Oddbean

@a0b5ba53 1. China wasn't Communist, they tried to achieve Communism using the state and failed, and ended up creating a totalitarian dictatorship. I could understand if you were criticizing their method of achieving Communism, but using China as an example of how bad Communism is, even though they never achieved it, is dishonest. 2. People with a stronger will than others will always try to impose themselves onto people, and so long as hierarchical institutions like the state and capitalism exist they'll continue to do so. 3. Capitalism and the State aren't human nature. They are relatively recent human constructs. Humanity for most of human history existed in some society similar to that of Communism.

@429bb265 @a0b5ba53 My central issue with anarchy is the first part of your second point - where no organized government exists to regulate use of force, how does a society prevent the person/s w the most weapons from imposing their will?

@5d35507a @a0b5ba53 They prevent it through collective effort. Just because there's no government doesn't mean there's no organization. It's just that whatever organization there will be will be of a voluntary nature. So if someone were to try any forcefully impose their will onto people, people would just get together and stop them. People don't need an authority figure in order for them to know when to fight and defend themselves.

@a0b5ba53 @429bb265 These terms like, communism are viewed as monolithic. That's a big mistake. The real problem is religion pushing people to believe in stuff that there's absofinglutely no evidence for.

@c6275ce1 @a0b5ba53 Religion gets a lot of it's support from poor and suffering people who latch onto religion to help cope with reality. Without poverty and suffering people will be less inclined to be religious. It's no coincidence that there are less religious people in the modern world, with our modern medicine and technology, than in the past, and why the places with the least religion are the ones where people have more access to the basic necessities of life and more freedom. If religion is to be done away with then everyone will have to be given all of the necessities of life without exception and the freedom to associate and travel as they see fit. Only then will the two primary gateways to religion, poverty and desperation, be gone, significantly decreasing the appeal of religion. Of course there are other reasons people are religious that have nothing to do with socioeconomic suffering, such as a yearning for a meaning to life, which will exist even if an ideal society where suffering doesn't exist. Philosophical education can surely be a viable solution to tending to people's existential quandaries so that they don't fall into religion as an escape.

@429bb265 @c6275ce1 @a0b5ba53 quite the bold statement to imply that places without religion are someone more accessible than those places without. If anything religion is the way people access those very serices and needs you state are "widely" available. I can tell that this is a very narrow and western understanding of religion. I'd really urge a bit more exploration with religious leftists/anarchist.

@deb6f389 @c6275ce1 @a0b5ba53 Countries with the highest amounts of atheist are ones with more accessable healthcare, education, and other necessities, and I believe the two are directly linked. And whatever services religious organizations provide can be easily done by secular organizations.

@a0b5ba53 @429bb265 a good test to figure out if something is communist or not is to ask: do the workers own the means of production? i.e. do the workers de use by themselves and for themselves what and how they produce their work? This also means that if it’s even less democratic than the liberal states, it is certainly not communism or anarchism.