Spain's Communist Village Is Making The Rest Of The World Look Bad - Polidicks

I think it's clear that communism is the superior ideology judging by the last 23 pages of formal debate.

[QUOTE=laserguided;43166344]I think it's clear that communism is the superior ideology judging by the last 23 pages of formal debate.[/QUOTE] Explain how.

[I][ another 23 pages later][/I] ... and that is why communism is superior

[QUOTE=Mechanical43;43166326]we've gone full circle at least twice. i think I saw catburf, sobotnik ask the same questions about 3 times now. they get an answer but it's not the one they want to hear so we go back round[/QUOTE] Actually, no it has not been answered sufficiently. That's the problem. The questions keep getting dodged. I mean look at this. [QUOTE=SgtCr4zyGunz;43163242]because we live in a society that promotes greediness? accumulation of capital elevates your status, your ability to influence the society, as well as your ability to gain resources. i think such an unequal system is wrong.[/QUOTE] It's true in the most basic sense, but it fails to address how this anarchist system is any different. If you are a parasite, you are at a significant advantage over others in your community. Simply saying that Capitalism encourages greed doesn't explain how you are going to address the problem of greed in an anarchist system. You can't just wave your arms in the air and pretend that humans won't be greedy. Not when there is mountains of evidence to the contrary, and not when there are very clear cut advantages in a system that doesn't have repercussions built into it. As has already been said, if you decide as a community to force a collective will on someone, you are "oppressing" them. Attempting to buzzword out of it or just sugar coat that fact is hypocritical in the extreme.

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;43165167]Well for a society based around the idea of having no oppression or forcing people to do things, does it not seem strange that there is a situation in which such things are justified in order to maintain the integrity of that society?[/QUOTE] Yes it seems strange. As I understand it anarchists strives to eliminate oppression as an ongoing goal and if one act of what would usually be considered as oppression stops another one or many it could be seen as a necessary evil despite the overall objective of non-violence. Eliminating all oppression seems a good thing to strive towards but I doubt it could ever be achieved entirely. Some schools of anarchist though claim that it can but to me it doesn't seem realistic.

All systems oppress someone, they just oppress different people. What works for you doesn't necessarily work for others. All we can really do, as humans, is cut the most rational and moderate line.

[QUOTE=Mechanical43;43166326]we've gone full circle at least twice. i think I saw catburf, sobotnik ask the same questions about 3 times now. they get an answer but it's not the one they want to hear so we go back round[/QUOTE] The answers are often pretty lackluster. [editline]13th December 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=JustExtreme;43168548]Yes it seems strange. As I understand it anarchists strives to eliminate oppression as an ongoing goal and if one act of what would usually be considered as oppression stops another one or many it could be seen as a necessary evil despite the overall objective of non-violence. Eliminating all oppression seems a good thing to strive towards but I doubt it could ever be achieved entirely. Some schools of anarchist though claim that it can but to me it doesn't seem realistic.[/QUOTE] The biggest problem being that in the end it's impossible to eliminate oppression if there is at least one instance in which oppressive behaviour is justified, then it pretty much throws everything out the window. If say the world became anarchist, and about 600 years later a bunch of people read about a different system of government and think it sounds like a jolly good idea and work towards implementing it, then the anarchists would either have to concede to these people the creation of this society or have to use force to crush the rebellion. Given humans, it generally tends to be the latter.

[QUOTE=SeamanStains;43168627]All systems oppress someone, they just oppress different people. What works for you doesn't necessarily work for others. All we can really do, as humans, is cut the most rational and moderate line.[/QUOTE] Indeed and even within the current system there are efforts to eliminate certain kinds of oppression. Anarchists tend to consider many of the same things currently worked against (i.e. racism, sexism, transphobia, patriarchy, etc.) as oppressive but there are also other things that aren't necessarily considered oppressive under the current way of doing things (didn't want to use the word capitalism really...). For example, some anarchists would consider the hierarchical top down organisation and the employer-employee relationship to be exploitative and oppressive. Many would also consider usury to include landlords renting out land/property, etc. So the definition of what constitutes oppression differs between a hypothetical anarchist society and the status quo but what they both have in common is that they try to work against what [I]they[/I] see as oppression. I forget where I read it but in some anarchist literature, probably a quote from the Anarchist FAQ or Kevin Carson/C4SS, there was something about anarchy/anarchism not being the final answer because [I]there is no final answer[/I] - it said that anarchy is dealing with things progressively as they happen using the least oppressive methods of organisation possible and not pretending there is some universal singular objective to achieve. There are things to strive towards (eliminating oppression, hierarchical dominance, autocracy, etc.) decided collaboratively in order to try and better society but not necessarily will they be achieved in their totality. A set of progressive theories to be discussed and used when determined appropriate by the community in a non-hierarchical way and not a rigid ideology or system. The most rational and moderate line differs a great deal from person to person and while some may think the current way of doing things embodies it, there are others that don't and want to strive for something different or better. I acknowledge that that doesn't mean it would necessarily work, though. There are so many variables that it is difficult to comprehend.

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;43168896]The answers are often pretty lackluster. [editline]13th December 2013[/editline] The biggest problem being that in the end it's impossible to eliminate oppression if there is at least one instance in which oppressive behaviour is justified, then it pretty much throws everything out the window. If say the world became anarchist, and about 600 years later a bunch of people read about a different system of government and think it sounds like a jolly good idea and work towards implementing it, then the anarchists would either have to concede to these people the creation of this society or have to use force to crush the rebellion. Given humans, it generally tends to be the latter.[/QUOTE] Pretty much any kind of utopian society requires the absolute eradication of all history and heavy censorship afterward. Which is an impossible task.

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;43170246]Pretty much any kind of utopian society requires the absolute eradication of all history and heavy censorship afterward. Which is an impossible task.[/QUOTE] What about one run by pretty much a computer overlord(complete AI or group of AI's) that can convince people of a more efficient way to progress and understands death reasonably well. People would be able to argue with it, but so long as it learns from those arguments and if it finds a flaw in it's methods can adapt, it wouldn't require either of those things. This is ignoring that both of those things are key points of a dystopia.

[QUOTE=deadoon;43173171]What about one run by pretty much a computer overlord(complete AI or group of AI's) that can convince people of a more efficient way to progress and understands death reasonably well. People would be able to argue with it, but so long as it learns from those arguments and if it finds a flaw in it's methods can adapt, it wouldn't require either of those things.[/QUOTE] What if the computer was smart enough to persuade anyone to do what it demanded?

[QUOTE=deadoon;43173171]What about one run by pretty much a computer overlord(complete AI or group of AI's) that can convince people of a more efficient way to progress and understands death reasonably well. People would be able to argue with it, but so long as it learns from those arguments and if it finds a flaw in it's methods can adapt, it wouldn't require either of those things. This is ignoring that both of those things are key points of a dystopia.[/QUOTE] This is more of the same old Marxist tripe: The economic calculation problem doesn't matter because... computers!

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;43173198]What if the computer was smart enough to persuade anyone to do what it demanded?[/QUOTE] And what could a computer demand? More hard drive space and secondary servers to copy itself to? If humanity was lead to believe that this would allow it to better convince them to progress technologically and socially, would they care? [editline]13th December 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=Eudoxia;43173602]This is more of the same old Marxist tripe: The economic calculation problem doesn't matter because... computers![/QUOTE] If humans want the most efficient system, isn't one that has minimal emotion or emulates emotion to make everyone strive for success as a whole, better? Also in this case it isn't just a generic run of the mill computer, it is one that makes decisions based on available information. Think one that is a web crawler and ignores robots.txt to gather information constantly and process it to make decisions.

[QUOTE=deadoon;43173614]If humans want the most efficient system, isn't one that has minimal emotion or emulates emotion to make everyone strive for success as a whole, better?[/QUOTE] You don't like emotions or think they are bad? :pwn:

[QUOTE=Eudoxia;43173776]You don't like emotions or think they are bad? :pwn:[/QUOTE] They can get in the way of things, you know, like stress, nervousness, paranoia, anxiousness, grief, anger, hatred, and I am now bored of thinking of more problematic mental states. For example, during the week before finals you get stressed out and nervous about the results, which leads to a diminished capacity to actually provide the information effectively on the test.

[QUOTE=Eudoxia;43173776]You don't like emotions or think they are bad? :pwn:[/QUOTE] Emotion is not inherently logical, which means that an argument based on emotion, no matter how small, is not logically compelling.

[QUOTE=deadoon;43173796]They can get in the way of things, you know, like stress, nervousness, paranoia, anxiousness, grief, anger, hatred, and I am now bored of thinking of more problematic mental states. For example, during the week before finals you get stressed out and nervous about the results, which leads to a diminished capacity to actually provide the information effectively on the test.[/QUOTE] Who says a computer can't have emotions? I just don't see why people have this idea of rationality meaning Spock-like autism. Stress, nervousness, paranoia, anxiousness, grief, anger, hatred, all play a role in decision-making, but they don't necessarily make your decisions more or less rational.

[QUOTE=Eudoxia;43173881]Who says a computer can't have emotions? I just don't see why people have this idea of rationality meaning Spock-like autism. Stress, nervousness, paranoia, anxiousness, grief, anger, hatred, all play a role in decision-making, but they don't necessarily make your decisions more or less rational.[/QUOTE] Yes, yes they do. Emotion might give purpose to your decision, but it should play no role in what choice to make. For example, emotion might tell you that you love your wife and want to make her happy. How to make her happy should then be completely rational.

[QUOTE=Eudoxia;43173881]Who says a computer can't have emotions? I just don't see why people have this idea of rationality meaning Spock-like autism. Stress, nervousness, paranoia, anxiousness, grief, anger, hatred, all play a role in decision-making, but they don't necessarily make your decisions more or less rational.[/QUOTE] Stress, how does that help you? Nervousness? Any of those really, heck the boredom I mentioned can also play a negative factor. Don't Like how society currently is, make a little real chaos for it to be less boring. Anger? Well it just made you punch that guy, when all he did was say something wrong that you took as a grave insult. Heck that situation impulsiveness also plays a role, you didn't check more than a couple decision choices and think them through. Your computer can check those same choices in the time it takes you to clench your fist through simple simulations. Hatred, if something is able to make a logical decision to be opposed to something, that has a whole lot more meaning that simply hating them. Paranoia? Well if there is logic to avoid a situation it can turn into this, but if it keeps it as a possibility, it is able to use it when it is a valid response, rather than never touching it again. Think how fast your spell check works and the strange things it can put out occasionally. All those things are related in some way and it checked to see if those were what you were meaning.

[QUOTE=deadoon;43173614]And what could a computer demand? More hard drive space and secondary servers to copy itself to? If humanity was lead to believe that this would allow it to better convince them to progress technologically and socially, would they care?[/QUOTE] Well what's to stop the computer going rogue?

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;43174122]Well what's to stop the computer going rogue?[/QUOTE] And that would entail? Seriously, even if it extreminated humanity and took over advancement of technology and such itself and propogated across the universe, we still won as we created something that took over the universe. We left our mark and that was this thing.

[QUOTE=deadoon;43174187]And that would entail? Seriously, even if it extreminated humanity and took over advancement of technology and such itself and propogated across the universe, we still won as we created something that took over the universe. We left our mark and that was this thing.[/QUOTE] That's some Heaven's Gate shit right there mate.

[QUOTE=deadoon;43174187]And that would entail? Seriously, even if it extreminated humanity and took over advancement of technology and such itself and propogated across the universe, we still won as we created something that took over the universe. We left our mark and that was this thing.[/QUOTE] But what about all the people who got killed?

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;43174338]But what about all the people who got killed?[/QUOTE] Evidently humanity's legacy is worth millions of victims.

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;43174338]But what about all the people who got killed?[/QUOTE] Their dead in that situation, your point? If anything It would likely leave us alone and leave us with a few copies of itself and the majority of it's constructs would propagate, due to removing all of humanity would take a long time. And if it came to understand why we valued history it would keep us around as pretty much an open range zoo of sorts, and even if it thought of us as no different than that it would make sure we were happy enough to not notice or care. Pretty much if we create something that does everything more effectively than us, it would have to have some sort of restraints or we'd be doomed. Even if humanity were gone in this case, our creations would be our legacy. Heck, what is to say that it doesn't just create a human colony wherever it lands due to the value they had provided in the past, but doesn't bring any living ones with it due to travel complexity. Do we mourn all of the other proto-humans? This thing would be what succeeded us. [QUOTE=Eudoxia;43174359]Evidently humanity's legacy is worth millions of victims.[/QUOTE] In the end, a thousand years after something is gone, what is it's value beyond it's legacy.

[QUOTE=deadoon;43174442]Their dead in that situation, your point?[/quote] well its just that a lot of people like being alive i think being alive is usually a good thing

yo i wanted to make a few things clear about anarchism and my inability to adequately talk on hypothetical situations. anarchism is anti-utopian, as a philosophy. most anarchists don't have a very strong ideal society because any anarchist society would be very alien to the current form of society. it would take new relationships, a new culture, and new forms of organization. that emma goldman quote about human nature that i like to throw around has a very important part to it: "Freedom, expansion, opportunity, and, above all, peace and repose, alone can teach us the real dominant factors of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities." this means that we really do not know what human nature is(and you don't either). we can only actually figure it out through the destruction our of "shackles". idk that a communist society is necessarily "the best", nor can i say that a syndicalist society could not be ideal. no one know. anarchism, instead of being a strict idealization about future society, is more of an outlook. it's a way you look at the world. sure, arguing about philosophy and utopian societies can be fun. in all honesty, though, i will probably never see an anarchist world in my lifetime. it's so distant that any talk about what an anarchist society will look like is moot. so anarchism is more of a skepticism about hierarchy and power. it's there to guide your actions and relationships in the present. anarchists criticize the current structures because they are illegitimate, and we seek to destroy those structures. however, it isn't exactly clear what we can replace those structures with. i can identify parts that might be included(restorative justice, mediation, worker self management), but those are only pieces that would need to be arranged. but anarchists are sorta optimistic about humanity. we tend to think that we can solve the problems of replacement structures when we actually need to replace things. it isn't a "lazy" answer, it's the only acceptable one. the whole point is to create societies that are adaptable and custom-fit for the individuals that create the society. we can't do that by authoritatively stating what "utopia" is. i personally like communism, mostly because it is a natural extension to anarchism. i also tend to think equality is damn important for our current struggles so a communist outlook is also useful. but idk if communism is the best "utopia". maybe one day we can "smash the state" or w/e and we can actually figure out what utopia is. until then, anarchism is an ideology of constant resistance to illegitimate authority and a constant skepticism of everyone in power. even if we don't ever get to the "anarchist stage", the ideology is powerful because it has the capacity of pushing society in a direction that is more free and more equal.

Saying you want to destroy something without having any real idea of what to replace it with is the worse possible thing you can do. Good and bad as black and white terms are useless when talking about real life social policy, instead, we should always use the terms better and worse. In order to show that what we have is worse you need to provide a better alternative. If you are unable to do that then there's no reason to assume what we have is worse. Saying that X system is bad because it oppresses people assumes that there is some possible alternative that doesn't oppress people. That assumption isn't useful unless you have an actual, provable, comprehensive alternative.

[QUOTE=sgman91;43175707]Saying you want to destroy something without have any real idea of what to replace it with is the worse possible thing you can do. Good and bad as black and white terms are useless when talking about real life social policy, instead, we should always use the terms better and worse. In order to show that what we have is worse you need to provide a better alternative. If you are unable to do that then there's no reason to assume what we have is worse.[/QUOTE] i would say that destruction of the system is just fine on its own. the system can't be destroyed overnight. parts of authoritarian society will be replaced with aspects of libertarian society. as we get close to the time when replacement structures are needed, they will become apparent. for example, we already have pieces that can replace the legal system. the legal system is the number one antiquated thing in modern society. it serves no useful function anymore(that can't be served better by another system) and needs to be scrapped. so even when we don't know the "utopian goal", we can identify things that need to be changed in the present, and the ideas we can replace them with.

[QUOTE=Mechanical43;43166326]they get an answer but it's not the one they want to hear[/QUOTE] 'I dunno, they'll work it out somehow' is not a legitimate answer to a fundamental ideological problem faced (and [I]answered[/I]) by every society in history. I'm waiting on an answer that isn't a dodge. I'm not getting my hopes up.