wat0n wrote:@Wellsy thanks for your response, but your distinction is fairly arbitrary. Why is an investment in human capital all that different from investment in physical capital? In both cases, you are seeking to maximize your return - regardless of whether you use a Marxian definition of profit or not.
I think the idea of exploitation might have made sense back in Marx's time, since even illiterate people could work in a factory because their work wasn't all that different from plowing the land as far as educational requirements were concerned: Workers were relatively easy to interchange and there were many poor peasants that were becoming industrial workers. However, nowadays there is a much stronger case for the existence of labor augmenting through human capital, since your skills may actually determine what kind of machinery you can use and how well you use it. And as far as human relations are concerned, I also think the gig economy undermines that idea as well since there is an ever growing number of industry where freelancing is becoming the norm.
As for the difference in programming languages, actually the language you use can affect your productivity in at least 3 ways:
1) Some languages are actually faster than others, so the same task could be performed more quickly depending on the language you use
2) Some languages are clearer to read, and debug, than others so debugging could be done more quickly in some languages than in others
3) Some languages allow you to do more things than others
There are also some trade-offs between these things, e.g. an assembly language (which is pretty much the fastest thing you can use) can be both hard to read and only allow you to use them on very specific hardware.
As far as government is concerned, I would say governments do generate value by providing some services that are necessary to have even a minimally functioning society. Although the Marxian paradigm also seems to have trouble with explaining the production of services too - even though nowadays around 2/3 of the labor force works in trade and services.
At last, I'm also thinking about a second scenario regarding exploitation: Let's say there is a cooperative where all workers are paid the same, but not all workers contribute equally into production (there could be differences in productivity owing to talent or levels of human capital, particularly once allowing for labor augmenting). Are less productive workers exploiting the more productive ones?
The problem as I see it as you're trying to frame economic terms as similarly applicable in the same way to a worker as it is to a capitalist which I speculate is a tendency in some economics which doesn't take the class distinction to be meaningful and largely ignores essential differences between the two in the notion that it is approaching economics in a formalized and neutral technical way.
FOr example, your talk of human capital and it is dubious if even such a thing as anything more than a metaphor and doesn't actually represent capital as Marx conceives it which I think is relevant in the distinction that you as a worker most certainly are not investing money as capital because it is not to make a profit but a wage and these are qualitatively different things. You are enhancing you possible labour-power, how much which you can earn, this is not capital however and the tendency to ignore distinctions of the sort is problematic. It's not arbitrary but identifying essential differences, it is only arbitrary once one ignores the distinctions to solely emphasize the manner in which they become vaguely analogous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_(economics)#:~:text=For%20Marx%2C%20capital%20only%20exists,the%20economic%20system%20of%20capitalism.In Marxian economics,[2] capital is money used to buy something only in order to sell it again to realize a profit. For Marx, capital only exists within the process of the economic circuit (represented by M-C-M')—it is wealth that grows out of the process of circulation itself, and for Marx it formed the basis of the economic system of capitalism.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/social.pdfc. Natural, human, political and social capital
I don’t like the term “political capital” and I never use it, but I think it is just a metaphor; noone seems to propose that gains in political assets is something which can be usefully
conceived as a form of capital, only that “political capital” is an accumulation of political
assets which, like capital, can be cashed in in the form of political profit. I have no problems
with this kind of metaphor. What troubles me is the industry based on the creation of
confusing oxymorons like human capital, natural capital and social capital.
Even though capital is a form of value, and as such, an abstraction from a specific form of
human relationship, it is the idea of capital that capital, like any value, can be embodied in
different forms. That is to say, capital can be a factory, a patent or copyright, a brand name,
land, stocks of a product, etc., etc., provided only that these forms have the potential to be
transformed into money and enter the process of circulation and return with a profit. Once we
admit of the idea that capital can have different forms, the way is open, and quite rightly
open, to the consideration of capital of different types according to the momentary form in
which it waits for the opportunity to convert itself to money and return again to the same
form in expanded magnitude. Thus we have finance capital, manufacturing, the service
industry, landed property, the share market and so on. These different forms of capital
correspond to different sections of the capitalist class, once we abstract from their
overlappings and interconnections. Capital itself, by its nature, is capable of freely
transforming itself into and out of any of its “forms,” as the power relations between different
sections of the bourgeoisie ebb and flow in accord with the changing patterns of the
organisation of labour.
In so far as adjectives are applied to capital to designate in this way forms of capital,
corresponding to sections of the bourgeoisie and productive activity subsumed under capital,
then we can have no argument.
...
Human Capital
Human capital is another fad term which, while describing human beings as a form of money,
aims to encourage companies to enhance the quality of their labour force and governments to
take action to improve the quality of the available pool of labour. Slave-owners doubtless
well understood that their slaves were human capital and in their case the observation would
have been true, since slaves were owned as private property, used in the expansion of capital
and bought and sold on the market. What precise benefit is supposed to follow from
encouraging modern capitalists to adopt this attitude escapes me.
But although there is such a thing which we could legitimately call “human capital” it is not
this which is usually referred to as “human capital.” When directed at employers, “human
capital” is taken to mean the skills and knowledge of their employees. But this is not capital;
this is the property of the employees. To suggest that it is capital, and that employees are not
entitled to take it with them when they go, and offer it for hire to another capitalist is both
deceptive in relation to the employer and naïve in relation to the employees. The employer
has use of the human energies belonging to the employee for the term of the wage contract in
the same way that the employer has use of land belonging to the landlord for the period of the
lease, but the employer does not own the land, it is not part of their capital. The skills and
knowledge of employees is part of labour-power.
Now what is part of capital are the various relationships within a firm which are not portable
for the employees individually when they leave. The most significant of this human capital is
the specific weight of skill, knowledge, reputation and loyalty which adheres to a company
and survives the departure of any and even all of their employees. This is an asset, owned by
capital, generally-speaking associated if tenuously with their brand name, and which can be
bought and sold. But although attached to a brand name it resides only in the mass of
employees, that is, it belongs to the subject, the company.
Even in this usage the term remains a semantic paradox, but if we allow latitude for the idea
of a type of capital referring to the form in which capital is temporarily invested which is
capable of being put back into circulation, in contrast to finance capital, industrial capital and
so on, then this is a legitimate usage of the term “human capital.”
Now, when the term is used in addressing governments, this becomes an absurdity.
Improving the health and education of the residents of a locale is supposed to increase the
“human capital” of the locale. It does increase the quantity of labour-power available for sale,
but labour-power is a different kind of commodity. Why is it necessary to describe saleable
skills as “capital” when they are the property of a person whose means of production is the
private property of some company? Like nature, a skilled, loyal and healthy workforce may be a precondition for the accumulation of capital, but it is not capital. Many other conditions
are necessary for the accumulation of capital. For example, should we count as human capital
the low standard of living of a neighbourhood which will provide employees at low wages,
the presence of gangs of racist thugs that can be used to intimidate workers, perhaps the
defeat of a recent strike creates “human capital” by creating a tendency towards compliance
in the labour force? Well obviously yes; these are human capital in exactly the same way as
trade qualifications and supportive families, in fact ignorance may be a human trait more
conducive to the accumulation of capital than trade skills.
If people want to say to the government: “As well as providing good infrastructure, tax-cuts,
anti-union laws, and lucrative government contracts, you ought to be providing a compliant
and skilled workforce for business to employ,” then say so.
One of the trends in the “knowledge management” industry, an off-shoot of the “human
capital” industry, actually proposes that the appropriate metaphor for “knowledge
management” is mining, that is, that employees should be treated like dirt. [source] One of
the things that all these trends have in common is that they address themselves to companies
and governments, that is, people dedicated to serving capital, and say “Look, this is a form of
capital, too; you should care about this!” while people know perfectly well that they are
human beings not capital, are perfectly sick of being treated as commodities by their bosses,
and do not need to have their bosses given any encouragement in that regard. And yet these
trends all think that they are doing something very progressive. But Dracula is already in
charge of the blood bank and telling Dracula that the air and water and human life are also
forms of blood does not help.
In fact profit is clearly distinguished in the costs of production as the capitalist makes an investment in not only the tools and means of production, but in wages for employees. The difference between the input and output within a cycle of production expressing the profit or perhaps the loss.
https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/r/a.htm#rate-profitSurplus Value and Profit
If a certain quantity of constant and variable capital are invested in a productive process, then at the end of a cycle of reproduction these values will have renewed themselves, but in addition, if the labour power of the employees has used to at least the social average of usefulness, there will a surplus-value.
Marx expresses this symbolically: c + v -> c + v + s, where c is the constant capital, v the variable capital (wages) and s is the surplus value, and the value of every product can be seen as composed of these parts.
On the basis of this conception, the rate of profit for the individual capitalist who got into the game of profiteering by investing (c + v) at the beginning of the cycle of reproduction, makes a ‘profit’ of s and therefore the rate of profit is s/(c + v). The individual capitalist is unlikely to see this surplus value in its entirety however, for the landlord, the state, the bank and everyone else will all demand a cut of this surplus: the productive worker must maintain not only “their own” capitalist, but all manner of hangers-on as well.
This rate of profit, s/(c + v), which is the ratio which affects the individual unit of capital, is different from the rate of surplus value, s/v.
The rate of surplus value expresses the proportion of unpaid labour that workers donate to the capitalist (s) over to the necessary labour time, v, that the workers spend reproducing their own needs, and is paid as wages, or variable capital.
Unless you want to somehow say that wages are profit, I think you're muddying the waters with the terms as if they're synonymous.
I don't think Marx's ideas have lost their relevance at all, I don't agree with the sentiment that things have become obsolete in part because he identified essential aspects of Capital and its relations and we still live in a global capitalist economy than not. There are additions and elaborations that have had to be made in the same vein as Marx's work, but these are compliments rather than a point of obsoletion.
While freelancing might be increasing, it's not something that has displaced the dominant mode of production and everything which flows from it. They still operate within a capitalist economy
https://books.google.com/books?id=tDsui1AA7mIC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA180&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=falseOne of the greatest misconceptions about capitalism is the notion that these tendencies flow from the motivations of a class of private owners of the means of production. Yet the reality is quite different: the drive to accumulate by means of exploitation is inherent in the generalization of the commodity form. An economy based on that form, in which economic reproduction occurs by means of exchange according to market criteria (socially necessary labor-time), will inevitably produce all of its basic relations, irrespective of the precise form of ownership.
Basically, regardless of ownership, while capital dominates the mode of production, even if all workers are owners in some sort of co-opt, they're still subject to the competitiveness of the market, the law of value still forces workers to press efficiency in decreasing the SNLT, increase reinvestment of capital, decrease their own wages. The idea being that it's not the case that Marx is singling out capitalist's as the origins of problems of the system, rather they come to personifiy tendencies inherent within it which no individual capitalists controls themselves but merely responds to. So even without the capitalists', if you haven't changed the manner of production, people will still be alienated and this is a big point in Marx's criticism, his critique isn't simply give workers their full labor, his point is about the harm it has upon humanity's being, it is actually a lot radical than a Ricardian Socialist want of full labor payment under the emotion that the equality of exchange is contradicted where as Marx shows that its maintained but labour isn't paid for, labour power is.
http://libcom.org/files/marx,%20marginalism%20and%20modern%20sociology%20-%20clarke.pdfFor Marx capitalism creates the means and possibility of liberating humanity
from the rule of natural necessity, while making humanity the slave to a social
necessity imposed through the alienated form of the rule of the commodity.
...
The
attraction of the labour theory of value for Marx was not that it ‘proved’ that the
labourer was exploited under capitalism, which it did not and could not do, but
that it connected labour with its alienated forms.
...
Far from adopting the labour theory of value to ‘prove’ the exploitation of the working class, Marx’s critique of Ricardo undermines any such proof, both philosophically, in undermining the liberal theory of property which sees labour as the basis of proprietorial rights, and theoretically, in removing the immediate connection between the expenditure of individual labour and the value of the commodity, so that the relationship between ‘effort’ and ‘reward’ can only be constituted socially. Thus Marx was harshly critical of ‘Ricardian socialism’ which proclaimed labour’s entitlement to its product, arguing that such a ‘right’ was only a bourgeois right, expressing bourgeois property relations.4 For Marx what was at issue was not ethical proofs of exploitation, whose existence requires no such proof since it is manifested daily in the contradiction between the growing wealth created by social labour and the relative impoverishment of the working population, but ‘to prove concretely how in present capitalist society the material, etc., conditions have at last been created which enable and compel the workers to lift this social curse’ (Marx, SW, p. 317).
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/10867/1/VWills_ETD_2011.pdfMan's loss of control over the product of his work Marx now calls exploitation; a term which does not mean that Marx thinks the capitalist is getting too much—more than is 'reasonable', but which underlines his insistence that what belongs to one man, or to men in general, is being appropriated by others, or by some men in particular. Exploitation is made possible by the creation of surplus value; but its basic ground for Marx remains the alienation of man from his labour power, the fact that man's activity becomes a commodity. I
Thought this might interest you as Marx isn't calling for a kind of equality, he wants a change in production. His criticism undermines this because he maintains that the equality of exchange is not violated in the exploitation of labor by paying only for labour power.
Man is no more liberated as long as his labor is still expressed in a commodity form, as he is still subject to the alienating forces of the market.
Thank you for sharing the details on the productivity implications of types of programming languages.
I did have the impression that some were limited in what they were useful or worked best in doing and other implications that could make it that no particular language reigns supreme in all cases perhaps but a preferce for what works best for the job's requirements.
But does the government make a profit off of their worker's, do they invest capital into people in that cyclical relation of costs of production, and then come out with a surplus. They may well do such a thing, I don't see why a government couldn't do so, but then they would act just as the capitalist does.
However, the government tends to step in where private enterprise cannot yet yield a profit. And while it might help maintain or even create the preconditions for the accumulation of capital, such preconditions such as enhancing workers education nd thus labour power/wages, doesn't constitute it as capital. I mean, raising children is a necessary task that takes a lot of work and is a precondition to the functioning of society and the accumulation of capital, but such work although useful doesn't yield a profit. But where the aim is the making of something useful, it need not yield a profit.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/help/value.htmIn Chapter One of Capital, Marx points out that (exchange-)value has no connection with the physical properties of a commodity, and value is "the very opposite of the coarse materiality of their substance". The most important commodity of all, labour-power, is a "service" not a good. In the Grundrisse, Marx deals with a wood-cutter, a porter and a wandering tailor, all of whom are stated not to create value, because, as self-employed contractors, they sell not labour power but the product.
...
"On the other hand, however, our notion of productive labour becomes narrowed. Capitalist production is not merely the production of commodities, it is essentially the production of surplus value. The labourer produces, not for themself, but for capital. It no longer suffices, therefore, that they should simply produce. They must produce surplus-value.
"That labourer alone is productive, who produces surplus-value for the capitalist, and thus works for the self-expansion of capital. If we may take an example from outside the sphere of production of material objects, a schoolteacher is a productive labourer, when, in addition to belabouring the heads of their scholars, they work like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out their capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, does not alter the relation. Hence the notion of a productive labourer implies not merely a relation between work and useful effect, between labourer and product of labour, but also a specific, social relation of production, a relation that has sprung up historically and stamps the labourer as the direct means of creating surplus-value. To be a productive labourer is, therefore, not a piece of luck, but a misfortune." [Capital Volume I, Part V, emphasis added]
Thus makes it abundantly clear that it is not the material (or immaterial) form of the product, but the prodcution relations within which it is produced that invest a commodity with value.
This is part of Marx's distinction between labor and labor power, labor is universal to all of human history, but labour power is a distinct commodity under capitalist mode of production.
In a commune, it is difficult for me to see the possible distinction of a worker selling their labour-power and thus producing a profit and surplus based on it's difference with the amount of labor performed.
As such it is hard for me to even necessarily see how capitalist relations necessary exist within a commune and where there isn't such a relation of production the idea of exploitation as Marx denotes it under capitalism likely doesn't exist.
However, in the general meaning of the term and colloquially I would say that they are taking advantage of other peoples work i.e. exploiting the advantages or work of others.
I would like to reference a piece from James Connolly to kind of reflect on the conditions of 'wages' within a commune.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1910/lih/chap11.htmPRODUCTION
We engage that whatever talents we may individually possess, whether mental or muscular, agricultural, manufacturing, or scientific, shall be directed to the benefit of all, as well by their immediate exercise in all necessary occupations as by communicating our knowledge to each other, and particularly to the young.
That, as far as can be reduced to practice, each individual shall assist in agricultural operations, particularly in harvest, it being fully understood that no individual is to act as steward, but all are to work.
That all the youth, male or female, do engage to learn some useful trade, together with agriculture and gardening, between the ages of nine and seventeen years.
That the committee meet every evening to arrange the business for the following day.
That the hours of labour be from six in the morning till six in the evening in summer, and from daybreak till dusk in winter, with the intermission of one hour for dinner.
That each agricultural labouring man shall receive eightpence, and every woman fivepence per day for their labour (these were the ordinary wages of the country, the secretary, storekeeper, smiths, joiners, and a few others received something more; the excess being borne by the proprietor) which it is expected will be paid out at the store in provisions, or any other article the society may produce or keep there; any other articles may be purchased elsewhere.
That no member be expected to perform any service or work but such as is agreeable to his or her feelings, or they are able to perform; but if any member thinks that any other member is not usefully employing his or her time, it is his or her duty to report it to the committee, whose duty it will be to bring that member’s conduct before a general meeting, who shall have power, if necessary, to expel that useless member.
DISTRIBUTION AND DOMESTIC ECONOMY
That all the services usually performed by servants be performed by the youth of both sexes under the age of seventeen years, either by rotation or choice.
That the expenses of the children’s food, clothing, washing, lodging, and education be paid out of the common funds of the society, from the time they are weaned till they arrive at the age of seventeen, when they shall be eligible to become members.
That a charge be made for the food and clothing, &c., of those children trained by their parents, and residing in their dwelling houses.
That each person occupying a house, or cooking and consuming their victuals therein, must pay for the fuel used.
That no charge be made for fuel used in the public room.
That it shall be a special object for the sub-committee of domestic economy, or the superintendent of that department, to ascertain and put in practice the best and most economical methods of preparing and cooking the food.
That all the washing be done together in the public washhouse; the expenses of soap, labour, fuel, &c., to be equally borne by all the adult members.
That each member pay the sum of one half-penny out of every shilling received as wages to form a fund to be placed in the hands of the committee, who shall pay the wages out of this fund of any member who may fall sick or meet with an accident.
Any damage done by a member to the stock, implements, or any other property belonging to the society to be made good out of the wages of the individual, unless the damage is satisfactorily accounted for to the committee.
...
The colony did not use the ordinary currency of the country, but instead adopted a ‘Labour Note’ system of payment, all workers being paid in notes according to the number of hours worked, and being able to exchange the notes in the store for all the necessities of life. The notes were printed on stiff cardboard about the size of a visiting card, and represented the equivalent of a whole, a half, a quarter, an eighth, and a sixteenth of a day’s labour. There were also special notes printed in red ink representing respectively the labours of a day and a half, and two days. In his account of the colony published under the title of History of Ralahine, by Heywood & Sons, Manchester (a book we earnestly recommend to all our readers), Mr. Craig says: – “The labour was recorded daily on a ‘Labour Sheet’, which was exposed to view during the following week. The members could work or not at their own discretion. If no work, no record, and, therefore, no pay. Practically the arrangement was of great use. There were no idlers”. Further on he comments: –
The advantages of the labour notes were soon evident in the saving of members. They had no anxiety as to employment, wages, or the price of provisions. Each could partake of as much vegetable food as he or she could desire. The expenses of the children from infancy, for food or education, were provided for out of the common fund.
Now what I wonder here with the labour note is whether it is the equivalent to ones full hours of labor and is not conditioned by the SNLT of a market.
To help explain...
https://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2014/07/02/indirectly-social-labor/Marx lays out, briefly, a way to make labor directly social, breaking with capitalist value production, in his Critique of the Gotha program. In Marx’s concept of directly social labor he advocates a system which breaks with the disciplining of production by socially necessary labor time. Producers in this post-capitalist society will not be compensated according to the social average but instead compensated directly for the actual amount of labor time they expend in production. If I spend 2 hours making a widget I get a labor-certificate entitling me to purchase consumption goods equal to two hours of labor. If you spend 3 hours making the same widget you get a certificate entitling you to 3 hours of consumption goods. Regardless of productivity our labors are directly social because they are compensated in full, considered part of the total labor of society, no matter what.11
Careful readers may ask how such a society would determine the labor-content of consumption goods (the ‘prices’ at which workers ‘buy’ them with their labor-certificates) in the absence of socially necessary labor time. This calculation would be based on the average social labor-time that it took to make a commodity. The calculation could be done simply by adding up all of the concrete labor times that go into making widgets and dividing this by the number of widgets. Such a calculation would allow society to continue to make production plans and to ‘price’ commodities. But the compensation of laborers would not be done through such a process of averaging. So such a system would not eliminate the role of average labor time as an accounting unit. What it would eliminate is the role of average time in the compensation of workers.12
Earlier we used a similar example of a Wallmart executive finding the average cost of of producing a commodity to set the price of the commodity. This example demonstrated how this process of averaging, which determines the socially necessary labor time, erases all particularity of workers, treating individuals only as units of average labor time, as abstract labor. Here, in our example of a communist society with directly social labor, we also see an example of the ‘prices’ of goods being calculated through a similar calculation of average labor time. What is the difference between these two examples? The difference is that Wallmart pays the same price for all of the commodities it buys from suppliers and those suppliers in turn only pay workers to the extent that they can produce at the social average. Any wasted time is not compensated. This creates an incentive for speed-up, exploitation, and the domination of machines over humans in production. In our communist society workers are compensated for the actual amount of time they labor, not just the part that achieves the average. This means that their labor is directly social. The immediate practical implications of this are that there is not an incentive for speed-up and so machines do not loom over production demanding more and more life from the worker.
To execute such an organization of labor it would be necessary for production to be owned and planned by society and not by individual capitals competing in the market. A society of directly social labor would entail different property relations and a different organization of production. In such a system labor-certificates would not circulate independently as money nor would alternative monies emerge spontaneously. This elimination of money would not be the result of political fiat. It would be a result of the organization of the mode of production. Directly social labor has no need for money. Money does not have a role in measuring socially necessary labor time. There is no need for a money commodity to measure the abstract labor content of commodities. The products of labor do not function as commodities with values. Without money and commodities there is no capital.
So what happens here is that those who are better able to work or work more are properly compenstated for such, and those who work less or unable may not be paid or based on the community a fund may be raised collectively such in the case of when a tragedies befalls someone and they're unable to work.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htmIn spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor.
But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.
But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.
So there is a similar accounting of labor, but labor isn't compensated based on the social average but in full. This is seen as the first step in breaking the law of value I believe.
So it actually undoes somewhat the tendency for someone to still receive their wage while working less than others because they will not be compensated as much in this scenario, they haven't worked. Here the idea would be the capitalist wouldn't exist or survive because he can't exploit the surplus labor to profit individually, each individual must work. As such, the idea is to undo the very basis of a class distinction.
Elsewhere had a good yarn about how the Amish do not represent communism and how they in fat are increasingly being drawn into the capitalist economy because they aren't entirely self-sufficient communities but are reliant on tourism and paid work outside of their communities.
https://www.politicsforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=175024Which I think points to the difficulty in how tenable preconfigurative politics is, as it seeks to simply act as one's ideal and collapses the means into the end as opposed to delinating the means to the broader end of how to change production overall and not in one's small 'island'.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/For%20Ethical%20Politics.pdf#page90
-For Ethical Politics