Arguing with a capitalist...

[Skyhilist]

So I have to admit, I can sometimes be bad at argument... what this person said really bothered me though. I'm an anarcho-communist/anarcho-syndicalist and was just compared to a dictator for describing my ideas and saying that I didn't see why local communities aren't capable of making their own decisions without hierarchy. Apparently she didn't take kindly to the word "commune", and even is trying to tell me that socialism is authoritarian and silly by nature. I'm so dumbfounded by such a counter-revolutionary and crazy response that I honestly don't even know how to BEGIN to reply.

Any advice comrades?

Here's what she said:

"[my name], you sound like a little dictator in the making. You want to take away people's hard earned money and give it to people who do not and will not work for a living...take away our right to compete and financially benefit for our efforts...take away our right to choose our health care...tell us how to think and make us submit to brain scans to make sure we think your way...tell us to go live on communes (I can't tell you how hard I laughed at that one)...and, in general, submit to the authority of government. And, I get the feeling that you think you could take control and brainwash all of us into taking our marching orders from you. If you want to live like that I suggest you go live in a green house where you can rule over potted plants...because that is what you want people to be...passive, submissive potted plants who depend on you and your government for permission to live. Potted plants will act exactly the way you want them to act and you can be their Great [my name] God. Listen kid, absolutely nothing you are saying is new or innovated. Your words are a hollow echo of the 60's. I was there. I even lived on a commune for a while. Kiddo, it did not work then and it will not work now. That is not how people are put together. We would not exist as a species if it were not for competition. Ever since we crawled out of the primal ooze we have been striving to achieve, accumulate wealth and, oh yeah, make weapons to defend ourselves against others who try to steal our wealth or threaten our lives or way of life. I know you are very young and still think you have all the answers. It is all part of growing up. I did it. Almost everyone did it. You think you are a leftist liberal. Yet what you are saying is some of the most repressive clap trap I have ever heard. Sorry, but if you are going to say the things you say get used to being pounded into the sand. You're suppose to be a smart kid. I am sure that you, like the rest of us, will outgrow Socialist pablum. Good luck on your journey."


I just... I don't even know how someone can confuse anarchy for a dictatorship. I even explicitly talked about how it would be non-hierarchical in a previous post.

[Skyhilist]

Don't even get me started on the juxtaposition of the words "leftist liberal" ...as if liberals have ever done anything for the revolutionary left.

[Raúl Duke]

who cares, she sounds liek some the usual American conservative idiot.
By the sound of it, if she was around by the 1960s, she sounds like those people who are all "middle-class" now who voted for Reagen in the 80s and live in those bourgie gated-community McMansions. I might be wrong but that's my impression.

In other words, not our "target demographic" for our message.

But to start with, call her out on her strawman of your position and most importantly pick away at her claims...such as "take away our right to choose our health care."

But I warn you it sounds like a lost cause and a hopeless case.

[Skyhilist]

Yeah she's older, she's one of those types who thinks that only "crony" capitalism is bad. She's sort of my neighbor though so I have to put up with her all the time. Thanks for the advice though, I'll do that. She always talks about being "union raised" and shit like that though so I get the sense that she wants to think she's a "realist" leftist, despite the fact that she's really not.

[Let's Get Free]

"[my name], you sound like a little dictator in the making. You want to take away people's hard earned money and give it to people who do not and will not work for a living...
Society certainly can't function without the hard work of the working class. But it can definitely function without the millionaires who just rake in money from rent, interest and profit. But feeding a few loafers is an insignificant drain on a society’s resources, especially when compared to pampering the voracious elite of our society.


Listen kid, absolutely nothing you are saying is new or innovated. Your words are a hollow echo of the 60's. I was there. I even lived on a commune for a while. Kiddo, it did not work then and it will not work now. That is not how people are put together. We would not exist as a species if it were not for competition. Ever since we crawled out of the primal ooze we have been striving to achieve, accumulate wealth and, oh yeah, make weapons to defend ourselves against others who try to steal our wealth or threaten our lives or way of life.
But if early human life was really like that, as bloody and warlike as our mythology has depicted it, humans would simply have died out. Any species with a reproductive cycle of 15–20 years that usually only produce one offspring at a time simply cannot survive if their chance for dying in any given year is more than a couple percent. It would have been mathematically impossible for Homo sapiens to have survived that imaginary battle against nature and against one another.


I know you are very young and still think you have all the answers. It is all part of growing up. I did it. Almost everyone did it. You think you are a leftist liberal. Yet what you are saying is some of the most repressive clap trap I have ever heard. Sorry, but if you are going to say the things you say get used to being pounded into the sand. You're suppose to be a smart kid. I am sure that you, like the rest of us, will outgrow Socialist pablum. Good luck on your journey."

Well, right now capitalism's mad rush for profit is destroying the environment and causing endless war, starvation, and misery. Why should people have to suffer through this any longer?

[prolcon]

You're not going to gain anything by engaging her. I feel comfortable predicting that she isn't interested in discussion as a means of exchanging ideas and learning. That said, socialism is quite authoritarian, in some ways. I just mean to say that, at some point, working people have got to exercise authority over the world in opposition to the exploitative ruling class. I'm not very familiar with anarchism in general, but I don't doubt you recognize this.

[Raúl Duke]

She always talks about being "union raised" and shit like that though so I get the sense that she wants to think she's a "realist" leftist, despite the fact that she's really not.No, she says things like that to basically say "I know what I'm talking about and you don't." Those kinds of people are generally dead-set with their perspective.


--
But, if you do want to continue arguing with her, the best way is to be more of like a "critic" rather than imposing or stating your arguments/ideas initially. You have to break down her claims and assumptions. This will help because she will doubt her "position of (intellectual) authority" she believes she currently has (already many statements she has made towards you is on the lines of "I know more and you're just a stupid kid"). Anti-capitalist critiques are more easier to do than speaking about how anarchism or whatever will look like since there's not much real example to argue on, but capitalism is something happening now and there's so many examples of shit.

One can easily argue that "crony capitalism" or "corruption/money in politics" is natural/built in the system: You can get rid of it temporarily through reforms but it will always return. Refer to the profit system, to history, etc.

Also, argue that "choice in health care" is a rotten deal compared to the universal health care in other countries (although arguing on this point is not exactly that relevant to revolutionary politics but whatever, and besides argument on this line proves the faultiness of capitalism in handling things like health care). She might say something like "it takes forever to see a doctor" or that "you need to see a generalist first before being referred to a specialist." Don't know much about the 1st one, but the second one I heard is false and in fact is an aspect of private health care: some private health care programs make you see a generalist first (I used to be in one of those programs, sucks).

[Ostrinski]

Working on a serious response, hope to be done tonight. Good practice for me ;)

[Ostrinski]

Well, the first thing you do is to tell her to stop being so condescending. It is very anti-social behavior and she should feel lucky that you're even humoring her bullshit. Tell her to adhere to a minimal standard of respect if you all are going to discuss things. "Kiddo" :rolleyes:.

And now, content.


you sound like a little dictator in the making. You want to take away people's hard earned money and give it to people who do not and will not work for a living...take away our right to compete and financially benefit for our efforts...take away our right to choose our health care...tell us how to think and make us submit to brain scans to make sure we think your way...tell us to go live on communes (I can't tell you how hard I laughed at that one)...and, in general, submit to the authority of government. Nothing is earned under capitalism. You are either a worker in which case the value your labor produces is extracted from you in the form of a wage, or you are a capitalist in which case you accumulate this value of unpaid labor in the form of profit. For those that fall under the category of the latter they are parasites because while they create no new value, they accumulate the lion's share of it through their control of the means of its exchange; and remuneration of the worker for a fraction of the new value they created.

"Right" to compete, "right" to choose healthcare. These "rights," if one will descend to the level of sharing that language, are artificial, manufactured, and serve no actual use or purpose as "rights" other than as cheap ideological justifications for the existing capitalist system. In other words, they make no sense/are completely illogical outside of the context of capitalism and outside of their relationship to capitalism. For instance, if I am a child and my mother buys me a new bed and tries to get rid of the old one, I could just as easily tell her that she's taking away my right to choose between beds.

Take that outside of the context of my mother buying me a new bed and try to turn it into a political principle: right to choose beds! My only responsibility would be to look at you as if you were insane. But I digress.

Socialism does not negate competition. The socialist mode of production is one of free producers, the rule of the laborers. As such, they are perfectly within their means to have friendly little competitions in any given trade. However, if you mean the wretched, dehumanizing, enslaving competition that forces workers to turn their teeth on each other instead of their class enemy, effectively to keep labor costs down, then yes. You're god damned right there will be no more of that.

Choose healthcare? Logically preposterous, morally outrageous, cynically laughable. "Choosing healthcare" in this sense means choosing between enterprises that profit off of human suffering and by consciously obfuscating the issue and wording it abstractly, you want us to hand human welfare over to private bodies. Sick.

The bit about government authoritarianism is always thrown at us socialists, luckily it is comical enough so as to not ruffle too terribly many of our feathers. Sometimes it is a straw man, sometimes a red herring, but at the end of the day the only way to move against the existence of the state is toward socialism, against the contradictions and irreconcilable flaws of class society that create the need for a state to mediate them.


And I get the feeling that you think you could take control and brainwash all of us into taking our marching orders from you. If you want to live like that I suggest you go live in a green house where you can rule over potted plants...because that is what you want people to be...passive, submissive potted plants who depend on you and your government for permission to live. Potted plants will act exactly the way you want them to act and you can be their Great [my name] God.Be sure not to respond to any of this. Empty phrases, empty words.


Listen kid, absolutely nothing you are saying is new or innovated. Your words are a hollow echo of the 60's. I was there. I even lived on a commune for a while. Kiddo, it did not work then and it will not work now.Your history is a bit off, non hierarchical way of life predates the agricultural revolution. Socialist theory goes back to the late 18th century and was scientifically expounded upon by Marx and Engels in the 19th. But no, keep talking about the 60's. Sounds like another arrogant baby boomer to me :laugh:.


That is not how people are put together. We would not exist as a species if it were not for competition. Ever since we crawled out of the primal ooze we have been striving to achieve, accumulate wealth and, oh yeah, make weapons to defend ourselves against others who try to steal our wealth or threaten our lives or way of life.*Sigh* the human nature myth was laid to waste by Ivan Pavlov over a century ago.

The idea that humans interact socially in a biologically preordained way is a bad joke. The concept of human nature is conceived through the observation of human interaction and relationship which are molded and conditioned by the larger and broader framework of the society that humans live in in any given time.

So since the idea of human nature doesn't really predate capitalist society, it is only natural that the codification of the ideology of human nature supposes to us that the way we are organized under capitalism, the way we interact under capitalism, the way we relate under capitalism, are all concrete things.

So human nature is a social construct.

As far as things like war goes, there are plenty of anthropological studies that debunk the myth of humans as inherently warlike, none off the top of my head.

But it should be pointed out that while war does predate class society it is always carried out in an economically interested form and never in a way that wouldn't beget economic gains. It seems like we as a species have understood this up until say, WWII when the ideological justifications for war became more sophisticated and convincing.

So war, like all other human interactive tendencies, exist only in relation to the conditions that necessitate their existence, not just because evolution pulled it out of its ass to program us that way.


I know you are very young and still think you have all the answers. It is all part of growing up. I did it. Almost everyone did it. You think you are a leftist liberal. Yet what you are saying is some of the most repressive clap trap I have ever heard. Sorry, but if you are going to say the things you say get used to being pounded into the sand. You're suppose to be a smart kid. I am sure that you, like the rest of us, will outgrow Socialist pablum. Good luck on your journey."Fuck off. You're not exactly a treasure trove of knowledge yourself in your rusty old age :laugh: (sorry).

Feel free to use or don't use any of this.

[Skyhilist]

Well, the first thing you do is to tell her to stop being so condescending. It is very anti-social behavior and she should feel lucky that you're even humoring her bullshit. Tell her to adhere to a minimal standard of respect if you all are going to discuss things. "Kiddo" :rolleyes:.

And now, content.

Nothing is earned under capitalism. You are either a worker in which case the value your labor produces is extracted from you in the form of a wage, or you are a capitalist in which case you accumulate this value of unpaid labor in the form of profit. For those that fall under the category of the latter they are parasites because while they create no new value, they accumulate the lion's share of it through their control of the means of its exchange; and remuneration of the worker for a fraction of the new value they created.

"Right" to compete, "right" to choose healthcare. These "rights," if one will descend to the level of sharing that language, are artificial, manufactured, and serve no actual use or purpose as "rights" other than as cheap ideological justifications for the existing capitalist system. In other words, they make no sense/are completely illogical outside of the context of capitalism and outside of their relationship to capitalism. For instance, if I am a child and my mother buys me a new bed and tries to get rid of the old one, I could just as easily tell her that she's taking away my right to choose between beds.

Take that outside of the context of my mother buying me a new bed and try to turn it into a political principle: right to choose beds! My only responsibility would be to look at you as if you were insane. But I digress.

Socialism does not negate competition. The socialist mode of production is one of free producers, the rule of the laborers. As such, they are perfectly within their means to have friendly little competitions in any given trade. However, if you mean the wretched, dehumanizing, enslaving competition that forces workers to turn their teeth on each other instead of their class enemy, effectively to keep labor costs down, then yes. You're god damned right there will be no more of that.

Choose healthcare? Logically preposterous, morally outrageous, cynically laughable. "Choosing healthcare" in this sense means choosing between enterprises that profit off of human suffering and by consciously obfuscating the issue and wording it abstractly, you want us to hand human welfare over to private bodies. Sick.

The bit about government authoritarianism is always thrown at us socialists, luckily it is comical enough so as to not ruffle too terribly many of our feathers. Sometimes it is a straw man, sometimes a red herring, but at the end of the day the only way to move against the existence of the state is toward socialism, against the contradictions and irreconcilable flaws of class society that create the need for a state to mediate them.

Be sure not to respond to any of this. Empty phrases, empty words.

Your history is a bit off, non hierarchical way of life predates the agricultural revolution. Socialist theory goes back to the late 18th century and was scientifically expounded upon by Marx and Engels in the 19th. But no, keep talking about the 60's. Sounds like another arrogant baby boomer to me :laugh:.

*Sigh* the human nature myth was laid to waste by Ivan Pavlov over a century ago.

The idea that humans interact socially in a biologically preordained way is a bad joke. The concept of human nature is conceived through the observation of human interaction and relationship which are molded and conditioned by the larger and broader framework of the society that humans live in in any given time.

So since the idea of human nature doesn't really predate capitalist society, it is only natural that the codification of the ideology of human nature supposes to us that the way we are organized under capitalism, the way we interact under capitalism, the way we relate under capitalism, are all concrete things.

So human nature is a social construct.

As far as things like war goes, there are plenty of anthropological studies that debunk the myth of humans as inherently warlike, none off the top of my head.

But it should be pointed out that while war does predate class society it is always carried out in an economically interested form and never in a way that wouldn't beget economic gains. It seems like we as a species have understood this up until say, WWII when the ideological justifications for war became more sophisticated and convincing.

So war, like all other human interactive tendencies, exist only in relation to the conditions that necessitate their existence, not just because evolution pulled it out of its ass to program us that way.

Fuck off. You're not exactly a treasure trove of knowledge yourself in your rusty old age :laugh: (sorry).

Feel free to use or don't use any of this.

I'll try to rephrase that since I never like exactly copying people's word or anything, but that was awesome, thanks!

[Hexen]

She's simply a product of her own society as within the perspective of future people looking back on this in a post revolutionary society when they would say "That's what they thought at the time" same way we do now towards people in the 19th century with Karl Marx (http://www.revleft.com/vb/karl-marx-sexist-t176264/index.html?t=176264&highlight=sexist) and such.

[Ostrinski]

Let us know how she responds.

[Hexen]

Let us know how she responds.

Although I have a feeling that people like that cannot be reasoned with since their minds are set towards that way and they just keep coming up with their own 'rationalizations' or simply twist words out of context and such.

For example, try debating with a True Nazi/White Supremacist/Fascist or even a hardcore religious person to know what I mean.

[GoddessCleoLover]

IMO one can't argue a reactionary out of her position. Please try to find something more productive.

[Fourth Internationalist]

Give her the definitions of your belief and ask her to explain how what she says you believe is in anyway what your beliefs are by definition. And PLEASE LET US KNOW HER RESPONSE if she responds.

[Fourth Internationalist]

Also she seems to think there is still money, insurance in such a society. Explain that there is none of that.

[Skyhilist]

Let us know how she responds.

She told me "Now you're just being more irrational. Your utopian society will never happen. Like it or not, capitalism is our best option despite what you might see as great in alternative, but realistically irrational and dysfunctional systems. I do no wish to debate this any further."

I the told her to actually justify everything she just said with evidence, and she just deleted her original post. I guess it's probably pointless arguing with people like that, but it just really bothers me how people can have all the evidence and still ACTUALLY think like that.

[Jesus Saves Gretzky Scores]

Well, the first thing you do is to tell her to stop being so condescending. It is very anti-social behavior and she should feel lucky that you're even humoring her bullshit. Tell her to adhere to a minimal standard of respect if you all are going to discuss things. "Kiddo" :rolleyes:.

And now, content.

Nothing is earned under capitalism. You are either a worker in which case the value your labor produces is extracted from you in the form of a wage, or you are a capitalist in which case you accumulate this value of unpaid labor in the form of profit. For those that fall under the category of the latter they are parasites because while they create no new value, they accumulate the lion's share of it through their control of the means of its exchange; and remuneration of the worker for a fraction of the new value they created.

"Right" to compete, "right" to choose healthcare. These "rights," if one will descend to the level of sharing that language, are artificial, manufactured, and serve no actual use or purpose as "rights" other than as cheap ideological justifications for the existing capitalist system. In other words, they make no sense/are completely illogical outside of the context of capitalism and outside of their relationship to capitalism. For instance, if I am a child and my mother buys me a new bed and tries to get rid of the old one, I could just as easily tell her that she's taking away my right to choose between beds.

Take that outside of the context of my mother buying me a new bed and try to turn it into a political principle: right to choose beds! My only responsibility would be to look at you as if you were insane. But I digress.

Socialism does not negate competition. The socialist mode of production is one of free producers, the rule of the laborers. As such, they are perfectly within their means to have friendly little competitions in any given trade. However, if you mean the wretched, dehumanizing, enslaving competition that forces workers to turn their teeth on each other instead of their class enemy, effectively to keep labor costs down, then yes. You're god damned right there will be no more of that.

Choose healthcare? Logically preposterous, morally outrageous, cynically laughable. "Choosing healthcare" in this sense means choosing between enterprises that profit off of human suffering and by consciously obfuscating the issue and wording it abstractly, you want us to hand human welfare over to private bodies. Sick.

The bit about government authoritarianism is always thrown at us socialists, luckily it is comical enough so as to not ruffle too terribly many of our feathers. Sometimes it is a straw man, sometimes a red herring, but at the end of the day the only way to move against the existence of the state is toward socialism, against the contradictions and irreconcilable flaws of class society that create the need for a state to mediate them.

Be sure not to respond to any of this. Empty phrases, empty words.

Your history is a bit off, non hierarchical way of life predates the agricultural revolution. Socialist theory goes back to the late 18th century and was scientifically expounded upon by Marx and Engels in the 19th. But no, keep talking about the 60's. Sounds like another arrogant baby boomer to me :laugh:.

*Sigh* the human nature myth was laid to waste by Ivan Pavlov over a century ago.

The idea that humans interact socially in a biologically preordained way is a bad joke. The concept of human nature is conceived through the observation of human interaction and relationship which are molded and conditioned by the larger and broader framework of the society that humans live in in any given time.

So since the idea of human nature doesn't really predate capitalist society, it is only natural that the codification of the ideology of human nature supposes to us that the way we are organized under capitalism, the way we interact under capitalism, the way we relate under capitalism, are all concrete things.

So human nature is a social construct.

As far as things like war goes, there are plenty of anthropological studies that debunk the myth of humans as inherently warlike, none off the top of my head.

But it should be pointed out that while war does predate class society it is always carried out in an economically interested form and never in a way that wouldn't beget economic gains. It seems like we as a species have understood this up until say, WWII when the ideological justifications for war became more sophisticated and convincing.

So war, like all other human interactive tendencies, exist only in relation to the conditions that necessitate their existence, not just because evolution pulled it out of its ass to program us that way.

Fuck off. You're not exactly a treasure trove of knowledge yourself in your rusty old age :laugh: (sorry).

Feel free to use or don't use any of this.

And boom goes the dynamite.

[Jesus Saves Gretzky Scores]

She told me "Now you're just being more irrational. Your utopian society will never happen. Like it or not, capitalism is our best option despite what you might see as great in alternative, but realistically irrational and dysfunctional systems. I do no wish to debate this any further."

I the told her to actually justify everything she just said with evidence, and she just deleted her original post. I guess it's probably pointless arguing with people like that, but it just really bothers me how people can have all the evidence and still ACTUALLY think like that.

:laugh:Of course she did that. Back when I was more anarchist, I remember debating some guy on Facebook, and after a while, his only argument was "you anarchists are so stupid, you don't have any arguments".

[prolcon]

She told me "Now you're just being more irrational. Your utopian society will never happen. Like it or not, capitalism is our best option despite what you might see as great in alternative, but realistically irrational and dysfunctional systems. I do no wish to debate this any further."

(Emphasis added.) Somebody ought to pick up that phone, because I sure as fuck called it.

[Fourth Internationalist]

She deleted her original post, she knows she's wrong, so don't pursue her anymore we don't want to turn her off to socialism. :)

[Geiseric]

Haters gonna hate dude, don't bother arguing with assholes. The best thing to help you argue is pre researched knowlege about capitalism's inherit problems, you should read Capital vol. 1 and then you won't have a problem. Or in general read anything that gives outlines of the fundamental concepts in Capital. That book though is the only thing that will give you the firepower to argue with captalists. There are young comrades who don't read anything and I see them argue with their friends, and they're totally off sometimes, but like with most things, practice and preperation are what you need.

[ComingUpForAir]

My advice is to listen to a few lectures on wearemany.org -- in the marxism/socialism section there is a lecture called 'Marxism and Morality'. There are also great lectures on Marxism and Human Nature, etc.

One you've soaked those up (more than once, I enjoy them so much), you'll be ready for battle. On the competition thing, I always find this so laughable. First of all, the establishment of communism happens after we've gone through an inter-mediary stage.. a stage where the rich become heavily taxed for being loafers and we develop a new kind of society. People still compete in communism, they just don't compete over material things -- they start competing over things like who's the best athlete, who can write the best play, etc etc.. I mean we don't watch gladiators kill eachother anymore right? Society has become a bit softer in some ways -- we watch football and basketball now -- that's what satisfies our competitive edge.

The idea that some people don't work and are freeloaders and blah blah.. well you have to take a look at people and ask, why don't they work, why are they lazy, if they are? You should mention to her that working class people work 10-12 hours a day working jobs that are more demanding and less intellectual -- they work VERY hard. People who work hard in school and get to be doctors have 1) $$ to go to medical school and $$ to be from a good community with a good school and thus a $$ good education. It really sickens me when counter-revolutionaries and capitalists say that ANYONE can make it you just have to work hard. It's so simplistic and it really pisses me off. They don't understand how people are shaped and molded, and they don't bother looking at the numbers.. for every person that makes it out of the ghetto, there are many many many more who don't. The odds are stacked against working class people -- and even more now, when college is expensive and getting a job means knowing someone (what a joke). When I was in college I actually believed for a time that it was about good grades and working hard -- that it was about merit. No, you have some HR person from a private company decide if you are a good fit for their company culture and you have to have someone get you in. Is that ***** serious?

She needs to understand a lot more -- she thinks she knows and get it bu she doesn't.. a lot of people are like that -- they think they've thought it through, but when you press them harder they actually don't know shit. Unfortunately defending marxism is very difficult -- it's a battle.. and you have to be prepared to fight a lot of bad assumptions and propaganda.. it's a war to penetrate people. I've been able to finally get through to people.. and marxists are far and few between -- but it's a worthy battle if ou can bring people to your perspective. So Argue and debate -- the grave will supply plenty of time for silence, comrade.

Sorry I started ranting there for a bit -- anyway you just have to soak up a lot of material --

Check out Richard Wolff - Occupy our future on youtube -- go to wearemany.org -- that's where I get my info from -- that will take you far. The Meaning Of Marxism is also a book I used to understand more.

No culture or society exists in a vaccuum, which is why Marxism has to be global to work -- but take the example of Mondragon corporation or some of the Scandinavian countries and throw those in her face a bit.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

The trick in this situation, I suspect, is to not argue on a terrain of mutual incomprehensibility. Instead, either:

(a) Create a situation where communism is an "in"-joke that you need to understand in some theoretical depth to "get", therein presenting her with the choice of either studying Marxism, and correcting her mistaken ideas herself, or being excluded from the neon luddite electro communist dubstep sex party.


(b) Deal on the terrain of every day life. Instead of talking in the abstract, talk about the shitty fastfood jobs you work. It's pretty obvious who's getting expropriated at McDonalds and its not the capitalists.

[Green Girl]

I'm an anarcho-communist/anarcho-syndicalist and was just compared to a dictator for describing my ideas and saying that I didn't see why local communities aren't capable of making their own decisions without hierarchy.

I just... I don't even know how someone can confuse anarchy for a dictatorship. I even explicitly talked about how it would be non-hierarchical in a previous post.

You're no longer debating her, but I think she might have the same objection to the word "dictatorship" I did back when I was first introduced to communism in the early 1970's. Marx's term "the dictatorship of the proletariat" bothered me because like most people I was only aware of the common one-person dictatorships and the police states they created. It was explained to me that "the dictatorship of the proletariat" means that the working class holds political and economic control, within a democratic system, in other words the workers democratically make all economic and political decisions, however the capitalists and idle rich have NO voice in either the economic or political realms. This made sense to me since workers are the most important people as they build everything. This caused me to study communism more.

However it would be so much easier in spreading the good news of how great REAL communism would be, if Marx used the term "the democracy of the proletariat" instead. I feel the term "dictatorship" has been used to justify countries calling themselves communist when in reality they were "state capitalist dictatorships" lead by a single person or a small group, but never by the working class.

[Raúl Duke]

(b) Deal on the terrain of every day life. Instead of talking in the abstract, talk about the shitty fastfood jobs you work. It's pretty obvious who's getting expropriated at McDonalds and its not the capitalists.

This, just this.

This is what I do; it's the most successful route.
Most people just don't want to talk about abstractions or "politics divorced from everyday life."


but I think she might have the same objection to the word "dictatorship"

This is possibly true. In speech class I remember a few things like "consider your audience" and that entails tailoring your message depending on who you're speaking to. Using jargon like "dictatorship of proletariat," no matter how you choose to explain it, will always rub people the wrong way since in the US at least it has connotations of a totalitarian regime.

[Domela Nieuwenhuis]

Haha, the ***** is funny...



You want to take away people's hard earned money and give it to people who do not and will not work for a living

Uhmmm, money in communism? Did i miss a memo?



take away our right to compete and financially benefit for our efforts

As if the most of us can do that now! You said she old. That means she has benefitted (and still does) from great plans from the fifties. Rich ol' *****.



take away our right to choose our health care

Ha, thought you lived in America? Last thing i heard only rich people have a choice.



tell us how to think and make us submit to brain scans to make sure we think your way

Uhm...last time i had a brainscan, noone told me how to think. (if they did, the thing really backfired!)



tell us to go live on communes (I can't tell you how hard I laughed at that one)

I wouldn't live in a small commune. Why the hell would i say she has to?



and, in general, submit to the authority of government. And, I get the feeling that you think you could take control and brainwash all of us into taking our marching orders from you. If you want to live like that I suggest you go live in a green house where you can rule over potted plants...because
that is what you want people to be...passive, submissive potted plants who depend on you and your government for permission to live. Potted plants will act exactly the way you want them to act and you can be their Great [my name] God.

Lol, capitalism is way better at that. She's living proof!



Listen kid, absolutely nothing you are saying is new or innovated. Your words are a hollow echo of the 60's. I was there. I even lived on a commune for a while. Kiddo, it did not work then and it will not work now.

Being a hippy is just not the same as a communist.



That is not how people are put together. We would not exist as a species if it were not for competition. Ever since we crawled out of the primal ooze we have been striving to achieve, accumulate wealth and, oh yeah, make weapons to defend ourselves against others who try to steal our wealth or threaten our lives or way of life.

And yet she is annoyed when someone caps the neighbour for his tv-set. Hypocritical old fart.



I know you are very young and still think you have all the answers. It is all part of growing up. I did it. Almost everyone did it. You think you are a leftist liberal.

And there it is! She actually tells you what to think! Funny as shit...



I just... I don't even know how someone can confuse anarchy for a dictatorship. I even explicitly talked about how it would be non-hierarchical in a previous post.
Ignorance. Pure unfiltered ignorance.
Why bother to take an interest in another human? You are always right anyway.

*sighs*...old people...

[GoddessCleoLover]

You're no longer debating her, but I think she might have the same objection to the word "dictatorship" I did back when I was first introduced to communism in the early 1970's. Marx's term "the dictatorship of the proletariat" bothered me because like most people I was only aware of the common one-person dictatorships and the police states they created. It was explained to me that "the dictatorship of the proletariat" means that the working class holds political and economic control, within a democratic system, in other words the workers democratically make all economic and political decisions, however the capitalists and idle rich have NO voice in either the economic or political realms. This made sense to me since workers are the most important people as they build everything. This caused me to study communism more.

However it would be so much easier in spreading the good news of how great REAL communism would be, if Marx used the term "the democracy of the proletariat" instead. I feel the term "dictatorship" has been used to justify countries calling themselves communist when in reality they were "state capitalist dictatorships" lead by a single person or a small group, but never by the working class.


While I endorse DotP as a concept as originally formulated by Marx and Engels, from a PR point of view we ought to place the term (not the underlying concept) of DotP in cold storage. Trying to explain DotP to one who is not a Marxist is beyond useless, it is counter-productive. It has no place in mass work in the 21st century. Whenever one feels they are about to utter the phrase DotP one ought to just say workers' democracy instead.

[Philosophos]

So I have to admit, I can sometimes be bad at argument... what this person said really bothered me though. I'm an anarcho-communist/anarcho-syndicalist and was just compared to a dictator for describing my ideas and saying that I didn't see why local communities aren't capable of making their own decisions without hierarchy. Apparently she didn't take kindly to the word "commune", and even is trying to tell me that socialism is authoritarian and silly by nature. I'm so dumbfounded by such a counter-revolutionary and crazy response that I honestly don't even know how to BEGIN to reply.

Any advice comrades?

Here's what she said:

"[my name], you sound like a little dictator in the making. You want to take away people's hard earned money and give it to people who do not and will not work for a living...take away our right to compete and financially benefit for our efforts...take away our right to choose our health care...tell us how to think and make us submit to brain scans to make sure we think your way...tell us to go live on communes (I can't tell you how hard I laughed at that one)...and, in general, submit to the authority of government. And, I get the feeling that you think you could take control and brainwash all of us into taking our marching orders from you. If you want to live like that I suggest you go live in a green house where you can rule over potted plants...because that is what you want people to be...passive, submissive potted plants who depend on you and your government for permission to live. Potted plants will act exactly the way you want them to act and you can be their Great [my name] God. Listen kid, absolutely nothing you are saying is new or innovated. Your words are a hollow echo of the 60's. I was there. I even lived on a commune for a while. Kiddo, it did not work then and it will not work now. That is not how people are put together. We would not exist as a species if it were not for competition. Ever since we crawled out of the primal ooze we have been striving to achieve, accumulate wealth and, oh yeah, make weapons to defend ourselves against others who try to steal our wealth or threaten our lives or way of life. I know you are very young and still think you have all the answers. It is all part of growing up. I did it. Almost everyone did it. You think you are a leftist liberal. Yet what you are saying is some of the most repressive clap trap I have ever heard. Sorry, but if you are going to say the things you say get used to being pounded into the sand. You're suppose to be a smart kid. I am sure that you, like the rest of us, will outgrow Socialist pablum. Good luck on your journey."


I just... I don't even know how someone can confuse anarchy for a dictatorship. I even explicitly talked about how it would be non-hierarchical in a previous post.

Seriously the biggest laugh I had in a while.

Yes communists want to take away the money that people worked really hard to earn them BECAUSE WE WANT THEM TO HAVE EVERYTHING WITHOUT WORKING THEIR WHOLE GOD DAMN LIFE LIKE SLAVES.


"take away our right to compete and financially benefit for our efforts". This thing is why we have no unicorns too BECAUE IT'S UNNATURAL! Let me tell you what humans are about since the freaking begining of time uhm.... helping each other maybe.

"tell us how to think and make us submit to brain scans to make sure we think your way..."
Yes that's it! Take a look at this site: We have many different opinions. Each one of us is a communist in a capitalist society because he wanted to. So we are brainwashed FUCK LOGIC!
Now let's look all these people that are not communists and are right winged or fascists or far-right or something like this. They work like slaves their whole life, they barely survive if they are middle class, they fall victims of their stupidity (football fanatics for example) because capitalism wants them to be stupid, capitalism influences their stupid brains with his propaganda (oh yeah the propaganda is not telling people how to think, FUCK LOGIC'S BRAINS OUT)

Yes we also live in communes and outer space with griffins and talking gorillas.

I seriously think this person has lots of issues (look at the dictator of the plants part, seriously wtf)

Yes humans are just animals that fight for the wealth of the others. We are parasects we can't make our own wealth and share it with the rest of humanity we have to feel that we dominate them and steal them because we have small dicks and we think they're going to laugh at us so we have to be DHE RULARS OF DHIS WERLD!

And ofcourse the grand closing: The wise words from Koumfoukiou's discipline:
Yu a' yang soooo you a' stupid. We all been thear! It's like yu a' stupid now but in da futur'aaa yu will be smart like mi!
Yes master please teach me how to fuck logic and how to not know anything but still think I know things.

Long and hateful post but seriously I was in the mood :lol::lol::lol:

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Haha, the ***** is funny...

On the other hand, when communist men are dropping casual misogyny, I don't blame her for being skeptical.

[Domela Nieuwenhuis]

On the other hand, when communist men are dropping casual misogyny, I don't blame her for being skeptical.

Omg, so it's gonna go this way? If it were a guy i'd call him an asshole!
How would you call that!?

Me being mad and throwing around angry words doesn't make me a misogynist!
I don't hate women...i f-ing married one!

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Omg, so it's gonna go this way? If it were a guy i'd call him an asshole!
How would you call that!?

Me being mad and throwing around angry words doesn't make me a misogynist!
I don't hate women...i f-ing married one!

I didn't say you "were a misogynist" - I don't know anything about your "essence" - I said that what you said was misogynist. And, yeah, using gendered insults in anger is misogynistic, and perpetuates the exclusion of women from radical spaces. So, next time, stop, check yourself, and just say "asshole".

[Ravachol]

Omg, so it's gonna go this way? If it were a guy i'd call him an asshole!
How would you call that!?

Me being mad and throwing around angry words doesn't make me a misogynist!
I don't hate women...i f-ing married one!

***** can come across as a rather gender-neutral slur to people who's first language is not English, but consider someone calling a woman a 'teef' (or worse, 'slet') and you can probably feel where the problem lies.

[Sea]

I wonder if the results would be any different if the OP was arguing for economic equality, egalitarianism, worker's control, etc. instead of explicitly phrasing it as communism.
So, next time, stop, check yourself, and just say "asshole".This. I don't care what they may say, I don't care what they may do, it is male supremacy to deny that women can be assholes too. Utopist, if she was black you wouldn't call her a nigger just because it was 'convenient'. If she was homosexual you wouldn't call her a dyke either. But the point is if she was a he you wouldn't call him who is really a her but is for the sake of argument a he a *****.

...would you?

[Domela Nieuwenhuis]

Okay...so next time i say "you meany!" and stick out my tongue?

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Okay...so next time i say "you meany!" and stick out my tongue?

That would be hilarious.

Failing that, I think "pigfucker", "epsilon minus", and "bottom-feeder" are all, for example, generally acceptable.

[Comrade #138672]

If you are still learning, you need to argue with people sometimes, even your opponents. The dialectics of these disagreements can be quite insightful. However, at some point it starts to become a waste of time.

[Domela Nieuwenhuis]

I saw this about discussions. So true...

http://sphotos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/388600_259013124166220_1788066324_n.jpg