You know what would liven things up?

[Demogorgon]

A few decent anti-leftist arguments here. I love debate, and despite all our infighting and disagreements, there is a limit to how much you can argue with other leftists. So obviously OI ought to be an interesting part of the board. And sometimes it is, but all too often it is too dry.

I was reading through some of the threads here and the standard of anti left wing argument we have been getting is pretty atrocious. No offence to the cappies, but when you are arguing with anarchists for example, ranting on to them about how they support state interference in the economy ain't going to cut it I am afraid. They are a few steps ahead of you there.

And I am pretty sure I know why it is, with the exception of a few trogdolytes (otherwise known as neocons) who swing by to bash the "liberals", restricted members can, with very few exceptions, be more or less divided into two groups. The first are leftists who have been restricted for some triviality or another, and they are hardly going to provide debate outside of whatever crazy view they have that had them convined here. And the other are Libertarians.

Libertarians (a rather inappropriate word for them I know, but I will use it) are pretty hopeless frankly, you get a lot of them on the internet, I have a sneaking suspicion it appeals to computer geeks more than others. It would be silly to try and judge a whole bunch of people, but politically they tend to be rather inept. A great deal of them, especially the variety evangelical enough to come to a Communist board of all things, tend to have starry eyed views of the world untroubled by what it actually looks like. They think capitalism is some great moral system of principles rather than a system of economics. They don't know what they advocate actually is, what hope have they of understanding what they oppose? I would have hoped that libertarians having posted here a while would at least know what communism is, even if they don't support it. But I still see certain established members still lecturing radically anti-state anarchists about opposing big government and I reluctantly feel I best give them up as a lost cause. Hell, some Libertarians don't even manage to criticise Soviet "Communism", they actually have their own made up version after all.

So here is what I am hoping for, I am looking for some restricted members who genuinely oppose Communism and anarchism who are not Libertarians (or fascists obviously, that's a big no no) who have some arguments against communism that actually deviate from the "yu hate freedom or "you support the state" line. Come on, it will aleviate my boredom at least.

[Raúl Duke]

By arguments against communism you mean its practicality (i.e. is it possible or not)? it's practices (which are many...because of the varied communist ideologies)? desirability? etc?

Exactly what aspect of communism would you like them to argue about?

I think specifying what to argue would help in starting this "lively debate" on the right track.

[pusher robot]

Since you seem to define anything anti-communist for liberal reasons as libertarian by definition, and anything anti-communist for authoritarian reasons as fascist by definition, you are asking for the near-impossible.

How about the argument against communism by strict inductive empiricism, to wit: a communist society has never remained viable over successive changes in government but capitalist societies have, nor has a communist society outperformed capitalist or even quasi-capitalist societies in economic productivity over successive generations. Self-proclaimed communist societies have engaged in more atrocities and human rights abuses than self-proclaimed capitalist societies.

From this we conclude, strictly as a matter of historical experience and without regards to principles or morality, that capitalism is more practical than communism for the members of that society.



No offence to the cappies, but when you are arguing with anarchists for example, ranting on to them about how they support state interference in the economy ain't going to cut it I am afraid.

What are you referring to here?

[Demogorgon]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 13, 2007 09:47 pm
Since you seem to define anything anti-communist for liberal reasons as libertarian by definition, and anything anti-communist for authoritarian reasons as fascist by definition, you are asking for the near-impossible.

How about the argument against communism by strict inductive empiricism, to wit: a communist society has never remained viable over successive changes in government but capitalist societies have, nor has a communist society outperformed capitalist or even quasi-capitalist societies in economic productivity over successive generations. Self-proclaimed communist societies have engaged in more atrocities and human rights abuses than self-proclaimed capitalist societies.

From this we conclude, strictly as a matter of historical experience and without regards to principles or morality, that capitalism is more practical than communism for the members of that society.



No offence to the cappies, but when you are arguing with anarchists for example, ranting on to them about how they support state interference in the economy ain't going to cut it I am afraid.

What are you referring to here?
I do not refer to any disagreement with COmmunism as either Libertarian or fascist. Unlike many people here, I understand the difference between liberalism and libertarianism. I guess I was looking for liberal criticism. PRactical criticism though. I am sick to the back teeth of pointless discussions of "the metaphysical basis of rights". Hell I am tempted to give up study of metaphysics at University I am so tired of the damn subject ;)

Anyway, I wasn't expecting it from you of al people, but tryig to criticise Communism on an entirely empirical basis is the sort of thing I am looking for, and it can lead to good debate. So without firther ado:

First of all simply cling self proclaimed Capitalist states capitalist and self proclaimed Communist states communist is not a good idea, are self proclaimed Democracies, democracies? I think the citizens of the German Democratic Republic may have disputed that.

However if we are discussing the difference between self proclaimed communist and capitalist states and their respective crimes, I would remind you that the Holocaust was carried out by a self proclaimed capitalist state. Puts things in perspective doesn't it?

Onto economics. Naturally if we are going to make a valid comparison, we will have to compare liek with like, so taking Cuba for example, a valid comparison will compare it to other Carribean countries, with which it has obviou similarities. Excluding various states their that remain colonies (Britain stil maintains several colonies in the Carribean), Cuba has by far the highest level of human development in the region and consequently the highest standard of living. For the next example we go off to the other side of the world and look at India. India is a fascinating country in many ways, but here we are going to compare various states. India has a highly federal system, where excluding the occasional bout of federal interference to "restore order" states have a degree of autonomy close in many ways to independence. What we find is that states that have been Governed by the Communist Party or parties with similar outlooks for large eriods of time again tend to have higher standards of living and often stronger economies.

Your examples are falling down quickly and that is just off the top of my head. And come to think of it, seeing as by your rules we can call any cpuntry that calls itself communist, Communist, can I put China's recent economic growth dwn to Communism? No? I had a feeling the game didn't work like that. Still it was worth a try.

[mikelepore]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 13, 2007 09:47 pm

How about the argument against communism by strict inductive empiricism, to wit: a communist society has never remained viable over successive changes in government but capitalist societies have, nor has a communist society outperformed capitalist or even quasi-capitalist societies in economic productivity over successive generations. Self-proclaimed communist societies have engaged in more atrocities and human rights abuses than self-proclaimed capitalist societies.
No matter whether its formally called communist or not, if industrial management is performed by top-down political appointees, rather than the democratic participation of the staff of each industry, then the potential of a collectively controlled system isn't being tested. All of the Soviet Union's variations adopted the essential form of the capitalist corporation, which is that the workers are viewed as outsiders who are instructed by the boss to to shut up and obey. If you don't have free speech and contested elections, there's no way the will of the people can be even measured, much less implemented. Calling it communist will then mean about as much as calling it a people's democratic republic, that is, it means nothing. In short, we shouldn't refer to a collectively owned economic system in the past tense, since so one has ever tried it before.

[Tower of Bebel]

You look for OI'ers who have actually read Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Malatesta, Bakunin, Stalin, or whoever in order to have a good debate?

[pusher robot]

I am sick to the back teeth of pointless discussions of "the metaphysical basis of rights". Hell I am tempted to give up study of metaphysics at University I am so tired of the damn subject ;)

Fair enough.


First of all simply cling self proclaimed Capitalist states capitalist and self proclaimed Communist states communist is not a good idea, are self proclaimed Democracies, democracies? I think the citizens of the German Democratic Republic may have disputed that.

I think that self-identification is a good basis for judgment, because it gives us some empirical evidence of what to expect from a society that so identifies. Your counterexample is interesting - but has anybody claimed that self-identified democracies have a stellar track record? Certainly nobody here has made that claim. Also, I am not claiming that self-identified communist societies are actually communist societies - I am simply claiming that whatever they are is what we can expect a self-proclaimed communist society to actually be.


However if we are discussing the difference between self proclaimed communist and capitalist states and their respective crimes, I would remind you that the Holocaust was carried out by a self proclaimed capitalist state. Puts things in perspective doesn't it?

I'm afraid I will need some kind of primary source to accept that the National Socialist Worker's Party actually self-identified as capitalist. Their very name self-identifies as socialist.


Naturally if we are going to make a valid comparison, we will have to compare liek with like, so taking Cuba for example, a valid comparison will compare it to other Carribean countries, with which it has obviou similarities. Excluding various states their that remain colonies (Britain stil maintains several colonies in the Carribean), Cuba has by far the highest level of human development in the region and consequently the highest standard of living. First of all, by whose measurements? Second of all, what are the self-identifying capitalist societies you are comparing Cuba to?


India has a highly federal system, where excluding the occasional bout of federal interference to "restore order" states have a degree of autonomy close in many ways to independence. What we find is that states that have been Governed by the Communist Party or parties with similar outlooks for large eriods of time again tend to have higher standards of living and often stronger economies. Do you have any evidence that during this time, the other states self-identified as capitalist, as opposed to feudal, socialist, mercantilist, or nothing at all?


And come to think of it, seeing as by your rules we can call any cpuntry that calls itself communist, Communist, can I put China's recent economic growth dwn to Communism? No? I had a feeling the game didn't work like that

First of all, I never claimed that self-identification as communist means that the country is communist or that the behavior of any self-identifying societies reflects anything on the ideology they identify with. That is a philosophical argument. You are deviating from the empirical standard. My only claim is that we can judge the behavior of future self-identified communist societies by examining the behavior of past self-identified communist societies.

Having said that, you are correct that China clearly falls into this category, a society that self-identifies as communist. So, we can observe China's behavior - a long period of violent and destructive social upheaval characterized by the death of tens of millions of citizens, followed by stagnation and then the rapid liberalization and privatization of large sectors coincident with huge economic growth - and extrapolate to future societies.

I would think, however, that from your perspective, China is the worst of both worlds. Competition and capital-based market activity combined with conservative social repression and enforced conformity, and a tiny social safety net. It surprises me that you would willingly hold it up as an example of how future communist societies are likely to trend.

[Idola Mentis]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 13, 2007 10:47 pm
From this we conclude, strictly as a matter of historical experience and without regards to principles or morality, that capitalism is more practical than communism for the members of that society.
That's "strict inductive empiricism"? Come on. You know enough to use the term, you ought to know enough to employ the method properly. Once you have, we might argue over the validity of reaching a true statement regarding such a hellishly complex subject matter by using two millenia old aristotelian methods - but first things first, eh?

For a start, define your axioms and other assumptions - then give us some other possible sources of error in your demonstration. Then perhaps you can show how you have eliminated them, and begin to have something an argument could be built on.

[pusher robot]

Originally posted by Idola Mentis+August 14, 2007 04:14 pm--> (Idola Mentis @ August 14, 2007 04:14 pm)
pusher [email protected] 13, 2007 10:47 pm
From this we conclude, strictly as a matter of historical experience and without regards to principles or morality, that capitalism is more practical than communism for the members of that society.
That's "strict inductive empiricism"? Come on. You know enough to use the term, you ought to know enough to employ the method properly. Once you have, we might argue over the validity of reaching a true statement regarding such a hellishly complex subject matter by using two millenia old aristotelian methods - but first things first, eh?

For a start, define your axioms and other assumptions - then give us some other possible sources of error in your demonstration. Then perhaps you can show how you have eliminated them, and begin to have something an argument could be built on.[/b]
Hmm. Are you certain you're not confusing inductive with deductive reasoning?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning

Induction or inductive reasoning, sometimes called inductive logic, is the process of reasoning in which the premises of an argument are believed to support the conclusion but do not ensure it. It is used to ascribe properties or relations to types based on tokens (i.e., on one or a small number of observations or experiences); or to formulate laws based on limited observations of recurring phenomenal patterns. Induction is used, for example, in using specific propositions such as:

This ice is cold.
A billiard ball moves when struck with a cue.

...to infer general propositions such as:

All ice is cold.
All billiard balls struck with a cue move.

My argument is empirical because I am making inductions purely from historically observed phenomena, not from moral, philosophical, or theoretical premises.

[mikelepore]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 14, 2007 04:05 pm
I'm afraid I will need some kind of primary source to accept that the National Socialist Worker's Party actually self-identified as capitalist. Their very name self-identifies as socialist.


Why did the big German capitalists like Krupp, Thyssen, and Kirdorf give so much support to getitng the NSDAP into power? Because the party's program included the goals of outlawing socialists and labor unions.

As for the name Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei including the word "socialist", it's fairly obvious that any group can adopt any name they think sounds pleasing. If the nazis had decided to call their group the Individual Freedom Party, would that make it necessary for us today to oppose individual freedom? Obviously not. We would find it trivially easy to realize that a name doesn't indicate what something is.

[pusher robot]

As for the name Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei including the word "socialist", it's fairly obvious that any group can adopt any name they think sounds pleasing.

What we are concerned with here is only how the nazis identified themselves, and whatever their "true" beliefs, the clearly did not identify themselves as capitalists.
You may argue that even though they called themselves socialists, they were not really socialists and the result was horrible. But that actually supports my argument. Remember I am talking about the empirical record of two classes of societies: those that identify themselves as capitalist, and those that identify themselves as communist. Whether those self-identifications are "true" or not is a philosophical point and irrelevant to my argument.

[IcarusAngel]

I think pusher robot is pretty good at debate compared to most capitalists. He can make his case with evidence without resulting to a lot of negativity.

Krupp, IG Farben, Siemens AG and other corporations (like the ones mentioned by mikelepore) certainly did support the Nazis and for the most part their profits weren't interfered with by the Nazi party. I've seen studies by economists that show the Nazis actually had less social spending than the United States. They also opened up trade. Clearly, the economy overall was capitalistic, rather than socialist. The Nazis used the term socialist like the capitalists (at least the ones good at propaganda) in the US use the term "democracy."

But Nazism was really more fascistic capitalism than democratic capitalism, or even capitalism with a little socialism. There is a difference. (They also used the term "socialist" to refer to a form of nationalism in general, as Hitler said. Hitler also called himself a capitalist plenty of times.)

I think if capitalists were smart they'd advocate a bit of social democracy along with capitalism, fair elections, clean government, and an almost Ralph Naderish form of anti-corporatism, with citizen groups and individual thinkers coming up with the solutions along with corporations. Because while it is true that capitalism has proven itself to work on the large scale whereas socialism hasn't, it has done so with government help.

I think the reason many capitalists (objectivists, Libertarians, conservatives) object to more democracy is because things might become so good that eventually we won't need capitalism and we'll have moved to another system. So they find the perfect balance which protects capitalism but keeps the system and people weak enough to where they don't want change.

Another reason, and this applies mostly to libertarians, is because if you don't have unlimited property rights you admit that property rights are flawed to some degree, and since Libertarianism is an absolutist philosophy this obviously hurts their own cause.

It should be noted though that people in the US, and on the internet, are catching on to the idea that it's not all what it's cracked up to be. Go to any philosophy or political forum and you'll see people challenging their philosophy from the perspective that it's too vague, that property is not the answer, etc. So libertarians are hiding behind other things ("anti-war" etc.) to appeal to people.

[IcarusAngel]

So here is what I am hoping for, I am looking for some restricted members who genuinely oppose Communism and anarchism who are not Libertarians (or fascists obviously, that's a big no no) who have some arguments against communism that actually deviate from the "yu hate freedom or "you support the state" line. Come on, it will aleviate my boredom at least.

Probably not going to find it from other rightists either, because most other rightists are conservatives who are the ones that started the whole idea that Leninism, Maoism, etc. = communism, and used anticommunism as a national religion (see Manufacturing Consent by Herman & Chomsky, filter 5).

Libertarians have the most trouble with socialism, calling all forms of government they don't like socialism or serfdom. Of course, they leave out that maybe their government is the most government (property rights and all that), esp. because it's absolutist and a few of them get to tell millions of people what to do.

However, there are a few libertarians who know about communism, particularly ancaps who don't have so much of a vested interest in distorting it.

[Demogorgon]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 14, 2007 04:05 pm
Also, I am not claiming that self-identified communist societies are actually communist societies - I am simply claiming that whatever they are is what we can expect a self-proclaimed communist society to actually be.



All your argument boils down to is you are saying that something that calls itself Communist, it will behave in a manner all previous things that will call themselves COmmunist will. That makes no sense. It would be as logical as saying because I am called Iain, I will behave in the same manner as all other people called Iain.

At any rate there was no standard procedure for the development of states that called themselves Communist and Socialist, they ranged from turning into something resembling a medieval monarchy like North Korea to almost immediately becoming Liberal Capitalist States like Portugal.

Become a little wider ranging and use the word Socialist as well (Communism and Socialism are often mutually interchangeable, I more often call myself a Socialist anyway) and we have a whole host of states and political parties that have behaved in a manner not resembling either my own political aims, nor those of the likes of the Soviet Union. Are you going to include people like Olaf Palm and Bruno Kreifsky in your list of Socialist tyrants? They were world leaders and they passionately insisted they were socialists (though I would disagree).
I'm afraid I will need some kind of primary source to accept that the National Socialist Worker's Party actually self-identified as capitalist. Their very name self-identifies as socialist.Not this tired old claim. The name f the party dates back to years before it chieved power. By the time it achieved power it was split into the "left" who were what we would now call third positionists and the "right" who were authoritarian capitalists. The left were killed off or forced to leave the country in the night of the long knives. But if you insist:

From Hitler: "I absolutely insist on protecting private property... we must encourage private initiative" Not the words of a man too enamoured with socialism

Also it is worth pointing out, Hitler preferred to keep Nazi's away from the ministry of finance and appointed people from other (dissolved obviously) parties like Hjalmar Schacht to run the German economy. He was never a Nazi (though he was given some of their honours as a reward) and was a member of the German Democratic party which was a free market liberal party (with some social liberal elements).

Hitler actually prefererd to keep out of amtters of economics as his party was not unified on the matter, but as we can see the German state itself under people like Schacht and his successors was very definitely capitalist and identified as such.

First of all, by whose measurements? Second of all, what are the self-identifying capitalist societies you are comparing Cuba to?Other Carribean ****ries, you know, Jamaica the Dominican Republic etc

Do you have any evidence that during this time, the other states self-identified as capitalist, as opposed to feudal, socialist, mercantilist, or nothing at all?My apologies. I presumed you knew enough about current affairs to know a bit about India. I guess it doesn't really "cross paths" with America the way it does with Britain. The various states obviously have a variety of Governments, socialist ones, traditionalist ones and capitalist ones. The point i was making is that the ones tending towards socialism often do better than the others, even when other factors (lack of resources) might otherwise indicate they would not do so well.

First of all, I never claimed that self-identification as communist means that the country is communist or that the behavior of any self-identifying societies reflects anything on the ideology they identify with. That is a philosophical argument. You are deviating from the empirical standard. My only claim is that we can judge the behavior of future self-identified communist societies by examining the behavior of past self-identified communist societies.Hang on, you are jumping about here. If you are not claiming these countries are Communist, what are you claiming? That their behaviour will be solely based on what they call themselves or what they claim to follow?

I would think, however, that from your perspective, China is the worst of both worlds. Competition and capital-based market activity combined with conservative social repression and enforced conformity, and a tiny social safety net. It surprises me that you would willingly hold it up as an example of how future communist societies are likely to trend.It is the worst of both worlds to me, I was being sarcastic. To you, the high economic growth is something to be found impressive, and by your own standards that high growth should be attributed to a "self identifying" Communist state.

[pusher robot]

Hang on, you are jumping about here. If you are not claiming these countries are Communist, what are you claiming? That their behaviour will be solely based on what they call themselves or what they claim to follow?

Yes.


All your argument boils down to is you are saying that something that calls itself Communist, it will behave in a manner all previous things that will call themselves COmmunist will. That makes no sense.

Why not? We infer the future based on the past all of the time. If we observe that societies that hold themselves out to follow certain ideologies end up behaving a certain way, why is it illegitimate to infer that trend will continue?

[Publius]

How can you devise a method of determining what people want that isn't market-based?

That's the problem I have. I don't like current capitalist markets, but I think the use of a market system of some type is pretty much unavoidable, because how else do you determine relative wants? By voting? How will this work? Why would people necessarily vote for what they need? Think about it. If you have, say, a town, as our example of a collective, and you hold a townwide vote, how would the voting work? Let's say you give people a certain number of votes (we won't call them 'dollars', though we certainly could): what will people vote for? Food? Housing? Clothing? Those necessities? But if the community votes as a whole, why would I waste my vote in those things when I could in turn use all votes for something specialized to me, say, computers or books, and just ASSUME that other people will be nice enough to vote for the things I actually need to survive. But what if everyone makes this perfectly logical assumption?

How can you even possibly devise a system of voting that correctly assigns goods to what people want that isn't essentially some sort of market? If you give people multiple votes and tell them to vote for each of things they want, aren't you essentially just constructing a very limited market? You could do polling I guess, to figure out what people want, that would encounter the same problems.

Think of how the capitalist system solves this problem: everyone essentially 'votes' for their own goods. Now the problem here is evident: some people have many more votes than others. But the problem ISN'T that people 'vote' in general. It would be idiotic of me to say that the current market system is democratic. It fails that test in multiple ways. But the obvious solution is to MAKE it democratic, not simply abolish markets.

Ideas like the gift economy simply don't even get off the ground, because you have no idea what to give anyone without some data gathering mechanism. And what mechanism would you devise? Guessing? Polling people? Voting? But goods would have to be acquired as a community. It's surely ridiculous to think we can tailor the economy to the individual whims of everyone. That would require perfect efficiency. So it's clear that some trade-offs must be made, and that the production system would have to be based on communities of some size. But we encounter a problem here. Let's we hold a giant town-hall vote every week (it would probably have to be much more often than this) to discover the consumption wishes of everyone in the town. What's stopping people from simply voting yes for everything? "Toilet paper? Aye! Bananas? Aye! New Computers Aye!" I mean, that is in fact what people want: more of everything. So why would anyone ever vote no? It would be ridiculous, because you would have to vote AGAINST your personal interests in favor of some abstract collective interest. But wait a minute. The purpose of this town hall is to gauge your PERSONAL interest, together with everyone else, and acheive the collective town's purchase interest. So if you vote already assuming the community's interest, you're not following directions. So what we do when everyone votes for everything, as they are wont to do? We can't exactly expect everyone to get anything they want, so we have prioritize those wants. And we're back to where we started. The obvious solution here is to give people a limited amount of votes, say 100, and have them vote for the 100 items they want the most. But this reaches an obvious problem, in that the 100 top items will probably be the same for most people, roughly. Certain food items, house wares, business related items, etc. So if we do this system, we might get everyone in town voting for bananas 8,000 banana votes, vs. 8 votes for more staples. But does that mean that people in the town want bananas 1000 more times than they want staples? That would be nonsense. But what else could the votes mean? So wouldn't we end up with truckloads of bananas and 100 staples? But, if people vote with the assumption that other people will vote for the necessary items they all share, like bananas and toilet paper, then NONE would vote for those items. And so the only possible solution could be some people voting and some people not, in exact accordance with what the town wants. So the citizens of the town would have to break out the pens and pencils and calculators (hope they ordered them) and figure out the towns wants and needs PRIOR TO voting for the towns wants and needs, just in order to figure out the town's wants and needs. Think about that for a second. In order to figure out how to vote to get what the town wants and needs its necessary to ALREADY KNOW what the town wants and needs or else you'll fall into one of the two voting traps I've made mention of.

So that's pretty much my problem with non-market systems.

[Demogorgon]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 14, 2007 09:14 pm
Yes.

Why not? We infer the future based on the past all of the time. If we observe that societies that hold themselves out to follow certain ideologies end up behaving a certain way, why is it illegitimate to infer that trend will continue?
This is preposterous. The path a society follows depends on the material conditions in the society and the decisions that are made by those governing it, it does not matter whether the ruling clique decides to refer to itself as Capitalist, Commuinst or Fred.

I have seen people make the mistake of saying the professed set of official beliefs will determine the course of a society, but I cannot honestly say I have encountered anyone before who thinks the name is so important.

Question, did Francois Mitterand, Tony Blair, Salavador Allande, Benazir Bhutto and Mikael Gorbachev all lead governments that ushed their society int he same direction?

All claimed to be socialists after all. I also claim to be a socialist, would I follow the path of some or all of them should I have influence over society?

[pusher robot]

Originally posted by Demogorgon+August 14, 2007 09:44 pm--> (Demogorgon @ August 14, 2007 09:44 pm)
pusher [email protected] 14, 2007 09:14 pm
Yes.

Why not? We infer the future based on the past all of the time. If we observe that societies that hold themselves out to follow certain ideologies end up behaving a certain way, why is it illegitimate to infer that trend will continue?
This is preposterous. The path a society follows depends on the material conditions in the society and the decisions that are made by those governing it, it does not matter whether the ruling clique decides to refer to itself as Capitalist, Commuinst or Fred.

I have seen people make the mistake of saying the professed set of official beliefs will determine the course of a society, but I cannot honestly say I have encountered anyone before who thinks the name is so important.

Question, did Francois Mitterand, Tony Blair, Salavador Allande, Benazir Bhutto and Mikael Gorbachev all lead governments that ushed their society int he same direction?

All claimed to be socialists after all. I also claim to be a socialist, would I follow the path of some or all of them should I have influence over society? [/b]
I chose the self-identification criterion to avoid the philosophical arguments as requested in the first post. Self-identification is relatively objective and neutral of philosophical content.

I specifically did not include self-identifying socialist countries in my argument. I can not see any clear pattern there, so no inferences are supported.

But you have not actually refuted my argument, which is that there is a clear historical pattern of failure for self-identifying communist countries as opposed to a pattern of success for self-identifying capitalist (or "liberal") societies. Thus, whatever the actual cause-effect going on under the scenes, the pattern is strong enough to infer that societies that self-identify as communist will fail.

[Demogorgon]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 14, 2007 10:13 pm
I chose the self-identification criterion to avoid the philosophical arguments as requested in the first post. Self-identification is relatively objective and neutral of philosophical content.

I specifically did not include self-identifying socialist countries in my argument. I can not see any clear pattern there, so no inferences are supported.

But you have not actually refuted my argument, which is that there is a clear historical pattern of failure for self-identifying communist countries as opposed to a pattern of success for self-identifying capitalist (or "liberal") societies. Thus, whatever the actual cause-effect going on under the scenes, the pattern is strong enough to infer that societies that self-identify as communist will fail.
Supposing you are right for a minute, where does that leave me?

For cultural reasons I always call myself a socialist rather than a Communist and nearly everyone I know from Scotland does the same. Does that mean that as we do not self identify as Communists your analysis does not apply to us, even though we are obviously closer to Communism than we are to many that call themselves socialist?

At any rate your argument is still guff, self identifying Communist countries have had a tendency to not do very well. Okay, why do they fail, because they call themselves Communist? I think not

[Dean]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13, 2007 09:15 pm
But I still see certain established members still lecturing radically anti-state anarchists about opposing big government and I reluctantly feel I best give them up as a lost cause.
Maybe the restriction process - and general interest towards inhuman, authoritarian practices and ideas - encourages such entrenchment in anti-communism. C'mon I was restricted for saying that women were more inherantly nurturing than men. I think that's a biological inclination; it obviously makes a differentiation between sexes, but it's no insult to either one.

And now I'm reactionary. I've been a radical egalitarian all my life in differing forms, but a group of people obsessed with a dead idea of authoritarianism can't bear to accept that one can make differentiation between people without being a bigot. Communism is, for many here, inhumanity and cold, blind 'logic.' Why argue against the concept of communism held in esteem here? It hates itself.

I'm glad I found my own way before I came here; I might have been sucked up in such childish fantasies otherwise. And who can blame capitalists for disliking a grotesque form of authoritarianism which I find horrific, inhuman and mostly at odds with the ideals and expectations of communism? I don't know many leftists who would agree with the sickness promoted by many here. That's not all, of course, but many. The CC is a great example of this kind of thinking.

[freakazoid]

as opposed to a pattern of success for self-identifying capitalist (or "liberal") societies.

How did these capitalist societies succeed?

How can you say that the name will determine how it ends up? If this was true then that would mean that all Christians are bad. Just look at history, The Crusades, Salem witch trials, etc. If we follow your logic then this "evidence" shows that all Christians are bad.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 14, 2007 11:14 pm

All your argument boils down to is you are saying that something that calls itself Communist, it will behave in a manner all previous things that will call themselves COmmunist will. That makes no sense.

Why not? We infer the future based on the past all of the time. If we observe that societies that hold themselves out to follow certain ideologies end up behaving a certain way, why is it illegitimate to infer that trend will continue?
Because there are many different communist ideologies. I will concede that countries following Stalinism will very likely end up like the Soviet Union et al. I will concede that countries following Maoism might end up like China. But that is all.

Also, I would like to point out to all participants in this topic that there is a major difference between the self-identification of a country (which is usually enshrined in the Constitution) and the self-identification of a political party that happens to rule that country at a given time. The Soviet Union identified itself as a socialist country. Nazi Germany never did anything like that; yes, it was ruled by a political party that self-identified as socialist, but that would put it under the same category as, for example, the United Kingdom today, which is ruled by the Labour Party.

[pusher robot]

Originally posted by Demogorgon+August 14, 2007 10:20 pm--> (Demogorgon @ August 14, 2007 10:20 pm)
pusher [email protected] 14, 2007 10:13 pm
I chose the self-identification criterion to avoid the philosophical arguments as requested in the first post. Self-identification is relatively objective and neutral of philosophical content.

I specifically did not include self-identifying socialist countries in my argument. I can not see any clear pattern there, so no inferences are supported.

But you have not actually refuted my argument, which is that there is a clear historical pattern of failure for self-identifying communist countries as opposed to a pattern of success for self-identifying capitalist (or "liberal") societies. Thus, whatever the actual cause-effect going on under the scenes, the pattern is strong enough to infer that societies that self-identify as communist will fail.
Supposing you are right for a minute, where does that leave me?

For cultural reasons I always call myself a socialist rather than a Communist and nearly everyone I know from Scotland does the same. Does that mean that as we do not self identify as Communists your analysis does not apply to us, even though we are obviously closer to Communism than we are to many that call themselves socialist?

At any rate your argument is still guff, self identifying Communist countries have had a tendency to not do very well. Okay, why do they fail, because they call themselves Communist? I think not [/b]
No, I think you're getting hung up on the importance of labels. It's not labels I'm concerned with, it's self-identification.

So, for example, you may call yourself a socialist, but if you identify yourself as aligning with the ideological principles of communism, then you self-identify as communist.

I could call myself a communist, but I think it would be obvious to everyone that the principles I espouse are capitalist. Thus, I would be self-identifying as capitalist.

There might be edge cases where the person is mistaken about what their beliefs are called. And I'm certainly not arguing that people don't often act in ways that contradict what they identify as their principles.

[Publius]

Everyone's ignoring my brilliant exegesis to take part in a spat over nomenclature.

It's distressing.

:lol:

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 15, 2007 08:59 pm
So, for example, you may call yourself a socialist, but if you identify yourself as aligning with the ideological principles of communism, then you self-identify as communist.
And which ideological principles are those, pray tell?

I am asking this question because one person's "communism" may not necessarily be the same as another person's "communism."

Edit: I have a reply in mind for your post, Publius, but it will have to wait until tomorrow. ;)

[pusher robot]

Originally posted by Edric O+August 15, 2007 10:24 pm--> (Edric O @ August 15, 2007 10:24 pm)
pusher [email protected] 15, 2007 08:59 pm
So, for example, you may call yourself a socialist, but if you identify yourself as aligning with the ideological principles of communism, then you self-identify as communist.
And which ideological principles are those, pray tell?

I am asking this question because one person's "communism" may not necessarily be the same as another person's "communism."

Edit: I have a reply in mind for your post, Publius, but it will have to wait until tomorrow. ;) [/b]

I am asking this question because one person's "communism" may not necessarily be the same as another person's "communism."


I think the principles laid out in the communist manifesto are a good starting point. You may think of others, of course, that I am probably not very qualified to articulate.

I mean, if the word "communism" has no agreed-upon meaning, then I might as well define "communism" as "unregulated free-market trading," concede that communism is the best system, and lose the argument but win the position.

[Demogorgon]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 15, 2007 06:59 pm

No, I think you're getting hung up on the importance of labels. It's not labels I'm concerned with, it's self-identification.

So, for example, you may call yourself a socialist, but if you identify yourself as aligning with the ideological principles of communism, then you self-identify as communist.

I could call myself a communist, but I think it would be obvious to everyone that the principles I espouse are capitalist. Thus, I would be self-identifying as capitalist.

There might be edge cases where the person is mistaken about what their beliefs are called. And I'm certainly not arguing that people don't often act in ways that contradict what they identify as their principles.
Okay, so the labels don't matter, it is the beliefs that lead to self-identification. In that case we can conclude that many, if not all of the so called Communist states did not self-identify as Communist as their leaders (incidentally trying to determine Communism by looking at leaders is ridiculous, it is the people that matter) certainly didn't hold COmmunist beliefs, let alone COmmunist policy.

Try as I might I can find little to do with Communism in any reliable source as to Kruschachev's beliefs for example.

[Demogorgon]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 16, 2007 04:05 am

I think the principles laid out in the communist manifesto are a good starting point. You may think of others, of course, that I am probably not very qualified to articulate.

Hang on, The Communist Manifesto is a document that only applied to the beliefs of ertain Communists in a certain time period. It is an interesting document, but it is hardly of ue in determining the position COmmunists hold.

You might as well say Andrew Jackson's election manifesto (or whatever these things were called then) is the be all and end all of Capitalist positions.

[pusher robot]

Originally posted by Demogorgon+August 16, 2007 12:29 pm--> (Demogorgon @ August 16, 2007 12:29 pm)
pusher [email protected] 15, 2007 06:59 pm

No, I think you're getting hung up on the importance of labels. It's not labels I'm concerned with, it's self-identification.

So, for example, you may call yourself a socialist, but if you identify yourself as aligning with the ideological principles of communism, then you self-identify as communist.

I could call myself a communist, but I think it would be obvious to everyone that the principles I espouse are capitalist. Thus, I would be self-identifying as capitalist.

There might be edge cases where the person is mistaken about what their beliefs are called. And I'm certainly not arguing that people don't often act in ways that contradict what they identify as their principles.
Okay, so the labels don't matter, it is the beliefs that lead to self-identification. In that case we can conclude that many, if not all of the so called Communist states did not self-identify as Communist as their leaders (incidentally trying to determine Communism by looking at leaders is ridiculous, it is the people that matter) certainly didn't hold COmmunist beliefs, let alone COmmunist policy.

Try as I might I can find little to do with Communism in any reliable source as to Kruschachev's beliefs for example. [/b]
You can't determine principles solely from behavior, because people often act in ways that contradict their own professed principles, yet those principles lead them to do other things that we can identify.

For example, a fundamentalist knows that science, not faith, keeps his airplane from falling out of the sky, but his principles lead him to do other idiotic things.

In the case of the USSR, they had an official orthodoxy that they held themselves out as holding. Whether or not they lived up to that is, for my argument, irrelevant.

Perhaps my argument would be much simpler if reformulated as follows:

"Historically, societies that espouse to follow the principles of Marx, or any other political philosopher who espoused to follow Marxist principles, have been much more likely to fail catastrophically than societies that disclaim most or all Marxist principles. Therefore, a rational society should choose to disclaim Marxist principles."

[Demogorgon]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 16, 2007 03:06 pm

You can't determine principles solely from behavior, because people often act in ways that contradict their own professed principles, yet those principles lead them to do other things that we can identify.

For example, a fundamentalist knows that science, not faith, keeps his airplane from falling out of the sky, but his principles lead him to do other idiotic things.

In the case of the USSR, they had an official orthodoxy that they held themselves out as holding. Whether or not they lived up to that is, for my argument, irrelevant.

Perhaps my argument would be much simpler if reformulated as follows:

"Historically, societies that espouse to follow the principles of Marx, or any other political philosopher who espoused to follow Marxist principles, have been much more likely to fail catastrophically than societies that disclaim most or all Marxist principles. Therefore, a rational society should choose to disclaim Marxist principles."
And your position is still ridiculous. Do you think what people claim to believe really has the slightest relevance if they choose not to act upon what they believe?

I might remind you that many of the social democrats who came to power across Western Europe after the war also claimed to follow Marx's political philosophy. Some like Nye Bevan quoted it at every conceivable opportunity. Yet they did not lead their countries to ruin, they led their ****ries to the greatest period of prosperity they had ever known at that point. If it were simply following, or claiming to follow, the philosophies of Marx that caused problems. That would not happen.

[mikelepore]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 14, 2007 07:48 pm
What we are concerned with here is only how the nazis identified themselves, and whatever their "true" beliefs, the clearly did not identify themselves as capitalists.
You may argue that even though they called themselves socialists, they were not really socialists and the result was horrible. But that actually supports my argument. Remember I am talking about the empirical record of two classes of societies: those that identify themselves as capitalist, and those that identify themselves as communist. Whether those self-identifications are "true" or not is a philosophical point and irrelevant to my argument.
Well, then, if the topic of your choice isn't whether a self-proclaimed "socialist" system really features self-management by the workers or is a fake, but simply some historical patterns in the use of vocabulary words, you can do that. Perhaps you really would find that there is a correlation between some of most miserable and oppressive societies and the word "socialist". You would probably also find that there is a correlation between some of most miserable and oppressive societies and their use of the words "freedom", "liberty", "justice", and "republic." To me this suggests that its far more instructive to look at the structure of a thing rather than its name. But if you only want to do a study of names themselves, go ahead. You might also find patterns having to do with the relative numbers of vowels and consonants, or whether various words have even or odd numbers of letters.

[mikelepore]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 16, 2007 03:06 pm

Perhaps my argument would be much simpler if reformulated as follows:

"Historically, societies that espouse to follow the principles of Marx, or any other political philosopher who espoused to follow Marxist principles, have been much more likely to fail catastrophically than societies that disclaim most or all Marxist principles. Therefore, a rational society should choose to disclaim Marxist principles."
Was there a tendency for those failed societies to be in the eastern hemisphere? If so, why didn't you attribute their failures to something having to do with plate tectonics or that portion of the earth's mantle?

That would make as much sense as attributing general failures to the professed goal of replacing class rule and exploitation by a system of democratic control of the means of production by the people.