6 ms·
> Like McCarthyism it’s a noble cause I'm unsure if this is sarcasm or not.
by teh_klev 5y ago
> Like McCarthyism it’s a noble cause
I'm unsure if this is sarcasm or not.
- Tabular-Iceberg 5y agoIt’s not. Why on earth would you want to have a bunch of Soviet or communist Chinese spies running around?
- lucian1900 5y agoMcCarthyism was about class struggle. Persecuting all communists, socialists and trade unionists made it less likely the working class would rise up against the capitalist ruling class. It worked for the Nazis, after all. You seem to have internalised this logic, since you're assuming all communists are spies for another nation.
- FredPret 5y agoYou, on the other hand, seem to have internalized a class-based worldview. I'm not sure that's healthy either
- lucian1900 5y agoClass struggle is the engine of history. Whether that fact is healthy for myself personally or not has no bearing on its truth. The company I work for keeps more of the value I create than they pay me. Whether I like it or not, I'm working class and in direct opposition to capitalists.
- Gormo 5y agoAll exchange is predicated upon each party gaining more utility from what they get than by retaining what they give up. The company you work for retains the goods/services you sold them and enjoys a net increase in utility, and you retain the compensation they provided in exchange, and enjoy your own net increase in utility as a result. On top of that, the ultimate consumption utility enjoyed at the terminus of the entire chain of production is not something you are individually responsible for; you aren't creating the final value, only offering your own marginal contribution of value by selling your own goods and services to your own particular customer. The concept of "class" does not factor into the reality of any of this.
- DenisM 5y agoI was with you until the last sentence. Per Marx, there is the class of people who work for a living *, and the class of people who don't because others do. This has been true since 10,000 years ago and the distinction remains relevant today. The actual classes change, but the division remains. * Managers and executives are still workers, only their job is to drive other workers on behalf of the owners.
- FredPret 5y ago1) I doubt you're actually working class, even if you're working for money 2) Capitalism is a decentralized system of allocating resources. By working and investing (even if just owning a retirement plan), you are taking part in it all. You may now collect your monocle and top hat. 3) Getting paid some fraction between 0 and 1 of the value you create is a fact of nature for all actors in the system. The company has to create more value for its customers than they pay for it, otherwise nobody would bother buying. 4) The system itself creates vast amounts of wealth and progress, for the entire society. You wouldn't have a good job and a good computer if it wasn't for all that extra value. 5) Don't confuse capitalists with capitalism. The people may behave badly, but the system is resilient - that's why it's been working well for centuries, through thick and thin.
- lucian1900 5y agoCapitalism is a mode of production in which production is motivated by profit derived from the private ownership of the means of production. Those that own the means of production (factories, companies, etc.) perform no labour, but get paid from the difference between the value produced by those that do work and the value generated by that labour. This difference is called profit. I own no significant means of production. The vast majority of my income comes from selling my labour power for a fraction of the value it generates. Thus I am working class, generating profits for capitalists. Wealth and progress is generated by labour. I wouldn't have a good job and a computer if the forces of production hadn't been advanced so far. This advancement does happen under capitalism, but not exclusively. Worse, the mode of production can inhibit further advancement, like feudalism was inhibiting industrial advancement. Capitalism fails all the time, it does it so often it's called the business cycle. Sometimes is fails catastrophically, like the Great Depression or 2008. It's being kept just barely functional by those that benefit from it; most of us don't.
- kashunstva 5y ago> it's been working well for centuries, It depends on one's definition of _working well_. The neoliberal economic school would wholeheartedly agree. But the disproportionate distribution of gains since the early 1980's says otherwise. Of course, that's a values-laden discussion that's probably not a great fit for HN. If the system works immeasurably well for the 0.1% and dreadfully for the bottom 20% such that on average the GDP trend is positive, is the system working well? The system has been resilient, but I'm afraid I'd don't know what the corrective forces are any longer, given the dysfunctional state of the political enterprise in much of the world.
- MadSudaca 5y ago> made it less likely the working class would rise up against the capitalist ruling class It would make it less likely for the country to shoot itself in the foot and radically lower the standards of living of its citizens, like happened and, unfortunately, still happens, in every country that adopted communist ideas in their government.
- wizzwizz4 5y agoI don't think “communist ideas” is well-defined. Could you explain what you mean by the phrase?
- retrac 5y agoNot OP but it seemed unambiguous to me given "countries that have adopted". The countries that proclaimed themselves communist at some point -- the Soviet Union, China, Yugoslavia, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Angola, etc. (Most no longer exist, only Cuba, Vietnam, China and Laos are governed by self-described communist parties today.)
- p_l 5y agoAnd a lot of those countries had standard of living sharply rise during communist era. People really, really under appreciate how bad conditions were in many of those countries for those who weren't creme de la creme of society, or how much for example interwar Poland history is kept silent about the squalor and poverty of huge portion of the society. Yes, for various reasons economic systems in many of them failed (or in few cases, it was nationalistic strife that dealt the blow), but others learnt lessons from it (for example, about badly defining and strictly adhering to plans, or too high concentration in one company, etc.)
- wizzwizz4 5y agoWhat about countries that only adopted two “communist ideas”? What if a country adopted hundreds of them, but didn't call itself communist? What if No True Communist Society does XYZ thing that all of the countries on your list have done? You can't talk effectively about something until everybody agrees on what the words mean.
- n4r9 5y agoIirc McCarthyism is the suppression of socialist ideas full stop, regardless of sympathy to Soviets or China.
- the_only_law 5y agoYou recall incorrectly > McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to communism and socialism.[1] The term originally referred to the controversial practices and policies of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin), and has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting from the late 1940s through the 1950s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
- n4r9 5y agoDoesn't seem too far off what I said. A widespread persecution of people with left-wing politics. Some other groups such as homosexuals also suffered. There was a tenuous and absurd justification of "un-American"ness or of communist sympathies.
- the_only_law 5y agoYeah that was my fault. I completely misread the comment.
- Miner49er 5y agoAnd the next sentence, which you conveniently left out: > It was characterized by heightened political repression and persecution of left-wing individuals, and a campaign spreading fear of alleged communist and socialist influence on American institutions.
- scollet 5y agoThis still sounds like sarcasm tbh.
- Tabular-Iceberg 5y agoNo, I don’t like to use sarcasm, I prefer plain language instead. Especially in writing where sarcasm is harder to detect.
- jvanderbot 5y ago"McCarthyism" is a derogatory term for overzealous political witch-hunts which cause irreparable harm to honest, innocent citizens. What you mean is counter-intelligence, and yes, that's absolutely an important thing.
- mynameishere 5y agoThe term probably shouldn't mean that since there actually was a wealth of communist spies, sympathizers, etc. Ie, it was not a witch hunt. McCarthy's problem was using the Congress in an executive role.
- p_l 5y agoMcCarthy's problem was being a daft c_nt on a power trip, with no idea how to actually deal with spies, and heavily based on violating supposed american freedom of thought and association. It was absolutely a witch hunt. There's in fact no record he ever disrupted any actual spy work, as far as I know, and his legacy is that even in Warsaw Pact he became famous - famous enough to require redefining in popular vernacular "useful idiot" to include him and his supporters.
- jvanderbot 5y agoSure. I mean, there probably were witches too, they just weren't actually magical.
- Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago> "McCarthyism" is a derogatory term for overzealous political witch-hunts which cause irreparable harm to honest, innocent citizens. Yes, that’s exactly my point. > What you mean is counter-intelligence No, I do mean McCarthyism. The pitfall that counter-intelligence easily falls into where they end up targeting innocent people rather than actual spies. A spy spends every waking moment trying to not look like a spy. Gang Chen on the other hand spends every waking moment trying to figure out heat transfer and nothing about not looking like a spy, because he “has nothing to hide”. That alone is going to make him look more like a spy than a real spy.
- coliveira 5y agoMcCarthyism was exactly about accusing people falsely of being associated to communists.
- locallost 5y agoMcCarthyism boils down to someone having absolute power to destroy somebody else's life based on their own beliefs. For instance, homosexuals were also targeted by McCarthy, simply because they were interpreted as subversive. It's nothing more than a modern witch hunt, a practice that can't be reconciled with what we consider the rule of law today. There is absolutely nothing noble about it.
- Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago> There is absolutely nothing noble about it. The cause, not the execution. I never said that the execution was noble. The phrase “noble cause” is used to describe this exact kind of situation, where the ends don’t justify the means. That they botched the execution was my entire point. Rounding up homos was easy and made themselves look good in the eyes of the public. Much easier than identifying and rounding up actual spies. I’m talking about the perverse incentives here.
- locallost 5y agoAll countries have spies and all fight foreign spies all the time. If you find this fight noble, so be it, but it's not really relevant. McCarthyism was really just a total abuse of power, a witch hunt only several times amplified through the power of modern media. And it destroyed the lives of thousands of people for no reason at all. So sorry, but I don't like it being mentioned in any kind of a positive context. There wasn't any.
- Tabular-Iceberg 5y agoWhere do you see it being used in a positive context? I used it as an example of something that’s bad, how is that “a positive context”?
- Veen 5y agoThere are two issues that should be separated. The first is that there were (and probably are) foreign spies in industry and government. That's damaging and they should be removed. The second issue is that those given the power to find and remove spies can abuse it. That's also damaging and should be prevented. However, that fact that people abuse their power doesn't mean we should stop looking for spies, or that all spy hunting is a form of Mcarthyism.
- loudmax 5y agoMcCarthyism led to the persecution of anyone with socialist political sympathies. It was an attack on unpopular economic beliefs. Let's McCarthyism what it is: Unamerican.
- DenisM 5y agoSo I've been thinking a lot about this... Consider that the application of the word "unamerican" is itself is destructive to national unity no matter where it is applied, and as such probably should be avoided, including in reference to McCartism or even to the very word itself. Where does that leave us? Not entirely sure. The best I could come up with is "not exactly pro-american". This word does not have stigma (cats are not pro-american which is fine with everyone), yet in a political context it carries weight.
- DenisM 5y agoWas mass incarceration of the Japanese Americans a noble cause? Nobody wants a bunch of hot-war enemy spies running around, after all. I'm not trolling you, I want to know where you draw the line (if at all). 9% false positive? 99%? 99.999%?
- Tabular-Iceberg 5y agoYes, that’s also an appropriate use of the idiom.
- DenisM 5y agoHow about preemptively jailing all men in case some are murderers. Also a noble cause?
- Tabular-Iceberg 5y agoYes, that’s another good example.
- fennecfoxen 5y agoThe thing people today may not know about McCarthyism is that there WERE a lot of Soviet spies in the State Department. It desperately needed to be addressed. The reason people forget this is because McCarthyism itself was not actually a very good remedy. It was great for the self-aggrandizement of Senator McCarthy (until he went too far, and his target Mr. Welch called him out while being interrogated before the Senate for making a national show of a very weak question of Welch’s colleague, a question could have been raised far more timely without the spectacle). It was great for building an atmosphere of fear, too. But in the end it was a pretty bad spy eradication program.
- wolverine876 5y ago> there WERE a lot of Soviet spies in the State Department. It desperately needed to be addressed. Where can I find some serious research on that?
- mdavis6890 5y agoI'm sure there were spies - but this is not what McCarthyism was about. Primarily it was about communism. Spying for a foreign govt is bad, and we don't want them in our govt, regardless of their ideology. Communist beliefs, tendencies and association are protected by our (US) constitution. Targeting spies is good, but McCarty was targeting communists (or alleged communists).
- wolverine876 5y agoMcCarthy was targeting people whose ideology he didn't like, and using communism as a justification.