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Hey. I'm a burger, so naturally I have a lot of idiot neoliberal/reactionary friends and family. I know it's not advisable to try to argue with them about socialism, as they don't tend to pay attention to facts, but I don't want to sit idly by.

I suck at arguing, but I think that if I had some specific statements under my belt that'd help me a lot, maybe this thread will help others trying to do the same thing.

Some popular points are:

Basically any stupid libertarian and capitalist statement. They're VERY dense. Let's add to this list of popular false arguments, disprove them, and jerk each other off until the revolution comes, boys.

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I'm a brainlet, but:

If you count every death from natural causes that happened under a nominally socialist government, then the answer is millions. If you do the same for nominally pro-capitalist governments, the answer is billions. Pic related.

The free market is a meme. Government enforces intellectual property rights, absentee property rights, subsidies, anti-union legislation (right-to-work laws), selective tax breaks, tariffs, and a host of other measures that interfere with the market for the benefit of the capitalists. Every capitalist system in the world has always had at least some of these laws and always will. As long as the system encourages concentration of wealth, those with massive wealth will use it to influence the laws in their favor.
There's no getting around the problems of Venezuela, but a few things:
1) Chavez did make long-term improvements in life expectancy, literacy, and a litany of other issues
2) The present issues are a result of the government's failure to diversify its holdings from oil. This would destroy any economy, and as policy has nothing to do with socialism.
3) The only "socialist" policies Venezuela has implemented (state-owned oil, subsidized health care and high social spending) have been implemented successfully in even capitalist countries such as those in Northwest Europe. And Venezuela's private economy is ~70% of GDP, so in order to label Venezuela as a socialist economy, one must also argue countries with lower private economy as percentage of GDP (France, for example) are full-blown communist, which is ridiculous.
Decent countries relative to similar capitalist countries. Compare Cuba to the DR, Puerto Rico, or much of Central America (Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador). China is doing quite well economically, and even before the reforms, under Mao from 1950-1977 the life expectancy rose from ~40 to ~65 years. This growth didn't happen in nearby capitalist countries (Philippines or India for example), and was only possible with the efforts made to improve medical care in China.
If they're a porky, there's nothing you can say to them as it's in their self-interest to maintain capitalism. Otherwise, they're a prole and they would get the full value of their labor under communism (either in services rendered from taxes or labor vouchers).
Communism isn't sharing, and you should ask whether those who have only founded the business, but don't contribute to its growth, deserve to be continually rewarded from those who do help the company grow (workers).

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Unironically, big businesses are better than small businesses. Large businesses like Amazon, Google, Walmart, ExxonMobil, tend to use some form of central planning in their operations/supply chain which factors into their economy of scale. As a result, they tend to pay their workers more, have better services, and cheaper products than small businesses. You can use this against lolberts to show how more planning increases efficiency.
Yes, and that's guaranteed as long as we live under such an undemocratic system. Increase democracy in the economy and the political system and the corruption becomes harder to maintain.
This one's just completely false. Most of the Internet, computers, and other modern tech has been funded by the public through the government. (See ARPAnet and DARPA in general)
Those who are truly successful in that they are able to create products and services with their hands, rather than making money (which isn't a useful skill to society) will profit under socialism.
Seeing as socialism would let you keep the amount of your labor that is taken for the profit of the firm, it would be in a worker's rational self-interest to support socialism.
People don't seem to do this when they aren't poor, so if we want to stop this from happening, we should improve the conditions of everyone.
Economic growth under USSR was the highest in all of Russian history. When USSR collapsed, caloric consumption went down, death rate went up, and the economy shrank from the second largest economy in the world to one the size of Italy. In fact, everywhere socialism has been implemented (Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba), life expectancy and other quality-of-life factors have made extraordinary leaps. Is this what failure is? There's a reason why in most ex-socialist countries, polls show a majority thought life was better under socialism.
Unless they support production for use and worker ownership of the means of production, they can't be.

Bring up every banana republic and rightist regime backed by the US and rhetorically ask them if the countries were 'free'?

You can safely just dismiss most of those arguments immediately by pointing out that they have no idea what the fuck they're talking about. Just ask them for proof or how many books they've read on the subject and watch them embarrass themselves.

Rarely, very fucking rarely, you might actually find someone vaguely familiar with events like the so-called Holodomor, or maybe they even bothered to watch a Vice documentary once or twice. In this case only reading yourself will be able to save you.

Literally just bully them

Humiliating people won't make them more sympathetic to your viewpoint. You might be right in calling them stupid but it's awful praxis.
Try to ask them questions that make them realize their mistakes on their own, instead of making them resist when you push too hard

just remember that right wing populism is false consciousness. Talk about asshole bosses, shitty jobs, unfair regulations, unaffordable necessities, lack of income growth, political media circuses, etc. until they're feeling sympathetic and then hit them with "well that's all because of capitalism."

Firstly tell them that capitalism has killed many more (primarily talk about famines and preventable disease in the third world) and then debunk the original claim they make.

What said.

Venezuela isn't communist, neither is China now. Just show them empirical data about Cuba and China under Mao and they won't be able to argue with them. Generally avoid defending NK because its a step too far for most people but blame its poverty on US sanctions.

What said

Under socialism you still have to work, so the people benefiting from public services will actually be contributing to society themselves. Under capitalism you are sharing your money with those who don't deserve it (surplus value)

This is kind of irrelevant as an argument against communism. But for the record, they don't make cheap products in order to help poor people. They make cheap products in order to maximise sales and thus profits. The only reason they are able to make such cheap products is because of exploitation of the third world labour force.

Yeah the government is corrupt which is why you need radical democracy. Also, what makes them think corporations aren't corrupt?

The US army invented most of these things, which is publicly funded and not operating under the laws of capitalism, but actually (in terms of this specific thing) in a more socialist manner.

Why do you always hear stories of dirt poor artists, musicians and inventors under capitalism? Capitalism only rewards success in certain fields, whilst neglecting success in fields that are actually of real value to humanity.

I presume all the millions of workers who have supported/still support socialism just don't value their money?

If you actually think about it this is such a cruel and inhuman thing to say. I presume these reactionaries are religious? Roast them for their hypocrisy.

Just show them empirical data from actual socialist countries. For the map I attached, it's the UN Human Development Index for 2017. Compare Cuba with the rest of the region.

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There are other arguements irl that you have to be careful with. My family fled from the eastern front in WWII. They blamed it on the reds. They were peasant farmers. They didn't live to see how their lives would turn out if they had stayed. And after decades of Western capitalist propaganda they had fallen for the Soviet are the epitome of evil meme. I remeber them telling me that owning private property is the most important thing in the world. I was 7 at the time. Talking about workers rights, unions, or even left leaning liberal politics was an in for violent discussion. And all roads led to Stalin, Mao, or North Korea. The worst offenders. No matter how hard I defended them it was never enough. It always came down to not being alive at the time. They are all dead now. The last twenty years we did not talk politics and everything was rosie.

Reflectivley, looking back, I should have defended their actions in the unapologetic style of Michael Parenti. This will take more than infographs and basic retorts to misconceptions. It takes a /marx/ ama about autistic knowledge / understanding of the history from the perspective of working people. The ruthlessness of a revolutionary to shut liberals the fuck up. But also the kind heart of family to forgive those that have been led astray.

My advice for your situation is be strategic, play it safe and subtle.
Start with small current things, ie exploitation of workers at Amazon. Prison system. Womens rights for the ladies (especially the hypocrisy of intersectionality corporate feminism), talk about stikes, anti-union laws, american imperalism. Keep all the left buzz words/ theoretical stuff to a minimum at first, until they are at least at a point where they hate porky but dont know the why's or how's. At this point you should offer historical solutions. This happened in y and that's how it was fixed. Once They have a reverse understanding of the problems from a historical point then you finish the job with marxist theoretical understandings… Only when the timeis right. Which in may be never… A trifecta of; now when it's shit;back then when it was shitter but somehow ended up being better then now; and a thorough understanding of Marxism to break their chains once and for all.

youtu.be/05tz0V9IBi0

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