4 ms·

Really? I know scientific publishing is terrible in a myriad of ways, but communism? Communism? We have to throw out the underpinnings of modern advanced civili

Really? I know scientific publishing is terrible in a myriad of ways, but communism? Communism? We have to throw out the underpinnings of modern advanced civilization because Elsevier makes too much money?

s_kilk 9y ago
As a non-American, this Red Scare hysteria is hilarious.
- AndrewKoszela 9y ago
  As a human the body count of communism is terrifying.
  - NiklasMort 9y ago
    pretty sure capitalism is responsible for way more deaths
    - thehardsphere 9y ago
      Ok, how many more? Communism is estimated to have killed about 100 million people in the 20th century. How many deaths do you attribute to "capitalism"?
      - pron 9y ago
        Comparing numbers nominally is a bit unfair, as communism is a much more modern economic philosophy than capitalism, and so operated in a much more populous world, but as to direct violent deaths by capitalism, you can start with many of these here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_indigenous_peoples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_indigenous_peoples It's true that one could say that that kind of capitalism wasn't really capitalism, or that capitalism has changed since then, but the same could be said for communism.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    I'd attribute those to mistakes in central planning (attempting to industrialize agrarian societies without securing the food supply) and to the usual death toll of authoritarian regimes (rounding up dissidents etc.). Is it possible to work towards Communism without falling into those two traps? I have no idea. But if someone can give good reasons why their proposal would be different, I'm willing to hear them out.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - jonnybgood 9y ago
    I'm not aware of any advocation of death in communist literature. Can you provide some citations?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - tim333 9y ago
      Googling comes up with >Here’s Marx in an 1848 newspaper article: “there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.” And commies seem to mostly follow Marx, hence perhaps the deaths. I've never been a fan of Marx - he seems to write reams of pompous twaddle. And then I guess when the pompous twaddley stuff doesn't produce utopia more revolutionary terror is the answer. Perhaps you could come up with a better socialist system without that stuff.
  - vixen99 9y ago
    A communist government is intended to be a dictatorship. In that sense, no different from a fascist government. Dictatorship of the proletariat is a myth of course simply because of human nature. It never happens. It cannot be otherwise. And someone will run the show - invariably an alpha male like Stalin, Mao, Mugabe, Castro, the list is long. http://www.conservapedia.com/List_of_dictators http://www.conservapedia.com/List_of_dictators.
    - pron 9y ago
      > A communist government is intended to be a dictatorship. Not necessarily at all, and not only in theory but also in practice. The Kibbutzim[1] in Israel are a relatively successful form of communism -- granted, not on a state scale -- and lasted for about 100 years now (though they can hardly be called communist any more), and they have always been democratic (even if in practice they were sometimes oligarchic, but not much different in that respect from many democracies). The Kibbutzim were a particularly radical form of communism, where children were raised collectively, and lived away from their parents (this practice was particularly criticized in Israel and later stopped in most Kibbutzim). > In that sense, no different from a fascist government. There are really so many senses in which communism differs from fascism so completely (e.g. one is founded on exploitation and the other is founded on anti-exploitation) so that even if they were similar in one sense, comparing the two is not very useful. The only sense in which the two can be said to be similar (and this one applies to many ideals, even to opposing ones) is that they're both utopian. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz
etplayer 9y ago
No, the case made in the talk takes the example of Sci-hub and agreement with its principles into a wider scope to ask, if intellectual property is a problem (itself a radical idea, even on HN) what about property in general? And by this 'property' nobody means one's toothbrush, the Communists and anarchists mean private property. As Proudhon tells us the difference; near the beginning of his most important work (which went on to inspire Marx, Engels, Bakunin, Kropotkin and every other Communist and anarchist) he writes as follows: "There are different kinds of property: 1. Property pure and simple, the dominant and seigniorial power over a thing; or, as they term it, naked property. 2. Possession. “Possession,” says Duranton, “is a matter of fact, not of right.” Toullier: “Property is a right, a legal power; possession is a fact.” The tenant, the farmer, the commandité, the usufructuary, are possessors; the owner who lets and lends for use, the heir who is to come into possession on the death of a usufructuary, are proprietors. If I may venture the comparison: a lover is a possessor, a husband is a proprietor. This double definition of property — domain and possession — is of the highest importance; and it must be clearly understood, in order to comprehend what is to follow." In my opinion, and apparently that of the person giving the talk, when we talk about science we don't only want the journals to be free (as in free speech), we want the "means of production" for it to be free. In this way, we believe, science can serve the broader community as a tool to advance knowledge rather than only when it's convenient for profit. As an example, look at how the funding was recently pulled (though I'm not fully up to date on the story) on a US government study into the effects of coal mining on health. I contend that there would have been less motivation to do this, if it was possible at all, in a Communist society.
- thehardsphere 9y ago
  I think that very much depends on what your communist society looks like in practice. If you actually somehow managed to create somewhere a successful communist society that actually succeeded at completing the revolution without a powerful state, maybe what you describe would happen. But we never have seen that happen because in practice communist regimes tend to have strong states that engage in rather heavy-handed central planning of the economy. As a result, funding for scientific enterprises in these societies ends up being directed toward whatever the political priorities of the planners are. In the Soviet Union's case, that was military technologies and Lysenkoism. Lysenkoism is a particularly troubling counter-example to your US coal mining example. In the US, the political inconvienence (presumably to the new administration) simply resulted in the project's funding being cut. In the Soviet Union, the political inconvience of natural selection resulted in thousands of scientists being jailed or killed, set back Soviet biology at least 150 years, and was partly to blame for the low crop yields that the Soviets kept experiencing. So yeah, I don't particularly like the status quo in scientific publishing, but it's better than abolishing private property. Abolishing private property is one of those ideas that sounds great in theory and always ends badly in practice.
heisenbit 9y ago
The issue is not Elsevir making too much money but that the current science publishing regime imposes a too high tax in terms of money, organizational overhead and excluding too many from quality information for decisions, education and furtherance of true progress. These externalities to Elesvier and similar are a huge burden on the society. The science publishing business is not in that position due to skill, value add or investment but due to laws that grant monopolies on content for an extended period of time. Copyright on scientific discourse is not an underpinning of modern civilization. It is thus a valid consideration to change these artificial protections of their business.
orwin 9y ago
Elsevier taking "too much" money is incidental, and not the main problem in science right now. And this Scihub solution do solve this incidental issue and more, but this is a fraction of all the issues in science (i can't explain this very well in english, so i won't, but the eastern/western culture clash, ego war, bureaucraty, lack of good HR that lead to depressed/apathic scientist, and the publishing race are some other issues not solved yet). But this is not communism (i know lot of people in the US are confused by this, even the people that call themselve communist) but rather anarchism ("Libertaire" in french that is a left-wing libertarianism) with the idea that science is one of the common good. This new-wave anarchism take some old idea from Proudhon and enhance them. So you let behind the idea that private property is evil, but private property of the common is. You have the idea that people can't own what is used by other people. So you can have a hundred appartments in a big city, but you can't rent them. You can sell them, speculate on them, but you cannot rent them. And since it is anarchism, a more distributed/less powerfull government is needed too. On the point of "no private ownership of the common good", this seems like communism, yes (Communism come from anarchism somehow), but communism is the idea that the state have to regulate this, scihub is not on any level a state initiative. Sorry for the messy thoughts again, conversationnal english is a bit hard for me

s_kilk 9y ago

As a non-American, this Red Scare hysteria is hilarious.

AndrewKoszela 9y ago
As a human the body count of communism is terrifying.
- NiklasMort 9y ago
  pretty sure capitalism is responsible for way more deaths
  - thehardsphere 9y ago
    Ok, how many more? Communism is estimated to have killed about 100 million people in the 20th century. How many deaths do you attribute to "capitalism"?
    - pron 9y ago
      Comparing numbers nominally is a bit unfair, as communism is a much more modern economic philosophy than capitalism, and so operated in a much more populous world, but as to direct violent deaths by capitalism, you can start with many of these here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_indigenous_peoples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_indigenous_peoples It's true that one could say that that kind of capitalism wasn't really capitalism, or that capitalism has changed since then, but the same could be said for communism.
- yorwba 9y ago
  I'd attribute those to mistakes in central planning (attempting to industrialize agrarian societies without securing the food supply) and to the usual death toll of authoritarian regimes (rounding up dissidents etc.). Is it possible to work towards Communism without falling into those two traps? I have no idea. But if someone can give good reasons why their proposal would be different, I'm willing to hear them out.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- jonnybgood 9y ago
  I'm not aware of any advocation of death in communist literature. Can you provide some citations?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - tim333 9y ago
    Googling comes up with >Here’s Marx in an 1848 newspaper article: “there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.” And commies seem to mostly follow Marx, hence perhaps the deaths. I've never been a fan of Marx - he seems to write reams of pompous twaddle. And then I guess when the pompous twaddley stuff doesn't produce utopia more revolutionary terror is the answer. Perhaps you could come up with a better socialist system without that stuff.
- vixen99 9y ago
  A communist government is intended to be a dictatorship. In that sense, no different from a fascist government. Dictatorship of the proletariat is a myth of course simply because of human nature. It never happens. It cannot be otherwise. And someone will run the show - invariably an alpha male like Stalin, Mao, Mugabe, Castro, the list is long. http://www.conservapedia.com/List_of_dictators http://www.conservapedia.com/List_of_dictators.
  - pron 9y ago
    > A communist government is intended to be a dictatorship. Not necessarily at all, and not only in theory but also in practice. The Kibbutzim[1] in Israel are a relatively successful form of communism -- granted, not on a state scale -- and lasted for about 100 years now (though they can hardly be called communist any more), and they have always been democratic (even if in practice they were sometimes oligarchic, but not much different in that respect from many democracies). The Kibbutzim were a particularly radical form of communism, where children were raised collectively, and lived away from their parents (this practice was particularly criticized in Israel and later stopped in most Kibbutzim). > In that sense, no different from a fascist government. There are really so many senses in which communism differs from fascism so completely (e.g. one is founded on exploitation and the other is founded on anti-exploitation) so that even if they were similar in one sense, comparing the two is not very useful. The only sense in which the two can be said to be similar (and this one applies to many ideals, even to opposing ones) is that they're both utopian. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz

etplayer 9y ago

No, the case made in the talk takes the example of Sci-hub and agreement with its principles into a wider scope to ask, if intellectual property is a problem (itself a radical idea, even on HN) what about property in general? And by this 'property' nobody means one's toothbrush, the Communists and anarchists mean private property. As Proudhon tells us the difference; near the beginning of his most important work (which went on to inspire Marx, Engels, Bakunin, Kropotkin and every other Communist and anarchist) he writes as follows: "There are different kinds of property: 1. Property pure and simple, the dominant and seigniorial power over a thing; or, as they term it, naked property. 2. Possession. “Possession,” says Duranton, “is a matter of fact, not of right.” Toullier: “Property is a right, a legal power; possession is a fact.” The tenant, the farmer, the commandité, the usufructuary, are possessors; the owner who lets and lends for use, the heir who is to come into possession on the death of a usufructuary, are proprietors. If I may venture the comparison: a lover is a possessor, a husband is a proprietor. This double definition of property — domain and possession — is of the highest importance; and it must be clearly understood, in order to comprehend what is to follow." In my opinion, and apparently that of the person giving the talk, when we talk about science we don't only want the journals to be free (as in free speech), we want the "means of production" for it to be free. In this way, we believe, science can serve the broader community as a tool to advance knowledge rather than only when it's convenient for profit. As an example, look at how the funding was recently pulled (though I'm not fully up to date on the story) on a US government study into the effects of coal mining on health. I contend that there would have been less motivation to do this, if it was possible at all, in a Communist society.

thehardsphere 9y ago
I think that very much depends on what your communist society looks like in practice. If you actually somehow managed to create somewhere a successful communist society that actually succeeded at completing the revolution without a powerful state, maybe what you describe would happen. But we never have seen that happen because in practice communist regimes tend to have strong states that engage in rather heavy-handed central planning of the economy. As a result, funding for scientific enterprises in these societies ends up being directed toward whatever the political priorities of the planners are. In the Soviet Union's case, that was military technologies and Lysenkoism. Lysenkoism is a particularly troubling counter-example to your US coal mining example. In the US, the political inconvienence (presumably to the new administration) simply resulted in the project's funding being cut. In the Soviet Union, the political inconvience of natural selection resulted in thousands of scientists being jailed or killed, set back Soviet biology at least 150 years, and was partly to blame for the low crop yields that the Soviets kept experiencing. So yeah, I don't particularly like the status quo in scientific publishing, but it's better than abolishing private property. Abolishing private property is one of those ideas that sounds great in theory and always ends badly in practice.

heisenbit 9y ago

The issue is not Elsevir making too much money but that the current science publishing regime imposes a too high tax in terms of money, organizational overhead and excluding too many from quality information for decisions, education and furtherance of true progress. These externalities to Elesvier and similar are a huge burden on the society. The science publishing business is not in that position due to skill, value add or investment but due to laws that grant monopolies on content for an extended period of time. Copyright on scientific discourse is not an underpinning of modern civilization. It is thus a valid consideration to change these artificial protections of their business.

orwin 9y ago

Elsevier taking "too much" money is incidental, and not the main problem in science right now. And this Scihub solution do solve this incidental issue and more, but this is a fraction of all the issues in science (i can't explain this very well in english, so i won't, but the eastern/western culture clash, ego war, bureaucraty, lack of good HR that lead to depressed/apathic scientist, and the publishing race are some other issues not solved yet). But this is not communism (i know lot of people in the US are confused by this, even the people that call themselve communist) but rather anarchism ("Libertaire" in french that is a left-wing libertarianism) with the idea that science is one of the common good. This new-wave anarchism take some old idea from Proudhon and enhance them. So you let behind the idea that private property is evil, but private property of the common is. You have the idea that people can't own what is used by other people. So you can have a hundred appartments in a big city, but you can't rent them. You can sell them, speculate on them, but you cannot rent them. And since it is anarchism, a more distributed/less powerfull government is needed too. On the point of "no private ownership of the common good", this seems like communism, yes (Communism come from anarchism somehow), but communism is the idea that the state have to regulate this, scihub is not on any level a state initiative. Sorry for the messy thoughts again, conversationnal english is a bit hard for me