Would the “society based on force” in play here be that I am being forced to work to afford and enjoy these necessities?
Kinda. You’re buying it in the first place because you don’t have a property to produce it yourself, which is also the reason we work, as there is no other way of getting what we need to survive. That’s also why you pay rent.
Think of this: who owns the food before you buy it, or who are you buying it from? How is it produced? Why can’t you just take it, and what happens if you do?
My point is: violence is inherent to property. Property can’t exist without violence or the threat of it.
And that the ideal society would be that I shouldn’t have to work to have those?
In Marxist communism, the question of what is a perfect society doesn’t matter, is counterproductive and should be repelled. The point is not to design a perfect society, but to develop the progressive forces of capitalism (the tools which develop scientific advancements, education, production capacity…) and get over the regressive forces (current relations of property, mostly). Communism will develop from capitalism, not made of thin air by a fairy. According to Marx himself, the initial stages of communism will be hardly distinguishable from capitalism, save for the property relations. Which brings us to:
I get that this is probably moving towards the more well known stance of “the workers should own the means of production”. Is that the case?
You should know what that means beyond the slogan:
You see, european and american capitalism started as progressive force, in the sense that it brought about a material development never before experienced in history. Now, we have the potential to do much much more than we currently are, but the way the system works gets in the way and keeps us from doing better. Just look at cars and climate change - why aren’t we ditching fossil fuels faster, if it’s for the surviving of the human race?
In Marx’s analysis, in the beginning stages of a form of society, their relations of property, specially the property of the means of production (land, tools, education), act as a progressive force, developing the productive forces (workers and their abilities, mostly). With time, these productive forces become too developed, and what once was a rocket launching society forward now becomes a cage that won’t let it go any further. These overdeveloped productive forces then dissolve the previous relations of property and a new relation of property arises, one that is based on that overdevelopment. Then rinse and repeat.
Science and productivity are now too developed for capitalism, which now ceases to be a factor of progress and becomes an impediment for further development. The natural next step of a society to progress is to abandon the current relations (who owns the land, tools, machines etc) and organize new ones based on the fact that workers are much more educated and we can now produce absurd quantities of useful products if we ditch the production of useless ones for financial market reasons (do you know the amount of energy humanity wastes mining bitcoin? 😬).
There’s also the fact that the planet is dying and big companies won’t let us do anything about it or else they’ll lose profits, so that is another situation in which capitalism has become a cage and not the rocket it once was.
I recommend reading Critique of the Gotha Programme, which consists of Marx dunking on a communist party of his time. He exposes all these ideas much more eloquently than I can.
Kinda. You’re buying it in the first place because you don’t have a property to produce it yourself, which is also the reason we work, as there is no other way of getting what we need to survive. That’s also why you pay rent.
Think of this: who owns the food before you buy it, or who are you buying it from? How is it produced? Why can’t you just take it, and what happens if you do?
My point is: violence is inherent to property. Property can’t exist without violence or the threat of it.
In Marxist communism, the question of what is a perfect society doesn’t matter, is counterproductive and should be repelled. The point is not to design a perfect society, but to develop the progressive forces of capitalism (the tools which develop scientific advancements, education, production capacity…) and get over the regressive forces (current relations of property, mostly). Communism will develop from capitalism, not made of thin air by a fairy. According to Marx himself, the initial stages of communism will be hardly distinguishable from capitalism, save for the property relations. Which brings us to:
You should know what that means beyond the slogan:
You see, european and american capitalism started as progressive force, in the sense that it brought about a material development never before experienced in history. Now, we have the potential to do much much more than we currently are, but the way the system works gets in the way and keeps us from doing better. Just look at cars and climate change - why aren’t we ditching fossil fuels faster, if it’s for the surviving of the human race?
In Marx’s analysis, in the beginning stages of a form of society, their relations of property, specially the property of the means of production (land, tools, education), act as a progressive force, developing the productive forces (workers and their abilities, mostly). With time, these productive forces become too developed, and what once was a rocket launching society forward now becomes a cage that won’t let it go any further. These overdeveloped productive forces then dissolve the previous relations of property and a new relation of property arises, one that is based on that overdevelopment. Then rinse and repeat.
Science and productivity are now too developed for capitalism, which now ceases to be a factor of progress and becomes an impediment for further development. The natural next step of a society to progress is to abandon the current relations (who owns the land, tools, machines etc) and organize new ones based on the fact that workers are much more educated and we can now produce absurd quantities of useful products if we ditch the production of useless ones for financial market reasons (do you know the amount of energy humanity wastes mining bitcoin? 😬).
There’s also the fact that the planet is dying and big companies won’t let us do anything about it or else they’ll lose profits, so that is another situation in which capitalism has become a cage and not the rocket it once was.
I recommend reading Critique of the Gotha Programme, which consists of Marx dunking on a communist party of his time. He exposes all these ideas much more eloquently than I can.