Debate: Dreamers were brought here as children. Should they be deported to - who knows where?
Side: America is their home

So none of the communistic or socialistic societies that existed (and there have been many) were sufficiently exemplary of your ideal conception of communism or socialism? That's interesting because I'd say the same about capitalistic societies, yet they seem to have gone significantly less wrong than the attempts at communism and socialism.This is partly what is wrong with the Western education system. Capitalist culture suffers from a dire case of confirmation bias. Firstly, socialism and communism aren't equatable. Many socialistic countries today -- if we are to take average living standards, scarcity of crime, freedom of expression and lack of poverty as our measures -- do far, far better than the American bastion of capitalism. Explain that to me.Second, while it is true that Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, and PolPot's Cambodia, to name a few, were brutal dictatorships, you would need to completely redefine the word communism to try to stick that label onto those dictatorships.Communism is literally the exact opposite of a despotism that witholds all wealth for the despot.As for capitalism working significantly less violently, that's only if you leave out the hundreds of millions of people who have been killed directly and indirectly through attempts to export the practice. The British Empire did it, the Americans did it, the French did it, the Portuguese did it. Capitalism is every bit as dirty and dangerous as Stalinism was.Unless you want to own property or innovate a new industry, in which case it takes your self-determination in these regards.Stalinism would. A Marxist communism would not. We would be educated to strive to the common benefit rather than the personal. It is, contrary to belief, quite natural for humans -- well educated and with nurtured morality -- to care just as much about others' wellbeing as their own.As for a society that is bottom-up, how, practically speaking, would this be implemented?With time, effort and a long and arduous struggle.You're talking exclusively about the financial aspect of empowering the individual. I can agree that there are advantages conferred by money and connections (which were worked for by the individuals' ancestors by the way). The fact of the matter is that if you study and get a good career you will earn more money than you could ever need.This is naive. Tell this to Indian slum children.So you're saying that in general the means of production and distribution would be privately owned and controlled?Not at all. The means of production would be communally owned. This seems to be in contrast with Marx's views. Though you also seem to be saying that everything would be publicly owned and controlled: "anything by which individuals oppress upon the self-evident interest of the many to support the needs of the many, for their own personal advantage."Not at all. Only things that are usurped from many for the benefit of few. As for power stations and railways, these were created by private individuals and groups using their time and resources. You will need to rob these people of their possessions with the threat of force.I don't care who built and owns the railways. Many people worked to build these infrastructure, probably for pittance. They're nationally important and I would have no issue taking them from individual privateers. Capitalism takes far more from the many and gives it to the few. We would just be balancing the books.Yet such centralized control always seems to lead to abuses of power, for instance in the violent suppression of dissent in communist and socialist societies. Also, there seems to be a theme of needing to violently force people to work, since there is no other incentive to do so.You're still struggling with definitions. Marxist communist theory isn't about despotism and centralised power. It's about evenly dispersed power.As for the "force to work" garbage, Stalinism isn't communism. China's state oligarchy isn't communism. Those people in those countries didn't get welfare cheques every month. Their incentive to work wasn't nullified by comfort lol. They had to work because their leaders were tyrannical despots that stripped them all of everything. Stalin didn't nationalize the infrastructure and give control over it to the people: he seized the infrastructure and dictated every which way it would be used, regardless of the people.There's a huge difference.So you want a communism that is organized by direct democracy? That sounds grossly inefficient, imagine having to vote on every single aspect of society and industry on a regular basis. After all, that is the only manner in which "the majority are the powerful".Right now, I'd settle for just having a vote on issues of pressing importance. Maybe like whether we ought to go into wars in countries most Westerners can't even point out on a map, or whether it's okay for education to cost our kids an arm and a leg, or maybe allow people to decide whether spending more money on bullets and bombs than on the nurturing of young minds is a wise financial decision.In all the ways that matter, we already live under a tyranny.