this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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Lefty Memes
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Wait, why do leftists hate leftists?
It's a joke, but "leftist" is such a wide term that it encompasses groups which don't really want to do much with each other, such as anarchists, bernie-bros, and ~red fash~ ~tankies~ marxist-leninists. Anarchists tend to not hate anarchists for example.
Here we go again, an anarchist calling Marxists leninists "red fash". What country destroyed Nazism, please remind us.
u mad?
Please remind us!
Aliens!
Seriously though, I don't know how anarchists can look at the consequences of the Perestroika, Glasnost and eventual dissolution of the Eastern Block, the millions of lives lost to unemployment, alcoholism, drugs and suicide, and still use the word "tankie" (coined to degrade the communists in support of the intervention of the USSR in Hungary when it went down that very path).
It's precisely because we saw the path of the USSR. Because we can see that ML regimes always leads to oppression and capitalism. They're just another way to convert poor agrarian/feudalist societies to capitalism and have no socialist potential. Terrible system.
Marxism-Leninism saved Eastern Europe from Nazism, the level of genocide we would have seen in Eastern Europe if it hadn't been for the existence of the USSR is unimaginable. Anarchists, on the other hand, have been proven absolutely incapable of stopping fascism, as was the case of the Spanish Second Republic, with some Anarchist unions such as the CNT numbering ONE MILLION members, and refusing to take action against the growth of fascism because "taking action would make us as bad as them :(". The consequence were 40 years of fascist dictatorship. At least AES countries, flawed as they were, can claim to bring industrialization, wealth redistribution, meaningful fight against fascism, a stop to unequal exchange, solid and moral geopolitical positions and support for emancipatory movements elsewhere in the world. Anarchism doesn't have a single serious historical claim other than Rojava and Zapatistas, two extremely small movements without much potential for growth, with one of them directly supporting the regional interests of US imperialism.
You're buying the framework of the ruling class of your country, ask yourself why you reach the same conclusions about socialism than libs
Mhm, so we agree that "AES" is just capitalism yes? Sorry but I'm a socialist. I'm not planning to do a revolution just to get capitalism again, but painted red. Especially when it's just more oppressive and homophobic as well.
Lol
No, I dont agree that AES is capitalism, it's just that you don't have historical knowledge of the decision-making power of the working class over policy and the means of production in AES countries.
Strong unions with legal power and decision-making capabilities, local committees supervising political and administrative activity, extremely high social mobility, participation in state politics through the party and through discussion in the press, and most importantly, the absence of a capitalist class. There is no capitalism without surplus extraction from one class to the other, and without a receiving class to absorb whatever metric of surplus value you want to define, there isn't capitalism. It obviously was flawed, as all systems ever in humanity, but it's the best we've got so far in the struggle against capitalism.
Thank you also for not addressing how anarchism has historically consistently failed in creating an alternative to capitalism and to fighting fascism even in countries with strong anarchist tradition.
There was wage slavery, therefore it was capitalist. QED. The extracting class where the party bureaucracy. I don't even need to debate this. The USSR devolved into kleptocracy with the party bureaucracy at the top immediately after it dissolved and its satellite states immediately splintered and switched to capitalism at the first chance they got which shows just how much the soviet experiment failed at all its goals and how hated it was for persisting only through oppression.
Same is true in other "AES" like China, which have literal billionaires ffs.
The failure to succeed in a revolution long term doesn't mean the movement is ideologically inconsistent. It just means it's time hadn't come yet. The collapse of "AES" or coversion into capitalism however does prove that it's an internally unstable movement whos only goal is to convert feudalism to capitalism.
Same old bullshit argument. "The bureaucracy" loosely defined by a select group of party members who didn't disproportionally enjoy a much higher standard of living, isn't enough of an argument to talk of a class division. There were no markets, there was no imperialism, there was no generational consolidation of a class (with most political positions being taken by non bureaucratic families)... Talking of capitalism in the USSR is simply delusional and portrays a lack of understanding of the meaning of capitalism itself, or more likely, willing misinterpretation and mental gymnastics to bash on other form of socialism that are more compatible with US state propaganda.
China is currently a capitalist economy. Markets, the existence of a capitalist class appropriating themselves of the surplus value generated by workers, and the only "redeeming" factor being a high participation of the state in the economy. Until proven otherwise I won't call modern China socialist.
Ignoring the influence of cold war and the material conditions of the moment into all of this is crazy, you literally have no regard of material and historical conditions. BTW, the overwhelming majority of USSR citizens voted for the continuation of the country in a referendum towards the end of the eastern block. Surprise surprise: if you don't exercise a certain level of oppression, you can't fight capitalism... one of the many reasons why anarchism never seems to take off and always seems to be incapable of fighting capitalism and fascism.
Imagine believing this while people criticizing said party members are regularly gulaged and disappeared. Imagine thinking that having widespread wage slavery means you're not capitalist.
Lol, USSR allied with Nazis to split Poland and invaded Hungary with Tanks which is literally why their supporters are known as Tankies. They literally invaded almost every neighbour they had. They were so fucking imperialist that everyone they conquered ditched them immediately when they were weak. A main reason they collapsed was because their imperialism in Afganistan weakened them too much. Just absolute delusion.
US state propaganda was all too happy to call USSR socialist/communist. You remember that, right? Should probably make you think why you agree with US state propaganda, but I doubt you will.
More like being too naive about allying with red-fash :D
ROFL, not the liberal Molotov Ribbentrop pact, I expected better from an anarchist NGL. Again portraying the absolute belief of US state propaganda to the same level that libs do, and a complete lack of understanding of the material and historical conditions.
There is well documented evidence that the USSR sought after mutual defense agreements with England, France and Poland early in the 30s, way before the Nazis started invading other countries, and facing a decade of rejection because they expected Nazis to firstly invade the communists, which was desired. In 1939 the USSR offered to send ONE MILLION soldiers together with artillery, tanks and aviation to France on exchange for a mutual defense agreement. The diplomats from France and England were both given orders (leaked wires prove this) to not accept any agreement, and only to pretend to be interested but delay the negotiations as much as possible. The USSR also offered, previous to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, to start an offensive against the Nazis as an alternative to the Munich agreements, if Poland England and France joined in the offensive, which they of course refused because, again, they wanted communism destroyed more than Nazism. The USSR in 1939 had had a total of 10 years of industrialisation to get out of being a feudal backwater country and have the industrial drive to fight threats like Nazism (Stalin famously predicted in the late 1920s that they had 10 years to make up the difference in industrialisation or they would be wiped out of the map). Every single year was crucial in the rapid development of the USSR industrial base, against the industrially superior Nazi Germany which had been industrialising for 100 years at that point. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was the only possible chance of survival for the USSR, it wouldn't be able to stop the advances of fascism by 1939 singlehandedly, and the "partition of Poland", while obviously not desirable, was the only option other than all-out war against Nazism without the intervention of France and England, or directly allowing the Nazis to take the entirety of Poland and increase the scope of the genocide. Again you show that your knowledge of the historical and material conditions isn't adequate, and that you're willing to replicate Josep Borrell levels of state propaganda. What a shame to be honest, I didn't expect even this low from an anarchist.
Wow, again with the US state propaganda! You're quite literally indistinguishable from a lib in your understanding of history. Tell me. What should the USSR have done when the US started to unilaterally arm and train militias of local tribal radical theocrats? "Sorry guys, sending troops to fight against a primitive version of fascism is wrong, we're communist after all, so much as picking up a rifle and showing any resistance to American imperialism would make us just as bad as them".
Dumbest take I've ever seen. The US called the USSR communist firstly because it was, and secondly because it's a way to prime people who have been radicalised against Russians in the US to be blindly critical of socialism (as you are proving to be).
Really, mate, I wasn't expecting this lib-level analysis of the international policy of the USSR, but I should have known better. Point by point replicating the anticommunist propaganda... Sad shit ngl
I'm sure Republican Spain and the anarchists (who refused to seize power and maintained the local bourgeoisie) would have resisted fascism so well without the guns, ammunitions, tanks, planes and troops from the USSR, lmao.
Anyway I wasn't talking about just the Mototov pact, but about the second, earlier imperialist pact. I'm sure you know the one ;)
The rest is basically "wah wah wah US propaganda" and then trying to defend imperialism.
Lol, you realize that it's the stalinists which allied with the libs against the anarchists and trots, no?
"Akchually I wasn't referring to the pact that I explicitly mentioned by making reference to the 'Polish partition' and which you successfully argued against using historical points that I will proceed to disregard with a deep fried picture of Jake Peralta, I am very smart". Your willful lack of understanding of Realpolitik and the needs of revolution are exactly the reasons why 1) you agree with every point fabricated by US state department propaganda against communism 2) anarchism has systematically failed as an alternative to capitalism. Literally "picking up a gun to defend against US imperialism is actually imperialism too, despite the lack of economic exploitation of periphery areas that characterises imperialism"
"Reapolitik forces us to do imperialism and dictatorship". It's why nobody takes tankies seriously :D
Actually I'll bite the bullet. Tell me your definition of imperialism
Again, you believing that holding a rifle in your hand is imperialism is why anarchists consistently fail. And again, please question yourself why you repeat every position on communism that US state propaganda shares
No I don't disagree with you! But you are still somewhat wrong! Hey social traitor, I'm splitting and creating my own leftist memes! These will be actual trotskyist memes, unlike your bourgeoisie-tainted memes!
rinse and repeat
oh fuck, this gif just made me realise now, after decades of knowing this movie, that they mistranslated this line in the Hungarian dub as "spitters" 🤦♂️ "Splitters" makes so much more sense.
It's almost as if ideology is just some made up bullshit.
Judean People's Front
SPLITTERS
Most conservatives are able to band together regardless of whether another of them is too racist, or too capitalist. They're able to look past flaws in that regard.
Meanwhile, we lefties fight among ourselves for not being left enough, or for being too left. It's why there are very few leftist governments.
Nonsense. conservatives inflight and even kill each other all the fucking time. This is a myth promoted by "left unity" leftists, and "big tent" libs to force everyone to follow them.
Aye, they do, but when it comes to voting they unify.
Take the UK for example. Of our three main parties the Conservatives are, well, conservative, Labour are (ostensibly) leftwing, and Liberal Democrats are centre-left.
In the end, most of my 44 years have been spent under a series of Tory governments because leftists who don't see Labour as left enough don't vote out of protest, and leftists who see Labour as too left will vote Lib Dem. Meanwhile, those in the centre or on the right will vote Tory. Sure, there are far right parties here, but they're mostly cranks and outright racists.
We only have a Labour government right now because the Tories went too lunatic and Starmer's lot shifted enough to the centre to attract those who would vote LibDem.
Prior to our last election, I saw a whole bunch of fellow lefties going apeshite because Starmer isn't leftwing enough, and still crying that Corbyn was fucked over (which, to be fair, he was), so much so that I genuinely feared for five more years of Tories reaming us. There was very little room for pragmatism.
As somebody who was an EU immigrant in the UK for over a decade and also lived in other countries of Europe, lets just say that New Labour are plain Rightwing (so, not even Center-Left, although the original Labour definitelly were Leftwing) and the Liberal Democrats are pure rightwing (whislt the Tories have been Far Right since at least the Leave Referendum).
The ideology of "Thatcher's Greatest Achievement" - a "relaxed about wealth" ideology which loves privatisation and derregulation - which took over Labour is not Left of center and the LibDems have always been even more Neolibs than that.
The Overtoon Window in England (not as much the other UK nations) is way to the Right of the rest of Europe, so its understandable that many there think that when they neither grew up back in the days when Labour was actually a party of the Working Class and never saw politics elsewhere in Europe.
*cries in Hungarian*
The Republicans have bred a cult that makes up the core of their voting block, though. This is how Trump originally got into the primaries and then elected. He pulled the cultists away from their masters and they couldn't control the new MAGA cult.
Both my grandfather before he died and my first boss had the same exact reaction if you asked who they were voting for. They'd look at you like you'd grown an extra head and reply, "I'm a Republican. I vote for the nominee."
Have you never met leftists?
dern leftists… ruinin' the left
Leftists. What a bunch of bastards.
It is very easy for people without a credible shred of leftist thought to claim to be a leftist.
Challenging those people winds up being an example of 'leftist infighting'.
So... a leftist and a tankie pretending to be a leftist, in a argument, basically...
Most common pairing for that is moderate centrist and a radical liberal, I find.