The Best Form of Government Thread - Communism Discussions

MikhailBakunin said:

Okay well then you're arguing that there are no necessary conditions for classifying anything.

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Nope. I'm just pointing out that you're employing a classically fallacious argument form and no amount of attempting to semantically parse it into validity is going to ever work as a result.

Socialism is fundamentally a critique of the power structures intrinsic in capital relations (which are typically expressed in terms of profit, interest, and rent). The base moral claim of socialism is that people ought not have power wielded over them simply because they're trying to survive.

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The way you have defined socialism, literally anything that proclaims to be a critique of capitalist relations can fall under its rubrik. The second sentence, which proclaims the moral intents of socialism, is simply irrelevant. I couldn't care less what the moral intentions of socialism proclaims to be.

This definition, the first sentence of the quoted text, is vacuous and without meaning or substance. By this definition, State Capitalism is absolutely consistent with the overarching rubrik of socialism, in that it attempts to critique the power structures of capital relations by ensuring that there is a facilitator which mediates between the typical mechanisms of the means of production and distribution which we call the state.

Let's go with the definition of socialism I get just typing "socialism define" into google for example:

so·cial·ism
ˈsōSHəˌlizəm/Submit
noun
a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
synonyms: leftism, welfarism; More
policy or practice based on the political and economic theory of socialism.
synonyms: leftism, welfarism; More
(in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism.

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By all of these definitions, as well, State Capitalism is a subset of socialism, in that it is a political and economic theory of social organizatoins in which the means of production, distribution and exchange are owned or regulated by the community as a whole through the mechanism of the state. It is also considered a possible transitional state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism.

Your argument is simply vacuous on its face, Mik.

Sorry bro.

Anyway, like I said, we've reached an impasse where we cannot proceed further. You're not going to get me to cede that your no true scotsman isn't the dictionary definition of the form of that argument structure, and thus fundamentally flawed at its core, and I'm not going to convince you that the distinction you are perceiving is ultimately meaningless in the same way you judged the theological implications of Jesus' execution date and time and the division between Shi'a and Sunni Islam to be ultimately inconsequential.

So since neither can budge on these points, it is pointless to continue any further.

Mik is there any case where someone could apply the No True Scotsman fallacy, utilizing your logic?

I am reading your posts, btw.

MikhailBakunin said:

It's extremely relevant. It's the entire crux of socialism.

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Eating haggis is the entire crux of being a Scotsman.
No true scotsman doesn't eat haggis.

MikhailBakunin said:

Eating haggis isn't the entire crux of being a Scotsman. The moral claim I laid out IS the crux of socialism. That's the difference.

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Alrighty then.

I disagree.

The case where the no true scotsman fallacy applies is where someone claims there's been a violation of necessary constraints but there hasn't been.

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There is no case where a person employing the no true scotsman fallacy doesn't think that their position fits this criteria.

Including yourself right now.

That's the problem you have.

That's a problem that isn't going away any time soon.

MikhailBakunin said:

On what basis?

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On the basis of exactly what I said in the rest of my post, which is that from the internal perspective looking outwards, these distinctions have far more meaning than they appear to have from without, and that the assertions by these internal parties that these distinctions are critical to distinguishing their groups is simply not a convincing argument for anyone on the outside looking in, because it is a textbook fallacy of reasoning.

I agree, which is why I said before that simply asserting that I've committed the fallacy is tantamount to flatly rejecting my claims about about the necessary conditions (which you've just done above). You're free to do so, but it's better that you've finally stated it openly so that we can get back to the actual argument (what are those necessary conditions?).

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What you're missing here is that the error in your argument is in its format, which means I can flatly reject, not your conclusion, but your supporting evidence for that conclusion, based on the fact that the evidence you are summoning for it is, by definition, badly constructed and therefore fallacious on its face.

See, I'm not claiming your conclusion is wrong. It could be right. It could be wrong. But you're failing to support it with valid evidence because you are relying entirely on a fallaciously constructed argument form as your sole form of evidence, I have no way to judge from an etic, exterior, perspective whether or not your claim is true.

I'm going to alter some words in your next quote to illustrate my point:

This is a little muddled but I get that you're claiming that I'm also asserting that eating haggis is a necessary condition to being a true Scotsman. That's true, but I don't think my condition is actually controversial in any way among people that study Scotsman ideology (in fact, I know they're not). Like I said before, I'm not really that interested in debating them because I think you're right that there's not much room to push in either direction there. For the purpose of convincing the hypothetical well-informed audience member I'm more than happy to stand on those assertions that eating haggis is what being a Scotsman means.

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Basically, you ARE the person claiming haggis is a necessary condition to being a scotsman. No attempts to try and explain that is going to get you out of that situation.

I understand that's frustrating logic for you, because it means you cannot confirm your conclusions from an internal position. But this is the same problem that, for instance, Matt Slick of CARM.org has when he claims that because of X number of criteria he declares as "absolutely necessary" that Catholics don't fit, they're not true Christians. This is the exact same problem anyone who is attempting to promote an internal division via internal methods of critique faces. You cannot use internal methods of critique to prove your position, and therefore you cannot use internal methods of critique to escape the structural fallacy inherent in no true scotsman.

MikhailBakunin said:

That is not an answer to my question. On what basis do you disagree that the moral claim that I laid out fairly represents the crux of socialism?

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I never said I disagree with your claim to the moral intentions of communism. I said intentions are irrelevant. Outcomes are what matter. So Communists/Socialists can talk about their great intentions till they are blue in the face. They are irrelevant.

I'm absolutely not.

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You absolutely are. You just have this massive in-built blind spot that prevents you from seeing it because it utterly demolishes your claim.

Anyway, as I've said previously, we've reached the impasse. You cannot accept that your logical fallacy is an appeal to the No True Scotsman fallacy. Your philosophy isn't special, it doesn't get to appeal to logical fallacies to justify itself, then declare that simply by right of its existence, no logical fallacies apply to it, even though your argument has been demonstrated repeatedly to fit the format of such a fallacy explicitly.

So that's the end of the conversation as far as I'm concerned. You've been demonstrated to be terminally irrational on the subject. Case closed.