I'm unsure if this is sarcasm or not.
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.
Where can I find some serious research on that?
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).
There is absolutely nothing noble about it.
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.
Damaging to whom? How is the average person damaged?
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.
What you mean is counter-intelligence, and yes, that's absolutely an important thing.
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.
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.
I'm not trolling you, I want to know where you draw the line (if at all). 9% false positive? 99%? 99.999%?
Let's McCarthyism what it is: Unamerican.
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.
You seem to have internalised this logic, since you're assuming all communists are spies for another nation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The quality of life for 99.99% of the population has increased more in the last 100 years than it did in the first 10,000 years of the human civilization. For a graphic example consider Charles Dickens *, he documented how people lived in the 19th century and it reads absolutely horrifying and unthinkable today.
Yes the rich are getting richer faster than the poor are improving their lot. However the poor's quality of life went up tremendously - housing, sanitation, hygiene, calories/nutrients, medical care, workplace safety, transportation, life expectancy, education, you name it. There is simply more wealth to go around today. Is the wealth distribution just? We can debate that **. Is the capitalist system improving lives across the board? Most certainly yes.
* or Friedrich Engels
** personally I would avoid this frame completely, but hey
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.
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.
Just because poor countries become socialist doesn't mean socialism makes them poor. Consider that they were kept poor and socialism is the way out.
or lucky enough to have a goose laying golden eggs. i.e. the North Sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_oil
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.)
You can't talk effectively about something until everybody agrees on what the words mean.
> 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
> 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.
"On May 26, 1947, the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a memo stating, 'With regard to the picture It's a Wonderful Life, [redacted] stated in substance that the film represented rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a 'scrooge-type' so that he would be the most hated man in the picture. This, according to these sources, is a common trick used by Communists. [In] addition, [redacted] stated that, in his opinion, this picture deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters.' Film historian Andrew Sarris observed as 'curious' that 'the censors never noticed that the villainous Mr. Potter gets away with robbery without being caught or punished in any way'."
The FBI being distracted with this nonsense is probably the greatest gift the real spies could have hoped for.
Of course, few communists openly come out and say they are making communist propaganda. It's a bit silly to think Capra would have been one of them, or that "It's a Wonderful Life" doesn't also celebrate the banker George Bailey (portrayed by conservative Republican Jimmy Stewart), but I can understand why the government would want to monitor communist groups, even if they get it laughably wrong from time to time.