Troper Communist Hangout

That doesn't discredit everything he says or stands for.

He is not credible at all since he defended Khmer Rouge and claimed that accounts of people who survived the horrible genocide committed by said regime were lies

Thus he is as "credible" as Ahmadinejad and his merry company denying Holocaust.

As far as linguistics are concerned, his pet theory seems to be flawed since he claims that language is a trait special to humans. Researchers associated with SETI proved that dolphins have their own language, proving that cognitivist assumptions about language are better.

edited 25th Jan '13 12:57:46 AM by CaptainKatsura

My President is Funny Valentine.

No idea that anyone has discredits everything that person says or stands for. I don't ignore the correct things Noam Chomsky says because of the bad things he says anymore than I ignore the good stuff Proudhon said because he was sexist.

I have never seen hims denied the Cambodian genocide, nor say that the survivers are liars...So I will need a source on that.

And I have seen him talk about the Cambodian massacres all the time, nothing has ever strucked me as a denial... He only says that Cambodia and East Timnor ar comparable, but that East Teamor was actually worse in casualties per capita...

I also heard he had back tracked from some of his linguistic theories in light of new discoveries.

edited 25th Jan '13 1:58:24 AM by Baff

I will always cherish the chance of a new beggining.

And, even if he did say those things about Khmer Rouge and even if he didn't do a belief update in light of new information, ideas stand and fall on their own merit, not the merit of the person who said them.

That's true, but I don't think that it implies that it is irrelevant whether he said such things (not that you implied that, of course — just saying).

The degree of attention that one can give to a new claim depends in a big way on the trustworthiness (or lack thereof) of the claimant. Ideally, all claims should be pursued until they are either conclusively verified or conclusively falsified; but this is not entirely an ideal world. For example: if Stephen Hawking claimed that he discovered a new physical law, I (and, more importantly, the people who are competent enough to check his claims) would certainly be willing to entertain seriously the possibility that he is right. He's made phenomenal discoveries in the past, after all, and he is definitely competent.

On the other hand, if some untrained dude, known to have made crackpotty claims in the past, made the same claim, I would not give much thought to the possibility that he is right. He still might be, sure, and in an ideal world, his claims would be checked anyway; but the time and the effort of the people who are competent in the area is a finite resource, and unless these claims are backed up by extremely compelling evidence it would be safe to bet that they would be ignored altogether.

Now, all of this goes double for claims about society and so on, which are notoriously extremely difficult to verify. I actually like Chomsky, I enjoy reading him, and I find his ideas stimulating (both the societal ones and what little I understood of his linguistic ones). I am in no real position to check his claims conclusively, but I think that he often brings interesting insights to the table.

But if I learned that he said these things and did not correct himself, well, that would definitely reduce his credibility as far as I am concerned.

Oh,and hi, everybody. I am not precisely a communist, but I am not opposed to communism as a matter of principle either. If we could make it work, I think that it could have some real advantages compared to our current systems; but as I see it, the question is if we can make it work. Still, I think that it is an idea worth examining.

edited 25th Jan '13 12:07:29 PM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Well, in what I have read about him he hasnt tried to minimize the crimes committed by the cambodians.

He even compared them to the nazis.

Do he initially was skeptical about the reported atrocities because as he pointed out the western media had the habit of portraying all new communist regimes as genocidal dictatorships and while none of them were nice places to be at and their was wide abuse of human rights many of the claims were very certainly exagerated.

After the true scale of what happened in Cambodia became evident he didnt raise the point again.

Besides this aclarations I most say I agree with your point about the importance of people´s credibility, but Chomsky has demonstrated, at least to, to be A. A very reliable source of predictions about the future. B. A logically consisten debater.

He is also the main political voice for anarchism in the world.

Furthermore even if he did minimize the Cambodian genocide (which I dont think he is) many others minimize or readily ignore various atrocities and are pretty main stream.

If anyone want to know his stances on Cambodia I found this interview:

[1]

edited 25th Jan '13 12:10:06 PM by Baff

I will always cherish the chance of a new beggining.

Thanks for linking that interview, it was very interesting.

And yeah, the whole post was hypothetical.

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Also this might be intersting and highlights Chomsky´s point (this is the type of posting that got me banned from OTC ):

[1]

I will always cherish the chance of a new beggining.

Carcio, you're a Catholic from Italy. Aren't you supposed to hate Communists with a vengeance?

Mache dich, mein Herze, rein...

I was just made a content creator for an anarcho-communist facebook page! :D :D :D

would you link to it?

I will always cherish the chance of a new beggining.

Here you go~

-randomly pops in-

I hope you don't mind me asking, but I've never really understood political stances/ideas and what-not so I don't have any personal views yet. :3

So I just wanted to ask... what exactly is communism? I mean, I've never heard anything about it besides either "IT'S BAD BLARGARGHBLARG" or the nosebleed-inducing Wikipedia page, and I think I'd like to learn about it from someone not prejudiced against the idea.

Sorry for bothering in advance! ._.

Communism is an extreme form of socialism, so, before explaining what it is, I'll explain socialism first.

Socialism is an economic system that attempts to make people as equal as possible. It often attempts to do this by giving control of the means of production, or the things that are needed to make other stuff, into communal control, either by giving the means of production to the workers who use them or to the state. To this end, it usually abolishes private property, which is distinguished from personal property as personal property is stuff that one uses or occupies on a day to day basis, for example your apartment or your laptop is your personal property, and private property is stuff that one owns but doesn't use or occupy, for example an oven in a restaurant that's a part of a chain is the private property of the owner of that chain or an apartment is the private property of the person who rents it out.

Now, there are two categories of socialism. There is reformist socialism and revolutionary socialism. Reformist socialism works within the system to reform it, usually by getting socialists elected to public office. Revolutionary socialism, on the other hand, seeks to completely overhaul the system, either by violent, such as a violent uprising, or non-violent, such as by a general strike, means.

Communism is a radical form of revolutionary socialism that seems the eventual abolition of the state, money, classes, and private property. Full communism functions under a gift economy, or an economy in which goods aren't traded, whether for money or other goods, but instead given freely with the understanding that everyone you give to will give to you as well. (This is common in pre-monetary societies.)

Of course, there are different forms of communism as well. There are two major flavors, libertarian communism and statist communism. Statist communism uses a state at the beginning to transition to full communism and is often very authoritarian. Libertarian communism seeks to abolish the state right away. Marxism is one of the biggest trends in communism. All statist forms of communism are marxist, as are a few libertarian forms of communism, such as council communism. Marxist theory tends to hold that people cannot transfer straight to communism from capitalism. Rather, there needs to be a transitional stage to teach people how to be communist. This transitional stage is the dictatorship of the proletariat, in which the proletariat rule themselves through a dictatorship to ensure the abolition of capitalism and it's supposed to disappear on its own when it becomes no longer needed. That's why marxism tends to be statist and statist communism is all marxist. The other big trend in communism is anarcho-communism. Anarcho-communism is a libertarian form of communism and seeks to abolish the state immediately, replacing it with direct democracy for all decision making.

Historically, the most common forms of communism are leninist or based on leninism, such as stalinism or maoism. Leninism and all forms based on leninism are statist and tend to be extremely authoritarian. States of this nature include the USSR, Communist China, and Cuba. However, anarchist forms of communism have cropped up in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and Ukraine during the Russian Civil War, but, as both appeared during wartime, they started out with a lot of enemies, so the Spanish anarchists (in Anarchist Catalonia and Anarchist Aragon) were defeated by Franco with pressure from Spanish marxists and the Ukrainian anarchists (in the Free Territories of Ukraine) were defeated by the Bolsheviks. However, both groups held out far longer than anyone expected them to.

The reason communism is so hated is mostly the fault of leninism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Leninism leads to an authoritarian state which tends to do horrible things and the dictatorship of the proletariat never fully disappears. In addition, rich capitalists hate it because it takes away their power over the proletariat.

Personally, I'm an anarcho-communist who is not a big fan of statist forms of communism and marxism in general (though I'm ok with libertarian forms of marxism, I just don't understand why they continue to call themselves marxist).

I hope that clears things up. :)

edited 22nd Mar '13 2:20:02 PM by CassidyTheDevil

The thing is, it isn't synonymous with anarchy in the same way a square is not synonymous with a rectangle. The end state of all communist flavors is a form of anarchy, by the meaning of anarchists as direct democracy and no hierarchy, but not all flavors of anarchy are communist and many flavors of communism aren't anarchy initially.

edited 22nd Mar '13 2:19:46 PM by CassidyTheDevil

I was not confusing anarchy and anarchism. Individualist anarchism is still creating anarchy. Mutualist anarchism is still creating anarchy. Collectivist anarchism is still creating anarchy. None of those forms of anarchy are communist. This isn't nitpicking. This is being accurate.

edited 22nd Mar '13 2:19:40 PM by CassidyTheDevil

Differentiating private property from personal property is quite dumb. People often acquire it with their own money and they are means of their own welfare. Robbing people of private property by a government or other people is a theft, unless they are paid full market price for it. And of course, it restricts one's freedom of being independent economically.

My President is Funny Valentine.

Private property is only actually a thing in capitalistic systems. (Well, it's also really a thing in Feudalism.) In anarcho-communism (and other forms of anarchism) property is defined by use and occupancy so private property isn't a thing.

However, even so, I'd object to you saying that stealing private property is theft. To me, private property itself is theft and illegitimate.

When in the context of businesses, it is theft of the workers' labor. I mean, yes, the workers are paid for their labor, but not in full. If the workers were paid in full for their labor, then there would be no profit. I mean, the "owner" of the private property inputs the value of the private property and the workers input the value of their labor. If the workers were paid for their labor in full, they amount they would be paid would be equal to the difference between the amount of money made by the company and the cost of the private property that the workers applied their labor to. The amount left over would only be enough to recoup costs, and, thus, there would be no profit. Thus, the labor of the workers is being stolen.

When in the context of landowners, the stealing is more blatant. The landowner is, normally, putting no value into the land. I mean, yes, sometimes the landowner fixes things, but, if rent was really for that, then the rent would not be a fixed and flat price. Instead, it would change depending on how much the landowner did and be nothing in months when the landowner didn't do anything. Rent, therefore, is theft.

Finally, when in the context of interest, the stealing is even more blatant. A certain amount of money is given to the person and the person is expected to pay more money than was given back. That difference is just theft, plain and simple.

Taking private property isn't theft. Private property is theft.

This, by the way, isn't even a purely communist analysis of private property. Much of this analysis I've borrowed from the individualist anarchists who spoke a lot about the three crimes of usury: profit, rent, and interest. They are the three ways that owners of private property steal with that private property.

If owners of business didn't have any profit, they would not prosper. And all those employees would be without a penny if there was no employers.

Taking property is theft and violating individual rights of people. And also against very nature of human beings. People are territorial from the moment they are born. Even toddlers in Jewish kibutses that were collectivists experiments argued over ownership of stuff.

My President is Funny Valentine.

If thieves didn't steal stuff, they wouldn't get stuff! Does that make it ok for the thieves to steal stuff?

Plus, you do know that worker co-operatives are a thing? They don't have profit. Everything they make is split between going into the business and paying the workers.

Also, taking personal property is theft. Private property is illegitimate property.

Yes, and ownership of personal property is the sort of thing that toddlers argue about. They don't argue about, say, who gets to own lego bricks that others would make stuff from for them, but, rather, who gets to own lego bricks that they would make stuff from.

*facepalms* profit is not what you earn in total. It is what you earn minus expenses. Without the extra sum that lands in the pocket of business owner(s) they would neither have money for investments nor for living. What constitutes majority of economy of healthy and prosperous country is private sector that invests between 25 to 30 % of its profit into getting more profit. That's why economies grow. If you hate private property go to North Korea where everything belong to state a.k.a. the Glorious Leader. Even Cubans can have private businesses now.

edited 23rd Mar '13 1:16:44 PM by CaptainKatsura

My President is Funny Valentine.