teachers and students vs. me

[CELMX]

i keep asking my history teacher about communism, and trying to refute the bad points, and bring out the good
however, the things i cannot ignore are that my teachers, and peers, now keep shoving the "communism (and anarchy) doesn't work" shit into my face, ever since i educated them about what it truly is.
he says that marx fails to present to us what will happen after the masses are free (very true) however, he says this leaves a gaping hole for evil dictators to fill (well...not those exact words:rolleyes:)

any good refutes for these?

so far, i've been making extremely stupid comments like: "people aren't inherently lazy, they have hobbies, and these hobbies can be jobs. i'm sure people like to "work" , but do the job they love" or "greed isn't human nature" or "humans are social creatures. they will learn to coexist and form communities. distribution and crime will be maintained by the community"

[redasheville]

i keep asking my history teacher about communism, and trying to refute the bad points, and bring out the good
however, the things i cannot ignore are that my teachers, and peers, now keep shoving the "communism (and anarchy) doesn't work" shit into my face, ever since i educated them about what it truly is.
he says that marx fails to present to us what will happen after the masses are free (very true) however, he says this leaves a gaping hole for evil dictators to fill (well...not those exact words:rolleyes:)

any good refutes for these?

so far, i've been making extremely stupid comments like: "people aren't inherently lazy, they have hobbies, and these hobbies can be jobs. i'm sure people like to "work" , but do the job they love" or "greed isn't human nature" or "humans are social creatures. they will learn to coexist and form communities. distribution and crime will be maintained by the community"
First, Marx didn't pontificate about what a socialist society could do because that is speculative, and therefore utopian (in the sense of a pre-fabricating a perfect model to follow). He used material reality as his starting point. The most dramatic example is this: Marx defines the working class coming to power as the workers "winning the battle of democracy", which is a very ambiguous statement. It wasn't until the experiance of the Paris Commune that Marx gave more substance to his ideas of the workers coming to power (i.e. he waited for the workers to show HIM how it was to be done).

Second, I don't think your comments are stupid at all! In fact when you say: "people aren't inherently lazy, they have hobbies, and these hobbies can be jobs. i'm sure people like to "work" , but do the job they love" you're starting to get to the heart of the matter. Workers under capitalism hate their jobs (in general) because they are alienated from the fruits of their productive activity. In other words, they have no stake in what they're doing, other than their paycheck. Work under capitalism is a sacrifice of a part of your life, that is forced upon us in order to survive. Hence people are understandably lazy when they're forced to work in order to make someone else rich. Marx describes this beautifully in his essay "Wage Labor and Capital". Which is available cheaply from Amazon and you can also read it free at Marxists.org.

You should also read the definition of alienation from the Marxists Internet Archive. It can be found here: http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/a/l.htm#alienation



EDIT: Your other points also have good answers to them, but I have to get to doing house work now so I'll respond to the rest of your post later. Unless someone else chimes in.

[Tatarin]

he says that marx fails to present to us what will happen after the masses are free (very true) however, he says this leaves a gaping hole for evil dictators to fill (well...not those exact words)

First, that is a pretty strange demand from him. No one can lay out a complete and perfect society. Not even the person who rules over a society.

What this teacher also fails to take into account is the nature of the revolution. Naturally, many who will join it will know what kind of an outcome they want. People in Russia, for example, didn't just revolt one day, to wake up the second day and find that Lenin was their new leader. Castro is a more recent example, Mao in China another.

And for that matter, ask him about the American Revolution. Surely the "founding fathers" didn't just appear when the people had thrown out the British to establish the USA?


"people aren't inherently lazy, they have hobbies, and these hobbies can be jobs. i'm sure people like to "work" , but do the job they love"

Those aren't stupid comments, on the contrary, if you come to the debate with the teacher, expand upon this. For example, people need water, air and food every day. Why should this not be free? As in guaranteed for every person every day? This is a core argument, because people want it easy, they don't want to go hunting every day for one meal. And instead of overworking one person 10 hours a day, why not share the burden with 10 persons, working only one hour? Add technological progress to the argument.

But sustenance isn't the only thing - people need houses, heat, electricity, and so on. In parallel, suggesting that pensions should be dropped all together isn't a very appealing argument for a politician, just as dropping heat, electricity and etc. isn't very popular. We've come to this stage, and we want to maintain it.


"greed isn't human nature"

It certainly isn't written in our DNA. Humans can not survive without anyone to whom they can talk to. A greedy "race" would simply use whatever friendship is formed for the individual's own goal, and so society would be much more fiendish than it is today. In fact, this site would probably not exist.

[Die Rote Fahne]

i keep asking my history teacher about communism, and trying to refute the bad points, and bring out the good
however, the things i cannot ignore are that my teachers, and peers, now keep shoving the "communism (and anarchy) doesn't work" shit into my face, ever since i educated them about what it truly is.
he says that marx fails to present to us what will happen after the masses are free (very true) however, he says this leaves a gaping hole for evil dictators to fill (well...not those exact words:rolleyes:)

any good refutes for these?

so far, i've been making extremely stupid comments like: "people aren't inherently lazy, they have hobbies, and these hobbies can be jobs. i'm sure people like to "work" , but do the job they love" or "greed isn't human nature" or "humans are social creatures. they will learn to coexist and form communities. distribution and crime will be maintained by the community"


Here's a refute:

knock knock
"who's there?"
The spanish revolution you dickface.

Another refute:

Communism has never been achieved. Even Lenin and those who strove for it said they "were fighting for socialism" not fighting to keep it. You can't refute something that hasn't happened.

[SocialismOrBarbarism]

Maybe you should be trying to sell them a communism that's realistic, where people have higher pay and less working time, as opposed to saying that people will work at pig farms or collect garbage as a hobby.

[redasheville]

Maybe you should be trying to sell them a communism that's realistic, where people have higher pay and less working time, as opposed to saying that people will work at pig farms or collect garbage as a hobby.

You missed his point and misunderstood his argument, I think. What he's arguing is a facet of the Marxist understanding of work under capitalism (which is impressive, for someone new to Marxism, and I think ComradeLenin has strong left wing instincts that point to Marxism).

[Drace]

I think the best way of opening their ears are by mentioning the simple facts.

The current conditions of the world today...
5% of the population owning over 60% of the wealth, 25,000 children dying every day because of hunger, etc.

And to break their ideas of the democratic and freedom loving US, all the imperialist acts the US has done.

[mikelepore]

he says that marx fails to present to us what will happen after the masses are free (very true) however, he says this leaves a gaping hole for evil dictators to fill

In the 1780s, the founders of the United States wanted to design a new form of government that would omit a feature that had been considered absolutely essential during most of the previous 5,000 years or so: the king or emperor.

They didn't know exactly how to go about doing this. They compared the writings of numerous political philosophers, and borrowed some ideas from Locke, others from Rousseau, etc. They tried to think of everything that might go wrong in the future, and figure out solutions in advance.

They were unable to rise above some of their own generation's prejudices, but they recognized their own fallability, and therefore composed the first written constitution ever to include a clause for its own amendment by future generations, whom they realized would be able to see further than themselves.

These are some of the same attitudes that people will require in order to adopt a classless society.

[Hit The North]

he says that marx fails to present to us what will happen after the masses are free (very true) however, he says this leaves a gaping hole for evil dictators to fill (well...not those exact words:rolleyes:)

any good refutes for these?



This might seem obvious, but the people cannot be free and simultaneously under the rule of an evil dictatorship.

Meanwhile, the entire project of communism is to extend the democratic control of society and establish formal and informal equality at the economic, political and social levels. This equality should guarantee that a dictatorship over the people will not take place. In fact, tell your teacher, it is more likely that societies based on inequality, where powerful elites are encouraged and the majority of citizens are removed from the decision-making process, will be subject to "evil dictators".

[bricolage]

It's often quite good to turn the arguments people make against say communism back on them;

- Lazy people will be rewarded; Lazy people are rewarded now, look at Paris Hilton!
- People will die; Ummm, and people don't die now?
- Communism doesn't work; Capitalism doesn't work, look how many people are living in poverty, suffering and oppression.

And so on and so on...

[Invincible Summer]

i keep asking my history teacher about communism, and trying to refute the bad points, and bring out the good
however, the things i cannot ignore are that my teachers, and peers, now keep shoving the "communism (and anarchy) doesn't work" shit into my face, ever since i educated them about what it truly is.
he says that marx fails to present to us what will happen after the masses are free (very true) however, he says this leaves a gaping hole for evil dictators to fill (well...not those exact words:rolleyes:)

any good refutes for these?

Well, if people are saying how Communism "won't get anyhting done because no one will have the incentive to work," then you call them out on that shit because, to me, the answer is pretty obvious.
Ask them if they've ever done any volunteer work; then ask if they enjoyed doing work that helped the community; ask if they want a job in the future whose contributions will have direct effects on their community, therefore their work can be lauded.

I'm sure they'll say yes to all these questions. Therefore, they are most likely to enjoy a communist society. Just because there would be no money doesn't mean people just sit on their ass - there are countless examples of people who have tons of money and don't work, but contribute their time to other causes and endeavours. If the workers of the world could be in that same situation - having all the resources they need to live a good life and possibly more - they too would be happy to contribute their time without worrying about earning money.

As for "rewarding the lazy," it's not like if someone just takes and takes and takes from the community and does nothing, everyone will just stand by and let this freeloader off the hook. I think that argument is condescending.


And the last bit about "leaving room for evil dictators." I'm sure if society is free, worker-run and egalitarian for a while, it's not like suddenly, when some guy decides to be a dictator, this classless, egalitarian society will just be like "Hmm... okay let's give ONE GUY all the power." That makes no fucking sense. That's like having children in pre-school who share all their toys, then suddenly one of the kids is all "Gimme all your toys lol," the other kids won't stand for it.

[Nwoye]

he says that marx fails to present to us what will happen after the masses are free (very true) however, he says this leaves a gaping hole for evil dictators to fill (well...not those exact words)
sounds hot.

[blake 3:17]

so far, i've been making extremely stupid comments like: "people aren't inherently lazy, they have hobbies, and these hobbies can be jobs. i'm sure people like to "work" , but do the job they love" or "greed isn't human nature" or "humans are social creatures. they will learn to coexist and form communities. distribution and crime will be maintained by the community"

That doesn't seem so stupid. All seem plausible, some more true than others.

Is your teacher an anti-communist lefty? Or just anti-communist? Try not to fall for the intellectual trap I fell in for years -- socialists are smart, anti-socialists are stupid. Ain't always true.