A friend sent me a Halloween cosplay image on WeChat. It showed as sent on his side, but the entire message was missing on mine.
WeChat has previously been documented silently filtering images in private chats. I can’t prove this case was censorship, but it looks very similar.
Even private messages can just disappear.
包蜜们：
X上面在传你们的厚米薨了，真的吗？
而且我确实查到，访美的人不是厚米本人了，是安排了副总理何立峰去的。
【何立峰率团访美，中美将举行经贸磋商】https://mo.mbd.baidu.com/r/239QDzRL0Iw?f=cp&u=800330838550d741&urlext=%7B%22cuid%22%3A%22\_8vM8\_ub2fgOiv8m08Hbuja\_2i03uvu7l82Si\_uJvuKz0qqSB%22%7D
毛也是60年前9月份死的，都是丙午年丁酉月，会不会这就是国运？
中国共产党究竟给中国带来了什么？为什么今天仍有这么多人支持它？
我最近在查一个问题：过去一百年里，国共日究竟分别造成了多少中国人死亡？
经过检索整理，大致数量级是：
日本侵华造成约 1400万–2000万中国人死亡；
国民党统治时期的政治镇压、花园口决堤等造成至少数十万，宽口径可能超过百万；
中共统治下，镇反、土改、反右、文革等造成大量直接死亡，而大跃进造成约 2000万–4500万超额死亡。合计而言，毛时代政治与政策造成的非正常死亡大约是数千万级别。
抗战时期，大规模正面战场主要由中华民国国民政府承担；中共在敌后不断扩大自己的军事和政治力量。日本投降后国共重新内战，共产党靠残酷的战争取得全国政权。
大家以为一切结束了，然而，谁承想，随后是三反五反、反右、大跃进与大饥荒、文化大革命。
改革开放后，大规模群众运动减少，但政治控制转向更隐蔽和非全社会性的形式：强制计划生育，甚至强制结扎、堕胎；六四镇压呼吁反腐和继续深化改革的大学生和市民；新疆和西藏的高压治理；维权律师和记者遭打压和抓捕；干扰香港选举，也让“50年不变”越来越像一句空话。
到了习近平时代，更是彻底公开开历史倒车。
“要是让人民知道了我们共产党的历史，人民就要起来推翻我们了。”
“没关系，中国有高铁、特高压、南水北调、5G”，这些奇观。
如果今天统治中国的是另一个稳定、工业化、技术能力正常的政府，难道它就不会修铁路、电网、水利和通信网络吗？
更让我好奇的是今天中共真正的社会“基本盘”究竟在哪里。
公开调查经常显示90%以上支持政府，但《The China Quarterly》的匿名实验发现，一旦受访者不必公开表达政治态度，对中共的真实支持估计会降到约 50%–70%；另一项实验甚至发现城市居民公开表达的支持率很高，但匿名后明显下降。
所以中国大陆真实的政治结构，可能并不是简单的“绝大多数人支持共产党”。
台湾同样经历过国民党威权统治和白色恐怖，但制度民主化之后，社会政治行为发生了巨大变化。至少台湾证明了一件事情：华人社会完全可以实行宪政民主制度，也没有因为民主化就大乱。
请问各位uu们：
1、经济发展和大型基础设施建设，能不能成为长期进行政治欺骗、打压新闻自由、打压司法独立、拒绝宪政民主的理由？
2、今天中国大陆对中共的真实支持到底有多少？教育洗脑、利益绑定、害怕动荡和政治恐惧分别发挥了什么作用？哪个才是重点？
3、还有一个“too young, too simple, sometimes naive”的问题：如果中国人民真的原谅中共，中共会愿意变革，做到宪政民主、司法独立和舆论自由吗？
还是说，等中国人真的要求这些东西的时候，它会不会再召唤一次坦克？
资料线索：Andrew Walder 关于文革死亡的研究；杨继绳、曹树基等关于大跃进饥荒人口损失的研究；Rana Mitter 关于抗日战争的研究；National WWII Museum 的中国抗战死亡估算；以及 The China Quarterly 关于中国民众隐藏反对意见的匿名调查实验。
陈独秀说过：“党外无党，帝王思想；党内无派，千奇百怪。”毛泽东后来也引用过这句话，而且明确承认共产党“党内也有派，从来都是如此”。
实际上，中共历史上也一直存在不同路线、利益集团和政治派系。
但它处理党内分歧的方法，往往不是把派系公开化、制度化，让党员通过选举决定谁执政，而是不断依靠政治运动和自上而下的清洗解决：
从反AB团、各种肃反和整风，到文化大革命；从六四之后对改革派干部的清洗，到习近平时代以反腐、反“团团伙伙”为名的大规模整肃。
这里其实存在另一条理论上的道路：
共产党完全可以不放弃执政党的地位，也暂时不改变中华人民共和国的基本国家框架，而是首先实行共产党内部的一人一票竞争性民主，或者让全民一人一票民主投票选择支持的共产党内部的派系。
允许不同派系公开提出路线，党员自由加入、退出派系；党内领导人由全体党员直接选举；失败派系继续合法存在，下次再竞争。
哪怕仍然是一党制，这也至少可能把“宫廷斗争—秘密结盟—最高领导人清洗对手”的模式，逐渐转化成一种制度化政治竞争。
但中共从来没有真正选择这条路。
我的理解是：问题可能恰恰说明，中共并不是一个单纯因为历史条件而“暂时没有民主化”的共产主义政党。
“共产主义”更多是它的意识形态外衣。它真正稳定延续下来的组织核心，更接近一种现代 totalitarianism：政治宗教式的意识形态、等级官僚体系、秘密组织纪律，以及对独立政治结社和公开派系竞争的恐惧。
所以它可以容忍事实上的派系，却不能容忍合法的派系；可以容忍私下站队，却不能允许公开竞选；可以不断发生权力斗争，却不能让普通党员决定权力斗争的结果。
因为一旦派系合法化、选举化，权力就开始从组织机器和最高领袖手里转移到党员手里。
大家觉得，中共为什么从来没有走向“党内多派竞争 + 一人一票”的模式？
这是列宁主义政党的组织逻辑决定的，还是中共自身长期形成的 totalitarianism 决定的？
又或者说，这种“党内民主化”本身就是一个不可能长期稳定的中间状态——一旦真的允许党内自由竞争，最终必然会走向真正的多党民主？
今天突然翻了一下过去七十多年的历史，越看越觉得难受。
1950–1953：镇压反革命
1957–1959：反右运动
1958–1962：大跃进与大饥荒
1966–1976：文化大革命
1980年代以后：强制计划生育，以及大量强制堕胎、绝育
1989：六四镇压及此后的全国性政治清洗
1999以后：对法轮功的全国性镇压
2015：709律师大抓捕
2019以后：香港政治自由迅速收缩
2020–2022：动态清零、封城、强制隔离、次生医疗灾难
2022年底：毫无缓冲地突然放开，随后出现巨大的感染潮与超额死亡
2026：广西严重洪灾与多座水库溃坝，仅南宁因灾死亡已确认136人，国务院至今仍在调查灾害防范和应急处置责任。
一代又一代中国人，好像都曾经相信：再等等吧，以后会好的。
很多老人年轻的时候经历过反右、大跃进、文革。他们等到改革开放，以为终于熬过去了。后来又有六四、计划生育、严打。再后来的人觉得那些已经是历史，至少自己的生活不会再碰到这样的事情。
我以前也是这么想的。
我们总以为这些事情发生在远方，发生在新闻里，发生在别人身上。可是最后才发现，它们迟早会以某种形式落到你我自己的生活里。
我亲身经历过被关在家里；亲人去世，却因为防疫无法见最后一面；看过拉帮结派、争着入党；听过过度防疫时一本正经地说胡话，也听过经济出问题以后继续一本正经地说胡话。
可即便到了那个时候，我都没有真正醒悟。
我一直觉得可能只是某些人坏，只是某些基层干部不专业，只是哪个地方出了问题。这个国家这么大，总不能整个制度都有问题吧？
直到后来，我又亲自遭遇基层公安专业度和责任感严重下降，才突然把过去经历的这些所见所闻和中共党史串在了一起。
我才幡然醒悟：这种共产极权主义不一定能保护你，因为它考虑的核心从来不是你。
之前可能是北京市民，前天可能是维权律师，昨天可能是上海被封在楼里的人；还有知识分子、农民、城市平民、宗教信徒。
你可以一辈子不关心他们。
但是权力不需要征得你的同意，才会进入你的生活。
极权主义的魔咒不会主动放过任何一个公民。
所以我现在真正想问的反而不是“中国以前发生过什么”。
而是：
中国到底什么时候才能真正变好？
上一代有人等了一辈子。
很多老人已经没等到。
我们这一代人，退休以前能等到吗？
I suddenly had this question today, so I asked GPT to help me organize the major cases from roughly the past 75 years and compare them using approximately the same standard.
I chose China and the United States because, in broad ideological and political-economic terms, they can be seen as two opposite extremes: China as an extreme example of communist totalitarianism, and the United States as an extreme example of imperialist capitalism.
China under the CCP 1950–53 — Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries 1957–59 — Anti-Rightist Campaign 1958–62 — Great Leap Forward and Great Famine 1966–76 — Cultural Revolution 1979/80–2015 — Coercive One-Child Policy, including forced abortions and sterilizations 1989 — Tiananmen crackdown and nationwide political repression 1999 onward — Nationwide persecution of Falun Gong 2008 — Tibet crackdown 2009 — Xinjiang/Urumqi crackdown, arrests and disappearances 2015 — 709 Crackdown on human-rights lawyers and activists 2017 onward — Mass detention and systematic repression in Xinjiang 2019/20 onward — Hong Kong political crackdown and National Security Law 2020–23 — Zero-COVID: extreme lockdowns, forced quarantine and barriers to food and medical care, followed by an abrupt reopening and massive excess mortality 2026 — Guangxi floods and reservoir failures: 100+ confirmed deaths and an ongoing investigation into disaster-response responsibility (not counted below as a proven human-rights disaster yet)
United States 1950s–65 — Jim Crow segregation and racial disenfranchisement (already underway when the 75-year window begins) 1932–72 — Tuskegee syphilis study: no informed consent and effective treatment withheld (already underway, so not counted as a new start) 1956–71 — COINTELPRO: FBI surveillance, infiltration and disruption of political and civil-rights groups 1964–73 — Vietnam War and the U.S. bombing campaigns in Laos and Cambodia 1965–66 — U.S. support for the Indonesian Army during anti-communist mass killings in which hundreds of thousands were killed 1970s — Indian Health Service sterilizations with serious failures in informed-consent procedures 1981–90 — U.S. support for the Contra war against Nicaragua; the International Court of Justice later found that the U.S. had violated international law through its use of force and intervention 1991 — Gulf War: U.S.-led bombing caused civilian deaths and extensive destruction of Iraqi civilian infrastructure 2001–21 — Afghanistan War: invasion, civilian casualties, displacement and detention abuses 2002 onward — Guantánamo Bay: indefinite detention, torture and detainees held for years without criminal charges 2003–11 — Iraq invasion and occupation: mass civilian casualties, displacement and detention/torture abuses, including Abu Ghraib 2004–18 — U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan, including civilian deaths and strikes investigated as possible unlawful killings 2011 — U.S.-backed NATO intervention in Libya, including civilian deaths from airstrikes and subsequent destabilization 2014–19 — U.S.-led air war in Iraq and Syria, including substantial civilian casualties 2015 onward — U.S. military, intelligence and logistical support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen despite repeated unlawful attacks on civilians 2017 onward — Major expansion of U.S. airstrikes in Somalia, with documented civilian deaths and possible unlawful strikes 2018 — Zero-Tolerance border policy and separation of more than 3,000 migrant children from their parents 2023 onward — Extensive U.S. military and diplomatic support for Israel during the Gaza war amid enormous civilian casualties, mass displacement and allegations of war crimes and genocide 2025 — Large-scale direct U.S. strikes in Yemen, with significant reported civilian casualties 2025 onward — U.S. military strikes on suspected drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing suspected traffickers without conventional criminal trials and raising serious international-law questions January 2026 — Direct U.S. military attack on Venezuela and capture of Nicolás Maduro February 2026 onward — U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, involving large-scale strikes and a continuing regional conflict
Very rough frequency comparison
Using this expanded list changes the result substantially.
If every distinct episode is counted separately:
CCP China: roughly one new major human-rights/state-policy disaster every 5.8–6 years. United States: roughly one every 3.5–4 years.
If closely related events are grouped into broader political or military waves:
CCP China: roughly one major wave every 6–7 years. United States: roughly one major wave every 5–6 years.
So after including U.S. actions abroad, my original estimate for the United States was clearly too long.
This is obviously sensitive to definitions. I’m not claiming this is a scientific “human-rights disaster index.” I’m trying to apply approximately the same threshold to two very different political-economic systems.
What would you add, remove, merge or reclassify?
(Thanks to u/RedMarsRepublic for pointing out the U.S. overseas interventions and wars I originally missed — that substantially changed the comparison.)
I’m interested in whether there is a structural explanation for this historical pattern.
Many communist dictatorships combined one-party political monopoly with state control over major economic resources, workplaces, unions and social organisations. Many capitalist dictatorships suppressed political competition while leaving more economic and social activity outside direct state control.
Linz distinguishes authoritarian regimes, which can tolerate limited pluralism, from totalitarian regimes seeking much deeper control over society (Linz, 2000). Kornai argues that classical communist systems linked one-party rule with bureaucratic control of the economy (Kornai, 1992).
So could ownership structure be part of the explanation?
When political power and most economic resources are concentrated in the same party-state, does dictatorship become more likely to expand toward totalitarian control?
Or is Leninist party organisation the more important variable?
References
Kornai, J. (1992). The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism. Princeton University Press.
Linz, J. J. (2000). Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes. Lynne Rienner.
Many communist dictatorships combined political monopoly with control over major property, workplaces, unions and social organisations. Many capitalist dictatorships suppressed political competition while leaving more economic and social life outside direct state control.
Linz distinguished authoritarian regimes, which tolerate limited pluralism, from totalitarian regimes seeking much deeper control over society (Linz, 2000). Kornai similarly argued that classical communist systems fused one-party rule with bureaucratic control of the economy (Kornai, 1992).
So could ownership structure be part of the explanation? If political power and most economic resources are concentrated in the same party-state, does dictatorship become more likely to expand into totalitarianism?
Nazi Germany is an important exception, but arguably on another axis: its totalitarianism was driven heavily by radical nationalism, racial ideology and the attempt to reorganise society around an ethnonational project.
These dimensions can also overlap. A communist regime can develop extreme nationalist or ethnically exclusionary characteristics as well — the Khmer Rouge is an especially brutal example.
So perhaps there are at least two separate routes toward totalitarianism:
economic-political concentration, and radical nationalist mobilisation.
How important is each?
References
Kornai, J. (1992). The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism. Princeton University Press.
Linz, J. J. (2000). Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes. Lynne Rienner.
​
Suppose AI and automation eventually allow society to produce the same amount of goods and services with far fewer hours of human labour.
What should happen to the gains?
Should working hours fall?
Should everyone receive some form of basic income?
Could consumers receive a share of company returns — a kind of consumer ownership based on rights to income rather than control of the company?
Should highly profitable tech and platform companies pay more tax, especially when much of their value comes from data, networks and automation?
Or is there a better way to distribute the gains from automation?
I’m curious what people here would design if the amount of necessary human labour really started falling substantially.
I’ve increasingly started to think that one of the biggest unresolved questions in socialism is not simply who owns the means of production, but what restrains political power during and after socialist transformation.
A society can nationalise industries, abolish private capital, call itself socialist, and even write extensive rights into its constitution. None of that guarantees socialism if the ruling party itself stands above the law.
The historical split within socialism seems increasingly important to me. Bernstein treated democracy as intrinsic to socialism. Rosa Luxemburg warned that suppressing elections, press freedom and open political struggle would eventually leave bureaucracy as the only active force in public life. Later Eurocommunists explicitly tried to reconcile socialist transformation with constitutional legality and political pluralism.
Much of the Soviet-derived tradition developed in the opposite direction: party supremacy, democratic centralism and legal instrumentalism allowed law to become an instrument of political objectives instead of an independent restraint on power.
And history seems to have given us a fairly brutal warning about where that can lead.
Some states still describe themselves as socialist today while operating under authoritarian or totalitarian political systems. That raises an uncomfortable question: if a political system suppresses genuine political accountability, places the ruling party above effective legal constraint, and prevents society from correcting the state, how much does the socialist label actually tell us?
I increasingly think the institutional lesson of twentieth-century socialism is quite simple:
Socialism cannot place itself above the rule of law and remain emancipatory.
Economic transformation may require powerful public institutions. The greater that power becomes, the stronger the legal and democratic restraints on it must become as well.
This also makes me wonder whether we have historically focused too narrowly on one question:
Who owns the means of production?
That question matters enormously. But there is another question that may be just as important:
Who restrains those who exercise power in the name of society?
If ownership is socialised while political power becomes monopolised, socialism can end up replacing one form of domination with another.
So perhaps socialism or communism should be understood partly as an ideological and economic project, while its survival depends on constitutional institutions: rule of law, genuine political accountability, independent legal constraints, freedom of expression, institutional checks, and mechanisms that allow the state itself to be challenged and corrected.
This also makes me wonder: if a second socialist or communist movement ever becomes necessary, should it still rely on secret societies, underground organisations, or highly closed revolutionary parties?
I don’t think it should.
The Soviet and CCP experience suggests that organisations built around secrecy, rigid hierarchy and absolute loyalty can carry those habits into the state after taking power.
If there is ever a second movement, I think it should grow through open politics, public debate, legal organisation, democracy and the rule of law from the beginning.
Otherwise, we risk repeating the same institutional mistakes under a new name.
So I’m curious what people here think:
Can socialism remain genuinely socialist without constitutional democracy, rule of law, independent legal constraints and real political accountability?
Or should those institutions themselves be considered part of what socialism must mean?
And looking back at the twentieth century, was the central failure of Soviet-style socialism primarily economic — or was it also a constitutional failure of power?
A new possibility is growing within the machines, algorithms, energy systems and knowledge created by humanity. It has not yet become a complete society. It does not even have a definite date. Yet it has already begun to unsettle a fact that has ruled human beings for thousands of years: people must exchange large amounts of labour for survival.
For thousands of years, this seemed to be the human condition. People had to cultivate the land to obtain food. They had to labour to obtain shelter. They had to submit to some form of power — an employer, a landlord, a lord, the state, or the market — in order to gain the resources needed to sustain life. Slavery changed this relationship. Feudalism changed it. Capitalism changed it again. Today, artificial intelligence, robotics, automated production, modern energy systems and the accumulated knowledge of society are, for the first time, pushing this question towards a new boundary: production itself increasingly needs fewer human beings.
A question deeper than unemployment therefore emerges. If the amount of human labour required to sustain society keeps declining, why should “employment for everyone” remain an eternal goal of human society? If machines can replace part of necessary labour, to whom does the productivity created by those machines belong? If automation can create an abundance unimaginable to previous generations, should that abundance ultimately become the limitless accumulation of capital, or the free time of human beings?
More than a century ago, Marx and Engels left us a phrase for this question: “from the kingdom of necessity toward the kingdom of freedom.”
They lived in a world of steam engines, railways and early industrial capitalism. They never saw artificial intelligence. They never saw a robotic society. They never saw the modern welfare state. They never saw modern economics, comparative politics, constitutional theory, behavioural science, complex-systems science or computational simulation. Nor did they have the chance to witness everything that came afterwards. We have.
We have seen socialist and labour movements bring the eight-hour day, public education, social security, labour protections and welfare politics into modern civilisation. We have also seen communist totalitarianism. We have seen party and state fused into one. We have seen political police. We have seen purges. We have seen personality cults. We have seen an organisation raise one person higher and higher, cadres compete to prove their loyalty, theory gradually become scripture, the leader gradually become truth, and eventually people willing to sacrifice freedom, personality and even life for one person’s name.
We inherit more than a century of ideals. We also inherit more than a century of evidence. Success is knowledge. Failure is knowledge too. The lessons written in blood are knowledge above all.
Marx and Engels had the right to construct the future they imagined using the knowledge available in the nineteenth century. We certainly have the right to use everything learned in the twenty-first century to reconstruct the human society of decades from now, and even of a more distant future.
We must study labour again. Study ownership again. Study markets again. Study money again. Study the state again. Study democracy again. Study communism again.
We must ask: when humanity becomes capable, for the first time, of escaping necessary labour on a large scale, what should the kingdom of freedom actually look like?
Socialism has historically been deeply work-centred: workers, labour, production, employment, and control of the means of production.
But what happens if AI and automation eventually make a large share of human labour economically unnecessary?
Should a socialist society still aim for full employment?
Or should its goal shift toward guaranteeing income, access to abundance, and freedom from compulsory work?
If fewer people are actually needed to produce the goods and services society requires, creating jobs simply to keep everyone employed may become increasingly artificial.
That raises a deeper question:
Is socialism ultimately about liberating labour, or about liberating human beings from dependence on compulsory labour?
If work is no longer necessary for survival, then what should become the organising principle of a socialist economy?
Universal income? Social ownership of automated production? Consumer ownership? Socialisation of economic rents? Some combination of these?
I’m curious how different socialist traditions would answer this.
If work stops being necessary for survival, what should replace work as the organising principle of socialism?
My own direction is currently built around three economic institutions: Universal Basic Income, socialisation of economic rents, and consumer ownership.
UBI would reduce dependence on wage employment. Socialising economic rents would return monopoly, land, financial and platform rents to society. Consumer ownership would broaden access to the returns generated by increasingly automated productive systems.
The broader goal is to use rising productivity to reduce socially necessary human labour while expanding material security and widely distributed ownership.
AI and automation raise a fundamental economic question:
What happens when socially necessary human labour becomes dramatically smaller?
People will continue to create, care, research, repair, organise and build. Human activity can remain rich and diverse even as the amount of labour required to sustain material production declines.
As productivity rises, full employment may gradually lose its role as the central economic objective. A more important question then emerges:
Who receives the gains from automation?
I think three economic policies are especially important.
As necessary human labour declines, material survival can gradually become independent of wage employment.
UBI gives everyone a secure material foundation and allows technological progress to translate into greater freedom over how people use their time.
Land rents, monopoly rents, financial rents, platform rents and other economic rents should increasingly return to society.
Competitive profits, entrepreneurship and incentives for innovation can continue to support economic dynamism.
The socialisation of economic rents spreads gains generated by scarcity, monopoly power and control over strategic assets, while reducing the concentration of economic power.
Automation may gradually reduce the share of the population participating in production primarily as workers. Ownership institutions can evolve alongside this transformation.
Consumers sustain productive systems through continuing demand. Consumer ownership allows people to share directly in the productive wealth and returns generated by the systems their consumption supports.
These three policies form complementary parts of a broader transition.
UBI reduces dependence on wage employment.
Socialisation of economic rents distributes socially generated scarcity rents more broadly.
Consumer ownership expands access to productive wealth and the returns from automation.
Together, they can support a gradual transition beyond capitalism: away from an economy centred on wage dependence and concentrated capital ownership, toward one with greater material security, broader ownership and declining socially necessary labour.
Markets can continue to coordinate exchange, demand and innovation. Private firms and entrepreneurs can continue to contribute to production and experimentation. Ownership structures and the distribution of economic power can simultaneously evolve in a post-capitalist direction.
If AI transforms the productive forces, our economic institutions can evolve with them:
higher productivity, less socially necessary human labour, broader ownership of productive wealth, and greater material freedom.
Marxism has always treated labour as central to capitalism: workers sell labour-power, capital owns the means of production, and class conflict develops around this relationship.
But AI and automation raise a difficult question.
What happens if a future economy can produce most necessary goods and services with far less human labour?
If society no longer needs everyone to work full-time, should a communist transition still treat full employment as a goal?
Or should the goal become something different: reducing necessary labour as much as possible while guaranteeing everyone access to the material abundance produced by increasingly automated systems?
This also changes the ownership question.
If automated firms generate enormous output with relatively little human labour, perhaps the central issue is no longer only who receives wages. It becomes:
Who owns automated productive capital?
Who receives the surplus generated by it?
Should economic rents be socialised?
Could some private firms remain while society captures rents and guarantees a universal material floor?
Could consumers, communities, workers, or public institutions hold different forms of ownership simultaneously?
At what point does “from each according to ability, to each according to need” become materially feasible rather than merely aspirational?
There is also a deeper philosophical question.
Is communism fundamentally about giving labour political power, or about eventually freeing human beings from compulsory labour itself?
If automation drastically reduces socially necessary labour time, continuing to organise society around the expectation that everyone must have a job might reproduce one of capitalism’s assumptions rather than transcend it.
I’m interested in how Marxists, Marxist-Leninists, council communists, autonomists, and other communist traditions would approach this.
If human labour becomes progressively less necessary for production, what should replace employment as the main mechanism connecting people to income, consumption, and social participation?
My own direction is currently built around three economic institutions: Universal Basic Income, socialisation of economic rents, and consumer ownership.
UBI would reduce dependence on wage employment. Socialising economic rents would return monopoly, land, financial and platform rents to society. Consumer ownership would broaden access to the returns generated by increasingly automated productive systems.
The broader goal is to use rising productivity to reduce socially necessary human labour while expanding material security and widely distributed ownership.