I’ve been messaging back-and-forth with an anarcho-communist on Tumblr. He doesn’t speak English as a first language, so it’s hard to explain a lot of things like NAP and everything with price determination.
I’ve been reading that “Why Capitalism” post, which is fantastic by the way, but I’m looking for one easy stance from which to argue my position. I know what I want to say, but it’s hard with him not speaking English as his first language. Every stance I take needs to be relatively elementary. I truthfully think he has fallen into more of the anarcho-communist rhetoric than anything, so I’m hoping to change his mind.
Any suggestions?
EDIT: This was part of his response to my first message.
I explained a bit about the historical virtues of an-cap versus an-comm in my next message, as well as what “voluntaryism” is.
It seems like you’ve attempted this but I’d still focus mainly on refuting labour theory of value, showing subjective value, explaining supply and demand and marginal utility. Communism is defeated by these basic economic points.
Thanks for those reminders. I’m planning on going into subjective valuation with supply and demand to supplement it. Then I’ll go into how communists tend only to see companies trying to exploit workers while, actually, companies need to compete for workers, and that’s partially how wages increase. He didn’t want too much complex theoretical arguments, though, because he said he won’t be able to comprehend it all.
i suggest asking him to forget the term “capitalism” and instead consider the term lasseiz-faire. its not a “system” you are promoting but the absence of any system. to paraphrase Liberty Student, it all boils down to one premise:
“the only morally justifiable relationships are those that are voluntary”
then build your argument from there.
The best cooperation is that which is voluntary cooperation.
“the only morally justifiable relationships are those that are voluntary”
I’m wondering, could this by itself defeat an-comm? If we go by the assumption that controlling wages/prices in the communist sense so that they are “just”, can that only happen through force? If that were the case, an-comms would be contradictory, essentially…they would be for a coercion-free system except when it comes to prices/wages. Then they’d have to drop the anarchy qualifier as they would need a state to enforce the “just” wage component.
Moral debates invariably devolve into vain logomachy. If the language barrier prohibits you from explaining capitalism and the harmony of interests to him, then there’s not much you can truly accomplish with him.