Housing - The doctor vs the cleaner.

I find that these kind of questions are far too focused on the statement that communism means absolute equality with no exceptions whatsoever. However, no such thing exists within communist theory.

A doctor and a cleaner, work at the same hospital. The doctor has had to be gifted, studied and do more complex work. Should both really be living in the same styled house/apartment?

Does this instantly denote the cleaner as unskilled? Cleaning is a necessity to hygiene, and must be done regardless. Often, I find that these flagrant statements are made without a shred of regard to the cleaner's life outside of work. Their abilities to study, create, and live still exist, but are stunted by the conditions of wage-labour and money-based society. In a communist system, the division of labour being abolished would presuppose the training of staff to be able to clean and cater for the environment adequately, and would be done on a rotary system rather than a mundane job that one is stuck with several days a week.

(personally how I'd answer this is, to have a tier system, but that brings in 'classism'.)

Again, far too rigid an outlook. "Social class" refers to our relation to the means of production, not in the size of our house. Generally speaking the richer will have larger houses, sure, and some will certainly be owners of the means of production (land, labour, capital, etc.); but it's the owners of the means of production we wish to depose and create a worker-run society (in my case, autonomous and federated unions and councils). My father's a manual labourer, yet we have a house which is more than big enough for the three of us. So what? I am not an oppressor, I am merely living.

So then how do we motivate people to become doctors etc?

If one becomes a doctor -- and involves themselves in treatment and saving lives -- for the sole purpose of money, I would recommend they reanalyse their parameters of morality. Money is necessary to continue existence, certainly, but to say that it is the only reason people assume stressful roles is wrong on all levels.

Generally speaking, people become doctors due to a vested interested in providing aid, treating people, saving lives, etc. Same reason people are motivated to become vets, for example. They have the capabilities for it and have the ability to assume the intellectual burden, and so they do. Mutual aid and help is natural within man, and it's been present in all modes of our existence despite desperate attempts to destroy the notion of its existence and tear apart the bonds of society and community. (For more reading and a scientific analysis, I'd highly recommend reading Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution.)

I hope I have answered sufficiently. If not, feel free to ask further questions.

/r/DebateCommunism Thread