Comment by YorkshireSeason | Hacker News Reader

Comment by YorkshireSeason | Hacker News Reader

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YorkshireSeason

    they are like reeeally left wing

The historical record of the extreme left is extremely pro-state, pro surveillance. Indeed, the Marxist corrective to freewheeling capitalism was a strong socialist state (to cover the period before communism emerges and the state withers away) [1]. Many modern surveillance techniques were pioneered or refined by the likes of the OGPU [2], the NKVD [3] and their equivalents in satellite states like the Stasi [4] in the GDR, or the secret police in China (sorry I have no good reference). Note that both Wilhelm Zaisser [5](founder of the Stasi) and Kang Sheng [6] (founder of China's secret police) had worked in Moscow under Stalin in the security services.

This is historically very well documented, but seems to be somehow unpalatable ...

[1] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-m...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_State_Political_Director...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Zaisser

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kang_Sheng

Edit: replaced "left" by "extreme left" for additional clarity.

> fear of leftist politics...

What I said, huh?! Maybe before you throw in the Stasi Wikipedia article, you should check out the CCC's. They advocate for a strong state regulations, strong democratic structures and freedom of the individual, including privacy. Transparency for the state, privacy for the individual. Large parts of their member base are anticapitalists and anarchists, minding the collective welfare, so I figured from an American perspective that's quite far left.

You won't find advertisement or any commercial interests on their very large conferences, which are completely organized and managed by volunteers. On every level. There is absolutely no tolerance for right wing ideas, police or military.

That's why I think their political background here is important, they always been activists advocating for everyone's welfare and rights. Something rather unusual for non left wing politics.

Not so much unpalatable as irrelevant? Using a descriptor like "left wing" to ignore people's actual politics and go straight to accusing them of being Stalinists?

I was clearly referring to 46886532558's "reeeally left wing", i.e. extreme left.

It is historically accurate to identify the extreme left with the ComIntern, i.e. the Soviet communist party, ruled during his lifetime by Stalin. Almost all communist parties were in the mould designed by Lenin, and refined by Stalin.

Even today, socialist / communist parties operate using the Leninist style of organisation, e.g. in the UK the SWP or RS21.

It is useful to know this, just as it's useful to know that Cambridge Analytica was owned by a company whose board is full of UK military/security-service types [1].

[1] http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2018/03/20/scl-a-very-british-c...

> It is historically accurate to identify the extreme left with the ComIntern, i.e. the Soviet communist party, ruled during his lifetime by Stalin.

No, it is absolutely not.

I invite you to defend your claim.

Start by asking yourself which non-fringe socialist/communist party was not using the Leninist model of organisation, and which was not a member of the ComIntern and its successors? Which did not receive funding and ideological schooling in the Soviet Union?

You have an uphill struggle against history against you.

How would you define 'fringe', and how does this not include views that are less pro-state?

Fringe is clearly a vague predicate. One way of defining Fringe is via the number of followers that can be mobilised for political action. E.g. in the UK the Tories, and Labour are not fringe, but CISTA (Cannabis Is Safer Than Alcohol) is. In the Weimar Republic the KPD was not fringe, but the Socialist League was.

Never mind that, how do you define "left"?

> non-fringe socialist/communist party was not using the Leninist model of organisation, and which was not a member of the ComIntern and its successors?

UK Labour party? Has everyone forgotten the Fabians?

The modern Green parties tend to be "left" but not necessarily inheriting from the Marxist tradition at all, generally post-dating WW2 (although this produces endless arguments about "watermelons"). Also modern left-wing parties of almost all colours are explicitly pro-human rights, which includes not only the right to privacy but the right to property!

Again, I'm not saying that there aren't some actual pro-Stalin "tankies" around, but it gets incredibly tedious having to defend everyone to the left of the Daily Mail from automatic charges of being a Stalinist. Congratulations on your dozen posts of derailing.

Apologies if I misinterpret your comment, but aren't we arguing the same thing?

Here's a list of talks given at the CCCongress: https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2017/Fahrplan/events...

You don't have to go from "left-wing hacker collective" right to Stalin if there's data readily available on the actual subject being discussed.

(There should actually be a left-wing equivalent of Godwin's law. Maybe "There-Is-No-Godwin's law"?)

I have commented not on the CCC but on user: 46886532558's original claim that being "reeeally left wing" is somehow a plausible reason for being anti-surveillance. This association is misleading, and I feel a responsibility to correct this historical mistake.

This correction is especially apt since Germany is still full of Stasi victims.

> The historical record of the left is extremely pro-state, pro surveillance

I think the problem with your comment is that you're flat-out misrepresenting the 'reeeally left wing'. There are plenty of 'leftist' movements that are just as opposed to 'the state' as they are to our corporate overlords. Arguing otherwise is either plain stupidity or intentional misrepresentation.

Railing against "the state" or "our corporate overlords" is not a mature political position, but merely unfocussed, reflection-free rage that gets tooled / channeled by political organisers and activists on the left and right, not to mention commercially exploited by the Facebooks of this world, whence Zuckerberg's "Dumb Fucks".

> Railing against "the state" or "our corporate overlords" is not a mature political position

Why not? Historically anarchists played a mentionable role in this whole leftist thing.

EDIT: Also, could you elaborate on what you mean with 'a mature position'? I've found that kind of statement to be an effective but dishonest way to dismiss things.

The anarchists, qua bombings, played a potent role in 19th, and early 20th century politics, but not a good one.

Politically, anarchists are really quite different from the socialist/communist tradition:

- Anarchists: reject the state

- Socialists/communists: reject capitalism

Naturally there could be overlap, and indeed there is a well-known tradition of anarcho-communism [1] which was especially potent in the Spanish Revolution of 1936 (note that there were bitter fights between anarchists and the Stalinists), but at the same time, it's difficult to reconcile the philo-capitalism of the libertarian wing of anarchism with the socialist tradition. Likewise, it's difficult to reconcile the philo-stateism of the socialist tradition with anarchism.

As to "mature": as a first approximation, I'd say, having a written, elaborate and communicable theory behind one's political actions, one that has survived multiple round of (friendly) critique. A mature political position includes reflection on the nature of political power, the shape of politial organisation, and political activism, and clear end goals with reasons why the desired end-goals are likely to come about. A mature political position also contains an understanding of other political positions, including those of one's political adversaries. An prime example of a mature political position is Marx. As an example of political immaturity, I'd point to myself when I was 19. I was nothing but an angry, raging young person, who railed against "the system", wanted to "stick it to The Man" and save the world. But I would not have been able to explain why, in way that I would have found plausible.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-communism

Thank you for elaborating. Truly.

Is there any way I could continue this conversation via email or some other form of communication? I very much would like to pick your brain on some of this in a more personal form.

EDIT: my email is my username at gmail.com

Yeah–the comment didn't use talk about "reeally left-wing". It was "reeeally left wing anticapitalist idealists and antiauthoritarians".

The description uses "left wing" to help you conjure up the right mental image. Because "anticapitalist idealists and antiauthoritarians" would also describe buddhists and anarchists.

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