A post responding to this youtube video

Socialism is when the government does stuff

Like SSS says, the left says peddles this narrative to make socialism seem easily integrable. It’s not an anti-communist talking about, it is a socialist talking point.

Socialism 101

Socialism: Common ownership of the means of production [each worker is an equal fractional owner of the company they work for], distribution, & exchange.

Communism: A stateless, classless, & moneyless society with common ownership of the means of production [everyone owns partly of everything]

SSS agrees for the sake of the video, that the countries that call themselves communist are communist even if they haven’t achieved the state of communism.

Communism would create a hivemind dystopia

Has anyone actually said this? I guess you could argue communism tries to create a hivemind but is not 100% achievable.

Communists want to “free” the masses

Argument one: it was capitalism that was constraining people’s freedom!

Rebuttal: the ruling class has always pushed their views onto others, whether they are more progressive or less progressive than the previous rulers. The october revolution might’ve resulted in more freedom, but for every good revolution, there are revolutions that end up being worse. Notable case: Iran and women’s right to not wear a hijab.

Argument two: in capitalism schools prepare students for a life time of work.

As if schools wouldn’t be doing the same under communism. In either system, people will have to work. It doesn’t matter if it’s voluntary, but if no one is doing critical work, then

Communism and Capitalism Kills People

Argument: communism solves everything!

Counter-examples:

• In 2020 capitalism = more than enough food. 2022: food shortage.
• US collects $1T per year in taxes, $3.2T = wealth of all billionaires, malaria costs $10B tops to solve, US donates $10B/yr to the UN.
  • If the US can’t solve malaria globally with $10B (not to mention military spending), then what good would $3.2T do?
  • Not to mention the debt each country has. If we wanted to solve malaria, why don’t we just take $10B in debt and solve it?
  • Is the cost of malaria under-represented, or are people just saying things without thinking about what their government actually spends their taxes on

Innovation

According to SSS, Canada is considered a socialist country. Therefore, why don’t all American socialists just move to Canada?

Human Nature

Incentives:

• Survival
• Bettering another person’s life
• Passion
• Satisfaction with work
• Curiosity
• Boredom
• Output for creativity
• Necessity
• Companionship

argument is that the human nature argument is generalizing humans, but that is actually not what it is. The human nature argument is that people don’t think the same, and their opposing beliefs get in the way. It is not human nature of humans, but rather the human nature of a human.

Why live in Capitalism? Go to X country

I concur that this is a poor argument, although no English speaking communist country exists. I highly doubt that communists would go to a communist country when they don’t even speak the same language.

Okay, we will ask a person to name the best country in the world. If it is communist (get them to clarify), ask them honestly why they don’t move there? Most likely, they will say money or language (culture). If money, ask them how much money they need to save up (proof by contradiction to get hypocrisy). Otherwise, ask them the country that they think is the most communist that they could assimilate to and then proceed to do the same questioning.

Horseshoe Theory

Argument: Far-Right and Far-Left are not equally bad.

Rebutall: It doesn’t matter which side is better if they are both bad! Not to mention, that people have different definitions of far-left and far-right. The most common definition is that far-left has a range of libertarian to just above centre whereas far-right is right and authoritarian. Therefore, far-left and far-right are obviously at the same level (i.e. there is a slope)

Authoritarianism

Generalization interventions as capitalism wanting to protect capital rather than a) national interests b) the pre-existing notion that communism would be bad.

SSS blames capitalism for anything communism does that isn’t stateless. Apparently the guerillas in South America are peaceful and aren’t killing innocent civilians. It actually capitalism that is making the guerilla groups kill innocent people.

“All capitalists cry when China defends itself” 😂😂😂😂

“Communism was actually popular”

SSS claims that 80% of USSR residents wanted to stay in the USSR, but where is the proof? All I see is a graphic and there are multiple accounts, for example, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1989-1992/collapse-soviet-union, that state that there were protests to gain independence from the USSR. You can argue that maybe only Russia wanted to be communist, but that is completely different than saying 80% of the entire USSR wanted to stay in the USSR.

After the demise of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the Baltic States and the Caucasus demanded independence from Moscow. In January 1991, violence erupted in Lithuania and Latvia

The administration could continue to support Gorbachev in hopes of preventing Soviet disintegration.

Who is telling the truth? Is this website also part of the conspiracy that everything that happens is because of capitalism?

SSS ignores the existence of food banks and welfare systems.

If people said they were in support of the previous dictatorship, does that automatically mean that dictatorship is better than democracy?

• sampling bias