All of them are pretty absurd, tbh... but if I had to choose I would say the horrors of Stalinism as that takes the most time to debunk.
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Best counter-argument to communism
Hi everyone,
Firstly: I don't want to discuss an opposing ideology, but the communism itself - I am forced to use this sub-forum, because I was told I would be deleted and banned if I posted anywhere else (e.g., in the more appropriate "Learning" sub-forum).
Now that that is out of the way, let me proceed to my question.
What do you think is the best counter-argument to communism? Tell me the its weakest point, its largest flaw, its greatest deficiency, its most pronounced shortcoming; in short, the strongest argument against it. Thanks in advance.
All of them are pretty absurd, tbh... but if I had to choose I would say the horrors of Stalinism as that takes the most time to debunk.
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Agreed.
Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of people that I talk to think that communism, socialism, etc are all synonyms for Stalinism. "But communism doesn't work," they say. "Look at the USSR! We tried it and it failed. It was an economic disaster and they had no freedom at all."
*sigh* The Western propaganda machine is depressingly effective sometimes
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it is unattractive to the philosophical idealist who believe in free will, freedom and deny material condition and materialism.
If the entire proletariat would realize materialism is true, the entire world would be Communist.
idealism- spirits and free will exist, ideas come from heaven or some other non-physical place.
materialism-ideas consciousness and all of humanity is influenced by material condotions, the only thing that exist is the material/physical.
And with that statement you do two things. 1. you were an idealist, 2. you made materialism/communism sound like a religion.
woops,
for me, materialism lead me to marxist.
I thought if everyone was somehow a materialist they would become a marxist.
if I am an idealist because i thought class consciousness would precede material conditions, it was because it was in a hypothetical situation.
The best argument? Well nothing from the liberal mainstream for sure (good on paper, equal pay etc.) and I can't really think of any good criticisms of the systemic functioning of the actual type of society that most of us advocate. That being said, arguments against the law of value (that price is determined by socially necessary labor time) can be quite good. Though a lot of the time these good arguments are moreso just reasonable objections like "how do producers know what the value of a product is from labor?" But even this is based on a misunderstanding of the law, which does not postulate that producers inherently know the value of a product but that prices of certain products fluctuate around the "labor value" of said product as the result of competition within that industry. The LTV accounts for competition in pricing, and is based on the subconscious, intersubjective valuation of labor by producers. Upon understanding the theory this way it kinda leaves even refutations of it easily defeated, so yeah there aren't really any good arguments against communism.
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The "human nature" argument is too easily shot full of holes if one has any knowledge of history or anthropology.
I don't think you need to accept LTV to be a communist - the fact is there's no profit without labour.
As far as I can tell, the best "argument" against communism is that one needs large proportions of the population to be on side in order to successfully enact it. But that could be equally applied to other political philosophies so it does not speak to the feasibility of communism itself.
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your idealism is demonstrated through your view that materialism itself serves as the foundation of some kind of movement, when on the contrary it simply serves as one of many methods of examining movements.
Our goal as class conscious folks is not to turn everyone into elite sociological intellectuals before the revolution.
Either way what you said was idealistic and really religiony sounding, even if you didn't intend to and saying it was a hypothetical situation still isn't a good excuse.
i have the feeling i'm derailing this thread so I'll pm you and if anyone has anything to say about my view please pm me.
There isn't one great flaw, but there are multiple smaller ones.
But if I had to choose one it would be the economic calculation problem. Still few have grasped the extent to which this applies (often misrepresenting the argument).
Would you care to elaborate?
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You could try to pull a Mises and ask about the economic calculation problem. Although, it's been 92 years, and the internet and computers came around, pretty much blowing this criticism to smithereens.
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What I consider the best argument against socialism is how it is going to happen. Revolutions are chaotic events and nobody is sure what the outcome will be. If we're lucky the result of a revolution could be socialism but it could just as well be Stalinist state capitalism or fascist reaction. It also seems a bit far-fetched that the working class will attain a critical amount of class-consciousness on a global scale within our life-time.
The liberal dream of "the same as now - just with more windmills" is a more realistic thing to work for.
"What is a thief? - A thief is someone who covets his neighbour's property so much that he doesn't take the time to form a corporation."
"The poor complain - they always do
but that's just idle chatter.
Our system brings rewards to all
- At least to all who matter."
"It is good that things have gotten better but it would be better if things were good."
There is no argument against Communism because we are correct.
"It is necessary for Communists to enter into contradiction with the consciousness of the masses. . . The problem with these Transitional programs and transitional demands, which don't enter into any contradiction with the consciousness of the masses, or try to trick the masses into entering into the class struggle, create soviets - [is that] it winds up as common-or-garden reformism or economism." - Mike Macnair, on the necessity of the Minimum and Maximum communist party Program.
"You're lucky. You have a faith. Even if it's only Karl Marx" - Richard Burton
I think this guy is actually looking for someone like 'Liberty" (an insult to the term).
If you want counter communist arguments, look somewhere else, and come back to us with them.
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For example this:
This is a misrepresentation as computers do not solve the economic calculation problem.
Let's take an example: the expansion of the port of Rotterdam. It has been decided to expand this port. In a market economy we have these figures:
The expansion will cost a total of $100,000,000.
The expansion will generate a revenue of $150,000,000.
In socialism we have these figures:
The expansion will cost a total of 100,000 labour hours, 10^3 cubes of sand, 100,000 tonnes of steel, 10 transportation ships.
The expansion will generate the following benefits: it will save 100,000 liters of oil, 50,000 tonnes of copper.
(these figures and materials are of course completely random).
How do we compare the two? What is better: not spending 10^3 cubes of sand thereby forgo on saving 100,000 liters of oil or spend 10^3 cubes of sand and thus save 100,000 liters of oil.
These are two wholly incomparable materials.
Computers cannot solve this issue.
In response we can say a couple of things. First, markets are themselves inefficient (no Marxist economics needed here), production for profits leads to irrationalities (such as exporting food from starving regions). Secondly, we can 'solve' this conundrum by adopt labour-hours as core decision-making guiding principle, and second economise those materials that are most scarce.
Labour-hours are of course also often incomparable, they differ in intensity, productivity, content, and so forth.
In spite of this, the economic calculation problem will still persist in socialism (of the non-market variant, but market socialism has of course different economic calculation problems).
That argument only makes sense when you conceive of communism as use-value liberated from exchange value, which is nonsense. Communism knows no value.
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Of that forbidden tree..."
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The greatest flaw is that it is poorly understood by workers.
