Devil's Advocate

[TomHPMc]

I'm going to play a game of Socratic dialouges here, basically so I can understand other leftist revolutionary stances through their opposition to popular right wing and authoritarian statements. Feel free to add your own statements for other users to comment on.

Note: I do not hold true any of the following statements I just want to just want to see what counter arguements arise.

GO!

'Gay adoption is harmful to children as it does not give them both maternal and paternal figures and can lead to bullying in their school years.'

'Anarchism would fail, without a governing body the biggest gang would simply take over.'
(The obvious retort to this one being: it already has)

'Without religion, people would not know what is right from wrong morally.'

'The absence of private property strips people of individual rights.'

'Capital Punishment is the best way to deter people from crime.'

[Mackenzie_Blanc]

I'm going to play a game of Socratic dialouges here, basically so I can understand other leftist revolutionary stances through their opposition to popular right wing and authoritarian statements. Feel free to add your own statements for other users to comment on.'

This should be fun! :)



'Gay adoption is harmful to children as it does not give them both maternal and paternal figures and can lead to bullying in their school years.'

They'd be better in an orphanage, huh? :rolleyes:


'Anarchism would fail, without a governing body the biggest gang would simply take over.'
(The obvious retort to this one being: it already has)'

So an Anarchist society could not succeed and be realized? :sleep:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH43YHaUGyQ


'Without religion, people would not know what is right from wrong morally.'

And with religion, all worldly problems are ignored and pacified and ethics is based on what a five thousand year book says.:laugh:


'The absence of private property strips people of individual rights.'

Rights are social constructs, the only way they exist is because another individual uses force to protect them. Natural Rights are as real as the invisible sky monster.


'Capital Punishment is the best way to deter people from crime.'

Which is why the U.S. executes more individuals than European countries yet maintains a higher crime rate.
http://www.graphs.net/wp-content/plugins/php-image-cache/image.php?path=/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Top-Ten-Countries-With-Highest-Reported-Crime-Rates.jpg

[LOLseph Stalin]

'Gay adoption is harmful to children as it does not give them both maternal and paternal figures and can lead to bullying in their school years.'

People are bullied for many reasons. Preventing gay adoption would not prevent bullying so no sense even trying to ban gay adoption for that reason. I was bullied and it certainly wasn't for having two parents of the same sex. Besides, why leave the children as orphans?


'Anarchism would fail, without a governing body the biggest gang would simply take over.'
(The obvious retort to this one being: it already has)This one is also Devil's Advocacy for me since I'm a vanguardist, but anarchism could sustain itself through a people's militia. Everybody would be armed and would protect the revolution.


'Without religion, people would not know what is right from wrong morally.'Because religion already teaches that killing nonbelievers and such is bad, right? :rolleyes:


'The absence of private property strips people of individual rights.'What rights do people have now? The right to starve and be slaves to their capitalist masters? Only the rich are really able to afford to enjoy their full "rights".


'Capital Punishment is the best way to deter people from crime.'Then why are some countries with capital punishment some of the most violent?

[Skyhilist]

Anarchism can have a horizontal system of governance actually, it just can't be a state.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I'm going to play a game of Socratic dialouges here, basically so I can understand other leftist revolutionary stances through their opposition to popular right wing and authoritarian statements. Feel free to add your own statements for other users to comment on.

Note: I do not hold true any of the following statements I just want to just want to see what counter arguements arise.

GO!

I'll give it a go...


'Gay adoption is harmful to children as it does not give them both maternal and paternal figures and can lead to bullying in their school years.'

Implicit in this statement is the assumption that children need "maternal and paternal figures" and not just, you know, love and support from caring adults. I contest that assumption.


'Anarchism would fail, without a governing body the biggest gang would simply take over.'
(The obvious retort to this one being: it already has)

Confuses political anarchy with mindless chaos.


'Without religion, people would not know what is right from wrong morally.'

Things like the Code of Hammurabi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi) (an ancient - but secular - code of law) would contradict this statement.


'The absence of private property strips people of individual rights.'

So people had no individual rights before the invention of private property?


'Capital Punishment is the best way to deter people from crime.'

Then explain why earlier times were more crime-ridden despite being more ready to use capital punishment?

[NGNM85]

I'm going to play a game of Socratic dialouges here, basically so I can understand other leftist revolutionary stances through their opposition to popular right wing and authoritarian statements. Feel free to add your own statements for other users to comment on.

Note: I do not hold true any of the following statements I just want to just want to see what counter arguements arise.

GO!

'Gay adoption is harmful to children as it does not give them both maternal and paternal figures and can lead to bullying in their school years.'

First; there are several studies which have proven that being raised by same-sex parents doesn't have any adverse affects on child development;

http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20051012/study-same-sex-parents-raise-well-adjusted-kids

Second; this argument blames the victims, for being victimized, as opposed to the victimizers. 'Nuff said.

Third; honestly, I'm not even sure how much of an issue this is, anymore. I am continually amazed at the speed at which the gay rights movement is progressing, in the United States. It's moving at warp speed. It's amazing. American attitudes towards homosexuality are changing by the day. Kids today don't give a shit. They've already moved past that. In a decade, or two, most of the country will see homophobia as baffling, and backward as elementalism, or phrenology.


'Anarchism would fail, without a governing body the biggest gang would simply take over.'
(The obvious retort to this one being: it already has)

That just doesn't follow.


'Without religion, people would not know what is right from wrong morally.'


That's absurd, and completely backasswards. Morality isn't predicated on laws, or rules, those rules, are, at best, attempts to codify, and institutionalize deeper principles of justice, which precede the law. Murder is not wrong because it is forbidden; it is forbidden because it is wrong.


'The absence of private property strips people of individual rights.'

The only 'right' infringed upon by abolishing capitalism is the 'right' to own property. ("Property' as in; 'capital.') I would argue, like many Radicals, that no such right exists. No-one is entitled to extort others for the proceeds of their labor.


'Capital Punishment is the best way to deter people from crime.'

Besides the not-insignificant facts that the death penalty is fucking barbaric, and is often applied in an arbitrary, and racist manner; study, after study has proven that capital punishment has no deterrent effect, whatsoever.

[Lowtech]

'Gay adoption is harmful to children as it does not give them both maternal and paternal figures and can lead to bullying in their school years.'this is a weak attempted to describe same-sex parents as bad or otherwise harmful to children. they have the same potential to be good or bad parents as straight couples. this is also indirectly asserting that if children do not grow up in a proper home with male and female parents, they can end up as undesirables (homosexual). or more simply put: same-sex parents do not constitute an improper environment to raise children. same-sex republican parents might be a whole 'nother topic :p
'Anarchism would fail, without a governing body the biggest gang would simply take over.'
(The obvious retort to this one being: it already has)anarchism would maintain more natural conditions than currently, and being that economic inequality is unnatural, it would obviously be much more natural economically, however we need natural conditions coupled with a cultural sense of proper behavior and a total "zombie apocalypse" mode wouldn't provide that
'Without religion, people would not know what is right from wrong morally.'this is asserting that people are inherently bad and religion corrects that, which is false. as modern society evolved and increased economic perversion was tolerated, society has progressively worsened the conditions for humans as a whole, however all of this is artificial and not based on human nature, rather it is based on human weakness in the face of economic subjugation.
'The absence of private property strips people of individual rights.'property in a marxian sense is kind of a misnomer. what really should be abolished is the notion of assets. since deriving economic value from assets rather than actually working and earning an income is highly unfeasible. this non-feasibility has been indoctrinated as economic inequality being seen as "natural" and belief that the majority of humans must trade work hours for plutocratic benevolence.
'Capital Punishment is the best way to deter people from crime.'if your only means to enforce law is to create deterrents, its much more efficient to simply build concrete walls, barbed wire fences, give people shock collars or to televise gruesome executions. people are intelligent, although not always utilizing this intelligence, therefore removing the conditions that produce crime goes much farther than simple "deterrents."

[TomHPMc]

All good stuff! Okay I'll post some more:


"Communism wouldn't succeed, there would be no incentive to work if everyone recieves the same reward"

"1st generation immigrants can never fully intergrate into society"

"Nationalism reinforces community"

"An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth; punishment must match the crime"

"It is sometimes necessary to censor art"
"

[Jimmie Higgins]

"Communism wouldn't succeed, there would be no incentive to work if everyone recieves the same reward"1) Socialism is about eliminating inequality in social power (i.e. bosses, the ruling class) not paying everyone the same wage. As it is in capitalism, there's no incentive to work (except for being forced to on some level: poverty, debt) if you get paid the same wage no matter how much value you create.


"1st generation immigrants can never fully intergrate into society"Don't know what that even means. If someone migrates somewhere and works then they are "intergrated" into that society. If you mean they don't assimilate into the domninant culture, then that's pretty subjective and hard to determine what "proper culture" consits of since there's much variation within native populations as well. Not assimilating the dominant culture could also apply to middle-aged people who say "The Internet" or "YouTubes".


"Nationalism reinforces community"A sense of community pre-dates the Nation State (which has only really existed in a modern sense for a couple hundred years) and probably pre-dates states generally or class society as people are social animals who created bands/communities for mutual survival. Ironically the rise of Nationalism and modern Nation-States often meant destroying local communities to create "Nation". France would be a prime example as they had social modernization schemes with the goal of eliminating regional differences and regional languages to create a common "French nationality".


"An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth; punishment must match the crime"Abstract. Whose crime, whose administering punishment and for what reason?


"It is sometimes necessary to censor art"Short answer: not really. But again, who, why, and for what ends?

[Regicollis]

All good stuff! Okay I'll post some more:


"Communism wouldn't succeed, there would be no incentive to work if everyone recieves the same reward"

Under communism the incentive to work yould be that your work was necessary and beneficial. You would also know that no lazy capitalists would expropriate the fruits of your labour.


"1st generation immigrants can never fully intergrate into society"

Define 'fully integrate'. Does it mean they have to look, talk and think exactly like nationalist reactionaries? If so, is that something to strive for?

Given equal rights and recognition immigrants are as able as anybody else to form relations and take part in society.


"Nationalism reinforces community"

It certainly does. It reinforces a very exclusive community defined by something very abstract and arbitrary. On the left we have higher aspirations for community than that.


"An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth; punishment must match the crime"

So if I steal an apple, a cop will come to my house and take an apple from me? What is the point of that? Any form of punishment should be directed at reforming the criminal through therapy, education or other forms of rehabilitation.


"It is sometimes necessary to censor art"
"

One of the roles of art is to provoke accepted norms. If people are demanding a work of art to be censored it is just one more good reason not to censor it.

[smellincoffee]

'Without religion, people would not know what is right from wrong morally.'
'

Our instincts give us a basic sense of morality, though not one idealists would champion: our native, instinctual morality lends itself toward tribalism. Culture can build on that, stressing empathy toward all and teaching people to regard the entire body of humanity, perhaps the Cosmos, as their tribe, while simultaneously discouraging the more negative aspects of our instinctive morality, like raging anger. That culture needn't be religious, and often the desires of the organized thing that is religion are at odds with the values it teaches: think of the coercion employed by both Christianity and Islam.

[Crixus]

'The absence of private property strips people of individual rights.'

The rise of private property stripped people of their ability to independently or collectively provide material sustenance. Private property is not a car, home, horse, hammer or pair of shoes for personal use, those are personal possessions. Private property is a factory, workshop full of tools, vast amount of land etc used to extract surplus value from people who have no choice but to work for the property owner in order to provide sustenance. The property market system can't exist unless hundreds of millions of people around the globe have been dispossessed of the means to independently or collectively provide material sustenance. Once dispossessed of that ability they/we have no choice but to sell our labor in order to survive. That's not the basis of liberty that's the basis of domination. Try to go out to unused land and build a home with your own two hands, milling your own wood etc. The system won't allow it. Try to sleep in a park or make a community garden to feed the community. The system won't allow it. Try to set up a nation which is communist and the property based system will fight it knowing full well that their system of property depends on people having no other choice but to submit to it.

The amount of freedom a person experiences can be measured by their access to the means to produce material sustenance for themselves. Traditionally in many places (within the family) women stayed at home and men worked. Men had access to the means of production and women didn't. This was, for a time, the main source of woman's oppression which is why feminism's first goal was to get women in the work force. It was the initial path to independence.

Now most men and women work which has majorly helped equalize family/social roles but even though they both enjoy a more equal access to the means of production they do not CONTROL their own means of production so both remain subservient to a boss. In this sense yes private property IS the foundation of liberty BUT only for the property owner and not the wage worker. Private property is the foundation of the modern state which makes us submit,the source of wage labor which makes us submit to a boss, rent which makes us submit to a landlord and interest which makes us submit to a bank. Where do my individual rights come into play? In my car on the way home from work? On Sunday during my day off sitting in a park being harassed by the police? At every turn there's people extracting value from me and that means my time is not mine and if my time is not mine what are individual rights?

The sort of "Liberty" and individualism capitalists promote is the "freedom to chose" what sort of multicolored useless junk to buy (or in the case below to shoot your body full of steroids so you look like a freak of nature who people will pay money to see like a carnival side show freak) :

KKbHA76-Hi0

There is the "freedom" of upward mobility under capitalism, yes Bill Gates exists, yes Schwarzenegger became Governor but this "freedom" absolutely depends on the impoverishment and subjugation of scores of millions of people. Fascism provides upward mobility and freedom for some of the citizens, does that make fascism a legitimate system? Chattel slaves could work hard and buy their own freedom, does this make chattel slavery legitimate? WW2 Germany saw it's citizens uplifted from economic ruin (at the expense of millions of Jews), does that make NAZI Germany a legitimate system to mimic? Freedom, liberty and upward mobility for the few at the expanse of the many isn't individual rights it's systemic domination and subjugation. The so called socialist/communist states never actually put workers in control of the means of production so yes the state took the place of the capitalist as oppressor. The source of liberty and individual rights is worker control over private property (production) and thus democratic control over society itself. The Orwellian doublethink capitalist line is Liberty and individualism means a minority of earths population is free to oppress and control the majority.

[tuwix]

'Anarchism would fail, without a governing body the biggest gang would simply take over.'
(The obvious retort to this one being: it already has)


Anarchism isn't a politilcal system. It's just ideology. It can't fail. It can be wrong only.




'The absence of private property strips people of individual rights.'




It is exactly conversely. Private property enslaves people because usually indivudual doesn't have it.

[Forward Union]

All good stuff! Okay I'll post some more:


"Communism wouldn't succeed, there would be no incentive to work if everyone recieves the same reward"

That's simply not Communism, it's a gross misunderstanding of the proposed method of distribution. Communism is the collective and democratic ownership and management of industry. People recieve "according to their needs" (and only if they contribute however they can to the society) not "all the same regardless of anything at all".


"1st generation immigrants can never fully intergrate into society"

I am a 1st Generation immigrant, and I can honestly say that, while I am not fully integrated I am already a better functioning member of society than a lot of others here. So I'd have to ask what the problem is, it seems there are always some people who can't fully integrate into the mainstream society, and others who can.


"Nationalism reinforces community"

A limited and toxic form of community. It limits the community to the familiar, why are other people not part of this community? - is that a good thing? and why am I "forgetting my differences" with people who materially exploit and oppress me who are members of the national community as me?


"An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth; punishment must match the crime"

How you respond to an injustice is a pragmatic decision and should be judged by the immediate facts. I think you should also consider Machiavellis point, that if you wound your opponant they may recover and retaliate, so it may be better to simply obliterate them.


"It is sometimes necessary to censor art"
"

having walked around some art galleries I almost agree.. :lol:

[Rugged Collectivist]

I'm going to play a game of Socratic dialouges here, basically so I can understand other leftist revolutionary stances through their opposition to popular right wing and authoritarian statements. Feel free to add your own statements for other users to comment on.

Fun!

'Gay adoption is harmful to children as it does not give them both maternal and paternal figures and can lead to bullying in their school years.'

There's no evidence that children need both a maternal and paternal figure. Even if there was they could find this in an aunt/uncle or some other non parent adult in their lives.

Bullying can occur do to having same sex parents, but letting bullies intimidate you is no way to stop bullying, and kids will doubtlessly be bullied for something anyway.


'Anarchism would fail, without a governing body the biggest gang would simply take over.'

My response is already contained in the OP


(The obvious retort to this one being: it already has)


'Without religion, people would not know what is right from wrong morally.'


Objective morality is a lie. Furthermore, there are many competing religions with irreconcilable moral codes. Which is right?


'The absence of private property strips people of individual rights.'

The only right it strips from people is the right to own private property, and since most people never will this is largely inconsequential.


'Capital Punishment is the best way to deter people from crime.'

Most crimes are committed by desperate people who have little or nothing to lose or crazies who don't think they'll get caught or are just unafraid of death. The former can be remedied by removing the conditions that lead to their desperation, the latter by psychological evaluation and treatment.


"Communism wouldn't succeed, there would be no incentive to work if everyone recieves the same reward"

People wouldn't receive the "same reward", but even if they did it would probably be greater than the shit wages most people are given under capitalism.


"1st generation immigrants can never fully intergrate into society"

This is just flat out wrong, and even if it weren't, most differences between foreigners and natives are either A. Petty. or B. something that reactionaries would consider private (religion and such). Compelling someone to conform to one monolithic culture flies in the face of all the personal freedoms and liberties that reactionaries hypocritically hold so dear.


"Nationalism reinforces community"

Yes, at the expense of everyone born outside of your arbitrary borders.


"An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth; punishment must match the crime"

Such a policy is only good for sating the bloodlust of the victim, and as much as I can sometimes understand the need for revenge I don't think it's a good basis for a legal system.

"It is sometimes necessary to censor art"

No opinion really.

[rylasasin]

I have one.

"We could fix capitalism if we made banks/businesses/etc fully transparent. The only way to have a fair and honest society is to have a fully transparent society in both the private and public sectors.
And the only way to make a fully transparent society useful is to require full disclosure of all that information and data in an easily accessible and useful way.

(basically from demand the good life. Though I've seen some libertarians throwing this one around too.)