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Lumifer comments on Estimate the Cost of Immortality - Less Wrong Discussion
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First, let me point out that there is a terminological mess here. I was careful to specify that I was talking in Marxist terms which do not match terms used in contemporary Western political discourse. Note, by the way, that we are not talking about theories (one of which is named "communism"), but about forms of society.
Marxists call "communism" a particular form of future society which has never (yet) been realized. It's an aspirational form, the carrot in front of the donkey, the light at the end of the tunnel, the heaven in which the worthy will find themselves. The realized, intermediate form is called "socialism". The USSR was a socialist country.
In Western political talk, "communism" and "communist" refers to real societies like Soviet Russia and Communist (!) China, while "socialism" means a capitalist state with a generous welfare system, e.g. Sweden.
In any case, a Google search will give you lots of Marxist definitions of communism. Let me quote you Wikipedia to start:
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It wasn't. The Russians, for example, who abolished private property, etc. did not call their society "communist". They called it "socialist" and said that they are only building communism.
Well, as I say, I am not a Marx expert, so let me stipulate that you're completely and perfectly correct in what you say about Marx's use of the word "communism". Then ... well, so what?
Looking back at the context in which the perfect-abundance-or-not question arose, it looks to me as if it was right when you said this:
But up to that point, no one had been talking specifically about a Marxian end-stage perfected communist paradise. Xyrik's question was broader: what if there were no private property and everyone just did whatever was needed? Now, for sure, one implausible imaginary future in which that's the case is Marx's end-stage perfected communist paradise, but there was nothing in what Xyrik wrote to imply that particular implausible imaginary future.
And you brought in "the whole point of the communist paradise" in order to foist upon Xyrik an idea not -- so far as I can see -- either explicit or implicit in the original question, namely that our hypothetical communards would be engaged only in "meaningful conscious-expanding profound activities" to the exclusion of mundanities like growing food. I don't really see how you get there even with the assumption that Xyrik is talking about Marx's specific utopia, but without that assumption I think it's hopeless.
So, granting you literally everything you say about Marx and Marxism here, I don't see that it actually gets you near the conclusion you were trying to support.