Surveillance

To what extent should a socialist state observe its citizens? Is spying on (presumably) innocent people justified under certain circumstances? If so, how much is too much?

How do you feel about government and corporate data gathering as it is now?

The more I look into it,the more you realize mass surveillance is ineffective. IF we're to have a state, it probably will have a surveillence/intellgience apparatus of some kind, however the type of surveillence done by the NSA for example would be cost prohibitive to a burgeoning socialist country and unnecessary as well, there are far more important things than surveillence such as developing computerize planning systems, etc. You don't need a sophisticated spy network to find out whos against you whos porky and whos not would be pretty obvious by who actually owns the land and businesses

with regards to the NSA, I do believe spying without just cause is unethical, however, I also don't care that much because its never been useful anyway. With all their unlimited data collection, the NSA has never been confirmed to stop a single islamist attack. Sure, they claim to, but its never been confirmed, they have never said specifically what, because they're probably lying

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STASI style

The two purposes for the ridiculously comprehensive surveilance state that we have now are to prevent dissident movements from becoming problems and to enforce intellectual property rights. Neither will be necessary in a socialist society. Like, said, class interests are a reliable indicator of who will be inclined to cause trouble. Intellectual property must be eradicated.

the preventing dissidents thing seems like something a socialist state will ahve to do since every non-socialist state will be funding counter-revolutionary groups

dumb MLs

dumb anarchists

everyone control the means of surveillance, no privacy for anyone

Socialism can exist with a state, with a state it is required, communism requires no state, I am convinced the people on here haven't read Marx and I'm an anarchist. These so called "anarchists" (who are actually liberals) need to read and learn the very basic definitions of communism and socialism:

Okay, not a socialist state then. An ideologically-driven organization holding a monopoly on the use of force in a given territory with the function of imposing the will of the working class on the bourgeoisie that totally isn't a state.

Look up the Marxist definition of a state.

Marx doesn't make a distinction between communism and socialism. The dictatorship of the proletariat will necessarily have a state but that isn't socialism/communism.

my favourite anarchists thing is how secret police and other state apparatuses are bad but every anarchist revolution that has lasted longer than a month developed them

It's the dictatorship of the proletariat which is a state.

dictatorship of the proletariat just means the proletariat runs society, it doesn't mean an actual dictatorship. we currently live in the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie

Yeah I'm aware. A state is the apparatus that one class uses to dominate another. The dictatorship of proletariat is a state due to the fact that there is still a proletariat who needs to supress bourgeoisie class interests. Once these class distinctions no longer exist there will no longer be a state and we will have moved into socialism. The whole idea of socialism being the transitory phase and analogous to the DotP was an invention of Lenin.

While that is true, after the revolution it would cost the capitalists dearly to lure locals into forming armed counterrevolutionary groups. Could the afford to raise a big enough force to challenge the revolution? They always seem to do that sort of thing during the revolution, but afterward the threat dissipates.

the experiences of pretty much every socialist state say that some sort of internal security appratus is neccessary. The US trained and supplyed rebel groups in the warsaw pact for its entire existence and they armed rebel groups within the societ union itself well into the 1950's. If the capitalist's can find a way to harm a revolutionary state they will do it.

not sure that's their main objective, more political surveillance and probably industrial espionage. They where caught tapping Merkels phone, thats probably unrelated to islamist extremism.

this

I guess the question then is if the revolution has seized the majority of the means of production yet.