Comment by lionhearted | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lionhearted | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> Or do you seriously believe that the government should have the right to violate people's privacy based on their political leanings?

I'm not the original poster, but something to think about - communism isn't a political leaning the way debating about state/federal powers is a political leaning. Mainstream communist literature - Communist Manifesto for instance - directly advocates violence and rioting, to the end of placing the state under control of the workers. Marx said that condition - control by the workers - would be socialism. Socialism could then slowly dissolve until it's a classless, peaceful society, but Marx said you'd need to make a lot of violence on the bourgeois first.

I don't know, if there was a group that advocated, for instance, that they should confiscate and destroy all the property of non-Caucasians, make sure whites control everything, but that's only a necessary step to a perfectly peaceful and equal society - well, would you want the FBI to keep tabs on those people? How about if someone believed that they should kill all infidels to place society under the control of Muslims, which would then lead to a peaceful society? No, Communism isn't a political leaning, it's a very bad thing that's done very bad things.

I'm visiting Cambodia in two weeks by the way, I'm going to see the relic of one of the most literal applications of Marxist communist doctrines:

> People were often encouraged to confess to Angkar their "pre-revolutionary lifestyles and crimes" (which usually included some kind of free-market activity, or having had contact with a foreign source, such as a US missionary, or international relief or government agency, or contact with any foreigner or with the outside world at all), being told that Angkar would forgive them and "wipe the slate clean". This meant being taken away to a place such as Tuol Sleng or Choeung Ek for torture and/or execution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_Fields#Process

Communism is a bad thing. The legality/criminality of advocating it should be equivalent to the legality/criminality of other forms of advocating violence and destruction.

This is the most egregious strawman I've seen in quite a while. The FBI already keeps watch on groups prone to violence. What you have done is simply redefined communists to be communists who advocate violent overthrow and declaring that is the only type of communist there is. Your comment is a piece of trite propaganda.

> What you have done is simply redefined communists to be communists who advocate violent overthrow and declaring that is the only type of communist there is.

But that's actually, legitimately the definition of Communism. That's how Marx defined it. Second sentence from Wikipedia: "Karl Marx, the father of communist thought, posited that communism would be the final stage in society, which would be achieved through a proletarian revolution"

Here's a map of everywhere that tried Communism - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sino-Soviet_split_1980.svg

Violence in every single place. Lots of it. Horrible stuff.

> Your comment is a piece of trite propaganda.

The book that laid out Communism - the Communist Manifesto - directly calls for violence. Every significant attempt at Communism has included violence. At this point, Communism includes violence. If you're not in favor of rioting and violence and re-education, you're doing something other than Communism as was written by the founder of the movement and every real life implementation of it.

Pointing this out is not propaganda, and it's not trite. Trying to make Communism happen has literally created more misery and destruction than any other movement in history, and it's not even really close. People need to know about and remember the Khmer Rouge killing fields, they need to know about the Great Leap Forwards and Cultural Revolution, they need to know what Marx actually wrote in his books, they need to know where Communism leads and what it really is. It's a horrible thing. Putting it down is not trite - it's important that it's remembered for what it is, and never allowed to surface again, for the same reasons it's important that fascism doesn't surface again.

Just because the Communist Manifesto calls for violence does not mean that everyone who self-identifies as communist has to accept it. Modern communists can change, re-interpret, or cherry-pick parts of the doctrine. I know at least one person who explicitly identifies as both a communist (small c) and a pacifist. Marx defined the original meaning of the word, but he doesn't control its definition through the end of history, and the modern conception of communism is the resulting economic system, not the means to achieve it. Hell, in some contexts, communism is a tool of literary analysis.

Communism (big C), in practice, has lead to a lot of slaughter. I can't deny that. However, to say that it has created "more misery and destruction than any other movement in history," I will provide the counter-point that it is the only significant social-historical movement to occur in the industrial age. The Crusades (to pick a Goodwin-level example) or even the French revolutions did not have the means to cause misery and destruction on such a scale. Controlling for that accident of historical (technological) context, I would need additional evidence or argument to convince me that Communism is significantly more malicious from any other abstract idea (including democracy in both ancient and recent time as well as most religions) that people have used as an excuse for killing each other over the years.

Little C communists are just big C communists who haven't had the chance to implement their ideas. The idea that the capitalization of a letter means a significantly different ideology is silly. Libertarians don't go around calling themselves liberals because they know it means something different now and don't want to be associated with the new definition of liberal.

> the modern conception of communism is the resulting economic system, not the means to achieve it.

Every socialist I've ever talked to has always said their about the good ideas not the bad results. Where do you think the bad results come from? Do you think Mao thought the great leap forward would really kill 60 million people?

Roughly the same amount of people have died in India, from starvation, because of implementation of quite opposing ideas.

I agree if you don't like the violence aspect don't call yourself a communist.

If you're going to think about something, then please make the attempt to do so clearly.

The standards you are applying to 'communism' here are ones that would damn 'capitalism' as well -- there have been plenty of atrocities committed in the name of both, and neither philosophy has abstained from advocating violence. Not to mention that you'd make most major religions illegal as well!

Step one in thinking clearly is to define and use terms precisely. What seems to be your working definition of "communism" is more or less "all the bad things done by people that the US disagrees with" -- if you're trying to make value judgements, a near tautology.

I thought he/she was being pretty clear, actually. I understood his working definition to not be "all the bad things ..." but roughly "the philosophy espoused by the Communist Manifesto and by the governments of the USSR, Mao-era China, and Khmer-Rouge Cambodia".

What are the atrocities committed specifically in the name of capitalism? I'm genuinely curious which ones would add up to having the same impact as the ones committed in Stalinist Russia, Cambodia, and cultural-revolution China.

I wouldn't have a problem with the FBI keeping tabs on anyone who has publicly stated that they want to violently overthrow the government. However...

Communism is hardly a monolithic strain of thought. There are many people who ascribe to the economic principles of communism but who absolutely reject that sort of violence. In fact, there are large numbers people who identify non only as communists, but also as pacifists, such as Einstein (though, late in life he made an exception for defeating forces such as Naziism). There is very little danger of someone like Einstein violently over throwing anything. His political philosophy is directly opposed to such a thing. The FBI keeping tabs on a man like him served absolutely no purpose related to the security of the nation.

Similarly, there are currently members of the tea party movement advocating the violent overthrow of government. They are a minority (probably a very small one) in the movement. As much as I disagree with tea partiers, I still feel that if the FBI decided it had a right to keep tabs on anyone who identified with tea party movement, it would be a gross violation of civil liberties.

The declaration of independence also calls for violent revolution as a means to obtain a more ideal society

Absolutely false. The United States Declaration of Independence does not declare war on Britain or advocate violence.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Seems pretty clear to me.

"new Guards for their future security" refers to forming their own government, the purpose of which is to safeguard the aforementioned inalienable rights. If "throw off such Government" is really the strongest call to revolutionary violence you can point out, I stand by my point.

It is absurd to assume that "throw off such government " means anything other than by forceful (violent ) means, especially considering the authors subsequent actions.

Christ what a piece of contorted nonsense. Can you name one governing political institution in history not initially established by violence, whether or not explicitly stated?

the hell. why are people upvoting this ridiculous ignorance?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com