Borders

The problem with borders isn't the fact that they allow categorization of areas. The question is how hard it's going to be for me to move from area 44 to area 52. Right now, if area 44 is Baja California and area 52 is California, that's pretty damned difficult, dangerous, and demeaning.

I'd be against changing the name of a place to a number. Changing the name of a place is often an attempt to deny the history of that place. I'm very happy to agree with Tojiah that everyone should be free to live where they want.

it depends how the workers' councils want to do things at the time. it makes sense to have regional councils, continental councils and global councils, so i can imagine they have loose geographical boundaries

i also think its fine to retain the names of countries (for instance Hungarian Soviet Republic etc). What matters is the content not the label

No "republics". Those are states.

Yes I agree with Tojiah. The problem with borders is that they are used to restrict access to areas (often encouraging free trade but discouraging the movement of indivduals). Because divisions in a capitalist society encourage us to conceptualise things as them and us, there is often one side of the border which assumes dominance over the 'other'. They have control of what goes in and out, therefore maintaining their power.

I think Naomi Klein makes some good points about this in her book Fences and Windows.

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Yes, but avoiding labels that have a specific meaning like that would still be a good idea.
I agree with what has been said before, naming and defining regions for administrative purposes is absolutely fine, the problem is when you start having rights and privileges associated with those regions, starting with the right to even go there.

Although this is one major practical problem, once all borders ar eopen it will require a massive amount of work to prevent huge, potentially dangerous movements of population of people from less desirable areas into more desirable ones. This is probably a queston for another thread actually. I'll start one later.

This is the point, language has been constructed under capitalism and it actually constitutes and re-constitutes certain realities/identities/inequalities we should use labels criticially and reflexively. If it is a name of a place that is rich in mostly positive history and tradition I say you have to keep it as it means something to people who live there.

If on the other hand it is a label which has a history of colonialism, repression and will thus further such inequalities it should be reconsidered. Such labels include "developing word" "core and periphery" "Third World" but also colonies that we're renamed by their conquerers. Think of Bombay which was renamed Mumbai to reclaim it from the British colonial rule.

On a seperate point I don't think having geographical names necessarily means having borders if there are no political connotations attached. I think we can all agree that in a borderless world there must be freedom of movement. As for the problems of mass migration obviously the process of fairer distribution of resources would have to be rolled out alongside the process of de-bordering, the two I beleive must go hand in hand.

Still I agree that you would have "regional councils" to make local decisions possibly with delegates from each meeting at national and international (nations will still exist as geographical entities, just not as political 'states') levels to share the decisions of local communities, exchange ideas, put forward a 'needs budget' if that community was short of particular resources etc.

i think there will be regional councils (as delegate confederations of local councils), and these will presumably be allowed a certain amount of autonomy, of course they will be prevented (by global or continental councils/ confederations) from instituting any damaging things like restrictions on freedom of movement.

This is all rather speculative anyway.

IMO the first tasks the workers in the advanced areas will do after the rev will be to repair their infrastructure, and at the same time work hard to develop the infrastructure of the backwards areas. If we are to be truly internationalist, it would be a goal to undo capitalism's lopsided global development.

Again this is speculative.

I don't think it'll be such an issue in our lifetimes but there are densely populated places in the world prone to hurricanes, floods and earthquakes that will surely get worse in years to come. Infrastructure can only do so much there.