Recently I have been arguing with an anarcho-communist- always fun stuff. The argument was nothing more than the typical string of communist fallacies (i.e. begging the question, argumentum ad verecundiam [most of his “argument” was quoting French Revolutionaries and other thinkers]) as well as some odd contradictory statements:
Communism has nothing to do with self reliance. It has to do with interconnectedness. In a world where markets exist and provide necessary or desirable products, they will be used by communes to garner said products. When the entire world is composed of communes, markets will be unnecessary, but in the absence of revolution they are used to allow progress.
When I asked him about revolution/evolution for the existence of communism, elsewhere, he believes that communism will be brought about by revolution, but he here (in the sentence before) states that it will be brought about by evolution. This was after pointing out that as far as alleged communist societies existed, they have only done so on dependence from trade on the market (which means prices, which means exchange, and recognition, of private property; a direct contradiction to the communist lynchpin). There has not yet been any attempt to demonstrate the validity of these bold assumptions: 1) that the people of the world will organize themselves into communes, and; 2) that markets will somehow be unnecessary despite their (admitted by my opponent) necessity in sustaining these communes at what limited scale these communes exist today.
Anyway, he referred to Freudian psychology and psychoanalyis in general as supporting his views. My arguments mainly pointed out the impossibility of economic calculation in a socialist society and claiming that any society which rests on the abolishment of private property is not argumentatively unjustifiable. I had to laugh when he brought up Proudhon:
Such property ownership is, in the Proudhonian sense that [name] and I view it, theft. Thus your arguments would lead to a conclusion that we do not own our bodies. The “deed” [I assume that he is here referencing some deed that individual “psyches” have to the body] is simply a contractual agreement for temporary use/occupation. This confirms my proposal that we use our body because other psyches have less use for it.
He has not yet stated when/how/why the deed was established, nor between whom/(what bodily organs) the deed is recognized. After criticizing Proudhon’s dictum “Property is theft” for the logical bankruptcy it espouses, performatively and as a matter of content, as well as citing Proudhon’s later abandonement of it as a principle and replacing it with his statement that property is a necessary counterweight to the state, my opponent stated this:
Does one possess exclusive rights to their own body? I might pose that even body rights imply theft-- the physical world cannot be exclusively claimed in any part by any individual psyche. However, you know best how to use your own body in the grand plan, because your psyche is housed in the body, and it is thus the vessel for a specific element of the libidinal flow of purpose. You have rights to use your body, because other egos have relatively little use for it, but not to own it.
This was after I engaged him in argumentation ethics and how his very participation in this argument assumed the presence of private property rights in his own body- noting that renting between the psyche and the body, even if true, doesn’t refute the claim that private property cannot justifiably be rejected through argumentation. The first boldened part would be countered, I guess, by the relation of praxeology to epistemology, as Hoppe has contributed in Economic Science and the Austrian Method: it isn’t psyches that claim ownership but the relation of the mind and the body that lays claim to own scarce resources and thus all actions are carried out not by the mind or body in isolation, but must necessarily be carried out by both in unison as bridged by the action axiom. He has yet to demonstrate any proof of this rent contract between the psyche and the body, of why other egos have little use for my body in particular but great use for whatever body they do “occupy” (his position on right to self-ownership seems utilitarian in this respect and, if pressed, should logically crumble fairly easily).
I was wondering if anyone could contribute more regarding his statements on psychology/psychanalysis? I remember reading in Marxism Unmasked that Marxists tend to use psychology as a basis for their arguments.
