Most arguments for abortion kinda don't make sense if you're trying to convince someone who thinks life starts at conception. The only really argument I find compelling is that no one should be forced to be responsible for another person's life without agreeing to it. Big Joel's video about the movie unplanned explained this pretty well, people just say things about abortion that aren't really arguments for it if you really think that a human being with a soul is created once egg meets sperm. Yes I think abortion should be legal and free, but not because the same amount would happen were it illegal. If I told you the same amount of murders would happen if we legalized it, would you say we should? Probably not, because we made it illegal not necessarily as a deterrent but so those who violate the social rules against killing can be formally punished.
The arguments are unconvincing because they are unable to solve the contradiction between the objective social benefits of allowing abortion (correct), and that the fetus is ensouled or otherwise a person, and therefore should have the same rights as you and me (false). In my opinion, that contradiction is unsolvable.
Even "no one should be forced to be responsible for another person’s life without agreeing to it" concedes too much ground. You should be able to get an abortion for any reason even if you got pregnant on purpose, which would be considered agreeing to be responsible for another person's life. The only solution is to stop considering the fetus a person.
I don't care how much soul you have, you have zero right to be inside me
I really don't like the "no one should be forced to be responsible for another person’s life without agreeing to it" argument very much. It borders too much on reactionary notions of "fuck you I've got mine" rugged individualism. If I don't have a responsibility for the life of the "person" inside me, then why should I have a responsibility for the homeless guy, the refugee or anyone else?
Living in a society means we become responsible for eachother's wellbeing. This is a very good thing as it means we get to have civilization. Most of the time that responsibility can only be handled collectively but there are situations when that responsibility becomes personal. If I were a fit swimmer and saw a kid fall into the harbour, should it not be my moral, legal and social responsibility to jump in and save that kid from drowning, even if I never agreed to have that responsibility?
In my opinion the way forward is to argue that a fetus is not a person.
I would say that individuals generally don't have responsibility for other individuals so much as society has a whole has the responsibility for the well-being for individuals. Lots of grey area within that though.
and that the fetus is ensouled or otherwise a person, and therefore should have the same rights as you and me (false). In my opinion, that contradiction is unsolvable.
we don't coerce organ or blood donation, so why are we coercing someone's entire body for months?
the violinist argument is a longer version of that. I can deny you the use of my kidneys and pregnant folks should be able to deny the use of their uterus. no contradiction.
The violinist argument "solves" the contradiction by changing what rights are given to a person, namely that everyone (including the fetus) has the right to bodily autonomy, even above the right to life and sustenance. Even assuming the least problematic version of this right, the problem remains that no one is a bodily autonomy absolutist. Let me offer a counter-thought experiment:
You agree to help a friend in a surgical operation where your heart will be used to pump her blood while her heart is being operated on. Midway through the surgery, you get a craving for donuts and decide to leave to get some from the nearby donut shop, causing your friend to die. A bodily autonomy absolutist would think this is your right, and that the doctors have no right to make you stay, which is obviously absurd.
So then we could arrive at some limited bodily autonomy, and the argument becomes "should the mother's bodily autonomy matter more than the fetus' life?", which is equivalent to the starting position and nothing was gained. Or we could raise something else above bodily autonomy, like "the contract", but this weakens the argument to cover abortions only under some rare circumstances. Neither of these is a good outcome.
You agree to help a friend in a surgical operation where your heart will be used to pump her blood while her heart is being operated on. Midway through the surgery, you get a craving for donuts and decide to leave to get some from the nearby donut shop, causing your friend to die. A bodily autonomy absolutist would think this is your right, and that the doctors have no right to make you stay, which is obviously absurd
this is somehow more ridiculous than the standard violinist example. you'd be unconscious. if you somehow sleepwalked to get the donuts you wouldn't get tried for murder.
I was thinking they just connect some veins to your friends while keeping you conscious, it doesn't really matter if it is realistic.
You get into a sort weird spot with the second one where at what point are you required to carr for your kids. I see the resolution being as long as the fetus can survive on its own sort of it should be removed and cared for until parents can be found for it, same as how if you really didn't want to care for your kids you could just leave them to the government or someone else who will raise them. As long as medicine is for profit this will be enormously expensive, and the backwards state of adoption means things will be rough from there. However, I honestly don't know where you can start calling it a person and have ut really be a sound argument.
Agreed. As with so many things, the solution is to restrict christo-fascist speech and put out pro-abortion propaganda, but we can't do that without power. For the moment, the best you can do is get them to shut up by exerting social pressure. Stuff like cutting anti-abortion family members from your life etc. A cousin really pissed off one of my aunts when she wasn't invited to his wedding.
Edit: Also obviously direct action to assist abortion seekers/providers etc, the above is specifically on the subject of convincing someone.
The only argument I know of that actually acknowledges that is that it’s about bodily autonomy.
If my brother was gonna die unless I gave him blood transfusions every day for a month (a much less invasive ask than a fetus growing in me for 9 months) it’s my right to say no. Maybe I’d be kind of a dick if I did so, but it is my right.
I've heard an old thought experiment for abortion which goes something like this:
You wake up and you find yourself attached to a world famous concert violinist. It turns out you and he are the only 2 compatible for this treatment, which is basically like dialysis but using your organs. He is completely unconscious and will remain so for the duration of your attachment. The doctor that sewed you together says that for the treatment to be successful you must remain attached for only 9 months. If the concert violinist is removed at any point before 9 months, he will die. Do you have the right to terminate the violinist? I don't know how many people it convinces but the few more antiabortion conservative people I've talked to about it at least agree they should be able to cut off the violinist lol.
I don't think this will convince people who believe in abstinence. The argument isn't perfect anyway, because if you have consensual PIV sex you know that pregnancy is a possible outcome whereas in your example it's completely random.
Even people who believe in abstinence can be raped/sewn to some dude without their consent. It's true, it isn't perfect because ultimately I do believe abortion should be provided without a reason needed. But this was for people who are total pro life absolutists, and in the end I don't think it actually convinced them to soften their stances anyway. They rarely have arrived to that belief by logic or whatever, so trying to convince them is kinda pointless.
True, this might convince absolutists to soften their position.
the violinist thing is way closer to rape than consensual sex
I think a modification that would make sense is that you were at fault in a car accident with the violinist, so the state decided you will be forced to be hooked up to them for 9 months.
We don't even make people give away their blood which comes back to 100%, so I feel like it's at least the same legally. Giving blood is no where near as big a deal as pregnancy with all the ways that can go wrong.
Grass is overrated as fuck and most species aren't even pleasant to feel. I didn't even think we liked lawns here.
"Touch Grass" Yeah, like I'm gonna run sorghum over my face. Piss off.
Take a hike buster....
But like ya seriously do it the wildflowers are beautiful right now.
That any nation state could realistically "decolonize" under the current conditions of the global system/totality (and we've seen how easily "decolonization" rhetoric can be weaponized by imperialist).
Cuba decolonized during the revolution and Castro, very wisely, figured out to really complete the decolonization they must also pursue a full socialist proletariate revolution as well. Thats pretty much the best case scenario for decolonization, I agree. Itll be way harder to pull off today.
Technically yes Cuba "decolonized" immediately after Batista was overthrown. But in practice Cuba's "decolonization" process was long and difficult as in reality "decolonization" for Cuba mostly meant dealing with the inequalities and prejudices black Cubans faced. It took decades for the revolution to reconcile Cuba's racist society and the racist inclinations of lighter skinned Cubans(most of which was a legacy of colonial plantations and slavery etc) . Of course black Cubans lives improved dramatically immediately after the revolution but full "decolonization" was long and difficult even for Cuba and still ongoing .
For the US at this moment "decolonization politics" is mostly confined within the discourse of anarchist and trotskyist circles who argue for autonomy movements in the US which I'm agnostic about as well as liberal and even neoliberal academia. Honestly my main problem with decolonization rhetoric is how easily it's cooped and frankly how vague it is at times to the point of obfuscation.
Rhetoric around Feminism, and disability rights has also been frequently co-opted for bad ends, but that doesn't mean the left should abandon those values or arguments. Nations in the Global South have pursued decolonization with success over the past century: the DPRK, Sankara's Burkino Faso and revolutionary Cuba to name some examples. They may have not fully achieved decolonization, but the pursuit of its destruction has produced less violent and better societies.
Redwashing has cleary made many understandings of "decolonization" toothless, vague and non-revolutionary, but I would blame put more blame for that on Capital and neoliberal hegemony rather than the left.
Your argument seems similar to those who say that because Socialism is "impossible" to realistically achieve today (particularly in the global North) the left shouldn't pursue it as an idea at all. Settler-colonialism exerts an enormous amount of violence upon Indigenous peoples today and for communists to be consistent it is imperative that they pursue its destruction alongside the interlocking systems of capitalism and imperialism.
I agree it doesn't nor did I at any point try and make the argument that "decolonization" in the general sense isn't integral to building a just society. Did you not actually read what I wrote about Cuba?
Yes, colonialism and western Imperialism have been the defining oppression of global capitalism for most people on the planet and therefore must be at the center of any organizing . A huge failure of the left in the west is that many do not put this fact at the center of their politics . And yes all support to the DPRK, Korea would be unified without the ongoing US occupation and war and RIP Sankara .
It's also worth noting that each example you cited maintained the conventional nation state. Many people who use the term "decolonization" use it in a context that aims to deconstruct the modern concept of a nation or at the very least advocates various forms of separatism/balkanization and or ethnic nationalisms/organizations.I don't know what "redwashing" is but decolonization is frankly sounding vague coming from yourself as well( though toothless would be too far.) . Again in the USA most people use the term "decolonization" in politics to argue for autonomous movements, outside of that it's often an academic term. Your using the term to basically mean liberation from western imperialism, and overthrowing the shackles of an old racist colonial order, which no one here disagrees with including me. And yes I would blame the terms relative degeneration on capital and neoliberalism as well . I never blamed it on the left.
So in summary yes imo "decolonization" is often a vague euphemism for particular oppressions and issues. Indeed though, the settler colonial country's( USA, Britain, Australia, New Zealand etc) are oppressive and racist and western imperialism must be opposed full stop no exceptions.
Not left left left but "socialism for the rich" is unbelievably stupid to me
Also just trying to reason with or argue with American Republicans in general. they are my enemies.
"Socialism for the rich" is a lib term not something an actual socialist should seriously use.
I'll go ahead and say the entire concept of what Marx called "upper-phase communism" is uncompelling and useless in terms of convincing people. So, the whole idea of a future society that has no property, no money, and no state. I usually hear this as a retort to everday people who think communism means a huge government that controls everything. But actually ah ha, true communism has no state!
Yeah it's just such a bad starting angle and I've only seen it attract cranks. Especially since they'll have to square that stateless, moneyless concept with existing and past socialist projects, which don't resemble that futuristic society.
Some people even go further, descriving SimCity style plans for collective factories and participation quotas and full economic automation. Stuff that doesn't exist. I actually do believe a society like that is possible and inevitable but who knows how we get there.
Instead the focus should always be on what's possible right now, for any leftist project. It's what can be done through organizing what we currently have and how to improve people's lives right now.
I mean yeah, it's meant to be the future that's worked towards. It's the end-phase.
Yeah, I just mean to say it's typically not convincing to people hearing it for the first time, as their first introduction to what leftists want.
I think it serves the same function that "heaven" does to Christians.
It doesn't exist and never has and never will, but it's a compelling myth that spurs people to action.
Defund The Police sounds awesome to people like us, but to your average liberal/apolitical person I don’t think they fully understand how much of their municipal budget goes to the police in the first place, and how it could be redirected to schools and social programs etc. It was too easy for the right wing to take that slogan and make it sound like the left just wanted total chaos and legalized murder in the streets or whatever, because anarchism = chaos in the average persons mind
Something I've noticed is that a lot of leftists seem totally unaware of how reasonable leftist positions might be wrongly perceived by non-leftists.
"Defund/abolish the police", "the Holodomor is nazi propaganda", "dictatorship of the proletariat", etc. There's a ton of these. It feels like every six months I see a Twitter thread about what exactly leftists mean when they say "stab babies with a fork unironically" and how it's actually very good and reasonable stuff and not at all what it sounds like from the scary slogan.
need to make one of those "help me budget" memes and the pig money will naturally be the punchline
I dislike the Defund the Police slogan for the opposite reason: It is far too easy for useless spineless liberals to "um actually" it down into pointlessness. "We don't actually want chaos and anarchy, we love the police, we just think they should be better trained so they can get by without so much equipment!"
Fuck that. Abolish the police. No compromise. I won't be happy while there is a single cop left in the country.
I'm with you. Slogans like "abolish the police/cia/fbi" seem like crank politics in the current context, but consider that until about a hundred years ago "votes for women" was seen as crank politics in much of the world. You have to introduce radical ideas to people, and you have to understand that it will take some time for those ideas to catch on - but eventually you reach a tipping point where so many people are saying it that it's not a radical idea anymore.
Libs who complain about the slogans of radicals are just trying to be tactful in saying that they don't support that goal. "Oh of course I don't like it when innocent people are gunned down by government death squads, but I don't want to get rid of the death squads entirely!"
I thought crushing the chuds by taking away their protection squad and allowing the underclass to take what it wanted was the whole idea behind defunding the police
"Just because [AES state] did [real or imagined excess] doesn't mean socialism/communism is discredited" or any variation of this. Actually, starting any rebuttal with "just because" automatically concedes whatever point one may have been trying to make and is thus a terrible rhetorical tool. As fo the former point, I don't see it around as often as I used to prior to the 00s, usually by very idealistic teenagers who didn't do the reading.
not even worth engaging with that argument imo because standing amidst the cooking ruins of our dying planet while tens of millions of children starve to death doesn't discredit capitalism, somehow
Definitely; in a vacuum, the "debate" may have had merit insofar as one believes the marketplace of ideas exists and thus everything should be debated, but in current year with apocalypse looming on the horizon, it's not worth having even in principle. Were this still the 19th/early 20th century, the debate may have merit. By now there is plenty of empirical evidence that liberalism and its derivatives have long outlived their purpose
I feel this same way when people try to compromise on imperialism against states that aren't even socialist. "Yes Saddam is evil and eats babies and hates freedom but we shouldn't invade Iraq because..." starting off your argument with all that shit means you already failed to convince someone. It doesn't matter if Saddam Hussein is literally Hitler, you shouldn't give ammo to your enemies and instead explain how trying to bring "freedom" to Bad Country always makes things worse.
Its a great strategy to establish oneself as ambivalent on baby eating right at the start of a debate.
Fuck it I'll say it, I don't mind windows, works fine for everyday use and gaming . Linux on the other hand is a pain for casual computing and gaming . 🙈
Microsoft sucks as a company but Windows>Linux crucify me .
:shrek:Don't really disagree either! I mean if Linux works for you then that's of course valid, an operating system is all about how it feels for that particular user at the end of the day.
And as for the latter paragraph again no pushback here . Microsoft is indeed a shitty monopoly corporation that used a lot of dirty tricks to get where it is and windows has a lot of bullshit(could be way better at the end of the day but Microsoft knows they have a virtual monopoly so they can sit on their hands for the most part). And 100%, always good to have knowledge of other operating systems like you said, especially if you code(which I do not).
Using Windows is like having a landlord for your operating system. You can say it's more convenient or it's a personal preference but at the end of the day, Windows is the private property of Microsoft. When you use Windows, Microsoft owns your computer system. When you use Windows, on any given day you could come back to your computer and Microsoft has changed the taskbar to show the weather or Microsoft has changed your audio drivers without asking you.
If you rent a house and your pipe bursts, you have to wait for the landlord to come fix it. If you own the house, you have to get it fixed yourself. If your Windows computer has a bug, you have to wait for Microsoft to fix it. If your GNU/Linux computer has a bug, you have to get it fixed yourself. Maybe it's more convenient to have someone else deal with the problems but at the same time, somebody else is in charge of your life.
If you own your own house, you can make improvements and expansions on the house. If you rent, that is controlled by the landlord. It is the same way with GNU/Linux vs Windows. With GNU/Linux the way that you improve or expand your computer system are limited by your imagination. With Windows, you can only change the system to the extent that Microsoft allows you.
The motivations are also the same. The landlord prevents people from having access to housing for profit. Microsoft prevents people from controlling their computer systems for profit. Microsoft spies on you and sells your data for profit. Microsoft makes exclusivity deals with software for profit. Microsoft limits the features of your system for profit. Microsoft limits the number of installations you can have for profit. A Windows system is private property. A GNU/Linux system is personal property.
"Maybe it’s more convenient to have someone else deal with the problems but at the same time, somebody else is in charge of your life." Look I agree and all with what your saying to an extent (Microsoft spys on you is evil so on and so fourth) but this qoute is really the only thing that truly matters for me when using an operating system. Windows is convenient and easy to use for my simple everyday computing and gaming an that's enough for me .
And outside of the abstract I don't really care that I'm being spied on and my data sold . Take it Microsoft I don't care lol.
"Castro freed slaves" is a bad meme because a simple google search will make you seem obviously wrong.
You can very easily describe how bad life was under Batista without it, too.
Not to go all wHaTaBoUtIsM but I don't think it's very effective when someone is criticizing an AES country to just respond with "Well America does it too/also did something bad" if the conversation isn't about directly comparing the two. It can be effective if done right but it often isn't.
Yeah I think this arises from a fundamental gulf in understanding between the leftist and non-leftist. From the leftist end, it seems obvious that the other party’s opinions are formed by US capitalist propaganda (corpo media and mainstream HS history), so pointing out America’s flagrant hypocrisy when it comes to human rights seems obviously relevant to try and make them question the credibility of the info they’re leaning on. But from the other side, they think their opinions have been formed by Objective and Trustworthy neutral sources, so playing the comparison game seems like a diversion or like it comes out of left field.
I do that sometimes, typically when the capitalist gets preachy and tries to moralize at me / scold me for supporting communism. It is deeply frustrating for me to have capitalists try to condescend to me morally, so I try to bring up capitalist wrongdoings to knock them off their high horse. Which never works, because they just pay lip service to capitalist countries wrongdoing and double down on still somehow being better (typically some dog-shit about "but their own people! We do it to foreigners, who don't count!").
Arguments that have the premise that the working classes deserve the same freedom that the rich enjoy. The freedom of the rich is limited because they're consumed with keeping the hierarchical structure that they benefit from in tact. The problem with capitalism isn't just the inequality, it's the entire organization of society around commodities. We're supposed to be advocating for a freedom that overcomes the narrow confines of liberalism.
I think abolish the police is a pretty confusing line of reasoning for a lot of people because the natural way to read this is no laws, not just property laws, will be enforced and then you won't be able to stop people driving in the bike lane or molesting children.
Yeah that's the prime example of bad sloganeering. "Defund the police" will always elicit a WTF reaction without the context backing it. People already securely on the left broadly understand that it really means something like Are Prisons Obselete, where the whole point is that we need to move beyond retributive justice systems towards something that fulfills the same (legitimate) purpose without being needlessly destructive and subservient to capital. But "defund the police" doesn't say ANY of that on its own.
I always say the left has two modes of communication: confusing slogans, and overwhelming walls of text. This is one example.
I always say the left has two modes of communication: confusing slogans, and overwhelming walls of text. This is one example.
That’s because, to working class people, leftist talking points explained well are just “common sense”. You’re giving people language to describe their own material conditions, which they’re already intimately familiar with
I always say the left has two modes of communication: confusing slogans, and overwhelming walls of text.
:data-laughing: :chefs-kiss:
I've kinda wondered how something like expand 911 would be. You make more services under 911 and in order to fund them, you take money away from the cops.
I think that'd be a bit easily co-opted... it's important that people get the right idea from it, but also liberals will run with something like that and just throw more money at cops. "expand 911" would be something liberals can use to do what they already want to do, "defund the police" is something they don't want to do and also can't do anything with because it'll be used as a bludgeon against them by the right. If you wanted to force their hand, the theoretically ideal message would be something that can only mean what you want it to and is clear enough to immediately make sense and sound realistically achievable.
"Fully automated gay space communism" is a fun thing to imagine but anyone with a serious belief in this is actually bonkers and has no material understanding that hard work and labor is the basis of everything in life. Very little happens without a person who makes it happen, and the futuristic sci fi world where robots do it completely disconnected of any human creator/controller is likely hundreds of years off if possible.
“Aim for the moon, so even if you miss you end up among the stars”
The point is that we should have a utopic ideal to strive for as a society. Will we ever achieve it? If yes not for hundreds of years. But every step towards it is a step in the right direction and it gives us something to work towards.
I agree it's a good goal, it's just not something I see happening within anyone's lifetime rn, especially with threats such as climate change that might require a scaling back till we can find safer alternatives.
Aaron Bastaani, the originator of the phrase Fully Automated Luxury Communism, argues it's way closer than you'd think and something to aim for in his book of the same title. I read it, it's not that good, but a really easy read and at least you'd have read someone arguing that side.
Not quite so. We could have something fairly close to it today. Fully automated farms are possible with the technology we have. Almost fully automated fairly easily so. It's cost less than what we spend to have the world we have now, but it would cost all we have. Still sounds like a good deal to be honest
Bookchin's Post Scarcity Anarchism was basically arguing that automation is so good that any revolution would create a post-scarcity, less work society. He also went on to argue that workplaces can and should be made more playful.
The dude was a sectarian asshole, but he was right about some things.
Also, the definition of anarchism as opposition to all social hierarchies is his, and everyone seems to forget that.
Labor theory of value is simple, but showing how it's better than what libs do is complicated enough people just tune it out. It's too advanced to open with.
