Comment by chroma | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chroma | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think PG is attacking a straw man at all. In my career as a software engineer, I've run into a significant number of outright communists. Like most of us, they keep their political opinions to themselves most of the time. But occasionally, they let slip how they would welcome revolution. I don't want to name names or expose people who don't want to be exposed, so I'll just give one prominent example.

Steve Klabnik is an extremely talented programmer. He's a core developer of Rust and is the main author of The Rust Book[1]. He is also a communist. (Edit: This is not 100% accurate. Klabnik is better described as anti-capitalist. See downthread for details.) Don't take my word for it. He wants people to know this. Read his blog[2]. Look at his Twitter[3]. Judging from his follower count, he's not exactly alone in his opinions.

I wish you were right. Communists should be straw men. If there's any societal system that has been shown not to work, it's communism. That experiment has been tried so many times, in so many countries, with varying cultures, geographies, and levels of development... and not one of them was successful. Yes, capitalism has had failures, but at least it's had successes.

1. http://doc.rust-lang.org/book/

2. http://words.steveklabnik.com/an-introduction-to-economics-u... At the end: "…this post is basically my own little summary of Capital, Volume I, chapters 1-7, by Karl Marx."

3. https://twitter.com/steveklabnik

What's wrong with being a socialist (or even a communist)?

I don't think it's an immoral position or anything, just a mistaken one. I covered why in my last paragraph:

> If there's any societal system that has been shown not to work, it's communism. That experiment has been tried so many times, in so many countries, with varying cultures, geographies, and levels of development... and not one of them was successful. Yes, capitalism has had failures, but at least it's had successes.

If your response to that is, "No true communist state has yet existed." Well… the same goes for a true capitalist state. The real world is full of implementations, not ideals.

When we look at implementations of capitalism, some are amazing successes (South Korea, US, UK, Canada, post-WWII Japan & West Germany, Taiwan, etc). Some are hellholes (the Belgian Congo). When we look at implementations of communism (The Soviet Union, East Germany, North Korea, China before Deng Xiaoping, Venezuela, Vietnam before Doi Moi, etc.), none of them are successes and many are hellholes.

I'm not an ideologue about this. If communism led to better quality of life than capitalism, I'd be fine with that, and I'd vote for communists. But the evidence is that it doesn't, so I don't.

Commentary for those wondering why my comments are gray: As soon as Steve Klabnik tweeted about this thread, all of my comments were downvoted.

I see nothing incorrect, nor unnecessary, nor unkind in my statements. If anyone disagrees, I welcome responses.

Hi Chroma, thanks for your comment, but I disagree with you, please text-search my name on this page and read my comments, and answer them point by point if you can.

Thanks!

I think saying that some people are "crazy communists", and that communism is failed, is not enough to discredit all the positive socialist measures that are likely leading to increased innovation and a healthy economy in the long run, in most developed countries.

- debt-free higher education - free health care - financial sector regulations - tax poors less than rich - taxes on corporations, which will be important in the future to deal with automation of most jobs, such as lawyers and truck drivers. - basic income (only exists in Finland at the moment in 2016, was tested a few times in the last decades, with success apparently)

The "Communism is failed" argument is typical of the neo con media, it's disingenuous and completely misses the point. Socialism is very different from communism. Socialism improves on capitalism. Socialism provenly works. Most developed countries are socialist, to different degrees. The most successful ones in innovation per capita happen to be the most socialist ones, literally, scandinavian countries. The US is already socialist to some extend, not just capitalist.

An interesting point to add is that Milton Friedman, the guru of the neo conservative current, actually supports basic income. Basic income just got voted in Finland. Basic income is very different from communism, and was proven to work in many real-life experiments, without affecting people's drive to work. See interesting TED talks on that subject.

… In 1962, the libertarian economist Milton Friedman advocated a minimum guaranteed income via a “negative income tax.”

As I've said on Twitter, I'm not _exacty_ a communist. I am far left, but the differences matter only if you're already a leftist. I think "anti capitalist" is the more accurate umbrella term.

I'm also one of the highest karma people on this very site. ;)

Apologies for not using the exact terms. While I have your attention: Would you agree that PG is not arguing against a straw man? That you, in fact, would like to prevent people from getting rich and end all economic inequality, and that many others share your beliefs? Considering that jacobolus's comment is at the top, I think it's important to know whether it's correct or not.

BTW, thank you for all your contributions to Rust, Rails, and countless other open source libraries and modules. Your work has benefitted millions.

I am out at a bar with friends, so I have not read the article. I just check things every so often and saw that I was mentioned. It's an inherently complex subject, and like I said, the details don't really matter unless you really care about them. It's just important that if someone calls me "communist", they don't think that I have no criticism of anything related to communism, because I do.

I haven't read through the links you cited, just the excerpt. A lot of non-communists cite Marx. My economics professors in University certainly did, including one who advocated eliminating corporate taxes.

Out of everything I said, I'm surprised this is the thing that's contested. Just scroll through his Twitter feed. Here are a few recent ones:

https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/682787891936948224

https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/682788969843658752

https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/682787609446330368

https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/682787371235016705

He retweeted this: https://twitter.com/kantrn/status/683385220167368704

https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/682759650362658816

https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/682759288012554240

Heck, his Twitter profile pic is a communist logo. His Twitter bio says, "Every loss for a worker is loss for all of us and every gain for a part of the working class is a victory for all." That's a quote from the Industrial Workers of the World[1].

I don't know how much more communist one can get.

1. http://www.iww.org/content/iww-greece-announcement-regarding...

Right, that looks pretty clear then. I guess I meant to say that citing his summarizing of Marx is a pretty poor way to suggest someone is a communist, if you can link to something that literally says "I am a communist". Plenty of non-communists cite Marx.

This is 100% accurate. My ultimate allegiance is to Deleuze, but that's only relevant to a VERY small niche of people. Marx is much more well-known.

Also, I care more about left unity than arguing over the exact kind of leftist I or others are.

Yeah so the IWW is an anarchist organization, not a communist one. Or at least, not a Marxist one. Soooooooooo

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