Debate Arguments

[Redhead]

Hello, i am constantly having debates about communism/socialism with other people, and alot of the same arguments against communism comes up. I was just hoping you would help me with some good ol crushing arguments. So here they are:

"It is unfair for a doctor who have years of training to earn the same as a groundskeeper"

"Communism will end up as dictatorships, history has proven that"

"With no money the motivation to work harder will dissapear"

"Communism cant work because there will always be corrupt people who will take advantage of the system"

"Taking the business from the owners is stealing, and wrong"

...and of course the same old repeating one:
"Communism works on paper, but not in practice"

[Psycho P and the Freight Train]

Hello, i am constantly having debates about communism/socialism with other people, and alot of the same arguments against communism comes up. I was just hoping you would help me with some good ol crushing arguments. So here they are:

"It is unfair for a doctor who have years of training to earn the same as a groundskeeper"

"Communism will end up as dictatorships, history has proven that"

"With no money the motivation to work harder will dissapear"

"Communism cant work because there will always be corrupt people who will take advantage of the system"

"Taking the business from the owners is stealing, and wrong"

...and of course the same old repeating one:
"Communism works on paper, but not in theory"

These are vague little slogans taught to gullible people in schools, but I'll try and answer them.

- The doctor won't "earn" the same as a housekeeper because there will be no housekeepers under communism. Take care of your own damn house. Also, communists want to abolish money. Under the transition, there might be labor notes, but doctors as well as any other profession will be operating in a totally different societal structure where the goal to serve the community is a higher motive than any kind of "profit" due to the socialization into a completely new system structured under these circumstances. Furthermore, there have been studies that prove that profit isn't even that good of a motivation. Doctors today under capitalism, despite their high earnings, are in the top tier of people suffering depression.

- Dictatorships as opposed to the class dictatorship we currently live under? Sure, I can vote for different parties. But who do those parties protect and serve? You don't stand a chance of even being on a ballot to even be considered to be a member of a party! Not unless you have millions and backing from corporate entities. And you must serve their interests to even be considered by the party to run for any office. And furthermore, all parties under capitalism serve the same interests: bourgeois interests.

- Not true, there have been various studies that show that despite profit motive, people are not very motivated to get work done under capitalism. Also some of the higher paying jobs contain people that suffer from crippling depression. Alienation is a major problem because nobody is working towards any kind of goal other than to increase capital and profits for a group of shareholders and corporate bureaucrats.

- It is true that corrupt people have ended up hijacking revolutions. But in most cases of corruption, it isn't socialism or anything close. North Korea and the Khmer Rouge were never socialist and nobody who calls themselves a communist/socialist will defend them. When they do, they are ridiculed by the rest of the leftist community. And even in places like the USSR and China, they saw a huge amount of progress in many areas. Not to mention that most leftists advocate forms of direct democracy. And under capitalism, corruption is actually necessary for the system to even work.

- Taking obscene surplus value from what the workers produce and not allowing the workers to reap the benefits of what they produce is stealing and wrong.

- I think you meant, "it works on paper but not in practice." There have been instances of socialism working in many cases. Cuba is a great example. After the revolution, the Mafia had been exiled, the literacy rate climbed to 99.8%, healthcare improved to the point of surpassing the U.S. in certain areas, there are more doctors in Cuba per capita than anywhere else, and the Cubans get these services for free.

In China and the USSR, they went from semi-feudal backwaters to powerhouses. Venezuela under semi-socliast polices and community land ownership, saw a drop in poverty rates by over 40%. And you know what? Most people don't even consider these places socialist!

The same could be said about capitalism, as in these "great first world nations" we have people living on the streets. How's that for working in practice?

---

So yeah, that's what I would say to those accusations.

[Brotto Rühle]

"It is unfair for a doctor who have years of training to earn the same as a groundskeeper"He shouldn't of chosen to be a doctor then.In all seriousness though, I'll just use the basics. If the doctor is in it for the money, they shouldn't be a doctor.


"Communism will end up as dictatorships, history has proven that"Communism has never existed. Material conditions are what caused the degeneration of revolutions into state capitalism.


"With no money the motivation to work harder will dissapear"Why? What does money get most people, the vast majority? Barely anything. Struggling to pay bills and rent? If you could not have to worry about any of that, about clothing your family, feeding them, sheltering them....why would you not work?

Ask them why they're so lazy.


"Communism cant work because there will always be corrupt people who will take advantage of the system"Ask them to describe the system. If it is anything other than "a stateless, classless society", jsut call them out on being wrong on what communism is.


"Taking the business from the owners is stealing, and wrongTaking surplus value from the labour of the workers is stealing, and wrong.


...and of course the same old repeating one:
"Communism works on paper, but not in theory"Why?

[GiantMonkeyMan]

"Communism will end up as dictatorships, history has proven that"
History has proven that if the working class attempt to liberate themselves from the chains of capitalism then the capitalist class will do everything in its power to crush that uprising and reassert the bourgeois dictatorship that we currently live in; we've seen this from the crushing of the Paris Commune to the Imperialist invasions of Russia following the October Revolution to the explicit bourgeois support of fascism to crush the workers' movement in Italy to the massacring of the Shanghai Commune in 1927 to the police infiltration and outright assassination of the Black Panthers and so on and so on.


"Communism works on paper, but not in theory"
I think you mean the old assertion that 'communism works on paper but not in practice' but this is simply a tautological statement that decries any actual analysis of the conditions we live in. It's nothing but a surrender to the status quo, a suggestion that capitalism is the sum of human existence and the progression from capitalism would be impossible. These sorts of statement are usually followed by others, such as "capitalism is best of all the bad systems", but in reality these are just catchphrases of individuals who've never actually done any analysis or study of communism and capitalism. I should know, before I was a communist I used these phrases all the time in my ignorance.

To challenge such a statement ask the individual if they think capitalism works, a system that produces enough food to give 2.5 times the adult male recommended daily calorie intake to every human being on the planet yet people still starve.

[Loony Le Fist]

I am phrasing this as if I was responding to the person asking the questions. This isn't really directed at any particular person.



It is unfair for a doctor who have years of training to earn the same as a groundskeeper


Groundskeepers do back-breaking work. They often take serious risks and the work is extremely exhausting--especially in summer. I think they certainly deserve to be compensated well for that, if not for anything else. Far more than they currently do.

Who says groundskeepers can't be well trained either? To make an honest comparison, you would have to compare a doctor to a skilled and trained groundskeeper. However, it's rare to find a skilled groundskeeper since the work is very tough and pay is awful.

Of course, there is a solution to this. :grin:



Communism will end up as dictatorships, history has proven that


It would seem that certain vanguard types would--and real life bears this out. Sadly, what history has truly proven is that forms of communism that lack a defense against imperialist and fascist forces will be crushed. Other forms will become dictatorial (also depending on the core ideology) against the surging pressures of liberal aggression. I think what one has to ask is not only what failed systems labeling themselves communist have done to themselves, but to also ask what external pressures they were reacting too. It should make us wonder why this question nearly always remains unasked.



With no money the motivation to work harder will dissapear


Why? What is the prime mover of human behavior? What is it at it's core? Is it the acquisition of wealth? Is that our pinnacle achievement? If I were to simply collect capital, what good does it do for me or anyone else? It is not money but what we can do with it. It is humans that develop their own motivations for doing. Implicit is the sleight of hand assertion that money is the primary motivation for things without demonstrating it. Money just happens something that we're motivated by, because that is how success is defined in the society we live in.

Capitalists contradict themselves with this often. On one side of their mouth they claim that without money there is no motivation. While on the opposite side they claim that workers don't need raises, since the studies in managerial science show that people are motivated by much broader interests than just mere accumulation of wealth. :laugh: Way to be consistent.



Communism cant work because there will always be corrupt people who will take advantage of the system


Two words: Honest Tea.


I would disagree with the idea that communism is necessarily a utopian system. You are going to have free-riders in any economic system. It isn't a challenge unique to any particular solution to the basic economic problem. It's something you simply must accept as a reality.

So let's take Honest Tea as an example. They set up a stand in many different cities and had tea left out for anyone to take, and a kiosk to accept payments. What they found was that 93% of the time, people were honest and payed for the tea. A 7% shrink level isn't bad. Panera did something like that with a pay-what-you-can restaurant concept and got similar results.

It is a fact that most people are honest. That is why capitalism works and is so successful at concentrating wealth. It rewards those most cunning and willing to deceive the majority of honest hardworking people.
...


Capitalism creates just as much of a free-rider problem--if not a worse one.



Taking the business from the owners is stealing, and wrong


It's never theft to take back what is first stolen from you.

EDIT: In this graph we observe a theft of productive output starting in the early eighties and progressively worsening with time. Prior to this, there was roughly a linear relationship between wages and productive output. Around this time there was also an increase in financialization and the development of complex derivative products that made the calculation of risk intractable. Ask yourself what the reasons might be for a company to release a financial product whose risk is established mathematically to be impossible to calculate? Either these gurus are quite lacking in common sense or they are consciously engaging in a type of economic warfare on the poor who have no investments, but suffer as a result of the losses through things like policy imposed inflation, bailouts, and other such nonsense.

EDIT: Eventually something gives in this disequilibrium. People can only be fleeced to a point. There is an awakening occurring, but in slow motion. It also seems to start and fit, like OWS, then the smaller Keystone demonstrations (which I never saw mentioned on any mainstream media I happened to encounter). That doesn't mean it's not worrisome.

Graph Comparing Real Wages (Inflation Adjusted) with Productivity


http://workerspartynz.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/real-wages-vs-productivity.png



We are more productive for the companies we work for, yet do not see the benefits. Who is the one stealing?



Communism works on paper, but not in theory

Capitalism doesn't even work in theory. That's the problem.

Real systems are going to have problems, but when your starting from a bad theoretical model, what do you think the real world one is going to look like?

[tuwix]

Hello, i am constantly having debates about communism/socialism with other people, and alot of the same arguments against communism comes up. I was just hoping you would help me with some good ol crushing arguments. So here they are:

"It is unfair for a doctor who have years of training to earn the same as a groundskeeper"


I'd ask simply why? What do make a doctor better than anyone else?



"Communism will end up as dictatorships, history has proven that"


Only version of communism working until today is primitive communism and there is no dictatorship at all. So-called 'communism' has nothing to do with communism.



"With no money the motivation to work harder will dissapear"


It's not exactly true. First of all, hard working is just a myth. The Wall Street CEO works in more comfortable conditions and speaking thusly his work is much softer than miner anywhere but he gets salary worth a work of thousands or millions of miners. But motivation for really hard jobs (miners, farmers, etc.) would really disappear without money. Many would like be poets but not many would like be farmers. This is why moneyless system should be introduced when those unwanted jobs would be done by machines in theit majority.



"Communism cant work because there will always be corrupt people who will take advantage of the system"


It could be said about capitalism but it works anyway.



"Taking the business from the owners is stealing, and wrong"


And exploiting workers is very noble and fair?



...and of course the same old repeating one:
"Communism works on paper, but not in theory"

You probably "not in practice". However, primitive communism proves that communism works in practice.