dragonfucker

Indigenous societies had complex networks of management and labour specialisation. Robust power grids and machinery don't change whether something is communism or not.

and more are entirely different from small communes

You're saying they're different because they're different. This argument is going around in circles just like your logic.

But all your arguments are based on technology and scale differences. You haven't named any differences based on principles of economic organisation. Drag says technology and scale aren't meaningful differences in this context.

If you exclude Turtle Island and Australia from the dataset, the continents with the best record of recent communism, then there's no point in this conversation, because drag is talking about continents with recent communism and a strong historical record.

You're making a circular argument. You're saying the distinction between "primitive communism" (can we avoid using 200 year old terms that belittle indigenous people?) and industrialised communism is meaningful, BECAUSE tribes aren't "primitive" anymore. That's an argument going in circles.

Drag is arguing at the level of meaning: drag says you can draw the distinction, but your reasons for doing so are bad and you shouldn't. The reliability of a measure is irrelevant if its construct validity is in question.

Tribes are perfectly capable of running industrial manufacturing supply lines in terms of administrative ability. In Australia, tribes are refuelling helicopters. They're doing it under capitalism, because white people suck, but they could just as easily do it under communism if the white people had left well enough alone and not stolen the land and enslaved generations.

The only difference you're talking about is quantity, not quality. Drag feels you're othering them on a weak basis. Industrialised communists have ten times as much in common with tribal communists as with industrialised capitalists, and what differences do exist, are our lack of knowledge of the land and respect for the traditional ways. We have more to learn from them than we have to teach them. You're dismissing them unfairly.

It's important to draw a line between Primitive Communism and Communism as a post-Socialist society. Primitive Communism is founded upon small, isolated communities, while Marx's Communism is one of large industry run along a common plan, democratically, to suit the needs of all.

That feels like some noble savage stuff. Societies aren't different because they have different technology with the same economic system. It feels like you're saying indigenous societies wouldn't have been able to industrialise without changing their political system radically.

But indigenous societies made conscious political choices about how to structure society, and drag believes they had the political structure required to adapt to industrialisation without losing their political system.

Drag doesn't buy the distinction you're making between indigenous communism and industrialised communism. Drag doesn't think the difference is relevant to whether something is communism, and the only way drag could see it being relevant is through the noble savage trope.