Re: [OPE] Wikileaks, Karl Marx and you

> Personally I would not want to be associated with wikileaks, and I will tell
> you why. It's not that what they do may not also turn out to have merits,
> such as demonstrating war crimes in the public domain, but rather that if
> you endorse the general principle of people releasing confidential or
> private information, or hacking into other people's databases, you invite
> others to do the same to you. It doesn't really help people to make their
> way in the world.
 
 
Hi Jurriaan:
 
wikileaks doesn't endorse a "general principle" that all confidential
information should become public.
 
I don't think they (or we) can apply the same standard to individuals as you can
to corporations and states.
 
I suppose some might complain about an alleged double standard here,
but I don't see it.
 
 
> Perhaps most important of all, the indiscriminate release of a barrage of
> confidential information by wikileaks lacks a clearly articulated political
> motive. It merely conveys the opinion that the public has a "right to know",
> and that the confidentiality of the information is inappropriate or unjust.
 
 
The 'right to know' is an important principle that we should apply to
states and other social institutions.
 
"The truth will set you free" may have a Biblical source but it also has
a political content. Most revolutionaries have understood this maxim (but
have not always applied it consistently).
 
It is quite different from an "anything goes" claim.
 
In solidarity, Jerry
 
PS: (speaking of truth, states, and Marx): what do you and others on the
list make of this: "All forms of the state have democracy for their truth,
and for that reason are false to the extent that they are not democracy"
(_Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right_)?
 
                                                
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Received on Tue Jan 18 13:34:13 2011