WHAT WE'RE UP AGAINST IN THE GENERAL: My Argument with a Flock of Communists...

[Occam's Banana]

You've got some good arguments there and, of course, communism can only work within a small group where everyone knows everyone else (tho I think it'd be surprising just how small the population would have to be in order for it to work - even amongst friends) [...]

Actually, I suspect it could "work" at all only within family groups - and only small families at that.

 

[mosquitobite]

Maybe not. But it's not necessarily important to convince them, per se. It's important to convince the onlookers who are on the fence, and are often influenced by whatever viewpoint prevails in a given argument. These civilian debates must be held in public at the grassroots level to convince the masses who are watching along.

Yes!! This is my line of thought as well!!

 

[Kylie]

I deeply and surely wish I was a tenth as smart as you guys. Where do I start?

Read. Read everything you can get your hands on.

I would think a good portion of us are avid readers, and it has been shown that the more you read, the more nimble your mind will stay.

Being here is a good first step. That's how I started 5 years or so ago. Someone on another forum turned me on to RP, and I liked what he said, so I started searching. From there, I found the Judge, Ayn Rand, and Mises. And I'm still very ignorant when it comes to all the in's and out's of philosophy. But I do know what I want out of my life, and for the lives of my children: Freedom. True, unadulterated freedom. Not this bullshit fallacy of choice we have today.

I think in the end, everyone wants to be free. Most, after being schooled, have no idea what true freedom is though. It's not a nice comfy blanket you can wrap yourself in. It's exciting, and scary, and the most fulfilling feeling you could ever feel in your life...next to love. But those two go hand in hand

 

[mosquitobite]

Pure Marxism is the idea that free exchange (capitalism) would collapse on itself out of its own greed and the people would become free from this "exploitation" of the bourgeois. No true communists need lift a finger, 'just wait and see' was the perscription.

But, reality proved them otherwise, and not willing to accept this failure of doctrine, some of the true believers set out fill the credibility void and to help make Capitalism die; to speed up the "inevitable" as they said. To help the final Communism come about, the violence of the state needed to be used. The rest is the bloody history of the Bolshivks, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, The North Korean Kims gang and many more true believers.

Communism needs absolute naked violence in every sphere of human life to maintain itself as a societal structure. Otherwise mans default nature takes over in which he freely chooses his own life interests over the collective interests of the would be slave masters.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to awake again.

As affa said on page 2.
To believe in communism means that someone has to distribute. And who better to willingly take on that role other than a sociopath?

I've also had friends who tried the "commune" type living. Inevitably, it always fails. Always.

Anyone who believes they are a communist/socialist needs to set up their own small scale version before trying to sell it to me as a better scheme nationally

 

[mosquitobite]

I deeply and surely wish I was a tenth as smart as you guys. Where do I start?

Yep, as others have said - read.

I was blessed with a wonderful economics professor in college.

He's also an author. He's a Christian libertarian. I loved his book "Lean Neither to the Left nor to the Right; A Thinking Christian's Guide to Politics"

If there's one thing I would suggest is: whenever you hear of some brilliant government idea - ALWAYS stop to consider the UNintended consequences...for there always ARE!

 

[Hook]

Did you tell them to get the flock out of here?

 

[PierzStyx]

Call it whatever, but normal people in their core still want the same principle - Justice. I'm trying to say that we SHOULD be convincing them to vote Ron Paul because his movement IS what they want, even if his means of doing so isn't what they are familiar with!

Doesn't just the mere fact I'm on a Ron Paul forum and donating to him mean something? There are people on the far left who understand what Ron Paul is trying to do, and that message needs to be spread to people who are skeptical of him!

I don't mean to "dog" you. And I apologize if it seems that way. Liberty is a message that appeals to everyone. In fact only in a free society could a fully voluntary commune develop that communism can only exist under. After all the ideology of communism is that everyone of their own free will practices communism. The moment government force gets involved then it isn't communism but only something LIKE communism.

This is why ideology is important in the long run though. While you're right in the short run, in the long run only a system that protects liberty against both individuals and the state be viable. If you want the liberty to practice communism you have to have a constitutional state along the lines of the US Constitution, one that protects liberty of association and property rights. As soon as a system that violates that comes into play it has to be stopped and liberty restored. I think the OP actually outlines that very well.

 

[ericthethe]

Why are you posting this here? You want us all to congratulate you for your smug, try-hard, self-important and pretentious attempt at "educating" your friends?

 

[AceNZ]

The exchange in the OP is interesting, in part because I think it's a good illustration of how the usual conservative / libertarian argument is not persuasive to progressives, communists and other leftists.

What's missing is the moral argument. The Left is arguing for egalitarianism on moral grounds, and the Right is actually granting them that moral high ground -- so they can't win. I believe the long-term key to success is to communicate how their moral premises are mistaken. Saying "capitalism is better, and here's how" just isn't enough. That should be the final conclusion of an argument, not a starting point.

 

[affa]

Why are you posting this here? You want us all to congratulate you for your smug, try-hard, self-important and pretentious attempt at "educating" your friends?

Why are you posting this here? You want us all to congratulate you for your smug, try-hard, self-important and pretentious attempt at "educating" [people that didn't join here this month]?

 

[ericthethe]

Why are you posting this here? You want us all to congratulate you for your smug, try-hard, self-important and pretentious attempt at "educating" [people that didn't join here this month]?

people who*

 

[affa]

people who*

'that' is perfectly acceptable when talking about groups.
http://www.grammarbook.com/grammar/whoVwhVt.asp

also, 'that' is considered by many to be perfectly acceptable when talking about individual people:
http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/who-versus-that.aspx

nothing worse than an incorrect grammar nazi.

 

[ericthethe]

May be correct but it's an overused word and makes you appear poorly educated. Keep trying.

 

[affa]

May be correct but it's an overused word and makes you appear poorly educated. Keep trying.

'that' is an overused word. crap. so is 'the'. and 'so'. and 'is'. crap. so is 'crap'. damn.

you're here to stir up trouble. i'm here to mock you.

 

[hueylong]

C'mon Dude. The general is a long way off.

 

[ericthethe]

'that' is an overused word. crap. so is 'the'. and 'so'. and 'is'. crap. so is 'crap'. damn.

you're here to stir up trouble. i'm here to mock you.

Not really. 'That' is used way more often than it should be. It's annoying and muddies up the flow of sentences. More times than not it can be omitted and a person still makes sense.

Look at this example:

There was this guy that I knew long ago that would talk about things that were interesting. He often said that he would do something that was important. It turns out that he ended up doing something that was boring.

Now without:

There was this guy I knew long ago who would talk about interesting things. He often said he would do something important. It turns out he ended up doing something boring.

Much better.

I'm not here to stir up trouble. You can continue to try to mock me, though. You're doing a great job. Good luck in your endeavors.

 

[noneedtoaggress]

I deeply and surely wish I was a tenth as smart as you guys. Where do I start?

Mises.org Has a lot of great Austrian Economics and Libertarian philosophy books and essays available for free.

I'd highly recommend checking out something like this short essay, or maybe some of the other ones in here.

 

[Mini-Me]

A warning: this is quite long, but important and very entertaining. ANYWAY, the point of all this is to show you what we (especially those of us in blue states) are up against come the general. So it is my recommendation to start this type of discourse with your own friends early and often, so that hopefully if/when Ron Paul wins the Republican Nomination, we can have a head start on the Statist attacks that are sure to be coming our way from those near and dear to us.

This conversation came about in a thread under a question one of my friends posted on facebook regarding Elizabeth Warren. This friend is a great girl; I vehemently disagree with her political philosophy, but she is a selfless, cool chick whom I really like and go all the way back to middle school with. I don't think SHE is a communist, per se, and she's definitely not a party-line Democratic evangelist (I don't even know if she's registered D), she doesn't support Obama, but she definitely leans toward communism/socialism rather than towards our persuasion.

Anyway, she asked if Warren was "for real" I responded, and suddenly found myself fending off attacks from one communist-sympathizer after another. There were too many people responding for me to try to indicate here which individual each response was coming from, so I'll just use "them" and "me" to distinguish the posts from one another. I'll put "Me" in bold to avoid confusion.

After some pretty benign banter (mostly friendly fluffy stuff about how they only like Kucinich and I pretty much only like Paul)...

Them:



Me:



Them:



Me:



Them:



Me:



Them:



Them AGAIN:



THEM AGGGAAAAAIIIN:


Me (Finally):


They have yet to respond.

Then I went on to post a couple "progressives for Ron Paul" on her wall, because of some of the Paul-hating. I really hope I changed some minds.

You've made the point about the authoritarian/totalitarian structure of Communism pretty clearly, so hopefully they'll recognize it. If not, I suppose they wouldn't understand economics enough to comprehend arguments about how and why economic calculation and coordination is impossible given pure central planning, and distorted to the same degree of state involvement and redistribution? They might press the environmental sustainability issue further though, in which case you'll have to stress the material voraciousness and expansionism of the state under any system, but especially Communism. The inherent inefficiency of the system demands more wasted energy and materials for every unit of wealth produced for each person...

 

[ericthethe]

I deeply and surely wish I was a tenth as smart as you guys. Where do I start?

You can learn about macroeconomics from macroeconomics classes in college. If you can't go just get a pdf or check out a book on intro and intermediate macroeconomics, every book is the same. Also, read economics blogs (like the Paul Krugman new york times blog). You can also learn about why austrian economics are shit from the internet.

 

[AlexAmore]

I've also had friends who tried the "commune" type living. Inevitably, it always fails. Always.

Anyone who believes they are a communist/socialist needs to set up their own small scale version before trying to sell it to me as a better scheme nationally

I know a family friend who's son joined a communist commune. The father was talking about it and he said his son has to work a very long full time+ schedule every week and everyone shifts their duties on a regular basis so everyone does everything. You get your basics for free like food, clean clothes, a shelter. At the end of the month you get a whopping $45! To spend as you please, yeah baby! You can tell this society is gonna invent the next great innovation of the 21st century at that rate.