I recently finished a book called The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by J. Maarten Troost. Contrary to the title, there is very little about cannibals, and less about sex. It is, however, a fascinating book about living in the equatorial island nation of Kiribati. The book is also the only reference I have found to a communist society that actually lives and sustains itself.
According to Wikipedia:
Pure communism in the Marxian sense refers to a classless, stateless and oppression-free society where decisions on what to produce and what policies to pursue are made democratically, allowing every member of society to participate in the decision-making process in both the political and economic spheres of life.
The major reason this system has never been reached in a large scale is that people seem to naturally oppress others so that they can have more things and more power.
Troost discusses a system on the Kiribati called the ‘bubuti’ system.
In the bubuti system, someone can walk up to you and say I bubuti you for your flipflops and without a peep of complaint you are obliged to hand over your flipflops. The following day, you can go up the the guy who is now wearing your flipflops, and say I bubuti you for your fishing net, and suddenly you have a new fishing net.
(p.95, ©2004 Broadway Books, New York)
The bubuti system, described in this way, essentially reaches the conclusion that you can have anything you want since al you have to do is ask for it. The limitation is that you can also lose anything you have since anyone else can ask for your possessions. The end result of this is that everyone lives very simply, with only what they need. If a person or family gathers or hoards more than what they need, then they risk gaining the attention of their neighbors and losing what they have.
The bubuti does system have limitations. The largest is that everyone must unanimously agree to follow the bubuti system without complaint or objection. Because of this, it is a system that could only develop out of a previously undeveloped culture. That is not to say the the Kiribati people are still undeveloped, simply that the bubuti system will not develop in the US because people have too much to lose by following the rules of the system. If a village of hard working sustenance farmers it might make sense to add a system like this to ensure that people did not die if some crops failed in a bad year.
Where the goal of communism is an classless, stateless, and oppression-free society, the bubuti fulfills these goals as best they can in a modern world. The Kiribati does have a government system setup, so it is not a truly stateless society, however the bubuti brings everyone to the same class and allows anyone being oppressed the option of simply asking for the means so that they will not be oppressed. The downfall of this is that the end result is a society that falls to the lowest common denominator. No one can excel because everyone else will reap the benefits of their work. Yet the society does somehow sustain its self.
Hey Kyle! Great work we see here and it was great talking to you :O)