What did school teach you that was blatantly false once you researched it on the Internet?

peetss · 2012-05-24T10:25:17.796909+00:00

I explain the difference here. Hope that's helpful to you.

peetss · 2012-05-24T06:31:01.622272+00:00

Not necessarily. Marxism is a type of communism, but not all communism is Marxism. Anarchists in general, specifically Anarcho-Communists are not Marxists, though they agree with Marx's criticism of capitalism in many ways as well as some of his other ideas. Marxism includes certain ideas on how communism should be established that not all communists agree with.

peetss · 2012-05-24T06:10:55.924305+00:00

What happens if one person wants to capitalistically keep all the money he earns?

This statement assumes that money exists, and that taxes are paid to a government or something. Neither of these are necessarily true in socialism. In capitalism the capitalist gets his profit from paying the worker as little as possible and selling the product of his labor for as much as possible. Under socialism the worker receives the full value of their labor.

Again, I need to stress that socialism does not require a state. You're asking me specific questions about a very vague idea. You create a straw man socialist society in your head (I don't know the details of this society, but it sounds like it sucks). Then you tell me a few vague things about it: it has a state, it has money, it taxes people, it uses ridiculous amounts of force. You then ask me to defend it. This is not really productive, but I'll proceed to touch on some of your statements anyway.

Socialist anarchists live in a fallacy world where everybody is perfect and will freely give up as much money as society dictates is necessary

Actually, Marxism is based on materialism, and most communists, socialists, and anarchists accept this. This means that they don't see the world as perfect, or indeed as ever being able to achieve perfection. They do seek to improve society, but this doesn't require utopian beliefs. Your statement about money doesn't even make sense in regards to socialism, and the fact that you refer to it over and over shows that you're not very familiar with socialism or communism at all.

the inherent flaw with socialism is that those who don't work don't need to work because those who do work will be "giving" them free money anyway.

Again, the mentioning of money is pointless, but I get your idea. It's a very common criticism that people unfamiliar with socialism make. First of all, I'd like to point out that socialism doesn't mean "everyone gets the same amount of resources no matter what". There could be forms of socialism like that , but it is not inherent to socialism. In some ideas of socialism you might get the very basics provided, and would need to work to have beyond the most simple life. In other forms, people who won't or can't work might be left to the mercy of charity like they are in capitalism.

I don't think that your criticism is really valid because it assumes a particular form of socialism. Even if we do assume that form of socialism I don't think it follows that society would collapse because of a few layabouts.

The problem with your entire statement is that you're looking at socialism through the lens of capitalism. You're basically saying "if we have all these traits/rules that capitalist societies have, then socialism can't work".

Unfortunately, your misapprehensions are too deep and varied for me to fully have a go at all of them. You need to learn more about socialism and communism before you can critique them in a way that makes sense. I takes a good deal of time and effort to fully understand these ideas which are far more complex than you seem to give them credit for.

I'd suggest that you go to /r/debateacommunist. You should read the FAQ for starters which will help with some basic things, and then you can feel free to post and debate socialism/communism. It's a great community and has plenty of different kinds of capitalists and socialists that are very helpful.

For a very brief introduction to socialism, I'd suggest reading Einstein's Why Socialism? and Oscar Wilde's The Soul of Man Under Socialism. You could also watch this short video by G.A. Cohen called "Against Capitalism" which has a kind of silly introduction but really outlines some good basic criticisms of capitalism.

Edit: Here is a longer list of my reading recommendations on marxism/socialism for beginners.

peetss · 2012-05-24T05:36:04.561615+00:00

You make two claims here.

That "an all-knowing, all-powerful government to make sure everybody's pitching in their fair share" is part of communism.

This is just not true. The USSR and other counries you're probably thinking about are/were states run by a communist party, they are not actually communism (which is a stateless, classless society). For more information on what the terms socialism/communism mean (the are commonly misunderstood) please read my comment here.

That socialism needs "an all-knowing, all-powerful government to make sure everybody's pitching in their fair share"

I strongly disagree. Socialism can be established many ways. It can have a state, but can also be anarchistic. Also, there are forms of market socialism. Why do you think that an all-powerful government would be necessary? Why couldn't a democracy or representative democracy have socialism? Why couldn't socialism exist in a stateless society like it has (albeit briefly) numerous times in the past?

peetss · 2012-05-24T05:25:52.033703+00:00

Communism is a type of socialism. Not all socialism is communism. I go into more detail about this here.

peetss · 2012-05-24T05:13:09.164894+00:00

No worries, admitting you were wrong makes you right. Also, I meant to link to this in the other comment, but you might appreciate the long comment I made above about the meanings of socialism, communism, etc.

peetss · 2012-05-24T05:10:32.989098+00:00

This is not true. First of all, the USSR was formed several years before Stalin took power. I have my criticisms of this as well, but it certainly wasn't Stalinism. Also, Yugoslavia cannot really be considered Stalinist and had a split with the USSR.

Also, The Paris Commune, The Ukranian Free Territory, and Anarchist Catalonia are some examples of attempts to establish socialism without any kind of authoritarianism that you may not be familiar with.

I do not claim that these were ideal situations, but I just wanted to point out that Stalinism has not been the only attempt to implement socialism/communism.

peetss · 2012-05-24T04:59:41.140385+00:00

You might want to read my comment above which explains that this is not the case. Some kinds of socialists and/or communists believe in violent overthrow, others in peaceful revolution, and others still in some kind of evolution or eventual acceptance by states. Personally, I think that the transition to socialism will vary depending on cultural, social, geographic, economic, and temporal differences.

peetss · 2012-05-24T04:58:27.311272+00:00

He didn't. He used socialism to mean the transitory period between capitalism and communism where the workers owned the means of production and there was a dictatorship of the proletariat. Communism was used as the end goal: a classless, stateless, moneyless, socialist society.

peetss · 2012-05-24T04:52:12.828109+00:00

If you read the article that you posted (even the first sentence) you'd see that dictatorship, when used in the way Marx used it, doesn't mean what you think it means.

Magmarizer · 2012-05-24T04:43:59.470929+00:00

They are social democracies, essentially welfare capitalists. I appreciate their progressiveness, but it's not something that can work on a global scale. Not only do they still exploit their own citizens, but the higher quality of life for their workers is still only possible because they further exploit and take advantage of people overseas.

Perhaps I could liken it to a "good" king. He may be nice to his people, but he's still a king who has no right to his position of power and he still doesn't care about other lands and takes things from them as he pleases.

coolguy3867 · 2012-05-24T04:35:54.061432+00:00

This is a quote from Brendan Cooney's series on Marx's Law of Value:

The tools we use to critique capitalism determine how we envision an alternative to capitalism. Models for market socialism that talk of worker-owned cooperatives coordinated by market exchange clearly see that production for the enrichment of the capitalist class must be done away with if we are to overcome capitalism. Yet any society coordinated by market exchange is still disciplined by Socially Necessary Labor Time (SNLT).

This means that workers in such a society would still have to discipline their actions to the social average. Cooperatives that worked at under the SNLT would appropriate value in exchange. Cooperatives would compete to modernize their equipment so as to lower the SNLT. And how would co-ops obtain the money to invest in better, labor-saving equipment? They would have to exploit themselves. That is, the more money that workers want to plow back into making their labor competitive, they less they can pay themselves. Not only would the workers be disciplined by SNLT, they would also find themselves disciplined by the need to amass surplus value so as to stay competitive. What happens to the workers in firms driven out of business by the centralization of industries? Where do they get the capital to start new firms? Do they have to sell their labor in the market?

Production of surplus-value for its own sake, fierce competition over super-profits, the disciplining of the labor process to the whims of impersonal market forces… sound familiar? Now perhaps one might be of the opinion that it is impossible to do away with SNLT, with market coordination. If this is the case then our best option is do debate what type of market socialism would be least exploitative, least alienating. But why not challenge ourselves to imagine a world without these things?

I don't pretend to think this quote "disproves" Mutualism. Honestly, I haven't done enough reading on Mutualist thought to have a critique beyond what Cooney says. I would love to see a Mutualist response to this.

peetss · 2012-05-24T04:20:51.661014+00:00

I'm not talking about brutality, that's another debate (though I don't think that it's fair to equate Stalin and Lenin in that way). One of the main ways that Stalin went against Lenin is that he believed that Socialism could function in an independent state. Both Lenin and Trotsky believed that it had to be an international movement (both, for instance, thought that Germany having its own communist revolution was of paramount importance). Lenin and Trotsky, of course, also have their differences.

peetss · 2012-05-24T04:03:31.198323+00:00

Alright, misconceptions about these words come up all the time and I'm trying to create a response that I can post whenever the subject arises. Here's my attempt at explaining the meanings/differences of the terms communism, socialism, Marxism and Stalinism:

Communism is a form of socialism. Socialism means the worker's ownership of the means of production. Socialism can be anarchistic or statist, and socialists may or may not be Marxists or communists. Communism can be used in a few ways. It can mean "classless, moneyless, stateless society where the people own the means of production". Communism (as the form of government) is in no way authoritarian and is actually anarchistic. Communism can also refer to the movement to establish communism. This part (how to achieve communism) is where most debate between different communists has centered.

Marxists adhere to Marx's ideas about how to establish communism, which included the people seizing/abolishing the state and instituting a "dictatorship of the proletariat". This doesn't mean "dictatorship" in the commonly understood sense. It means that the working people would control the government, like direct democracy. It's all more complicated than that and there's plenty of debate on how this should be done and how Marx himself envisioned it, but I'm trying to be brief.

Stalin did consider himself a communist. He belonged to a communist party and claimed to believe that his actions would help to establish communism eventually. Many communists don't consider him to be a Marxist. One major difference between Stalin and other communists is that he thought that socialism could succeed as an isolated state whereas others thought that it needed to be an international movement. His methods went against Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg, and many other major communists leaders so many argue that he wasn't a "real" communist. I should mention that Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Luxembourg all had big differences as well. Many claim that the USSR wasn't even socialist. Trotsky called it a "deformed worker's state" and others consider it a form of State Capitalism instead of the government by the people Marx and many other communists envisioned.

This is not an end all be all explanation. There is a lot of debate about the ways to bring about a communist and even some kind of socialist society, there are many different branches of socialism, communism and anarchism. Please research and read about this subject so you can form your own opinions.

Anyone with more questions or who wants to debate these subjects should check out /r/debateacommunist please read the FAQ before posting.

TLDR:

Socialism: Worker's ownership of the means of production. This can be acheived through a state or in a completely stateless society.

Communism: A stateless, classless, moneyless, socialist society. This term can also mean any movement to achieve communism.

Marxism: Adherence to Marx's political, economic, philosophical and social ideas. Marx had his own particular ideas about how to establish communism and what the intermediate socialist society should be like. A Marxist doesn't have to dogmatically support everything Marx said, but they do at least agree with his basic ideas.

Stalinism: Stalin's ideas and techniques for establishing communism. Many communists, socialists, and Marxists feel that he went against their ideas.

ConstantEvolution · 2012-05-24T02:32:56.134604+00:00

You don't know enough about the meaning one or both of those words.

TheBigGinge · 2 days

Eh, I'm sure those thoughts would've occurred to him, but he may have held his tongue if he was sober. I actually knew the guy years ago and he hangs around with racists who believe in Communist and Jewish conspiracies so he's probably the "liberal" out of that group. The father of one of his friends wrote this book if that gives you any idea.

TheBigGinge · 2 days

The other night I had a friend bring over one of his friends. The guy was drunk and clearly not too bright, but he rather belligerently asked me why I had so much "Nazi-Communist shit". My bookshelf is in my bedroom so all he saw were the books I happened to have out in my front room which were "Fidel Castro: My Life" and Charles Nordhoff's "The Communistic Societies of the United States" and these were among several other fiction/philosophy books that had no real connection to communism (nothing had any connection to Naziism/Fascism). I just explained to him that Naziism and communism aren't the same. He tried telling me that Hitler was a communist and I just interrupted that Hitler killed tons of communists and hated them. He then went on a long rant about his "ideal" society free of "bullshit" which sounded just like some simplistic utopian socialism/anarchism. I just told him that that sounded nice... I didn't really want to engage on the subject anymore as we were both drunk and he was stupid.

Anyway, that's the closest I come to "persecution", which is just people grossly misunderstanding what socialism/communism/anarchism are and I see that stupidity way more on reddit than I do in my real life, where it just doesn't come up too often.

StarTrackFan · 2 days

You're so revolutionary!

pzanon · 3 days

Oh yeah, I didn't want to make it seem like I don't care about the poor. It's just that, in capitalist countries, poor people are really poor by choice. If they worked harder or were more creative they could easily become wealthy, so if you think about it, anything available to the super-rich is available to the super poor under capitalism. It's freedom and equality at its finest.

There's no doubt in my mind that forcing everyone in the world to voluntarily accept our economic system is a great idea.

StarTrackFan · 3 days

This is a beautiful story, comra-- I mean... buddy. Tears, brave, heroic, patriotic and economically conservative tears, are pouring down my face as I write this. If only I had been there to witness such a miracle of free marketry! If only the whole world could hear this song and read your words, I'm sure they'd praise Our Doctor from sea to shining sea! The world could all be united under the banner of Capaulicism and enlightenment could spread to all (just don't "enlighten" our wallets, amirite?).

I'm so glad you came to your senses! Now you can drop that disgusting and idealistic religion of communism and focus on the reality of RON PAUL 2012. Welcome to the fold, you'd better not be expecting handouts!

I speak these words in loving love of Our Doctor who art in Austria, Deliverer of Infinite Babies, Tightener of Belts, Freer of Markets, Ender of Feds, Last Bastion of States Whites, Dreamer of Paultopias, Gardner of Human Happiness, and By Far the Most Handsome of All Repuplican candidates. Aynmen.

pzanon · 3 days

Sorry, but cannibalism, like everything else ever, is most efficient under capitalism! You want human flesh? Why not try Teryaki Toddlers™, Grandparents with Gravy™ or Soylent Teen™. If you're rich enough you can have whatever you want, you don't have to make due with the same boring old thigh meat cooked over a dirty communist fire (also less efficient than capitalist ones). Capitalism provides variety. Not everyone wants to eat the same parts of the humans, or even the same kinds of humans. The FREE market accounts for that.

The thing about capitalism is the endless choice it provides for the wealthy. There's no uncle Mao or Auntie Stalin telling you what you can and can't do if you're wealthy. Everything, even human life, has a price. It's paradise! We don't force everyone into being the same bland boring way, we like our wealthy citizens to be individuals.

The way you commies eat people is just disgusting and immoral... you don't even make any profit off of it... it makes me sick just thinking about it.

StarTrackFan · 3 days

It's the "Ron Paul likes having fun" line that converted me. Feel free to share your conversion stories, communist swine.

crackedrepair · 4 days

Here is my list of good books for beginners. I also provide links to free online copies of most works I mention.

Edit: Also, I made this giant comment some time ago that attempted to collect all the book recommendation questions asked here.

StarTrackFan

TROPHY CASE

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