how can a communal civilization become technologically advanced?

[Sharad9]

in this altruistic society, there is no concept of ownership by the individual. all resources are shared among its members, including food, tools, living space, and so on. The country is divided up into tribes, each with their own clans. These clans are run by a village chieftan and a council, who plays a role in determining how resources are meeded out. It is similar to the romanticized history of Native Americans before the Europeans arrived, where personal property did not exist as a concept.

Can a society like this become technologically advanced and still retain its communal aspects?

[Nifft]

Sure, you just need a way to reward innovation, and a value system that includes empirical evidence.

You can look at the Free Software community for a group of people doing basically what you're talking about, which is creating advanced technology without any concept of personal ownership nor of profit from (temporary) monopoly of innovation.

Rewards for innovation can be as simple as recognition, scaling up to fame & admiration for exceptional innovation -- look at the free creations in the Homebrew section of this forum, for example. That's work being done by hundreds of people, entirely for free, often for with no "profit" in mind beyond constructive feedback.

[Mechalich]

It's not really an issue of technology so much as it an issue of society. Communal civilizations do not, in humans, scale very well. Clans run by a chieftain and council who manage all resource distribution only works up to basic tribal size - a few hundred people maybe. Beyond that you're going to need a bureaucracy to manage and plan resource utilization. Likewise, you need similar societal structures if you want to conduct major public works projects (and not just vanity stuff like pyramids, but useful projects like canals or roads) or produce expert knowledge. And once you develop specialized knowledge and skills the idea of equality of property becomes untenable, because the contents of certain people's heads become more valuable than others even if there's no physical property involved.

There's also the comparative issue involved. The USSR was a theoretically communal society with advanced technology, but it had a lot of trouble with advancing technologies on its own due both to ideological problems but also to issues with resource distribution and failures of the central planners to anticipate technological trends such that resources were allocated into the wrong areas. Now, this may not matter if there are no other civilizations around, but if you're competing with non-communal societies in the developmental race, the evidence suggests you will get crushed and eventually destroyed.

[jqavins]

Can a society like this become technologically advanced and still retain its communal aspects?

Maybe, but it'll be hard. Wouldn't it be sweet to agree with Nifft and WhatThePhysics? But there are flies in the ointment. The people posting on these fora and creating free software are 1) having fun and 2) well fed, with free time on their hands thanks in part to an existing technological infrastructure.

Historically, as I understand these things, which is undoubtedly simplistic, things like art and science develop only very slowly if at all unless a society's production of food and other necessities is such that some people can spend their time not producing that stuff, and work on abstract stuff like art and science instead. And you need a goodly number of people in order to have more than a very few scholars and artists. So it's not that a highly communal society can't develop advanced technologies, it's that small societies can't do it, and large societies generally can't continue to function quite so communally.

In a technologically advanced society, producers of necessities are far more productive, so a larger portion of the population can spend a larger portion of their time doing other things. That's when you get free software.

In a fantasy setting, however, this might be altered. I see two ways, and there are probably more.

1. Either magic or the favor of the gods helps the small society to develop technology. Maybe they are given scientific knowledge and/or a religious imperative to advance knowledge and to invent. Maybe their food, fiber, and lumber crops grow unrealistically well, so that it takes far fewer people's labor to feed, clothe, and house everyone.
2. These people's nature is not like ours, so that communal living of the sort you describe does work in a larger society. I was going to write "human nature" but maybe they aren't human at all, but rather a race of elves or other fantastical people who are naturally gregarious to a degree that humans are not, at least not IRL.

[johnbragg]

It's not really an issue of technology so much as it an issue of society. Communal civilizations do not, in humans, scale very well.

OP didn't specify one way or the other. Are we talking about RW base humans, or could we be talking about a demihuman or straight nonhuman group with more cooperation and less cheating in the DNA?

Clans run by a chieftain and council who manage all resource distribution only works up to basic tribal size - a few hundred people maybe. Beyond that you're going to need a bureaucracy to manage and plan resource utilization.

Just as important, you need some sort of "legitimating ideology" that tells people why they should work hard to better the society. Historic examples are honor-based systems (your relative position in society is heavily dependent on the effort you put in, and or the results of your effort), military-rank-type systems (apprentice-journeyman-master-senior-etc).

Another thing that works is cultivating a healthy suspicion and rivalry with the outgroup next door. (Usually for solid reasons--you suspect them, they suspect you, things happen, you fight, grudges take root, boom). So you'd better Man Up/ Stiff Upper Lip / We Raised You Better or the Googlies will get us in the next war/battle/skirmish.

Likewise, you need similar societal structures if you want to conduct major public works projects (and not just vanity stuff like pyramids, but useful projects like canals or roads) or produce expert knowledge. And once you develop specialized knowledge and skills the idea of equality of property becomes untenable, because the contents of certain people's heads become more valuable than others even if there's no physical property involved.

But that doesn't have to be modelled through currency-based systems. Informal fame-and-honor systems (Linux, Linus Torvald; George Washington, who "turned down a crown" and won eternal fame for at least a couple of centuries), formal rank-and-honor system (legal degrees of Subject-Citizen-Gentleman-Knight-Lord, for example).

You could fairly easily imagine a society ruled by a Freemason-type organization, where people progress through 33 ranks based on merit ("what exactly is merit" is a question for later)

There's also the comparative issue involved. The USSR was a theoretically communal society with advanced technology, but it had a lot of trouble with advancing technologies on its own due both to ideological problems but also to issues with resource distribution and failures of the central planners to anticipate technological trends such that resources were allocated into the wrong areas. Now, this may not matter if there are no other civilizations around, but if you're competing with non-communal societies in the developmental race, the evidence suggests you will get crushed and eventually destroyed.

Communism killed about a hundred million people last century, but we're talking about a fantasy world. If you want a working communist empire in your campaign world, you could handwave away the human nature problems by using not-humans, and handwave away the economics problems identified by the Austrian economists by just flat-out ignoring it (or just saying it's "magic" which is the same thing)

Actually I just realized that my post is completely permeated with a category error.

You're asking about a communal society. I'm talking about a society of individuals, just operating primarily on a non-cash basis.

[Sharad9]

OP didn't specify one way or the other. Are we talking about RW base humans, or could we be talking about a demihuman or straight nonhuman group with more cooperation and less cheating in the DNA?



Just as important, you need some sort of "legitimating ideology" that tells people why they should work hard to better the society. Historic examples are honor-based systems (your relative position in society is heavily dependent on the effort you put in, and or the results of your effort), military-rank-type systems (apprentice-journeyman-master-senior-etc).

Another thing that works is cultivating a healthy suspicion and rivalry with the outgroup next door. (Usually for solid reasons--you suspect them, they suspect you, things happen, you fight, grudges take root, boom). So you'd better Man Up/ Stiff Upper Lip / We Raised You Better or the Googlies will get us in the next war/battle/skirmish.



But that doesn't have to be modelled through currency-based systems. Informal fame-and-honor systems (Linux, Linus Torvald; George Washington, who "turned down a crown" and won eternal fame for at least a couple of centuries), formal rank-and-honor system (legal degrees of Subject-Citizen-Gentleman-Knight-Lord, for example).

You could fairly easily imagine a society ruled by a Freemason-type organization, where people progress through 33 ranks based on merit ("what exactly is merit" is a question for later)



Communism killed about a hundred million people last century, but we're talking about a fantasy world. If you want a working communist empire in your campaign world, you could handwave away the human nature problems by using not-humans, and handwave away the economics problems identified by the Austrian economists by just flat-out ignoring it (or just saying it's "magic" which is the same thing)

Actually I just realized that my post is completely permeated with a category error.

You're asking about a communal society. I'm talking about a society of individuals, just operating primarily on a non-cash basis.

how could a society run by a mason-like organization work?

[johnbragg]

how could a society run by a mason-like organization work?

You have 7 or 13 or 33 ranks or gradations. You get promoted based on (varies from society to society). That part is crucial--the promotion process has to reflect what it's supposed to reflect, not just social connections/nepotism/bootlicking.

The selection process could be oligarchic (Everyone starts at Rank 1, Rank 2s are selected by the existing body of Rank 2s, or the existing body of Rank 3-and-up) or a benevolent dictatorship (there is a Supreme Honcho who controls promotion, but he or she is honest about it) or a mix of the two (the Supreme Honcho technically does the appointing, but he's just ratifying a list made by the bureaucracy, like the US President signing a military commission)

VArious positions of honor, trust and profit are reserved for persons of particular ranks. Let's call the ranks Subject, Citizen, Esquire, Knight, Lord.
Subjects are directly under an Esquire's supervision. Apprentices, unskilled labor, children, students.
Citizens have won the right to not be directly supervised. Guild journeymen, advanced students, tenant farmers, town guards.
Esquires are generally the head of a household, and have Subjects under their supervision and care.
Knight is a level above that, qualifying you for minor public office.
Lord qualifies you for major public offices.

That's pretty hierarchical, but you can turn that organization to a communal purpose. Generally the cultural or psychological model is the military. Higher ranks keep the respect of the lower ranks by performing, and by not abusing their rank (either for power-trips or for luxury.)

[Corneel]

The societal system can be reinforced by religion, especially in D&D where there is good evidence of the existence of Gods in the form of clerical magic.

[brian 333]

The primary trouble with communism is, what do you do with the non-producers?

In a primitive small clan or tribe, those who don't produce are a liability. There is no such thing as free, and if it takes a significant amount of work to create enough for everyone to eat, then non-producers actually risk the health and security of everyone when they sit at the breakfast table, spoon in hand.

In a large, advanced society, those who don't produce consume the surplus of those who do, thus rewarding non-production and penalizing production. It doesn't take a phi beta kappa to see where that leads. As the old saying goes, if everyone can sit in a wheelchair, who pushes?

You will discover that small communal societies excluded non-producers very quickly. Today some of the methods they used seem harsh to us, but we tend to forget that these societies were on the razor's edge between survival and starvation. Even the pets had jobs, and if they didn't perform, they could at least be used in the stew.

Large bureaucratic communisms have issues with labor. Absenteeism, failure to meet work quotas, producing sloppy workmanship, and a host of other things you and I might get fired for doing become criminal penalties. Because such societies have a limited capacity to advance its members, they must focus on punishments to incentivise workers, which quickly establishes minimum requirements, which quickly becomes the goal of the vast majority of workers. This results in a lack of surplus, which leads to rationing, which further reduces the ability of that society to reward producers, and instead requires further confiscation of any local surplus for distribution, incentivising the workers to produce only the bare minimum.

The development of technology in such a society is very difficult. The reason for this is risk. A capitalist can risk his fortune on the development of something new, and if he fails he may never recover. But only he and his investors suffer in the case of failure. Communists, on the other hand, must draw resources away from feeding the people to invest them in a venture. Failure in such a case results in the personal sacrifice of many for no gain. The only time a communist society will even attempt innovation is when the alternative is worse.

A famous Briton once asked an emir why his people were not more prosperous. The reply was, "Everything in this kingdom belongs to me. Why should they work harder to make me richer?"

The only way communism will ever work for humans is if the means of survival become free, and I pray that day never comes because bored, well fed humans kill each other. The incentive to do better and acquire status in our tribe keeps us busy, productive, and happy.

[jqavins]

bored, well fed humans kill each other. The incentive to do better and acquire status in our tribe keeps us busy, productive, and happy.

What experience backs this statement up? In general, crime, violent crime, revolutions, terrorism, etc. are all most common where people are not well fed. Prosperous people have better things to do than kill each other. Y'know what happens when emigrants from opposite sides in some war torn country meet here in the US? They usually get jobs and live side by side just fine. It's hunger that breeds hate.

Which does not, in any way, contradict the rest of what you wrote.

[Zebalas]

The desire for confort and less scarcity can make a society grow as much as the desire for money and power.

[Vogie]

By having altruism being reinforced by an outside source.

The book Freedom (TM) by Daniel Suarez plays around in this space - The first book in the series, Daemon, introduces what is essentially a sentient algorithm that slowly infects all technology. By the second book, Freedom (TM), societies are forming around the acceptance of that algorithm as a unifying force, channeling the benefits of an altruist unmoved mover with the crux of technological capabilities, it creates a worldwide movement of communal living... because it's actually communal. The problem with existing communist systems is there are still people on top who are running the show, which alters the communal system by making those individuals more equal than others, essentially breaking the system EVEN IF those people originally have altruistic hearts (although that tends to be rare). If there isn't a "person" running the show, but rather a nonhuman, nonbiased, force with the ability to learn & adapt, that allows all of the people to explore their best selves, and make the future evenly distributed.

If you take that concept, and put it in a fantastic world, substituting the daemon for a deity, ancestral council, or other sort of non-person-based leadership matrix, that could still work.

[Max_Killjoy]

By having altruism being reinforced by an outside source.

The book Freedom (TM) by Daniel Suarez plays around in this space - The first book in the series, Daemon, introduces what is essentially a sentient algorithm that slowly infects all technology. By the second book, Freedom (TM), societies are forming around the acceptance of that algorithm as a unifying force, channeling the benefits of an altruist unmoved mover with the crux of technological capabilities, it creates a worldwide movement of communal living... because it's actually communal. The problem with existing communist systems is there are still people on top who are running the show, which alters the communal system by making those individuals more equal than others, essentially breaking the system EVEN IF those people originally have altruistic hearts (although that tends to be rare). If there isn't a "person" running the show, but rather a nonhuman, nonbiased, force with the ability to learn & adapt, that allows all of the people to explore their best selves, and make the future evenly distributed.

If you take that concept, and put it in a fantastic world, substituting the daemon for a deity, ancestral council, or other sort of non-person-based leadership matrix, that could still work.

Which is perhaps to say that a functional communal society bigger than a village or so... is fantasy material.

[jqavins]

a sentient algorithm that slowly infects all technology.

Wow, it manages to infect every nut and bolt? Every farmer's field? The very bricks and lumber from which the houses are build?

If you take that concept, and put it in a fantastic world, substituting the daemon for a deity, ancestral council, or other sort of non-person-based leadership matrix, that could still work.

That's how a truly communal society might exist. But to develop advanced technology, if I may risk harping on my earlier post, they still need enough surplus production of food and other necessities to support scholarly class.

[Vogie]

Wow, it manages to infect every nut and bolt? Every farmer's field? The very bricks and lumber from which the houses are build?

Yes. There's a delightful encounter in the first book where a local SWAT team is completely stopped by a house and unmanned vehicle. In the second novel, they reinvent the farm completely. Also, wakka wakka eyeroll.

That's how a truly communal society might exist. But to develop advanced technology, if I may risk harping on my earlier post, they still need enough surplus production of food and other necessities to support scholarly class.

Of course. You couldn't have any society gain any advancement if 100% of each individual's time is dedicated to simply staying alive. If a person risks near instant death by pondering "is there a better way to do this", there's not going to be much pondering. And even if there is pondering, it may not instantly generate results.

Humanity has had the wheel for thousands of years, and luggage since just after the concept of belongings, yet "luggage with wheels" is only 48 years old (and, amusingly, is United States patent No. 3,653,474).

[jqavins]

Of course. You couldn't have any society gain any advancement if 100% of each individual's time is dedicated to simply staying alive. If a person risks near instant death by pondering "is there a better way to do this", there's not going to be much pondering. And even if there is pondering, it may not instantly generate results.

My point is this: what portion of a civilization can you have not directly producing? And by not producing, I mean not only that they are not farmers, but are also not miners, smiths, potters, lumber jacks, brick makers, builders, spinners, weavers, tailors, etc. In a society that has not yet developed advanced technology, even one percent seems quite generous. Of those who do not produce, some are bound to be military, some are clergy, some in the science and engineering professions, merchants, and some in other fields I haven't thought of. So, by a liberal estimate, something like one in five hundred people are contributing to technological advancement. Now, say it takes a group of one hundred of those to make progress at a substantial rate. That means that it takes a society of at least 50,000 really get going.

Some have stated, myself among them, that a society that large, in human history, can't maintain a successful communal society. You've offered one of a few solutions to that problem. What's still required is a community of that size first existing and thriving at all (even if the issue of doing so communally is solved) and second being motivated commit so much of its resources to sci/tech development.

[TheStranger]

Technological advancement requires two things - surplus resources (including people's time and energy), and the incentive to invest that surplus in innovation. That applies to everything from coming up with a better way to shoe a horse, up to interstellar travel.

You'll have a hard time coming up with real-life examples of communal societies that manage those things at any scale. That's probably just human nature, as others have said. Market-driven societies do a much better job of incentivizing people (and groups of people) to produce more food and goods than they need, and to invest their energy in coming up with new ideas, than communal societies. There's also a survival-of-the-fittest effect in how those resources are allocated, in that people who are good at innovation get more resources to continue innovating, and people who are bad at innovation don't get more resources and go broke. In the big picture, that probably leads to more efficient investment in innovation and more technological advancement.

One of the big issues with communal societies producing surplus resources is that somebody needs to do the really unpleasant tasks. In an idealized communal society, nobody has to clean the sewers. In the real world, somebody has to, and they won't enjoy it. But part of maximizing productivity, and therefore maximizing surplus and enabling technological advancement, is getting your hypothetical sewer-cleaner to work overtime. In a market-based society, you pay them more, and they do more work. In a communal dictatorship, you just force them, which is almost certainly much less effective. Probably very few people in history have been sufficiently altruistic that they would work at 100% of their capacity cleaning sewers just for the common good.

That said, it's not as if people living in a communal society are inherently less *able* to produce surplus goods or come up with new ideas than people in a market-based society. But you'll have to handwave the incentive issues in some way, and you'll want some type of meritocracy governing how resources are allocated.

The incentive issue is by far the biggest problem here, to the point that a romanticized communal society in a technologically-advanced context is probably more believable if it's non-human, maybe even a species with clear castes or hive-mind aspects that makes the idea of industrious worker-drones more fitting. Maybe I'm too genre-savvy about this, but if I encountered a society with people happily working every waking hour at menial and unpleasant tasks for no tangible reward, I'd immediately start looking for the dystopian underbelly. Which would be the other way you could play it, I suppose.

[Mechalich]

The incentive issue is by far the biggest problem here, to the point that a romanticized communal society in a technologically-advanced context is probably more believable if it's non-human, maybe even a species with clear castes or hive-mind aspects that makes the idea of industrious worker-drones more fitting. Maybe I'm too genre-savvy about this, but if I encountered a society with people happily working every waking hour at menial and unpleasant tasks for no tangible reward, I'd immediately start looking for the dystopian underbelly. Which would be the other way you could play it, I suppose.

I suppose that in a fantasy context one trick would be the widespread application of magic to take care of menial tasks. The most obvious way is through mystic servitors of some kind. Even something fairly minimalist - say within the capabilities of the D&D Unseen Servant spell - could take care of a lot of the menial labor and allow a massive societal restructuring. So if you imagine a fantasy world where everyone has some kind of 'helper spirit' (and worlds like this are surprisingly common) that could do things. Of course, this would have a lot of downstream consequences you'd need to account for as well.

[jqavins]

Several of us seem to be saying very close to the same thing, and I think that the answer we're circling is this:

How can a communal civilization become technologically advanced?

They probably can't be humans. If they are, then they must already have magic doing lots of stuff for them. But they're probably not.

[TheStranger]

They probably can't be humans. If they are, then they must already have magic doing lots of stuff for them. But they're probably not.

That's pretty much it, and I don't think I danced around it very much. Although, I think the key isn't whether they're human, it's that they'd need to think and act very differently than humans do in any culture we're familiar with (at least, that I'm familiar with - if somebody has an example of a human society at any tech level that acts in this way, let me know). That said, there are probably ways to justify a communal human society, with greater or lesser degrees of handwaving. Doing it in a way that's believable would be challenging, but I won't say impossible. Like I said, I'd be waiting for the dystopian shoe to drop, but good writing can get past that. I mean, I'm willing to suspend my disbelief on things like dragons, I can probably manage to wrap my head around altruism for the sake of a good story.

I will add, though, that the other way a communal society can become technologically advanced is by copying their tech from somebody else. I think we've all been working on the assumption that the communal society needed to advance on its own, but that's not strictly the question the OP asked.

[jqavins]

That's pretty much it, and I don't think I danced around it very much.

I meant to say that collectively we have been. Some say it along with other details. Some say something very like it. Some say other things that the members of this community would have to do, that humans generally don't. Collectively it's been a dance.

Although, I think the key isn't whether they're human, it's that they'd need to think and act very differently than humans do in any culture we're familiar with (at least, that I'm familiar with - if somebody has an example of a human society at any tech level that acts in this way, let me know). That said, there are probably ways to justify a communal human society, with greater or lesser degrees of handwaving. Doing it in a way that's believable would be challenging, but I won't say impossible.

Step-2-3 Turn-2-3.

I will add, though, that the other way a communal society can become technologically advanced is by copying their tech from somebody else. I think we've all been working on the assumption that the communal society needed to advance on its own, but that's not strictly the question the OP asked.

Now that, sir or madam, is an excellent point! Heck, they could just be handed the tech.