Communism

Incentives My opponent more or less repeats himself here. Ignoring a lot of my arguments, such as the proven examples of incentives existing sans wages such as in Mbuti, Semai, squatting, and Kibbutz culture. Along with ignoring the social and societal consequences of slacking. He claims communist states fell for this reason. Disregarding the fact that neither of these nations had communism, none of these states actually fell due to lack of incentives. The Soviet Union fell due to Gorbachev's reforms [1], Cuba still hasn’t fallen [2], and Czech fell due to a revolution [3]. There is also the fact that all of these nations had/have currency [4][5][6] and therefore monetary incentives would’ve also existed. Con tries to refute my argument from intrinsic motivation by claiming you can’t have intrinsic motivations without having external motivations. His only justification for this is that all will get the same outcome and become demotivated. First, this doesn’t justify Con’s assertion. He states intrinsic motivation is linked to monetary motivation, yet his justification assumes people work mainly for external motivations (the very thing he’s trying to prove). Second, his claim is wrong. Food and shelter aren’t the only outputs in existence. Production, job satisfaction, altruism, personal mastery, social aspects, ect would all increase the harder one works. For example if a chef started to lack pride in his cooking, he won't have the satisfaction of mastering the culinary arts. So too would he lack seeing the full product and potential of his work. He would be acting less altruistic and therefore making him less happy (as demonstrated in my previous round). The social aspect of people hating his food would also be in place. A chef who works hard and one who slacks off don’t produce the same output. Furthermore, how is this different under capitalism? Under capitalism the boss decides how much you make. If you do the bare minimum, you get paid the same rate. If you work hard, you still get the same rate. As I stated last round, if there is a necessary link between intrinsic and monetary motivation, how is it possible that we do work for no money at all? Such as volunteer work along with leisure work such as hunting, fishing, hiking, ect. He states my study showing the superiority of intrinsic motivations over external is unsourced. Unless I’m hallucinating, you can clearly get to the source by clicking on the first link in my sources section, last round. His argument is a tu quoque fallacy, as he basically states it would do nothing for communism ignoring the fact that it was an attack his conception of motivation. Although his critique is circular reasoning. He asserts communism reduces intellectual capacity because it lacks incentive, even though this assumes the very thing the cited study disproves. Ultimately, my opponent here ignores a majority of my arguments. He believes people work for only monetary means, which is completely false. He ignores the several proven examples of societies based on wageless motivation. He also misconstrues unimportant contentions such as the history of Marxist Leninist nations (which have no relevance because I’m defending anarchist communism). I remain unconvinced by Con’s contention. It ignores history and the science of motivation. Money My opponent presents (or rather plagiarizes) an argument that claims Mises proved a moneyless economy doesn't work. It’s not really an argument because he never actually presents it. All he does is state that Mises has an argument which he thinks refutes moneyless economics. Nonetheless, I believe he is speaking of the calculation argument. The calculation argument only applies to a planned economy (as my opponent quotes), yet there is no centralization or government to “plan” the economy under libertarian communism. He then states that all implementations of communism necessitate centralization to defend against my rebuttal. However, Con never states why this is the case. Especially since I am advocating for anarcho-communism. This is also proven wrong by the revolution in Spain. The socialistic implementation in order to transition to communism during the Spanish revolution was self-managed, without centralization [7]. Even then, some regions of Aragon went completely communistic [7]. Con then claims that Argentina isn’t like the US in terms of capitalism. This completely strawmans the point of bringing up Argentina. The point was to demonstrate a moneyless system can work. He also ignores the functioning of free shops. Con yet again fails to attack the main points of my rebuttal here. He confuses my Argentina point for an attack on capitalism. He doesn’t understand the difference between Marxist-Leninism and communism. In other points he just claims there are arguments that refute moneyless systems of economics without presenting them. Both of Con’s arguments fail. He ignores a majority of my points and seems to rely word for word on other people’s comments about communism instead of engaging in the context of the debate. However he presents two other arguments (technically only one because his other one is just the incentive argument again). Failed Implementation entails Failure of the Idea My opponent copied and pasted an argument presented in a forum link from the first round. It is basically arguing that since a collection of implementations of communism have ended up with horrible consequences, therefore the idea itself must be in error. The problem is that said implementation of an idea is wholly separate from the idea itself. If I attempt to implement capitalism in a socialist economy by murdering babies and trying to trademark their organs, this doesn’t critique the ideology of capitalism itself. It also assumes the only possible way to implement communism is via a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship. Which is completely false and Con (or rather Con’s forum page) never attempts to demonstrate why communism is somehow bound to ML. Communism like any other system of change can be implemented in a variety of ways. Such as methods of direct action (use of strikes and demonstrations) and syndicalism which uses unions as a force for change. These methods have been tested to bring about social change, specifically in anarchist Spain [8]. He then brings up the incentive argument again for some reason. Plagiarism My opponent has outright plagerized from the mises.org article called “The Death Wish of the Anarcho-Communists”. As he uses its arguments word for word in the moneyless section of both of his rounds without citing it. https://mises.org... And technically since my opponent fails to use quotations for much of his quotes (such as in the last section), he has also committed what’s known as “Mosaic Plagiarism” [9]. Why Communism Con never attempts to address any of the arguments in this section. They are therefore conceded. Conclusion All in all, my opponent fails to present a strong case against communism. He constantly ignores my rebuttals and ignores my main arguments. It appears he is mostly copying and pasting arguments instead of engaging in a debate itself. Sources [1] http://www.debate.org...