Hacker News Reader

Comment by kps | Hacker News Reader

And out of curiosity, who is the firing-squad person?

Let's not forget Jon Sterling, linguist, software engineer, amateur mathematician (okay at it), the organizer of the [PrlConf](http://www.jonprl.org/prlconf.html) subconference (note the unsubtle red star), well-known communist and [murder advocate](https://twitter.com/jonsterling/status/707424802496090113).

Mostly likely referring to Steve Klabnik https://archive.is/BtDaA

Klabnik himself being influenced by Marxism and committed to overthrowing the democratic state, presumably through armed revolution:

https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/514125493663436800

Communism has killed millions and millions of people yet its advocates don't get blacklisted for wrongthink.

And despite Klabnik's efforts to police the ideas of tech speakers, his chosen software licenses don't prohibit use of his software by repressive regimes:

https://github.com/steveklabnik/request_store/blob/master/LI...

He's an anarchist of some sort, just like many. Anarchists generally want to replace the violent top down nation-state with bottom-up democratic forms. Real democracy, not fake doublespeak democracy where no one feels like their voice matters.

Your post is horrifically misleading.

He says the single word which best describes him is small c communist, so at best this sort of anarchism is a violent tactic, and historically a very unwise one. And would be a quickly lethal one in the well armed US.

It's good to be cautious when people say they believe in "democracy" or "communism". (Does democracy mean killing people for billionaires and their 4-year king? Serious democracy proponents must say things like "bottom-up democracy." Same with communism: does it mean marxism/maoism/leninism/stalinism?)

Anyway, anarchists generally strive towards communism, if that means an advanced future society where you're free from boss-subordination, and some don't have to be "poor" to scare everyone else into obedience.

And anarchists don't bomb people, unlike adherents of every other political philosophy in the last decades. Certainly the US is always bombing people. Even Bernie Sanders supports it.

Anarchists don't generally strive towards communism because they recognize what history shows: communist states are even less accountable than modern oligarchal democracy.

Communist "state" is an oxymoron: "the communist society, which is a socioeconomic order structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money, and the state." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism)

Please google these basic terms before you engage in character assassination. As you did with Klabnik. (On topics like this, HN comments don't even rise to the factual rigor of YouTube comments.)

How does theoretical common ownership of the state mean a state doesn't exist? Do you have any examples of this theoretical non-state communist society? Has it ever existed at any scale?

These are among the most common anarchism 101 questions. FAQs exist; why not google for yourself? (Or speaking of capitalism, pay someone to educate you rather than expect uncompensated labor. I've done enough unpaid work resulting from your character assassination.)

"Educate yourself" seems to be a fashionable way of dodging difficult questions.

(Quick clarification: "advanced future society" is misleading. For instance, consider primitivists.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com