.

The fact that something is scarce in a market is no logical indication of its scarcity in fact, because the very ability you mention, the ability of some to “appropriate as much as they wanted” can create scarcities in markets which do not exist outside of them. If one man owned all the oceans and charged everyone else $5 a gallon if they wanted any, sea water would become scarce in all markets which accepted this claim to ownership, but to extrapolate actual scarcity from market scarcity - even free market scarcity - is a fallacy.

Also, it’s important to draw distinctions; I may only want one cell phone at any particular time for my personal use, but if I could own all the cell phones in the world and sell them to others, obviously I’d be wealthier in the second circumstance and I might desire that - but to say that because I can’t own all the cell phones in the world, that therefore cell phones are “scarce,” is an abuse of the word. There is not only a dichotomy between “scarce” and “effectively infinite” - some things are both abundant, meaning non-scarce, but effectively finite. Housing, food, and in some places cell phones are abundant - meaning they are available in sufficient quantities to satisfy all sane desires for personal use of them.

17

Government fiat can create scarcities where none previously existed. There’s nothing really novel in this.

Secondly it’s important to point out there’s really no such thing as “free” in reality: All things have opportunity costs. If I opened a stand on the side of the road giving out free cookies, would everyone who knew about it stop by and wait in line (possibly for hours) to get one? Ultimately the cookies aren’t really “free;” You still have to expend your time and energy to get them. If satisfying a desire had no costs then it would not be necessary to act in order to fulfill it. It would not be a desire at all, but a general condition of existence.

The fact that world hunger exists disproves this statement easily. Furthermore what qualifies a use as a “sane” one?

18

Government fiat can create scarcities where none previously existed.

Yeah? So can markets. Markets just ration goods according to who has money. Governments ration goods by other criteria. Market rationing creates shortages for POOR PEOPLE. It’s better to be penniless in Havana than it is to be penniless in Miami, and better to have a little cash in Miami than it is to have a little cash in Havana.

Communism can’t produce a vibrant economy, while capitalism can create lots of wealth but will never, ever resolve world hunger, homelessness or poverty. Capitalism requires world hunger, because it requires allowing the winners to win and the losers to lose.

There’s a hypothesis that if we all become richer, through the growth of capitalism, private charities would resolve poverty, but that’s a pipe dream. Capitalism is a race, and capitalists who give away money to help the less fortunate are like a runner in a competitive race who stops to help another runner who’s fallen down; all it means is they both lose eventually to a third party who doesn’t waste time with unprofitable activities.

World hunger proves food scarcity like holding your head underwater proves air scarcity.

19

No, market rationing shifts productive resources to the most profitable pursuits which is why poor people enjoy so many goods to begin with.

Ugh, says who?

Pure ipse dixit. Who are the “winners” and who are the “losers”?

There’s a hypothesis that if we all become richer, through the growth of capitalism, private charities would resolve poverty, but that’s a pipe dream. Capitalism is a race, and capitalists who give away money to help the less fortunate are like a runner in a competitive race who stops to help another runner who’s fallen down; all it means is they both lose eventually to a third party who doesn’t waste time with unprofitable activities.

There’s an hypothesis that capitalism is a race to the bottom, but that’s a fantasy. The rest is pure bloody assertion. What stops a capitalist from drawing from their personal consumption income to help another? And who says only “capitalists” would do so?

World hunger proves food scarcity like holding your head underwater proves air scarcity.

You’re aware what causes world hunger, right? Interference with market distribution mechanisms. Production is an on-going process. You could, say, solve scarcity in a night and then be left with no future market. Hunger is caused by government interference. Citing it as an example of capitalism’s “failure” is rather ironic, tbh.