Cmon guys, this is c/memes and not c/politics yet you make it look like we're in a fucking civil war lol
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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Perhaps the tankies are making you question some deeply held beliefs you have and that’s making you uncomfortable?
It’s easy to dismiss most of their rhetoric, I do as well (I.e. running people over with tanks is a bad idea), but it’s harder to ignore the fact we have a significant portion of the value of our labour taken by capitalists.
You’re not wrong.
Reading the communist manifesto made me realise the flaws in Marxist thinking as well.
Don’t misunderstand me, Marx was right about a lot of things and still is. Das Kapital is still 80%-90% relevant and accurate but the parts Marx is incorrect about (that capitalism naturally trends to socialism and the worker will have necessarily poorer conditions under capitalism) are addressed through other political philosophers who built upon his and Engels’ work.
Socialism as a political ideology has evolved considerably. Tankies are stuck at a point in time and it’s sad they stand in the way of a socialism without authoritarianism.
Hmmm well maybe we are talking past each other.
I see it like this, the manifesto was a call to arms for the factory workers of Europe; join our revolution and your life will improve.
And some did, and their lives did improve for a while, but most importantly the majority of workers (ie European workers who didn’t have a revolution) did not join and their conditions still improved (WHS laws, working hours, sick leave, PTO, pension, healthcare).
How does Marx explain this? This shouldn’t be possible according to Marx.
When I was saying people have built on Marx I was alluding to revisionists like Bernstein.
He points out that self interest is a motivating factor, once a worker has a certain level of condition then they are no longer willing to risk that in a revolution, capitalism has effectively satiated them. Revolution is no longer possible in this situation.
This is the western world I see today, a lot of people who aren’t willing to risk what they have to get something better.
My solution (which isn’t really mine) is to appeal to their self interest, sure it’s nice now, but it would be even better under socialism etc.
Yeah that’s where we disagree.
I don’t think you get to say ‘hey those nice things you got while under capitalism will disappear at some point - source, trust me bro.’
That arguably hasn’t eventuated for western workers as we haven’t returned to the original or worse conditions than when we were at at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
Too few are interested in dying to improve their conditions further which disarms any vanguard party.
I don’t know much about Hegel, but the bit I do know makes me very skeptical about historical materialism. Socialist philosophy is better without Hegel IMO, yes I assume you disagree with this strongly.
I've decided to answer your, likely rhetorical, question from your first comment and this one in one comment instead of two:
You're not wrong here. Even if my views don't differ that much in many ways from even the lemmygrad or hexbear users (at least on economical terms) there's still some topics that I just do not share their views on (You mentioned their stand on authoritarianism) and it does make me uncomfortable because very often you either have to 100% agree with them or are instantly excluded.
In the end, I'm usually hopping on to see memes to give my brain some distraction, enjoy some good banter or laugh at some quality memes and not see yet another online civil war unfold.
And for the last I'm often just too tired to participate in after 8hrs of work
What is a tankie, you sound like a little baby
They have brought up some good points, but the good points they make are over shadowed by the whole genocide denial and "dunking on libs".
The following example is not meant to represent hexbear users, but to show an example of how I could see it.
Think of a fascist who brings up some good examples of modern problems in about 1/10 of their messages, while the rest are talking about how Mussolini was actually good, since he brought up the living standard in Italy and expanded the public sector. And when someone brings up the bad things Mussolini did, the fascist just says "It's clearly western propaganda".
You wouldn't want to read their messages, since they are full of this fascist apologetic garbage, and the good points they bring up are ignored because of their other opinions.
It doesn't matter how good willed your opinions are if no one wants to associate with you.
Exactly this.
I've told them this before. I agree with them on about 60% of the stuff they believe. But they are really, really hung up on the genocide apologetics. I've tried reasoning with them, but I don't think it's going to happen. I'm pretty sure they banned me haha
Mussolini did not make living standards better though, and his crimes are well documented and aren’t just propaganda. So it’s a false equivalence.
It was never meant to be an equivalence. I made it to draw a rough picture of how a person can have some good ideas, but be a person no one wants to associate with due their other ideas.
Sure, but it may be the case that the “other ideas” also aren’t actually wrong and the people who don’t want to associate do so out of not wanting to challenge their own wrong ideas about things.