I fail to see how your first statement has anything to do with my comment. Of course I don’t tolerate Nazis, fascists or anything of the sort and trying to lump your idea of ‘tankies’ into this category does remind me of what conservatives and reactionaries sometimes do with ‘woke’
Also just because I don’t agree with you doesn’t mean I’m one of ‘you people’ ‘tankies’ ‘red fascists’ or wumaos and you are just lumping me in with anyone who you associate with being part of that vague group. Just because I don’t agree with you on any issue doesn’t mean that I’m a state propagandist.
What would you call the position that defends authoritarian communism even to the point of justifying genocide and brutal suppression of opposition and free press?
What the fuck does that question have to do with anything? The US could have a personal hatred for every individual Uyghur Muslim in the world and China would still be in the midst of trying to genocide them.
I’m an American and I care, so at least partially yes, America does care. And because we have a democracy, the government (at least imperfectly) reflects the priorities of the people.
But I also agree with the other poster that doesn’t really have anything to do with anything we were taking about
at what level of desperation do you have to be that you look at totalitarian states and decide they’re the forefront of leftism in the world, instead of just like, admitting they didn’t work and trying to avoid the mistakes they made? seriously, why? in an ideology and belief system heavily entrenched in nuance why do you view the world in black and white? why is it being a “lib” to say that governments who repress the human rights and civil liberties of minorities are not practicing leftism in good faith? the same governments who have horrifically and violently crushed workers rights movements? who have enforced crippling wealth inequality in their own borders? do you even know what leftism is?
The state owning the means of production is no better than capitalists. Only when the workers control it themselves will communism be achieved and settling for anything less shouldn’t be accepted
I get your general point, but I’d like to say that theoretically you could have a socialist system where the state owns the means of production for certain industries and the workers would have control through the state as long as the state is an actual functioning democracy.
The problem, of course, is that states with that much power almost always devolve into authoritarianism because of the corrupting force of power.
All I’m trying to say is that, if done right, you could have actual worker control via the state as long as the state is actually listening to and, in some sense, subservient to the people.
This is no way defends the state capitalism we see in China and Russia since they are not even close to a functioning democracy.
I believe I’m an anarchist at heart, though I’m not sure the world, with its current population, is ready for that level of self reliance and community building. Lots of learned behavior to break.
We kind of dug ourselves a mighty deep hole as a species. We need to be better.
Growing up in a western capitalist state has left me fairly jaded as far as politics go, tbf
The question always comes down to how do we stop people from being bad. The answer escapes me tbh.
“The question always comes down to how do we stop people from being bad.” This is the problem with not having a materialist analysis of the world, its not about being bad or being good or morality at all. At large people are motivated by self interest, perpetuating and sustaining their material conditions. Its only through struggle of the oppressed against those in power that change can come about.
I am an anarchist. And I understand that. I flip flop between having hope and thinking there is none. Some days I think we missed our chance and now we’re too far gone. Other days I look at movements like the Zapatistas and Rojava and think that their may be hope. Ultimately I don’t think any first world country is gonna have it happen. Maybe if a country had a successful anarchist revolution and society, it’d be able to inspire people in first world countries. But I do think our hope lies outside of first world countries. At least till there is a proper example to inspire people.
I do still try to put an effort into organizing where I live. As I think it is still important to do that. Even if I don’t think it will garner fruit till there is a true example of anarchism in action.
I’ve found that the most I can do is to touch people in my everyday, hopefully sparking some sort of revolution within themselves, but not in an intrusive or dogmatic way. I live in a particularly conservative area, and I find that they are just people, people whove been indoctrinated to the point of apathy, with a side of fear of the unknown ie racism etc. I’m knee deep in the shit, and it’s overwhelming sometimes.
I am not hopeful for any political or economic agenda. But I am hopeful of the human spirit.
It’s pretty resilient, but also malleable. You add in our self perpetuating ‘I me mine’ mentality and you end up with bad actors taking advantage of the majority, decent people.
I do agree that the 1st world, at least where I am, would need something pretty tragic to spark some sort of sweeping change. We are not taught self awareness, at least I wasn’t, and I think that’s where alot of our progress will need to come from.
Supporting Cuba doesn’t a tankie make: Good arguments can be had that Cuba is actually a democracy, and not in the “democracy is when party rules” kind of way. Supporting North Korea, OTOH…
Fun fact: you can be opposed to capitalism without being a communist.
You [tankies] maybe opposed to capitalism, but you’re still in favor of the coercive control of individuals by a state-level entity. That’s just another flavor of authoritarianism.
You’ll get to vote on a lord to rule the town, and they’ll get to vote on the barons to rule over each barony, and each barony will basically be its own country anyway so they maintain the right to secede and stuff like that, and the barons will get to elect a monarch and a council to advise them who will rule the country.
So you see it’s totally democratic and it definitely won’t turn into a de facto autocracy that’s not meaningfully different from regular feudalism this time
That’s closer to anarchism then communism. Communism, as it’s generally developed, has a central state authority.
Personally, I see the existence of a state and individual liberties as always under tension. You can’t have a state without some infringement on individual expressions. But some restriction on individual expression is necessary for a functioning society. The question is what infringements and under what circumstances are acceptable.
You’re just licking a different boot. All forms of hierarchy need to be abolished. State and capitalist. You don’t advocate for workers, all you advocate for is state control.
We’d have more than two if it hadn’t been for tankies stabbing us in the back. But go, go on, tell me how Makhno was a counter-revolutionary or something. Kulak? Or was it about not being able to tolerate a non-authoritarian alternative.
As to successful tankie revolutions… there’s none. They devolved into either state capitalist tyranny, capitalist tyranny, or straight tyranny. Cuba and Vietnam don’t count they were wars for independence from colonial powers first, communist second in Vietnam’s case and in Cuba’s fourth or fifth or something.
We’d have more than two if it hadn’t been for tankies stabbing us in the back.
This is a phrase that keeps popping up in anarchist spaces but once you look at what it makes reference to it’s… Simply not true? It’s mostly used to refer to the Spanish Civil War, but one only needs to pick up a high school history book to learn that the May Days were a result of the anarchists attempting to antagonize the entirety of the Republican side by hindering war efforts, and not only the PCE or other Soviet-alligned communists, who held a rather small amount of power inside the Republican government.
But go, go on, tell me how Makhno was a counter-revolutionary or something. Kulak? Or was it about not being able to tolerate a non-authoritarian alternative.
If to not be authoritarian is a priority for you, reading Voline’s accounts of his participation in the makhnovist movement should be enough to realize that his project is probably not the one you want to rally behind the most.
Just ignore the Zapatistas who are a current example of anarchism in practice.
And saying the Soviets held little power in the Spanish Republic is just a bald faced lie. The Soviets withheld supplies from non-soviet militias and actively damaged the war effort because they’d rather focus on garnering power than actually fighting fascists.
You know it’s kinda rich of you to refer to, of all people, Voline. If he was critical of Platformism guess what he had to say about Bolshevism. Even before Trotsky tried to have him killed.
See one factor of Anarchism is that you invariably don’t end up having the same ideas of how to do stuff once the dust has settled and power is secured. Yes, Makhno was quite a bit of a Bonarparte. That doesn’t mean that he would’ve crushed disagreements with tanks, he would’ve taken an offer of “Comrade, we thank you for all you’ve done but you’re a fighter not a politician, here’s a nice Dacha”, and then written his memoirs. Anarchism adapts itself, Anarchists adapt themselves to local circumstances and culture, shaping it as much as the utopia is shaping people. As a gestalt, it is shapeless, therefore, it can succeed: Because it does not need to, must not, fight the people.
…somehow you also ignored the two successful ones. I kinda wonder whether you even know which I’m talking about.
Also, if you bother answering at all I’d like you to give an example of a revolution of yours that didn’t end in tyranny. Shouldn’t actually be that hard for a tankie as you don’t think tyranny is bad, so why not admit it that there’s none?
I thought it meant the crazy liberals who want a communist utopia where no one works. The ones that specifically are so deranged they useally ban any discussion that’s against their ideology.
Tankies are the ones who think you need a strong state (read authoritarian) to enforce communism.
They support the use of literal tanks to crush any rebellion or uprising against the authoritarian communist state, and then deny that it happened at all.
The term was coined when the soviets crushed the Hungarian rebellion of 1956 (local communists didn’t want to be under soviet rule, soviets sent in tanks) The original tankies supported the soviets
Then there’s Tiananmen Square, the CCP crushed protesters with tanks until fire hoses could wash the sludge down into the sewers, Tankies claim it was justified, when they acknowledge that it happened at all.
Tankies deny the ongoing genocide of the Uyghurs. Or claim that china is only detaining “rebels”.
And finally, tankies tend to be pro-Russia, even though it stopped pretending to be communist in the 90s. The tankies tend to be anti-Ukraine in this conflict.
Another aspect is the 100% denial of any western media or released intelligence, because it’s all evil capitalist propaganda.
Basically these types of Tankies have picked up a history book, seen the overwhelming evil that the western powers have propagated and decided that anyone who stands against the western powers must be good. Which is stupid as fuck.
The world isn’t black and white, it’s not good vs evil, it’s varying shades of greed and evil vs other shades of greed and evil. Tankies tend to not understand this simple truth.
I don’t think that it’s accurate to call tankies liberals.
A lot of this gets thought of on a left-right spectrum, but it’s really more like a compass, with economics being left-right, and authoritarian/antiauthoritarian being top-bottom. Liberals in the US would be slightly left of center on the economic spectrum, but largely centrist on the authoritarianism spectrum. Tankies would be far left on the economic spectrum, but at the top of the authoritarian spectrum. Libertarians (or, what gets called libertarian now) would be at the extreme right on the economic spectrum, but at the very bottom of the authoritarianism spectrum. (The most modern libertarians are not actually anti-authoritarian, although they claim to be. E.g., many of them oppose abortion rights.)
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No it’s an insult for red fascists
Explaining a meaningless insult using another one kind of just proves his point
“You don’t tolerate Nazis? Perhaps YOU are the REAL Nazis”
Why are you people all the same? Do you get a 50 Cent Army script or something?
I fail to see how your first statement has anything to do with my comment. Of course I don’t tolerate Nazis, fascists or anything of the sort and trying to lump your idea of ‘tankies’ into this category does remind me of what conservatives and reactionaries sometimes do with ‘woke’ Also just because I don’t agree with you doesn’t mean I’m one of ‘you people’ ‘tankies’ ‘red fascists’ or wumaos and you are just lumping me in with anyone who you associate with being part of that vague group. Just because I don’t agree with you on any issue doesn’t mean that I’m a state propagandist.
Not surprising
Maybe you could try explaining your reasoning to me instead of immediately comparing me to the Nazis?
What are your opinions on the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact?
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What would you call the position that defends authoritarian communism even to the point of justifying genocide and brutal suppression of opposition and free press?
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What the fuck does that question have to do with anything? The US could have a personal hatred for every individual Uyghur Muslim in the world and China would still be in the midst of trying to genocide them.
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I’m an American and I care, so at least partially yes, America does care. And because we have a democracy, the government (at least imperfectly) reflects the priorities of the people.
But I also agree with the other poster that doesn’t really have anything to do with anything we were taking about
The only thing our government reflects is the priorities of capital…
at what level of desperation do you have to be that you look at totalitarian states and decide they’re the forefront of leftism in the world, instead of just like, admitting they didn’t work and trying to avoid the mistakes they made? seriously, why? in an ideology and belief system heavily entrenched in nuance why do you view the world in black and white? why is it being a “lib” to say that governments who repress the human rights and civil liberties of minorities are not practicing leftism in good faith? the same governments who have horrifically and violently crushed workers rights movements? who have enforced crippling wealth inequality in their own borders? do you even know what leftism is?
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The state owning the means of production is no better than capitalists. Only when the workers control it themselves will communism be achieved and settling for anything less shouldn’t be accepted
I get your general point, but I’d like to say that theoretically you could have a socialist system where the state owns the means of production for certain industries and the workers would have control through the state as long as the state is an actual functioning democracy.
The problem, of course, is that states with that much power almost always devolve into authoritarianism because of the corrupting force of power.
All I’m trying to say is that, if done right, you could have actual worker control via the state as long as the state is actually listening to and, in some sense, subservient to the people.
This is no way defends the state capitalism we see in China and Russia since they are not even close to a functioning democracy.
States with that much power will always devolve into authoritarianism. If there is a power structure, it will be corrupted. That’s the issue.
Yea that’s where I’m at. Human nature is a bitch.
I believe I’m an anarchist at heart, though I’m not sure the world, with its current population, is ready for that level of self reliance and community building. Lots of learned behavior to break.
We kind of dug ourselves a mighty deep hole as a species. We need to be better.
Growing up in a western capitalist state has left me fairly jaded as far as politics go, tbf
The question always comes down to how do we stop people from being bad. The answer escapes me tbh.
“The question always comes down to how do we stop people from being bad.” This is the problem with not having a materialist analysis of the world, its not about being bad or being good or morality at all. At large people are motivated by self interest, perpetuating and sustaining their material conditions. Its only through struggle of the oppressed against those in power that change can come about.
I am an anarchist. And I understand that. I flip flop between having hope and thinking there is none. Some days I think we missed our chance and now we’re too far gone. Other days I look at movements like the Zapatistas and Rojava and think that their may be hope. Ultimately I don’t think any first world country is gonna have it happen. Maybe if a country had a successful anarchist revolution and society, it’d be able to inspire people in first world countries. But I do think our hope lies outside of first world countries. At least till there is a proper example to inspire people.
I do still try to put an effort into organizing where I live. As I think it is still important to do that. Even if I don’t think it will garner fruit till there is a true example of anarchism in action.
I really feel what you have said.
I’ve found that the most I can do is to touch people in my everyday, hopefully sparking some sort of revolution within themselves, but not in an intrusive or dogmatic way. I live in a particularly conservative area, and I find that they are just people, people whove been indoctrinated to the point of apathy, with a side of fear of the unknown ie racism etc. I’m knee deep in the shit, and it’s overwhelming sometimes.
I am not hopeful for any political or economic agenda. But I am hopeful of the human spirit.
It’s pretty resilient, but also malleable. You add in our self perpetuating ‘I me mine’ mentality and you end up with bad actors taking advantage of the majority, decent people.
I do agree that the 1st world, at least where I am, would need something pretty tragic to spark some sort of sweeping change. We are not taught self awareness, at least I wasn’t, and I think that’s where alot of our progress will need to come from.
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Supporting Cuba doesn’t a tankie make: Good arguments can be had that Cuba is actually a democracy, and not in the “democracy is when party rules” kind of way. Supporting North Korea, OTOH…
@lemmybrucelee @lobster_teapot Go back to lemmygrad bootlicker
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Fun fact: you can be opposed to capitalism without being a communist.
You [tankies] maybe opposed to capitalism, but you’re still in favor of the coercive control of individuals by a state-level entity. That’s just another flavor of authoritarianism.
Feudalism might make a comeback lads
Feudalism will be different this time we swear.
You’ll get to vote on a lord to rule the town, and they’ll get to vote on the barons to rule over each barony, and each barony will basically be its own country anyway so they maintain the right to secede and stuff like that, and the barons will get to elect a monarch and a council to advise them who will rule the country.
So you see it’s totally democratic and it definitely won’t turn into a de facto autocracy that’s not meaningfully different from regular feudalism this time
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That’s closer to anarchism then communism. Communism, as it’s generally developed, has a central state authority.
Personally, I see the existence of a state and individual liberties as always under tension. You can’t have a state without some infringement on individual expressions. But some restriction on individual expression is necessary for a functioning society. The question is what infringements and under what circumstances are acceptable.
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Economics is political. Always has been.
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You’re just licking a different boot. All forms of hierarchy need to be abolished. State and capitalist. You don’t advocate for workers, all you advocate for is state control.
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Maybe quite stabbing us in the back and practice some of that “left unity” you tankies love to preach about
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We’d have more than two if it hadn’t been for tankies stabbing us in the back. But go, go on, tell me how Makhno was a counter-revolutionary or something. Kulak? Or was it about not being able to tolerate a non-authoritarian alternative.
As to successful tankie revolutions… there’s none. They devolved into either state capitalist tyranny, capitalist tyranny, or straight tyranny. Cuba and Vietnam don’t count they were wars for independence from colonial powers first, communist second in Vietnam’s case and in Cuba’s fourth or fifth or something.
This is a phrase that keeps popping up in anarchist spaces but once you look at what it makes reference to it’s… Simply not true? It’s mostly used to refer to the Spanish Civil War, but one only needs to pick up a high school history book to learn that the May Days were a result of the anarchists attempting to antagonize the entirety of the Republican side by hindering war efforts, and not only the PCE or other Soviet-alligned communists, who held a rather small amount of power inside the Republican government.
If to not be authoritarian is a priority for you, reading Voline’s accounts of his participation in the makhnovist movement should be enough to realize that his project is probably not the one you want to rally behind the most.
Just ignore the Zapatistas who are a current example of anarchism in practice.
And saying the Soviets held little power in the Spanish Republic is just a bald faced lie. The Soviets withheld supplies from non-soviet militias and actively damaged the war effort because they’d rather focus on garnering power than actually fighting fascists.
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You know it’s kinda rich of you to refer to, of all people, Voline. If he was critical of Platformism guess what he had to say about Bolshevism. Even before Trotsky tried to have him killed.
See one factor of Anarchism is that you invariably don’t end up having the same ideas of how to do stuff once the dust has settled and power is secured. Yes, Makhno was quite a bit of a Bonarparte. That doesn’t mean that he would’ve crushed disagreements with tanks, he would’ve taken an offer of “Comrade, we thank you for all you’ve done but you’re a fighter not a politician, here’s a nice Dacha”, and then written his memoirs. Anarchism adapts itself, Anarchists adapt themselves to local circumstances and culture, shaping it as much as the utopia is shaping people. As a gestalt, it is shapeless, therefore, it can succeed: Because it does not need to, must not, fight the people.
…somehow you also ignored the two successful ones. I kinda wonder whether you even know which I’m talking about.
Also, if you bother answering at all I’d like you to give an example of a revolution of yours that didn’t end in tyranny. Shouldn’t actually be that hard for a tankie as you don’t think tyranny is bad, so why not admit it that there’s none?
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Bro if a communism button existed Biden would be infinitely more likely to press it than Xi, and Biden sure as shit is not a communist.
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lolno
I thought it meant the crazy liberals who want a communist utopia where no one works. The ones that specifically are so deranged they useally ban any discussion that’s against their ideology.
Tankies are the ones who think you need a strong state (read authoritarian) to enforce communism.
They support the use of literal tanks to crush any rebellion or uprising against the authoritarian communist state, and then deny that it happened at all.
The term was coined when the soviets crushed the Hungarian rebellion of 1956 (local communists didn’t want to be under soviet rule, soviets sent in tanks) The original tankies supported the soviets
Then there’s Tiananmen Square, the CCP crushed protesters with tanks until fire hoses could wash the sludge down into the sewers, Tankies claim it was justified, when they acknowledge that it happened at all.
Tankies deny the ongoing genocide of the Uyghurs. Or claim that china is only detaining “rebels”.
And finally, tankies tend to be pro-Russia, even though it stopped pretending to be communist in the 90s. The tankies tend to be anti-Ukraine in this conflict.
Another aspect is the 100% denial of any western media or released intelligence, because it’s all evil capitalist propaganda.
Basically these types of Tankies have picked up a history book, seen the overwhelming evil that the western powers have propagated and decided that anyone who stands against the western powers must be good. Which is stupid as fuck.
The world isn’t black and white, it’s not good vs evil, it’s varying shades of greed and evil vs other shades of greed and evil. Tankies tend to not understand this simple truth.
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I don’t think that it’s accurate to call tankies liberals.
A lot of this gets thought of on a left-right spectrum, but it’s really more like a compass, with economics being left-right, and authoritarian/antiauthoritarian being top-bottom. Liberals in the US would be slightly left of center on the economic spectrum, but largely centrist on the authoritarianism spectrum. Tankies would be far left on the economic spectrum, but at the top of the authoritarian spectrum. Libertarians (or, what gets called libertarian now) would be at the extreme right on the economic spectrum, but at the very bottom of the authoritarianism spectrum. (The most modern libertarians are not actually anti-authoritarian, although they claim to be. E.g., many of them oppose abortion rights.)
The political compass is extremely dumb and completely useless for actual political analysis.