How do I win debate against a Marxist?

/thread

No time

Retards need not apply

20-24 year olds and a few professors

Don't directly attack the monolith Marx/Marxism, because he's generally respected and you'll come off as partisan. Instead, develop a solid understanding of Marx's ideas, and show that they lead to a different conclusion. You can safely contradict two or three of his premises on the way there, but any more will make for poor optics.

Example:

>If we suppose that capitalism is necessarily exploitative, and that historical crises will eventually lead towards liberation from said exploitation, we still have to develop a utilitarian equation which justifies allowing said crises to happen in order for this progression to be ethical.

>In order to do so, we must show that the utility generated by communism outweighs the utility generated by capitalism, as well as establish that the instatement of communism lasts a worthwhile span of time. Marx establishes this first point via the labor theory of value, and the second with the assumption that communism will spread across Earth uniformly, eliminating all colonial powers in the process.

>However, both these premises are deeply flawed. The labor theory of value is demonstrably incorrect (counter-examples include digital art & artificial objects which can also occur naturally), and the notion that any economic system will be instated rapidly enough to automatically overcome resistance is silly. Furthermore, even if communism does become global overnight, we immediately face a tragedy-of-the-commons problem, wherein a moderately-well-organized militia could reap vast benefits by acting as a spontaneous colonial power.

>One might attempt to counteract this by backing communism with a strong central government which uses taxation and other coercive methods to provide a national defense, but this would lead to the same sort of social strife communism seeks to alleviate (albeit to a lesser degree). Furthermore, in order to ensure that tax revenue is consistently useful, a certain degree of central planning becomes inevitable. This, again, eliminates many of the gains communism claims to offer. As we often see in history, states which are ostensibly communist tend to recreate the same problems of capitalist states, and regularly invoke state-capitalism themselves, as responses to the challenge of colonialism.

>Essentially, the mere possibility of colonial overthrow causes communism to game-theoretically self-destruct.

If you want to defend this position, you'd better read up on game theory, research historical examples of the phenomenon, and thoroughly understand why the labor theory of value doesn't hold up. Once all that falls into place, though, you challenge communism both in practical and ethical terms, which is a lot for the other side to deal with in a format where rebuttals are shorter than opening statements.

And never, ever use the prefix "cultural." You'll look like a fucking joke.

Kill their parents and watch them starve to death.

Postmodernism and identity politics.

>"Not everything is about an economic theory, right?" Clinton asked her audience of a few hundred activists, most of them wearing T-shirts from the unions that had promoted the rally. "If we broke up the big banks tomorrow — and I will, if they deserve it, if they pose a systemic risk, I will — would that end racism?"

>"No!" shouted her audience.

>"Would that end sexism?"

>"No!"

>"Would that end discrimination against the LGBT community?"

>"No!"

>"Would that make people feel more welcoming to immigrants overnight?"

>"No!"

Why does it matter if people suffer under current conditions?

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is a central thesis of marxism and it's pretty easy to debunk if you're not talking about a hypothetical post-scarcity scenario. Who gets to decide the individual needs of people when dealing with finite resources and so on and so on.

If you take that statement as literal or essential to Marxism, you know nothing about Marxism. It's a popular slogan coined by Marx, not an element of his theory. You have to distinguish between stylistic elements of Marx's prose and his actual ideas.
>inb4 "then he's a bad writer"
All philosophers do this, and many STEM writers do it too. Theories would be easier to understand without embellishments, but they'd be much less compelling.

A key part of Marxist thought is that the common worker is being taken advantage of, because they are not in control of what they produce. This is clearly a silly position, because if the worker really thinks they deserve ALL of the fruits of production, then why don't they quit, and do it themselves?

A common laborer is provided with tools, designs and sellers. Most of them provided by people taking substantially more risk than them.

A coal miner, a lumberer, a cook, these laborers are all using tools, instructions and markets provided to them. It's not like they are producing it on their own.

Yep this is good advice

"He is a German."
*walks out*
*cue Ghostbusters theme*

The best thing you can do is read Marx and Engels. Know your enemy. Most self proclaimed Marxists are idiot kids who have never read the basics.

Explain that the Labor Theory of Value is bunk, which consequently means that the rest of Marxism falls apart.

If they ask you to prove it's bunk, ask them how much the time/effort they waste in asking stupid questions is worth. Alternatively, tell them to dig a 6ft-deep hole, ask them how much that hole is worth, and then shoot them in the head. With the grave already dug, you'll save a lot of time/effort burying them.

Marx directly addresses this argument, and his rebuttal is solid. The workers can't "quit and do it themselves" because they don't own the means of production. He also talks about tools and machines for pages when he lays out the labor theory of value, with the express goal of showing that it handles cases like these.

Or, you know, you could prove it with a counterexample.

t. guy who actually bothered to read up on Marx before rejecting Marxism

You don't; they're incapable of rational discourse.

>human nature tho

Few people on this website have enough brain cells to seriously debate a Marxist.
Source: I'm a former Communist who went from the far-left to the center left.

>trying to "win a debate" rather than come to a mutual understanding of each other's point of view
Faggot.

Who needs brain cells when you have muscle cells?

I want to murder and rape, you don't. Let's just molest.

We are living in post-scarcity, bucko. All scarcity nowadays is artificial.

Watch these videos:
1. youtube.com/watch?v=YeIcQSnepig
2. youtube.com/watch?v=hmJLh3QCNgM
3. youtube.com/watch?v=ViN7rzPuXq8
4. youtube.com/watch?v=tBibWSh8L8Q
5. youtube.com/watch?v=x1tUFx_StSo

/thread

but i have youtube

Start by reading Marx. Read everything he has written. Then read his critics. Everything. Then, form your own opinion using both Marx and his critics to support your claim. This is the only way to do it. Everyone these days wants a shortcut to sounding like an educated person and it doesn't work like that. Becoming smart takes years of reading and writing.

The good news for you is that most modern self-proclaimed Marxist teenage communists in the street have typically read nothing but Marx and Marxist literature. If you've read Marx and his critics, you should win any debate with ease by simply being more diverse in your approach. Marx is easily beaten, but to know how, you have to read him.

"Why aren't you redistributing your own wealth right now?"

>communism seeks
And you blew it.

You can't. No because he will be right (he won't) but because he will never change opinions.

Every single time Bolshevism has been tried it has been wildly successful.

It's not Lenin's fault you think his success is your failure.

>Every single time Bolshevism has been tried it has been wildly successful.

Wrong. There are finite resources on Earth. If there were an infinite amount of resources at our disposal then we would be post-scarcity. Star Trek is post-scarcity because they can magic shit up in their magic shit maker.

Pretty much everything he believes in is based one way or the other on the LTV, which is bad science from the 19th century.

Basically, just explain to him why subjectivist theories of value are correct and that's it, you won. Whether he understand that or not is irrelevant.

Oh, I guess I imagined the creation of the USSR and all its various copycats.
>lol the central thesis of this future society envisioned by some Victorian fucknugget doesn't apply to current society MARX BTFO
"To each according to his contribution" and "he who does not work neither shall he eat" are both central tenets of Marxism, btw.

Shit I'm not a Marxist and I know this.

Very, very easily. Remember: just because the Marxist keeps on talking, does not mean that you have not won the argument. People who lose arguments go on talking all the time.

t. guy who has won dozens of arguments against Marxists (they never realize it, though).

>most modern self-proclaimed Marxist teenage communists in the street have typically read nothing but Marx and Marxist literature

Are we sure this is true?

because today's marxist have actually read him right

The stuff that isn't based on the LTV is rooted in blank-slatism or psychoanalysis or some other retarded thing depending on the type of marxist you're facing.

And remember that if you're to the right of democratic socialism, he would probably kill you or order you to be killed if he had the chance. Provided he's sincere, of course.

You're right. He's being wildly generous in assuming they've even read any Marx/Marxist literature.

>Oh, I guess I imagined the creation of the USSR and all its various copycats.

No, you didn't imagine them. You're just looking at them through extremely rosy glasses.

>application of marxism
>application of free market

that and Harry Potter

Start off by accepting the fact that you can't use capitalism to beat Marx. You have to use feudalism. Capitalism and communism both lead to the same end.

Anyone else notice that whenever you talk to a communist its like they're speaking a completely different language?

Capitalism and communism both lead to the same end.

care to explain

>You're just looking at them through extremely rosy glasses.
Or maybe I'm not and you just can't read my fucking post:
>It's not Lenin's fault you think his success is your failure.
i.e. Bolshevism did what it was meant to do: seize power, and hold it.

And because they were successful, suddenly a bunch of other faggots copied them. And they were successful too; of course they were (who knew violence and coups were so effective?). And then faggots like you get self-righteously butthurt when other socialists tell you that Bolshevism was a special-snowflake fringe ideology before Lenin made it big by taking control of one of the biggest powers in the world.

lmao I hate those cuck shills with their SJW faggotry. They don't worship Pepe like me (praise Kek)

Never mind the gif. Socialism has indeed succeeded in everyone of its technical actual goals. If you like it, you won't change opinions, as I said.

reality.gn.apc.org/econ/DZ_article1.pdf

Abstract:

>This study aims to investigate the empirical strength of the labor theory of value. Using input-output data and labor hour statistics for Sweden it replicates tests done by Cockshott and Cottrell (1998) for the British economy. Its results are broadly consistent: labor values are closely correlated with market prices. When it comes to reality, the labor theory of value works at least as well as the theory of production prices.

There is no scientific consensus on LTV's power vs other theories, saying it is debunked will discredit you

Is that supposed to be how non communists talk?

No you faggot it's meant to show that jargon doesn't mean cultiness, unless you think Veeky Forums is a cult.

>There is no scientific consensus on LTV's power vs other theories

top fucking keks, always with that piss poor paper

Is your next post going to be "lysenkoism is probably correct" ?

not him

Another lie that Communists still erupt today, is to pretend that the enemy of capitalism, which are not, but worstly, are the worst capitalists. Lenin and Marx were born in the wealthy capitalist families, and were not satisfied with their benefits under the legal system, have conspired to overthrown anyhthing to get on the path to becoming a capitalist emperor, under the papacy of money worship. The Communists are not the proletariat, but the worst kind of capitalists who are trying to avoid justice. Communism = Capitalist Anarchy = Capitalist syndicate man-farm

The words you listed are not loaded in any way. They're just simple words or memes that can be easily defined if they're not readily apparent. Try to explain what use-value, wage labor, petty bourgeoisie, division of labor, or labor-power means in a single sentence. That is loaded language that is almost completely exclusive to communists and it is cult-like behavior.

>technical language is cultish jargon
Woah those STEMfags are worse than I thought!

r u eastern euro? me to!!!

anyone ever read this?

Did you read the paper are you judging it by conclusions?

Here is a global version of the study, examining many non-social-democratic countries. Again LTV predictions and real values is as good or better as the TPP

reality.gn.apc.org/econ/Zachariah_LabourValue.pdf

Those STEM guys sure are plebs aren't they? They can't even keep up with our jargon.

This. It's not the Bolsheviks fault that goys think the mission is to create a utopia when in reality it's a Gentile-genocide machine of global proportions and the end-goal is to enslave all non-Jews.

It's not "technical language" if basically everyone who actually works in the field agress that it doesn't map on anything real. Same reason why scientology words aren't "technical jargon".

>still with zacharia

Yeah, and wait until you hear what doctor Wakefield has to say on vaccines!

Man I sure wish these dead guys would stop manipulating me.

What are you talking about?

You're finding tiny details which could apply to anything which needs to use its own language to explain anything (for example, Aristotle's works) while ignoring all the cult leaders and shit which are supposed to be there -- and aren't.

He's saying there is no way by which dead people can manipulate individuals.
And he's right, I mean, they could be capable of extending their influence on people beyond their death if there just was some way of recording words, maybe like by painting them.

You're getting overly offended at something being described as cult-like behavior which in itself is cult-like behavior. The language used by Aristotle was not obscure to his contemporaries BTW.

Are you a member of any socialist clubs or groups?

Well I guess Scientology isn't a cult since the founder is dead.

Then you will lose all the time senpai.

The ends justify the means. Does that remind anyone of anything? Anyone?

Thats a misunderstanding of what the other user was saying. We have the means to provide every person on Earth with adequate food, shelter, and access to entertainment (film, music, internet, clubs, etc). The issue is the logistics, figuring out how to set-up and maintain those systems in a capitalist system is extremely difficult.

Earth has finite resources, but those resources will last penty long enough for us to develop technology to mine from asteroids and set-up colonies on other terrestroal bodies before running out is even a concern.

None of this is saying the other user is correct, or at the very least, misleading in his language. Scarcity is only "artificial" in that it theoretically could be ended.

>STEM language correlates to clear and explicit meanings/definitions.
>Postmodern language has endless debates on what terms mean and no one can agree on definitions, yet said language gets parroted endlessly.
Fucking retarded STEMfags, amirite?

That was poorly-phrased, you're right.

A better phrasing:
>this would lead to the same sort of social strife Marx claims communism would alleviate (albeit to a lesser degree).

All of those terms can easily be defined in a sentence.

Use value- a product's utility
Wage labor- work for temporally based, fixed remuneration; rather than work for the wealth one creates
Petty bourgeois- small business owners, managerial workers, and the like
Division of labor- splitting the creation of a product into multiple independent activities for the sake of efficiency (also this one is hardly exclusive to Marxian economics)
Labor power- one's ability to work

Don't stop there:

dialectical materialism
commodification
commodity fetishism
alienation
equivalent form
lumpenproletariat
universal equivalent
sublation
modes of production
means of production

>Scarcity is only "artificial" in that it theoretically could be ended.
I think this is the main point. It could be ended but that would mean a more 'even' distribution of wealth across the globe. This would severely harm some people and severely help others. There are billions of Chinese and Indians, for example, and many have very low standards of living.

Become a even better Marxist.

>Does that remind anyone of anything
The modern way of thinking.

Dialectical materialism- Marx's reworking of Hegel idealist dialectical logic to be applicable to the existent, physical world. Essentially, the effects of economic life on human thought and behavior.
Commodification- the monetization of activities and products traditionally located outside of the sphere of civil society.
Commodity fetishism- Belief that products have inherent value, outside of the labor and subjectivity that one "alienates" into a commodity for its creation.
Lumpenproletariat- criminals and others pushed to the fringes of capitalist society, equivalent to Hegel's "Pöbel"
Universal Equivalent- money
Sublation- another Hegelian term regarding the final dialectical movement, whereby to (often) contradictory concepts are transcended by a third.
Mode of Production- economic System
Means of production- the capital necessary to produce.

Don't bother sending another list as I don't agree with your premise that a philosophy using neologisms or referencing Hegel automatically makes it a cult.

Why would you not use "money" instead of "universal equivalent?" That type of language is unnecessarily loaded and it is cult-LIKE. You're confusing terms here. When I say cult-like I'm not saying cult-literally, as in literally a cult. I'm saying the behavior is cultish. Nobody talks like a communist.

u don't u just think u do

Marx's works are as much works of history as they are philosophy. He uses the term universal equivalent to show the role money played in its emergence in bartering systems. Many of these terms require context, but aren't meaningless. And for what it's worth, I would find someone walking around spouting these terms strange as well. They're mostly just used in academic settings, if at all.

Point out that he is guilty of ressentiment.

Game over.

>Marx's works are as much works of history as they are philosophy. He uses the term universal equivalent to show the role money played in its emergence in bartering systems.

That's an odd way of defining a word in a single sentence. Are your other definitions so overly simplified as well?

Have you ever had any contact with any philosophy whatsoever? Have you ever tried reading Kant?

"Money" can bear a lot of meanings, but Marx is specifically talking about the object that measure by which other products are priced and blah blah blah

How do you determine value and need?

> but Marx is specifically talking about the object that measure by which other products are priced and blah blah blah

Then universal equivalent cannot be defined as "money." You have overly simplified the definition to the point of meaninglessness.

>lol ur jus jelly

is there a worse "philosopher" than neetshit?

Dam n, u trolled me

Low ability individual/low IQ person here.

Do I need to apply and know advanced mathematics in order to read Das Kapital? I opened a couple of pages here and there and there was lots of things that looked like mathematics.

Also what is the Das Kapital directing criticizing? Capitalism of course, but any writers it directly goes against

why marx call the roman empire capitalist?.
it is?.

> why marx call the roman empire capitalist?.
> it is?.

He didn't and it wasn't.