Debate: Socialist VS. Capitalist

Debate: Socialist VS. Capitalist published by The 1st Amender
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Posted on 2018-12-05
Writer Description: Loves to blog and debate
This writer has written 210 articles.

It comes with great pleasure to say that there exists Socialists willing to listen to opinions on the other side. Most echo chambers I have gone to actively seeking out these avenues have resulted in my immediate ban despite pure curiosity. At the end of the day, while we had to end the conversation (as it was going on for too long) it was still quite interesting and I thought I should share it. For the sake of simplicity and keeping the person more private, I will simply refer to each response as Capitalist and Socialist.

The original post which was in response to my article regarding Minimum Wage and why it is a horrid mess. If you haven't read it yet, I recommend to read it so you understand my perspective and maybe also why a Socialist would hate it. With that being said here is the polite discussion.

Socialist: Minimum wage is a bandaid, until a federal jobs guarantee, which is just another bandaid. Both will help the downtrodden more than unbridled capitalism

Capitalist: This is crazy! You sound like a basic anti-bourgeois sympathies. The same exact ideologies that killed millions of people in the wake of its altruistic intent!

Please take a look at the article. Capitalists aren't around to destroy labor and get it for as cheap as possible. Most companies want to hire someone worthy and won't steal from their company. With that being said, a lot of jobs exist above minimum wage because the job itself is worth more than minimum wage even at $15. This just serves to harm inexperienced and low-skill workers at best, the very people you seek to save!

Socialist: You are crazy! You sound like a basic bourgeoisie boot-licker! The same exact ideology that has killed billions in the wake of its profit seeking intent! Capitalists ARE around to get labor as cheap as possible because it enriches them! Minimum wages havent kept up with inflation in 50 years. Productivity has increased, focusing wealth at the top!

Capitalist: "Why does he have what I don't have"
The story of Kain and Abel in one single fell swoop. A capitalist cannot kill because a capitalist can only trade. A government can kill. Look at your history. Actual hundreds of millions dead and your reference is some Banana Republic or Congo reference which used assistance of government to destroy. Enough.

Socialist: What? Capitalists have killed people IN THIS COUNTRY, ever heard of Pinkertons? People hired to kill union members and strikers. And governments kill and install dictators all over the world in the interest of capitalists. Any type of redistributive government is put down. Right libertarians fail to see the link between the state and capitalism: one serves the other

Capitalist: Yes in this country. I'm aware of Pinkertons. So how many did they kill? And how many companies utilized private militias to destroy union sympathizers? Was this a huge amount of corporations who did this or was it a very small number of corporations to stop the unions? Are those people capitalists or are they authoritarians?

The point I'm trying to make here is you are talking about a small minority of capitalists who are predatory, which are not capitalists at all but authoritarians that violate N.A.P. Do not besmirch the name of capitalism when the cause of socialists renders the deaths of hundreds of millions.

Socialist: Socialists have been the cause of fewer deaths than capitalists. Like i said, the states throughout history have committed war crimes to open up markets and get natural resources FOR CAPITALISTS. I will besmirch capitalism and any entrenched hierarchy all i want. You believe in free speech dont you?

Capitalist: Sure do. Write an article on 1stAmender so you can show me your damned capitalists that utilize government to gain unnatural power.

Socialist: I dont have to write an article, ive been doing that throughout these comments. WWI, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan have all been colonial capitalist conflicts. Not to mention installing protofascist and fascist dictators across africa and in latin american countries like chile, brazil, and venezuela, costing millions of lives. Also famines, natural disasters, and rising temperatures caused by global capitalist industry have killed and will kill millions more

Capitalist: WWI, governmental war between nations. Vietnam: Governmental war between nations. Iraq: governmental war between nations where government is used by corporations enabling them to break N.A.P.. Afghanistan: Yet more government overreach. Instillation of pro-fascist dictators. I love you mentioned Chile because both of my parents happen to come from there.

I'm assuming you mean Augusto Pinochet which was assisted by the CIA to commit a coup d'etat. You literally had no food in grocery stores and people were starving when finally Pinochet took over and there was food within a couple days. Thank you based USA for doing that part and stopping communism/socialism at the root. Evil by true nature over and over and over and over yet people seem to have an issue with capitalists. And to top it off raiding a libertarian board that keeps its doors open with open arms and chooses to keep itself not an echo chamber.

Socialist: Pinochet killed thousands of leftists and communists simply for their ideology. That is literal fascism. He also privatized all parts of industry leaving working people hanging out to dry. And like i said, those governments fighting those wars SERVE THE INTERESTS OF CAPITAL. And i thought libertarians were non interventionist? If a country wants to be communist/socialist, why should we intervene? Doesnt that violate their freedom?

Capitalist: People will willingly vote for their own destruction. It proves to me that democracies cannot work as people will vote for death. Yet currently, after Pinochet's rule he did kill communists and Nazi sympathizers. Currently Chile is the wealthiest nation in South America but slowly falling behind due to the multiple years of socialist leaders having taken over the country.

Socialist: People didnt vote for the destruction Pinochet brought. You are apologizing for fascism.

Capitalist: You're right. They didn't vote for it. They voted for socialism, the system that results in the starvation and deaths and destruction of quality of life for all. People voted it, and it took an authoritarian to stop it. It was only then that people lived their lives in a free society of capitalists bringing on economic prosperity for many years to come. What an unfortunate situation that it happened. Yet at the same time, when you ask Chilean people about Pinochet the answer is usually: "Yeah he sucked but we also kinda needed him. We had some serious problems in the 70s namely with hardcore ideologies. The issue I have with him is that he stayed too long."

edit: There was no food and quality of life was deteriorating at a rapid pace while Salvador Ayende was "democratically" elected.

Socialist: Pinochet is an affront to human rights and should never have been put in place. Socialism has led to fewer deaths than capitalism, take the blinders off and consider something other than the propaganda thats been spoon fed to you. And Allende, the socialist, denounced Nazis, while Pinochet had close ties to ex-Nazis. Get your fash bullshit out of here.

Capitalist: Fascism is evil. I agree with you. Pinochet is seen as what I said above. People were literally starving. Read the Gulag Archipelago. Even skim through those and you will see what your precious socialism brings. It is you who has the blinders.

Just because 51% can vote away the rights of others doesn't make it right. Period. The founding fathers made the constitution to make sure the government doesn't take the rights of others despite what the popular vote thinks.

Here is the quote from Thomas Jefferson: "Democracy is 51% of the people taking away the rights of the other 49%."

Socialist: If you hate fascism and are a true libertarian then you wouldnt be excusing the killing of people based on their political ideology. No excuses. And gulags are to punish criminals who have extorted the masses. I dont like them, but regular people arent going to gulags. What about the private prisons and forced labor in the US?

Capitalist: Hah! Just the "political offenders" need be worried. Oh. Also the family. And the friends. "It so happens Mr. So and so was speaking with Mr. Other Guy on the corner of whatsit who is a political offender. What was it you were talking about with Mr. Other Guy for so long? Were you conspiring against the state?"

Don't forget the religious types and Christians, people who hold the concept of god higher than the state, also to be sent as political offenders.

You have no idea. Hundreds of millions were churned through the Gulags like a giant millstone breaking grain, uncompromising and indiscriminate. 17 million killed in the Gulags and yet the number is seen as higher as many have been born and died within the gulags entirely. Private prisons are often due to real violent offenders. And when you talk about the drug war, I'm against that as well so anyone who is in jail due to victimless crimes should be freed.

Socialist: Im against the state killing people in any form. But your numbers are way over blown, and again when compred to the deaths caused by capitalist imperialism and climate crises, capitalism takes the cake. Pinochet killed/ disappeared at least 5,000 ppl, how many did Allende kill?

Capitalist: You just said 5,000. The 17 million, as what people would say being way over blown. over 100 million which were taken into the Gulags, and then released. These are not numbers overblown, and anyone with a blasted ideology to push will deny these numbers. Just like Mao Tse Tung, Nazis pointing out: "It wasn't 6,000,000 jews it was just something like 300,000." Yet it comes to the same authoritarian presence that brings in true evil. But to have a true economic freedom. You cannot allow those who seek to remove these freedoms without fighting for them. You just stated 5,000 people killed in Pinochet which I wouldn't deny, yet you actively deny the confirmed killings of millions by the Gulags entirely.

Socialist: You honestly think hundreds of millions went through gulags? The ussr population was 290 million. U think they gulaged a third of their population? Thats just statistically fucked. And the rest of your post is just ramble that i cant make sense of. Youve been drinking the koolaid a lil too much i think.

Capitalist: Yes they did! Socialism as a doctrine realized that you cannot provide for the mass populace without some level of forced labor to make it a reality. So during the time of Lenin it was started, and only gotten worse with Stalin. Under that time anyone they could even pin to being a bourgeois was taken to the Gulags. You did not read the Gulag Archipelago and I suggest you do spend some time to read it. At least vol. 1. I went through all three volumes and looked up many of the statistics that were being thrown at me, all of which were verifiable.

At the end of the day there was nothing a Socialist could tell me to justify their evil actions. They have good intent, but lack the knowledge to get free stuff, you have to force the labor to make it. And because of which, causes more evil than Capitalism could hope to accomplish.

Edit: Gulags lasted over 50 years with multiple offenders, some of which were repeats. over 100,000,000 is not hard to imagine.

Socialist: That book is based on the account of 200 prisoners. The wife of the man who wrote it said it was “overestimated and wrongly appraised” and that the author considered it “camp folklore” rather than scientific historical study. Look into these works and its easy to see they are just propaganda

Capitalist: That is the same bullshit that was fed to me when I queried the socialist reddit. (I got banned by the way) The same dang thing. Almost verbatim. What's amazing to me is that while the wife was in Russia when interviewed, of which in the 1960s it was STILL a huge problem with naysayers of the government simply disappearing. It wouldn't surprise me if in her own sense of safety would renounce anything her husband wrote. So don't give me that bullshit, when you can account for many different instances and the countless untold stories that go on to this day. At this point you are simply denying the Gulags having killed so many. Even at the lowest accounts it was over 1,000,000. Yet from certain areas output over 2,000,000 from single areas. The hundred million comes from the 50 years of civilian forced labor.

Socialist: So im supposed to blindly accept whatever western capitalist propaganda gets shoved down my throat? No thanks, ill question everything, and there are reasons not to believe this jokers account, as well as your fascist apologia

Capitalist: Don't blindly accept. READ. Read about it. You didn't accept shit because you didn't read it. I know this because if you did, there is no way you would even come close to socialism again. There's simply too much irrefutable evidence to say the contrary.

Simply dismissing it as propaganda is awful and blatantly disrespectful to the millions who died, and is the same thoughts of Nazi sympathizers. Honestly I find you politically fascinating, and want to talk further, specifically someone who is the opposite of me.

Socialist: Ill say that its not the same as Nazi sympathizers, communists were at the forefront on the fight against Nazis, and were killed by Nazis. Im mot saying people didnt die in the USSR, its part of the reason im a libertarian socialist. The state is another vehicle of oppression. Im just saying the Red Scare and anti-communist sentiments in the west hve way overblown the numbers to make any form of communism seem synonymous with fascism

Capitalist: Russians fought against the Nazis because to them, nothing is above the state. Regardless, still an authoritarian presence and an evil blight which brought on the highest recesses of death and destruction in humanity. Yet now exists millenials that refute history in favor for altruistic intent. While altruistic and a good premise, the results resolve into a much more evil ideology. I wrote an article on "why libertarian socialism cannot exist" here: https://1stamender.com/article.php?articlenumber=1407

Socialist: Libertarian socialists reject both the state and capitalism. The USSR was essentially state capitalism, much different than socialism.

Capitalist: So... what exactly is it that you are trying to achieve, and what are your means to achieve it? I don't claim that capitalism is a perfect system, it certainly isn't. But it's the best damn thing we got right now. So unless you have a concept so radically different to make you some sort of political philosopher to span the thought provoking process of millions before you, please do enlighten me.

Socialist: A society in which the means of production are owned by all, rather than the state or a select few. People contribute some labor to produce for the commons, and are then free to pursue whatever intellectual labor they desire. Food, shelter, and health care are provided to all. Basically the anarcho communist society outlined by Petr Kropotkin.

Capitalist: So if owned by all, what if someone wants to keep their means of production to themselves? How do you stop that from happening?

After this discussion, absolutely fascinating by the way, even if he was opposing ideologies. We went on into a Discord to discuss the topic further. It went onward to discuss the validity of the Gulags, to Anarchists being left wing, to altruism being evil, to how the state took from resources causing famines in Russia, etc. The conversation lasted hours and was fantastic. But regardless, it's all about having the open discourse. I was glad to find someone that wasn't resorting to calling people names and attacking one another. It was truly a good time I must say. Keep on debating guys. Socialist, communist, libertarian, authoritarian, left, right, you're all good to me.

If you hated this article, that's fine. You have a right to your own opinion. If you find anything about it feel free to write your own article in rebuttal. I will read it. Additionally, I post an article a day Monday-Friday. Feel free to check out this site while checking out the articles I've written in the past.

Sources:
self-written with the help of my Socialist friend.

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