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

[gb13]

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:

Hah... well... I'm not sure I agree with either of the viewpoints there... I want to smash the state, persay, but I'm definitely not a libertarian.... and I'm not totally sold of Warren's rhetoric there either... but I'm wondering if my left-ish progressive-ish or even left-ish radical friends think she's like, a "real" progressive or if she's just another politician... and I know these are all completely loaded and problematic words, ha! (And dear friends, I really don't want this to turn into a convo about Obama, please nobody mention him)

Me:

The thing I don't understand about Progressives is this... They're usually anti-war, and anti-violence in general, but they fail to see that the State is nothing but a monopoly on force/violence. They give the State a pass for the very same violent acts that, if committed by an individual, would rightly be seen as reprehensible... I don't get the logical disconnect there. As soon as you bring a gun into the argument, you've lost. That's all the State has: Guns.

Them:

well, i certainly don't disagree with you about the state having a monopoly on violence. i don't really consider myself a progressive though, i want radical change. i think the system is inherently flawed and part of it is because of what you said, that the state = violence. i like kucinich probably for similar reasons to why you like paul, because he is totally fringe.

just because a person critiques the foundations of a state, doesn't mean they a libertarian. at least not in the ron paul sense. in any case there are a lot of different ways to go with disdain for/distrust of the state, it's a complicated position to hold. i'm not sure i'm up for getting into it....

Me:

One point I'd like to run by you: Decentralization; bottom-up. Leave most social/fiscal/civil matters to the individual states as the 10th amendment prescribes. Would there be injustice at the state level? Yes, of course. But, I think history shows that this is vastly superior to the enormous injustices of which an omnipresent Federal State is capable. Consider...

Them:

yuck. libertarianism is such a mind-leech. sigh. so many good potential communists and anarchists gone to waste on capitalist ideology about states v. markets when what you have, and always have, under capitalism, is a market-state, no matter how small or 'big' it gets, or how many states you break it up into. the advantage with one is that its clear where you have to aim your action to cripple the ruling classes. the more the state conspires to shift guarantees of universal freedom downward to arbitration by 50 fiefdoms or privatizes its functions, the more bureaucratic authorities you have ruling over you, the more private money controls your chances of anything remotely resembling a decent life, and the more the state looks like a senile feudal lord, presiding over chaos, in the name of market freedom.

anyhow, on warren, believing in her as something beyond the perimeters of the Democratic Party's ideology is a recipe for disappointment. she's a solid believer in reforming credit markets in such a way that provides more guarantees of middle-class security in the *flows* of credit but not the accumulative spread of the monopoly of lending: so her main concern is big bank behaviour and how to rationalise and tame it, not the structure of ownership and control over decisions in relation to credit. she basically believes with all her heart in 'the middle class', which is a way to avoid talking about class struggle, not embracing it. especially when, y'know, wages have been repressed for thirty years due to the destruction of union power and there's no upward mobility from the working class to the middle class anymore (if there ever was in quite that starry-eyed way rather than a working class that just got richer). so it's an anti-struggle message butcher-papered in a struggle message. she seems to have an unusually solid sense of ethics - she took her job far more seriously than was polite in ruling class circles - and most of the stuff she says is leftward of what's on offer, of course, so she's a likeable Democrat, which is increasingly rare. but she is a Democrat, true and blue. i wouldnt expect too much at this point.

Me:

Wow, dude. Talk about a mind-leech. Anarchy and Communism as somehow equatable... Communism as a fair system... OK. Maybe if we all agree to revoke our individuality in favor of the collective State then yeah, it's fair. But so long as you have individual human beings capable of dissenting points of view, you'll never have fair communism. But more than that, you don't even have your terms right, You're not even talking about "capitalism"; you're talking about corporatism: the corporate/state complex, which is all we've ever really had in this country, save for a few isolated instances in short periods of time taking place at random geographical locations, before being absorbed by the corporate/state complex. I'm a minarchist, more in favor of voluntarism over mainstream libertarianism, but I would take libertarianism over communism, or radical socialism any day of the week, because I'm against violence (other than self-defense), and I'm against force as a means to an end. A market, in its pure form, is nothing more than voluntary exchange, i.e. the fairest possible system. Are you against people acting voluntarily? Have you forgotten that the Corporation is a creation of the State? It seems so, since you rail against the corporation, while completely giving the State a pass. How can you deride the "market", when it doesn't even exist, and what your really arguing against is just a State perversion of voluntary exchange. No matter which way you try to refine your rhetoric, whatever pseudo-intellectual artifices you try to drape over it, when you take away choice, when you put guns in the hands of State agents to force absorption of the individual into the collective, you champion injustice and violence. Take off the cheap disguise.

Them:

Good luck trying to get capitalism to give up its "corporate/state complex": if you give up your head for the liberty of your torso and limbs, you've put yourself to the guillotine. Here's the thing with the "it's not capitalism, it's corporatism" line. I suppose you wouldn't accept it if I turned around said that the communist movements of the twentieth century were in no way responsible for the socialist states that resulted. If I said, oh, it wasn't that *they* got it wrong but that the "bureaucratic/state complex" took over. And as it happens, I agree. Communism in the 20thC did get it wrong, especially about the state. Yet capitalism - oh no, capitalism never went wrong. It somehow isn't responsible for the state that capitalism occurs in. Because capitalism has never really occurred, as you have to argue, because if you were to acknowledge that capitalism actually existed, rather than "the corporate/state complex", you'd have to acknowledge that capital needs the state precisely because it requires classes. See, the only way to arbitrate classes is via a strategic field formed by the intersection of the lines of class power. That's the framework of the state.

Do you know why libertarianism talks about individual liberty on and on *only*? So it never ever has to talk about class, which it doesn't think is real. Libertarianism sees class as an 'identity category' and says once we understand we're just individuals, liberty and justice will prevail. Yet...seeing as class already coerces what you can and cannot exchange freely, and determines the power of your volunteered labour to make a difference to your life chances, to talk about liberty and justice without talking about class is like trying to tell the time on a clock with no hands.

The corporation, you say, is a creation of the state. So there's no relation between the accumulation of capital and the forms in which it accumulates in, which are all the product of this violent, violent state-thing that coerces and coerces. No relation between the economies the ruling classes preside over and the capitalism they've long said they represent. Capitalism never has produced a ruling class, for the very convenient reason it has never really existed. Pretty sweet self-confirmation bias you have there. But, outside that cognitive loop, the point of the state is to ensure that 'a fair and voluntary exchange' can take place between those who have accumulated capital on behalf of their interests as a class. It's not there for those who lack capital: it's there to *govern those who lack capital* on behalf of those who do, and arbitrate disputes and relations between those who have capital but different influence, amounts and interests. And capitalism is predicated on a labour force that lacks capital. Straight fact. If you are serious about a world without class, you're a communist, whether you know it or not. And, may I add, if it's the case that fair communism is impossible so long as you have individual human beings capable of 'dissenting view points', then how will you ever stop people exercising those dissenting view points in favour of a state structure? What on earth will libertarianism do with all the progressives? I'm sure it won't involve force. Or not force that counts anyway since you've defined them as being on the side of 'injustice and violence' in advance.

As for the rest, I can only ask you to actually sit down and read, first hand, books on communism by communist thinkers and not trust the scary monster version filtered through to you through Reason Magazine or whatever. I've read Hayek, Mises, Rothbard, Konkin, Novick, etc. I'm willing to bet you've never read Marx, Lenin or Trotsky and wouldn't have a clue who, say, Hilferding or Poulantzas or McNally is. Mind you, you don't have to spend all your waking life reading to have a political opinion - in fact, you don't even have to read at all - but if you're going to think you have the full measure of certain political philosophies, it's really only fair to base your opinion on some familiarity with what they actually say, rather than what you've been told they said by a culture this full of bullshit. Especially when what you've been told is so easy to believe: that the world can be broken down into a cartoonish antinomy between 'the individual' and 'the collective', and 'the State' and 'the market', without any account of class and political economy and ideology and the state's mediation and amplification of capitalist market violence through legalizing capital's exploitation as the order of everyday life and repressing collective organization on the part of the lower orders on capital's behalf. Every day of life under capitalism is a cheap disguise.

Them AGAIN:

I'll say this: Capitalism and its friend corporatism are inherently exploitative pyramid schemes. It is literally impossible for their to be equality within capitalism/corporatism because they require classes. In the most basic sense, you cannot be rich-- you cannot have MORE-- if there is not somebody who has less. This is built into the system. Also built into the system is a profit motive. An owner makes profit because he doesn't pay the worker what the work is worth. An owner gives the worker a wage that is not equal to the product-- it can't be, otherwise there would be no left-over, no profit. So the owner, while not doing any work himself beyond an initial investment, managing money, and bossing people around, takes time and value from the worker. From there he is able to accumulate capital which makes him go farther and farther up while the worker has to work more and more within that ever-widening gap just to stay afloat. There's no way to argue that capitalism/corporatism can exist without classes. If one argues that, then it is clear that they do not understand the systems at hand. This isn't anarchist or communist conspiracy; this is literally how capitalism works.

Furthermore capitalism requires constant expansion into resources (due to the fact that it requires constant competition which necessitates constant growth-- again, capitalism literally cannot exist without these things, this isn't environmentalist hooey) which means that it is inherently destructive to the natural environment, but that is a whole other critique.

In short, capitalism/corporatism require the following: profit motive; classes; expansion; competition. These things DEFINE capitalism. If we're not talking about these things, we are talking about something else. In the most literal sense.

I don't mean disrespect but I do find that most people who defend capitalism and/or degrade alternative systems, have not actually read capitalist thought or critique thoroughly enough to talk about the issues. I don't know what to do with this issue, because it does require time and other personal resources to really sit down and go through the texts and understand them, which, interestingly, can make the scholarship elitist in itself... but then, I guess that's also capitalism's fault, because education would, in an egalitarian society, be free and fair.

Now this is not to say that there can be no fair "markets". Market does not equal capitalism/corporatism. Markets and trade can exist without capitalism/corporatism/class. Again, that is another conversation.

THEM AGGGAAAAAIIIN:

Funny how all but one of the candidates in the Republican primary sound like they WANT another civil war. Paul doesn't seem to, but his "free market" bullshit will certainly encourage one. For a while there I felt like I was drowning in my own tiny corner of poverty and couldn't muster the energy to argue against Ron Paul's utopian capitalist vision. I feel my positions, literally and politically, have been given adequate support [by others on the thread].

Me (Finally):

First of all, it's important to note that "Capitalism" is actually a term coined by Marx (in a derogatory fashion) to describe a state/corporate perversion of the marketplace which existed in his day. For this reason alone, Marx's and Engel's argument fails at point one because it doesn't even really know its enemy. I don't even like to use the word "capitalism", because I don't like peddling a lie. I prefer talk about voluntary exchange; that vital manifestation of innovation, choice and variety -the essence of human output- which Communism tries to obliterate, but for the sake of speaking your lingo, I'll let it slide for now.

The reason I say that "capitalism" (here again meaning voluntary exchange), as a widespread system, does not exist today is because it actually does not… Not because it's more convenient an argument; it simply ceases to be. All the capitalism we've had in the past 100 years has existed solely under the power-structure of central banking, which as you know, is a vital component of Marx's and Engels' argument. Voluntary exchange and central banking are antithetical to one another. The market fails under such a system, because it is perverted at step one. Corporatism, on the other hand, thrives in this environment, because with the issuing of capital and the powers of economic planning being so centralized, the elite business *class* and the political *class* work, via elite-centric regulatory conditions and manipulation of the supply of capital, toward a mutually beneficial end, and to the detriment of the rest of humanity. Again, the modern communist argument fails at point one, by failing to even properly define its enemy, but we can go further, considering you touched on so many different topics.

I think Bastiat said it best when he wrote that statist communism is based on three fictional components, "the utter inertness of mankind, the omnipotence of the law, and the infallibility of the legislator". As hinted at by my use of the word "fictional", the trouble is that none of these things actually exists in real life.

The entire concept of communism is predicated on the great lie that someone (or a group of people) entirely benevolent can exist at the top of its structure in order to ensure equitable distribution. This is not a classless society; it is merely a society with fewer classes: the overseers in one class, the rest of humanity in another, and little opportunity to change stations. This aspect is entirely similar to the corporatist system, except that under communism, rather than the corporation being a legal fiction created by the state, the corporation IS the state. (So, corporatism is actually closer to communism than it is to my system of voluntary exchange). Considering the undeniable truth that, in human beings, pure benevolence is nonexistent, how anyone could believe that such a structure as Communism -one that is even more oligarchical than the corporatist system- could somehow wind up being fair, is beyond me. It assumes an impossible, idealistic scenario where somehow the instinct to act in self-interest can be removed from the human psyche. Every single point of history shows us the complete opposite is true. What's that saying about absolute power, again? This central reason why Corporatism and Communism -and Statism, in general- fail is precisely why an unfettered system of voluntary exchange works; it accounts for selfishness, checks it with consumer/worker choice, and leaves protection of life, liberty, and *legitimately* acquired property as one of the state's strictly limited functions.

The reason communism never talks about liberty, is because under communism, liberty does not exist. It is a wholly authoritarian system -an absolute state- which completely ignores the value of the individual in favor of "equitable distribution" of imaginary capital to the collective; capital containing no intrinsic value which can be arbitrarily expanded and contracted by the state in order to fulfill whatever allegedly altruistic goals it may have. Sure, one could take the Bolshevik argument and say that money should not exist either. But, considering that actual "money" (i.e., not fiat) is nothing more than a convenient way to create equitable exchange while bypassing the unworkability of a barter system in a modern world, one need only to look at Russian life in the early 20th century under the Bolsheviks to see that transitional or hybrid systems lead to disasters that those of us living today in the west (even under our unjust system) could hardly imagine, let alone empathize with.

It's also important mention that under the Bolsheviks, while private trade in the urban areas was made illegal, it actually took place at a higher rate than perhaps at any other time in Russian history! If this were a fictional literary attempt to create a perfect depiction of irony, it would be lauded by critics as a wild success; tragically, though, it actual happened. The starving, impoverished people were desperately (and illegally, under penalty of death) using "capitalism" in order save themselves from the unspeakable inequities brought about by the unjust, failed policies of their Communist rulers.

Communists rail on about how workers are exploited by the owners of the means of production, because in order for a company to be profitable, it has to pay workers less than the market value of what they produce (an entirely true point, though redeemed by virtue of the relationship being entirely voluntary) but, the communist fails to apply the same standard to the State, which under communism, has de facto ownership of a person's output, because wages are garnished by the state in an compulsory, unchecked, arbitrary fashion... The state owns 100% of the fruits of your output, and permits you to keep whatever portion it deems fit. And so we come to the graduated income tax -another pillar of Marx's system- which also very curiously exists under what you like to call "capitalism", even though, here again, the two concepts are antithetical.

So now we have two concepts central to Marxist communism perverting the market, and yet you fail to recognize this fact, preferring instead to blame voluntary exchange for perversions committed by the state in the marketplace.

That's like blaming the rape victim for not being impervious to penises.

Sadly, these are but a few examples of the inherent dishonesty that must be committed when defending ANY Statist system (communism being no exception). Such systems trade voluntary interaction for forced labor; individual freedoms, for collective imprisonment; the ability to change your station in life, for the miserably static existence of a serf.

A just system is one which does not rely on force and violence to accomplish its end. A fair system is one which allows people to act freely so long as they don't infringe on the rights of others. Statism is the opposite of this. But, to answer you question, if you would like to live under a system of communism, no, I would never use violence against you to force you to choose otherwise. I would bitterly defend your right to live voluntarily in a commune as a part of a collective. As long as you're not going to force me to join up with you, I say more power to you. Have at it. The trouble is that I highly doubt, given the history of Statist ideologues, that you would afford me the same courtesy if I chose not to partake. That's the rub.

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.

 

[LibertyIn08]

You won't win this election by trying to educate the fringe-left or fringe-right. Concentrate on converting and mobilizing the easily convinced first.

 

[archangel689]

Marxists are the worst. The single pillar their entire philosophy has been built upon has been disproven time and time again, it is a dogma that just won't die. http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/308/02/20101200_cockshott_nitzan_bichler_testing_the_ltv_exchange_web.htm



The apparent disconnect is that OWS folks confuse wealth and plunder. And Even in a communist society there is profit, it is just unseen because there is no money, but economic calculation is a tool that can be used to tell us if something is worthwhile or not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxMem2rkBiM&t=29m48s
^^^
Socialist governments must strive to maximize profit.

 

[everlasticity]

Whenever I meet a communist I ask them to help carry my groceries.

 

[amabala]

You're good gb13. Impressive.

 

[gb13]

You won't win this election by trying to educate the fringe-left or fringe-right. Concentrate on converting and mobilizing the easily convinced first.

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.

 

[Nate]

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.

+rep

 

[HOLLYWOOD]

Unfortunately, all these fringe freaks on the left and right cannot view it as such. They assume they are the natural center, yet the foundation of this nation was incredibly libertarian, with history, and the documentation backing it up. Every time I hear this out of those other ideologues, I think of those that followed, "The Sun and all the other planets orbited/circled planet Earth". They would look up in the sky and watch planet ascend across the skies, only to digress/regress against the same sky and time advanced. They just couldn't figure out why a planet when back and forth in the night skies. So they spent countless hours coming up with complex formulas and algorithms to match the movement of the solar system to what their eyesight measured in the skies. As soon as someone open their eyes to the planets revolve around the gravitational mass and pull of the sun, boom, everything fell into place with a simple equation and the movements judged by eyesight measured exact.

It's the radicals in both directions that create the fictional ideologies and corrupt state. More for themselves by whatever means, yet when we the people, truly, the individuals, are given the illusion of choice on the periodical, both extremes come back to the center to collect their support. The second they're back in power, the pendulum swings back to the extremes.


As many know, Lou has some pretty good info, I like this one below, though, he does mention Reason, lol.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/kinsella/kinsella15.html

 

[DanConway]

In before they respond "how dare you compare anything to rape?!"

Most likely you won't convert communists (if you do, they're probably true believer types who will latch on to any ideology), but getting onlookers thinking counts for something, especially considering that their vote counts just as much as those of the extremists who have already made up their minds.

 

[PeteinLA]

You have some great arguments there. I've eventually won over my lefty sister by bringing the "flat management structure" argument into the equation. She has been in a management position and could make the connection between the Libertarianish position of pushing decisions and choice down the food chain as much as possible. She now sees inefficiencies everywhere.

Good luck.

 

[affa]

gb13. Please consider posting the following response to your friends. I am speaking from the heart, and I am speaking as one of them. To be quite honest, I agree with many of your opponents. If forced to label myself, I'm anarcho-syndicalist, and ultimately, anti-capitalist (and yes, I'm well aware of the difference between corporatism and capitalism). If you told me 10 years ago I'd be rooting for a libertarian, or even a 'president' at all, I'd have laughed.

I support Ron Paul not because of libertarianism, but because of liberty. But even more importantly, because we're at the cusp of some terrible times - truly horrific ones - in regards to endless war, the growing police state, the risk of hyper-inflation, and general economic crisis. And while I do not agree that capitalism or libertarianism is a cure-all (or even an end goal), I think, at this juncture, Ron Paul is the only possibility we have to end these wars and, perhaps, avert full economic meltdown.

Quite frankly, debating the actual impact of pure unadulterated capitalism is missing the damn point. It's doctors arguing over the proper treatment while the patient dies on the operating table. It's critical to remind oneself that Ron Paul won't be changing everything overnight. It's not like a vote for him is a vote for unrestrained capitalism.

And besides, the system we have in place isn't exactly defensible - it's been overrun by corruption at every level, infiltrated by the power hungry, the lobbyists, and big industry (big pharm, big-agri, oil interests, war profiteers, etc) for the past 100 years, at the very least. To defend the American System against a man who wants to begin stripping that corruption away is misguided at best. It's not time to rebuild, yet. We're far too off track for that. It's time to dismantle the Empire.

Ron Paul will end the wars. You can take that to the bank. And speaking of banks, he'll bring the Fed to its knees, if not end it outright. And anyone who doesn't recognize the Fed, and those behind it, as the enemy of us all, hasn't done their homework. No other politician even seriously broaches these subjects. More importantly, Ron Paul has a long, established history of integrity and consistent message. He can be trusted to end the wars. Period. Many of us warned that Obama would not follow through, and we were right. And we already see other candidates co-opting Ron Paul's others messages; Newt Gingrich, for example, is trying to steal the 'End the Fed' platform. This theft of platforms (from 'peace' to 'liberty' to 'end the fed') by those who can not be trusted will only accelerate.

So I implore you - get your head out of the philosophy for one second. Our situation is that dire. If Ron Paul was not libertarian, but rather, a variant from what is commonly referred to as the 'far left', we'd be begging the libertarians and an-caps to please, please, get past the philosophical differences for a half a second and recognize right now, we need to unite. We may not agree with his every position, but c'mon, do we really expect to find a knight in shining armor that looks and thinks exactly like us? I don't even agree with myself every day, let alone another person.

We can't wait for the perfect solution, especially when there is no one on the horizon and we're at such a critical moment. Ron Paul is our chance. Possibly our last chance. Certainly our last chance at having someone so obviously true to his word.

I don't advocate capitalism. I most definitely see the danger in it, the power structure inherent to the concept of 'capital' itself. But more importantly, I see the danger - the real, practical, pragmatic danger - of not getting Ron Paul into office. He is the path. And once we end these wars, and strip down the corruption in government, and throw the banksters out... then, we can concern ourselves with the deeper philosophical issues.

I am not trying to position Ron Paul as the 'lesser of two evils'. I reject that argument myself. Rather, I view Ron Paul as a man of integrity, that I disagree with on a couple important subjects, but also recognize will allow us as a nation to take the first steps towards a better future. We need to heal as a nation, and heal as a world, and we can't do that while we remain empire, while we drone bomb, while we split and enrage our own populace by defining social issues at the Federal level, while our economic policies destroy the middle class and enslave the poor.

 

[LibertyIn08]

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.

I appreciate what you're saying but that isn't how you win a primary. Maybe in the general but right now? We need to concentrate on getting 100% of supporters and 100% of potential supporters to their voting booths.

Not to say philosophical arguments aren't important - just need to know their place.

 

[jmdrake]

I wouldn't worry about them. We've got to get past the primary first. If we win then Ron Paul simply has to play the antiwar / anti-police state card like there is no tomorrow and watch the left fracture.

 

[thoughtomator]

certain isms are indistinguishable from religions, and if your point challenges a central point of faith don't expect them to be receptive

 

[NYgs23]

In the eyes of the communist, the root of the problem isn't the violence of the state but the private ownership of capital or "the means of production." Thus, for them, any society that allows private ownership of capital is evil, whether or not it has a state. This is why they conflate free market "capitalism" with state-corporatism. For them, the distinction doesn't matter; the key is that they both allow Lockean property rights over capital. They consider the private ownership of capital akin to a feudal fiefdom.

Whereas Lockean propertarians think that if a person transforms a resource through his labor, he justly establishes complete sovereign dominion over it, self-described anarcho-communists and anarcho-syndicalists often follow a doctrine of ownership based on possession, whereby a person only has just dominion over a resource if he is in current possession of it. For example, under possession-based ownership, it would be unlawful for a person to build a factory and then employ people to work in the factory and then demand a portion of the produce for himself. This is because once those laborers started working in the factory, the factory would fall automatically under their ownership and the builder would have no right to it. For the same reason, the possession doctrine would forbid loans, investments, and rent. All of these forms of economic transaction involve a contract by which the owner of a good agrees to allow someone else to use the good in exchange for a return. Under the possession doctrine, such contract would plainly be void since the owner would lose all rights to the good the minute it passed from his hands to the other party, who would have no legal obligation to repay anything to original owner.

Needless to say, applying such a doctrine by law would hamstring an economy. Possessors of capital would refuse to give up their capital for even temporary use by others since that would be akin to giving it up entirely. If you had a person who owned an axe and another who was good at cutting wood, they could not broker a contract by which the latter could rent an axe from the former. The latter could only barter for it, which would be impossible if he had nothing himself. The communist solution is that everyone would live in a commune and pool all their resources, which, of course, creates the perverse incentives of a "tragedy of the commons" situation. The communist solution to that is assuming that human nature would change under such a system so that people would no longer be care so much about their personal material gain. Which is absurd, since any creature possessing a lack of concern for its own material self-improvement would be at a severe disadvantage and on the road to self-destruction.

Furthermore, they're not necessarily consistent with their possession doctrine, since if you press them and ask them if you'd lose ownership of your car by lending it to a friend for free, they admit that you would not; the prohibition against lending only applies if there is money involved. This belies the fact that it's really mutually beneficial commerce they despise, not broad ownership rights. They want a world in everyone works cooperatively purely out of fellowship and find it distasteful that people would prefer to "selfishly" make deals with each other instead.

I'm also not sure how they feel about independent contracting. The possession doctrine, if consistently applied, would mean that if you let a car mechanic work on your car, he would own the car. I'm not sure what their answer would be to that one.

 

[Occam's Banana]

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.

I was going to point out the utter futility of attempting to persuade dedicated "class warriors" of ... well, of anything sane ... but it looks like you're well aware of this.
In cases like this, making counter-arguments for the sake of spectators is the only sensible approach.
+rep for having the good sense to be aware of these facts - and for presenting well-crafted arguments.

As for the rest, I can only ask you to actually sit down and read, first hand, books on communism by communist thinkers and not trust the scary monster version filtered through to you through Reason Magazine or whatever. I've read Hayek, Mises, Rothbard, Konkin, Novick, etc. I'm willing to bet you've never read Marx, Lenin or Trotsky and wouldn't have a clue who, say, Hilferding or Poulantzas or McNally is.

Ahhhhh ... the old "I've read Euclid & Pythagoras, so it's only fair for me to demand that you read all the proofs for squaring the circle and trisecting the angle before you conclude that they are not valid" argument.

And mixed with a nice dollop of authoritatem name-dropping, too, Yummy!

(And I have, BTW, read some Lenin. Probably not the texts that "Them" have in mind, though. The man was a vile & despicable POS).

 

[Demigod]

Just my view as an ex-communist.

Well at least for me the center of the whole communist ideology was about reeducation.My idea was that people are not born greedy,angry and hateful they are turned that way by a society that encourages it.So if you start prohibiting some stuff in time those kind of character attributes will start to disappear and in time will be exterminated.So capitalism was just a small part of the problem.


I got out of that kind of thinking by realizing a couple of things:

1.I am not that smart
2.Other people do not have the same desires as me or dreams,who says that the way I think they should spend their lives is the right way.
3.By centralizing government who can guarantee that a sociopath would not trick us all take the power and then just completely ruin us
4.That as I see that no one else is smart enough to tell me how I should live my life,from point 1 comes that i should not aspire to do the same to others.


5.I saw a video on You tube describing how well intention ed people who think that by centralizing power think they are helping people,actually are hurting them.

Then I also found out about Ron Paul and this forum broke the rest of the socialist ideas that I had left in me.I was communist for a very long time, proud member of the party.And I really see now point 5 describing me back then.


So if you want to show them the errors.Ask them "What happens when you centralize all that power,and a sociopath/greedy man comes into power? You have just doomed an entire population to be lab rats fulfilling the dreams of a maniac "

 

[Brian Coulter]

There are only two types of people in this world, Paul supporters and REDS.

 

[Occam's Banana]

There are only two types of people in this world, Paul supporters and REDS.

Better Paul-led than Red!

 

[MrTudo]

Marxists are the worst.

Actually the marxists are predicatable and for the most part if you're crafty, avoidable.

The ones that are perhaps the biggest traitors of them all are the ones who espouse "patriotism" while brainwashing the masses with regards to what patriotism even is. They send our young people overseas and while we're worried about them they bankrupt the country thereby CREATING MORE MARXISM HERE.