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Communism may or may not be incompatible with the US constitution. A surveillance state is _certainly_ incompatible with the constitution and threatens our civi

Communism may or may not be incompatible with the US constitution. A surveillance state is _certainly_ incompatible with the constitution and threatens our civil liberties. Having not lived during the Cold War nor studied it, I don't have a perspective on what that is like. But I find it difficult to understand the idea that a political ideology like Communism ought to be "illegal."

unimpressive 13y ago
>Having not lived during the Cold War nor studied it, I don't have a perspective on what that is like. But I find it difficult to understand the idea that a political ideology like Communism ought to be "illegal." Let me help: http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/coldwar/documents/pdf/4-1.pdf#zoom=100 http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/c... Basically, every communist (Read: Marxist-Leninist/Stalinist/etc) party that existed during the 20th century took its orders from the U.S.S.R. The authoritarian form of Marxism practiced by the Bolsheviks would never fly with the population of the United States, so the Soviets would use the sympathies of American communists to leak info and sabotage national defense programs. This meant that every communist was a de facto U.S.S.R spy in the eyes of the USA. The above document is a report to President Truman in 1946 about the ideological underpinnings that would go on to cause the cold war.
- wavefunction 13y ago
  And we had our own Democracy cheerleaders trying to export our system to every corner of the globe as well. If they were honest, they would have allowed discussion and dialog rather than the McCarthyite witch hunts and branding communism as AIDs-spreading terrorists strapped with nuclear suicide bombs. They didn't even trust in their own ideology to survive a rigorous examination, and that's why they turned to demonization.
  - btilly 13y ago
    Not so fast. We backed multiple military coups in multiple democracies. Basically any tin-pot dictator who wanted our support could declare themselves "anti-communist" and they had it. And many, many did so. No matter how obvious it should have been that we did not want to support their actions.
    - wavefunction 13y ago
      Well, that was sort of my point. We were so hell bent on fighting an enemy we'd created in our minds (and vice-versa for those in the USSR) that we lost all rationality, it seems. I'd liken it to religious fanatics who seem incredibly fearful of other religions. If they're so sure they've got "the way," then their beliefs should be able to stand up to scrutiny or comparison with other belief systems.
      - coldtea 13y ago
        >Well, that was sort of my point. We were so hell bent on fighting an enemy we'd created in our minds (and vice-versa for those in the USSR) that we lost all rationality, it seems. No, the foreign policy actions were very rational. It's not like they got duped by some dictator posing as "anti-communist". They knew what they were getting and what they were supporting (as all historical accounts and de-classified documents show). They just wanted to gain influence to those parts of the world (for resources, trade routes, military bases etc) at any cost.
        wavefunction 13y ago
        Yeah, I suppose that creating the enemy in communism that we did served the foreign policy purposes of the nutjobs pushing it, but it wasn't rational at the human level.
  - lostlogin 13y ago
    Had?
    - wavefunction 13y ago
      In the context of the Cold War/struggle with USSR... But you're right, they're still out there causing havoc.
- scarmig 13y ago
  "Basically, every communist (Read: Marxist-Leninist/Stalinist/etc) party that existed during the 20th century took its orders from the U.S.S.R." I don't know whether you're accepting this at face value or just pointing out it was the justification offered for treating people with certain political leanings as people without rights. But regardless it's worth pointing out that factoids like that are what give anti-Communists a bad name, as it's very, very wrong, particularly post WW2. Note that I'm saying that as someone who is very much on the anti-Communist side.
  - unimpressive 13y ago
    >I don't know whether you're accepting this at face value or just pointing out it was the justification offered for treating people with certain political leanings as people without rights. A little of both, I was going to point out the existence of opposition communists, but they seemed too minor to merit mention. Unless of course you want to show me the non-trotskyists who weren't in the pay of the U.S.S.R? I admit my knowledge of the various communist parties is pretty flimsy.[0] [0]: This is why I qualify most of my statements with things like "pretty much" or "most of" or "almost every", guess I slipped up here. EDIT: "pay" is probably the wrong word there, maybe "under the ideological command of" would be a better description.
    - scarmig 13y ago
      I mean, pick one at random. There were a good number of Communist Parties who accepted the Moscow line hook line and sinker--the CPUSA being the foremost example of that, at times worse than non-Soviet Warsaw Pact CPs. But, to name a couple... Spain, Italy, and the rest of the Eurocommunists (which probably should include Australia); Japan and it's very peace and anti-nuclear oriented party; China and its affiliated Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist-Mao Zedong thought-style parties, which killed more USSR troops in armed conflict than the USA ever did; the Khmer Rouge, which was effectively a murderous pariah state only supported by the PRC (ultimately being replaced by a leftist Soviet and Vietnamese-affiliated government); India with its half a dozen of Communist sects that I can never keep straight in elected office; Yugoslavia with its market socialism and Non-Aligned foreign policy. There are even oddities like Albania, which took an ultra-pro-Soviet position that outpaced the Soviet Union's CP (it argued that it was turning too far away from Stalin). And ideologically the Cuban Communist Party had few moorings, mostly providing a gloss for nationalism until it actually achieved power. Even in the USA, although CPUSA was effectively defined as the group of people with slavish devotion to the USSR, it constantly shed members or purged them, who formed their own groups that were anti-Soviet in principle, though many still grudgingly thought it was the lesser of two evils when it came to foreign policy. And the UK Communist left was infamous for its variety of views leading to a "one person, one party" system. I'd say the biggest issue with your claim, though (aside from ignoring truculent Trotskyites, whose level of influence has persistently remained stuck at zero) is it ignores the China-USSR split. This isn't to the credit of those Communists who weren't on the USSR's side; they were the cheerleaders of the Khmer Rouge, Cultural Revolution, and Shining Path. Most USSR-affiliated ones, by contrast, steadfastly supported parliamentary tactics because they were more likely to rebound to Soviet benefit. It was a very real and relevant split.
- rmc 13y ago
  I think a lot of stuff came out after the ussr fell, and Russia admitted to stuff that happened over the 20th century. One of the things they admitted was how much control they had over communist parties in the USA
- coldtea 13y ago
  >Basically, every communist (Read: Marxist-Leninist/Stalinist/etc) party that existed during the 20th century took its orders from the U.S.S.R. That's totally wrong. Especially in Hoover's time. Tons of countries with ruling communist parties had broken ties with USSR or were independent in the first place, if not outright hostile (like China). And there were also lots of non ruling communist parties, especially in Western Europe and UK, that were anti-USSR, anti-Stalinist, etc. In the US, the so-called New Left, was decidedly anti-USSR too, (which is one of the reasons for the "New" moniker). And that's before we add other communist parties, that were in "war" with USSR, like the Trotskyists.
pyre 13y ago
It wasn't so much that Communism was illegal, but it was: 1) A witch-hunt in the context of McCarthy-ism. 2) The possibility that KGB spies could turn said person into an agent using the person's "Communist leanings." I'm not saying that I agree with it, but I don't think that Communism was ever "illegal" in any sense (I could be wrong).
- mynameishere 13y ago
  Real communism was pretty close to being illegal as it explicitly calls for revolution, in contrast with social democracy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act_trials_of_communist_party_leaders http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act_trials_of_communist_p... The "witch-hunt" term needs to go away. The government was lousy with communists and soviet agents. McCarthy was ultimately not very helpful, as the media has found it very easy to use him to make the anti-communists look like the real villains.
  - cadlin 13y ago
    Most Smith Act convictions were overturned by the Supreme Court because people were convicted when they hadn't done anything besides being a member of a political party. That's not the sort of thing that makes anti-communists look good.
  - pyre 13y ago
    | Real communism was pretty close to being illegal | as it explicitly calls for revolution, in contrast | with social democracy. Marx believed that the transition to Communism would go like this: Democracy => Socialism => Communism with each of those transitions being a bloody revolution. The transition to Communism wouldn't necessarily have to be a bloody revolution just because Marx thought that it would be (as evidenced, to him, by the transition from Totalitarianism => Democracy). Also, the term "Communist-sympathizer" could very well have applied to many people at the time that were more in favour of social programs like universal health care. | The "witch-hunt" term needs to go away. This is one of those times that the term witch-hunt is actually useful. Once you are accused of being a Communist-sympathizer, everything you do is under a microscope, and you're guilty until proven innocent. By the time you're accused it's practically a fore-gone conclusion, and no one wants to listen to you. It's an Us vs. Them mentality, and you are accused of being one of Them, and now you have to prove that you're One of Us. Does this sound like something helpful? | the media has found it very easy to use him to | make the anti-communists look like the real villains. This isn't an all-or-nothing proposition. It isn't a case where the 'evil people' are either the anti-communists, or the communists, and that's the end of it. No one things that the USSR was a "worker's paradise," but at the same time, "I'm working against these other bad people," is no excuse for bad behaviour.
saraid216 13y ago
> A surveillance state is _certainly_ incompatible with the constitution That part isn't actually true. It's arguably and intuitively incompatible, but it's not certainly incompatible. This is a really important difference that keeps getting swept aside by ideological rants. If you're going to make the Constitution your basis for law or morality, you need to (1) know exactly what it says and (2) have a very strong sense of its history of interpretation. I would recommend that you avoid this line of argument, though, for two reasons. One, it's not portable to other countries. "Incompatibility with the U.S. Constitution" is a bad reason for China or the UK to not become a surveillance state. This forces you into an American-centric position that's basically blind to international nuance. Two, the Constitution can and will be changed, and the reasoning for doing so is never going to be "compatibility with the Constitution". It is rare that I would recommend a libertarian perspective, but this is a case where it would behoove you to study how they come to their positions. I recommend the libertarian one because it's simple-minded enough to take little effort to understand their reasoning process.

unimpressive 13y ago

>Having not lived during the Cold War nor studied it, I don't have a perspective on what that is like. But I find it difficult to understand the idea that a political ideology like Communism ought to be "illegal." Let me help: http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/coldwar/documents/pdf/4-1.pdf#zoom=100 http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/c... Basically, every communist (Read: Marxist-Leninist/Stalinist/etc) party that existed during the 20th century took its orders from the U.S.S.R. The authoritarian form of Marxism practiced by the Bolsheviks would never fly with the population of the United States, so the Soviets would use the sympathies of American communists to leak info and sabotage national defense programs. This meant that every communist was a de facto U.S.S.R spy in the eyes of the USA. The above document is a report to President Truman in 1946 about the ideological underpinnings that would go on to cause the cold war.

wavefunction 13y ago
And we had our own Democracy cheerleaders trying to export our system to every corner of the globe as well. If they were honest, they would have allowed discussion and dialog rather than the McCarthyite witch hunts and branding communism as AIDs-spreading terrorists strapped with nuclear suicide bombs. They didn't even trust in their own ideology to survive a rigorous examination, and that's why they turned to demonization.
- btilly 13y ago
  Not so fast. We backed multiple military coups in multiple democracies. Basically any tin-pot dictator who wanted our support could declare themselves "anti-communist" and they had it. And many, many did so. No matter how obvious it should have been that we did not want to support their actions.
  - wavefunction 13y ago
    Well, that was sort of my point. We were so hell bent on fighting an enemy we'd created in our minds (and vice-versa for those in the USSR) that we lost all rationality, it seems. I'd liken it to religious fanatics who seem incredibly fearful of other religions. If they're so sure they've got "the way," then their beliefs should be able to stand up to scrutiny or comparison with other belief systems.
    - coldtea 13y ago
      >Well, that was sort of my point. We were so hell bent on fighting an enemy we'd created in our minds (and vice-versa for those in the USSR) that we lost all rationality, it seems. No, the foreign policy actions were very rational. It's not like they got duped by some dictator posing as "anti-communist". They knew what they were getting and what they were supporting (as all historical accounts and de-classified documents show). They just wanted to gain influence to those parts of the world (for resources, trade routes, military bases etc) at any cost.
      - wavefunction 13y ago
        Yeah, I suppose that creating the enemy in communism that we did served the foreign policy purposes of the nutjobs pushing it, but it wasn't rational at the human level.
- lostlogin 13y ago
  Had?
  - wavefunction 13y ago
    In the context of the Cold War/struggle with USSR... But you're right, they're still out there causing havoc.
scarmig 13y ago
"Basically, every communist (Read: Marxist-Leninist/Stalinist/etc) party that existed during the 20th century took its orders from the U.S.S.R." I don't know whether you're accepting this at face value or just pointing out it was the justification offered for treating people with certain political leanings as people without rights. But regardless it's worth pointing out that factoids like that are what give anti-Communists a bad name, as it's very, very wrong, particularly post WW2. Note that I'm saying that as someone who is very much on the anti-Communist side.
- unimpressive 13y ago
  >I don't know whether you're accepting this at face value or just pointing out it was the justification offered for treating people with certain political leanings as people without rights. A little of both, I was going to point out the existence of opposition communists, but they seemed too minor to merit mention. Unless of course you want to show me the non-trotskyists who weren't in the pay of the U.S.S.R? I admit my knowledge of the various communist parties is pretty flimsy.[0] [0]: This is why I qualify most of my statements with things like "pretty much" or "most of" or "almost every", guess I slipped up here. EDIT: "pay" is probably the wrong word there, maybe "under the ideological command of" would be a better description.
  - scarmig 13y ago
    I mean, pick one at random. There were a good number of Communist Parties who accepted the Moscow line hook line and sinker--the CPUSA being the foremost example of that, at times worse than non-Soviet Warsaw Pact CPs. But, to name a couple... Spain, Italy, and the rest of the Eurocommunists (which probably should include Australia); Japan and it's very peace and anti-nuclear oriented party; China and its affiliated Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist-Mao Zedong thought-style parties, which killed more USSR troops in armed conflict than the USA ever did; the Khmer Rouge, which was effectively a murderous pariah state only supported by the PRC (ultimately being replaced by a leftist Soviet and Vietnamese-affiliated government); India with its half a dozen of Communist sects that I can never keep straight in elected office; Yugoslavia with its market socialism and Non-Aligned foreign policy. There are even oddities like Albania, which took an ultra-pro-Soviet position that outpaced the Soviet Union's CP (it argued that it was turning too far away from Stalin). And ideologically the Cuban Communist Party had few moorings, mostly providing a gloss for nationalism until it actually achieved power. Even in the USA, although CPUSA was effectively defined as the group of people with slavish devotion to the USSR, it constantly shed members or purged them, who formed their own groups that were anti-Soviet in principle, though many still grudgingly thought it was the lesser of two evils when it came to foreign policy. And the UK Communist left was infamous for its variety of views leading to a "one person, one party" system. I'd say the biggest issue with your claim, though (aside from ignoring truculent Trotskyites, whose level of influence has persistently remained stuck at zero) is it ignores the China-USSR split. This isn't to the credit of those Communists who weren't on the USSR's side; they were the cheerleaders of the Khmer Rouge, Cultural Revolution, and Shining Path. Most USSR-affiliated ones, by contrast, steadfastly supported parliamentary tactics because they were more likely to rebound to Soviet benefit. It was a very real and relevant split.
rmc 13y ago
I think a lot of stuff came out after the ussr fell, and Russia admitted to stuff that happened over the 20th century. One of the things they admitted was how much control they had over communist parties in the USA
coldtea 13y ago
>Basically, every communist (Read: Marxist-Leninist/Stalinist/etc) party that existed during the 20th century took its orders from the U.S.S.R. That's totally wrong. Especially in Hoover's time. Tons of countries with ruling communist parties had broken ties with USSR or were independent in the first place, if not outright hostile (like China). And there were also lots of non ruling communist parties, especially in Western Europe and UK, that were anti-USSR, anti-Stalinist, etc. In the US, the so-called New Left, was decidedly anti-USSR too, (which is one of the reasons for the "New" moniker). And that's before we add other communist parties, that were in "war" with USSR, like the Trotskyists.

pyre 13y ago

It wasn't so much that Communism was illegal, but it was: 1) A witch-hunt in the context of McCarthy-ism. 2) The possibility that KGB spies could turn said person into an agent using the person's "Communist leanings." I'm not saying that I agree with it, but I don't think that Communism was ever "illegal" in any sense (I could be wrong).

mynameishere 13y ago
Real communism was pretty close to being illegal as it explicitly calls for revolution, in contrast with social democracy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act_trials_of_communist_party_leaders http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act_trials_of_communist_p... The "witch-hunt" term needs to go away. The government was lousy with communists and soviet agents. McCarthy was ultimately not very helpful, as the media has found it very easy to use him to make the anti-communists look like the real villains.
- cadlin 13y ago
  Most Smith Act convictions were overturned by the Supreme Court because people were convicted when they hadn't done anything besides being a member of a political party. That's not the sort of thing that makes anti-communists look good.
- pyre 13y ago
  | Real communism was pretty close to being illegal | as it explicitly calls for revolution, in contrast | with social democracy. Marx believed that the transition to Communism would go like this: Democracy => Socialism => Communism with each of those transitions being a bloody revolution. The transition to Communism wouldn't necessarily have to be a bloody revolution just because Marx thought that it would be (as evidenced, to him, by the transition from Totalitarianism => Democracy). Also, the term "Communist-sympathizer" could very well have applied to many people at the time that were more in favour of social programs like universal health care. | The "witch-hunt" term needs to go away. This is one of those times that the term witch-hunt is actually useful. Once you are accused of being a Communist-sympathizer, everything you do is under a microscope, and you're guilty until proven innocent. By the time you're accused it's practically a fore-gone conclusion, and no one wants to listen to you. It's an Us vs. Them mentality, and you are accused of being one of Them, and now you have to prove that you're One of Us. Does this sound like something helpful? | the media has found it very easy to use him to | make the anti-communists look like the real villains. This isn't an all-or-nothing proposition. It isn't a case where the 'evil people' are either the anti-communists, or the communists, and that's the end of it. No one things that the USSR was a "worker's paradise," but at the same time, "I'm working against these other bad people," is no excuse for bad behaviour.

saraid216 13y ago

> A surveillance state is _certainly_ incompatible with the constitution That part isn't actually true. It's arguably and intuitively incompatible, but it's not certainly incompatible. This is a really important difference that keeps getting swept aside by ideological rants. If you're going to make the Constitution your basis for law or morality, you need to (1) know exactly what it says and (2) have a very strong sense of its history of interpretation. I would recommend that you avoid this line of argument, though, for two reasons. One, it's not portable to other countries. "Incompatibility with the U.S. Constitution" is a bad reason for China or the UK to not become a surveillance state. This forces you into an American-centric position that's basically blind to international nuance. Two, the Constitution can and will be changed, and the reasoning for doing so is never going to be "compatibility with the Constitution". It is rare that I would recommend a libertarian perspective, but this is a case where it would behoove you to study how they come to their positions. I recommend the libertarian one because it's simple-minded enough to take little effort to understand their reasoning process.