Remember kids, Tankies wants to undermine democracy - same as facists.
this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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I'm not against the hostility being shown towards tankies here... but it should be remembered that there are a lot of well-meaning and well-intentioned people who get caught up in the technocratic ideology tankies buy into. Let's face it... if you google anything about leftism you are more likely to end up reading about Marx and Engels than Bakunin or Goldman - and right-wing propaganda is as perfectly fine with conflating everything "leftist" with the technocratic (ie authoritarian) left as tankies themselves are.
If we are leaving some doors open for fascists and capitalists who turn against their programming, we should remember to do the same for tankies.
As someone who's read Marx and lenin, and Bakunin and Goldman... not to mention kroptikin(god damn that guy bullshat his way through conquest of bread)
The anarchists always decry practical steps that are needed for the transition, but they have a poverty of ideas when it comes to propose better alternative solutions to the problems faced by actual revolutions. And frankly, reading their literature I understand why. They're still hung up on ideas and values and not material analysis much more than MLs. They're still trapped within liberal hegemonic thought though they are against liberal capitalism.
Neither the anarchist revolutions in Ukraine nor Spain seemed to lack "practical steps"... what they did lack, however, was practical steps for turning into a reactionary elite as soon as they seized power - something the Bolsheviks and their ideological spawn seems to have no problems with.
They absolutely did, their inability to coordinate and make compromises during wartime absolutely led to their failures as revolutions.
Oh... being (respectively) stabbed in the back by Bolsheviks and being sabotaged by Stalin had absolutely nothing to do with it, eh?
No, tankie... I don't think you've read any anarchist literature at all.
Yes, the Spanish anarchists were unsuccessful because Stalin, and not because they refused to be integrated with the popular front(which even the fucking liberals joined), including militarily until the war was already well lost, which made coordinated actions against the fascists with the popular front impossible
The lessons of the Spanish civil war dont reflect well on the anarchist movement there.
Yes. That's why, tankie. And no... they didn't lose because they decided not to take orders from your outrageously incompetent and cynical two-faced realpolitking fetish object Stalin.
Okay?
Okay so how much did you actually study the Spanish civil war because this comes off as really ignorant? Like, what books have you read on the subject that have led you to the conclusion that Stalin was controlling all of the Spanish Republicans except for the anarchists? You seem to deify Stalin much more than me, who generally considers him a very flawed leader who was a better revolutionary, but doesn't consider him some octopus with his tentacles in literally everything.
I'm not the one demonstrating weaponized ignorance on the subject, tankie - you are.
But hey... bring it on.
It is a self dunk to get combative when someone asks you what books you've read on a subject you're opining about
Why would I compare books with you, tankie? You've already claimed to have read things you so obviously haven't.
Gee, you needed a book to tell you why nobody except your ilk gives a flying fuck about your precious vanguardism, eh? Most people don't need a book to see the obvious.
so now we are gonna start calling names. Cool, very mature.
Well, then... what do you think we should call them? Do remember... it was Marxist-Leninists themselves that came up with that term.
The stupid part is that the third-way labor parties and social democrats are doing a much better job at socialism than any Leninist or Maoist tradition. But every leftist space on the internet seems to hate these "fake socialists" as much as anything else. That's really all the evidence I need that these people are more interested in revolution fetish fan service than anything resembling actual statecraft.
Well... no, not really. It's not that leftists hate social democrats... every anarchist I've ever spoken to appreciates the effort of people like Bernie and AOC - it's just that we understand what they are allowed to do and what they aren't. The political establishment will allow them to protect capitalism from itself by restraining it's most obscene aspects it to a certain extent (and even such meagre self-protective measures are a bridge to far for the right-wing hivemind)... but that is all they could ever achieve.
Remember - no matter what the media hysterically screeches - the term socialism has a very hard and uncompromising meaning... a condition wherein the workers control the means of production. If it doesn't measure up to that or only pretends to measure up to that, we can't call it socialism with a straight face.
This is what socialism means if you restrict yourself to orthodoxy from 100 years ago. Social democrats are not swearing allegiance to capitalism. They are not meeting with billionaires in back rooms promising to not almost go far enough. This is naive, academically outdated, and exactly the kind of thing I am tired of explaining to people who read some pamphlets and think it represent a broad view of contemporary political science.
Third way socialism starts with an acknowledgement that capitalist forces arise from places other than malevolence by so-called capitalists, and a broad rejection of such modernist economic determinism. Rather, it acknowledges that capitalism is in part an inevitable product of scarcity and economic complexity which can be whittled away, while also being a tool which can be wielded by the state. But the imperative to eliminate it is as artificial as the imperative to eliminate rainy days or icebergs.
If the goal is keeping people dry and ships afloat, then just do those things, and push society forward iteratively until the conditions are correct that we can legitimately control the weather. Liberate people by creating conditions for liberation, not by calling their chains something different.
No, no, no, wiseguy... you don't get to pretend that socialism all of a sudden means whatever the fuck you want it to mean. If that's what you want to do, perhaps you should be meeting in back-rooms with billionaires - because your drivel sure as shit don't mean anything for us proles other than "more of the same."
In other words... there's nothing socialist about it in any way whatsoever.
See? That wasn't so difficult at all.
One doesn't need to take centuries old writing as dogma to learn from it or expand upon it. Your narrow definition of socialism is outdated by contemporary standards. You don't have to like it or agree, but don't shoot the messenger.
No. It isn't. You just wish it was.
No, I think we'll just settle for debunking you... which would be no more difficult to do than with any other "enlightened centrist" claptrap.
Me: The political form of a society wherein the proletariat is victorious in overthrowing the bourgeoisie will be a democratic republic.
You: Insufficient fan service
Isn't that what they've been telling us we already have?
Really... try harder.
Me: exclusionary leftist orthodoxy is the most annoying part about lemmy.
You: but have you considered exclusionary leftist orthodoxy?
You're excluding yourself, Clyde. Don't expect leftists to include you while you're trying to camouflage the fact that appeasing the status quo serves your interests - that's the kind of shit we have become really good at seeing through.
You heard it here first folks. Democratic socialism is the statues quo. I think we've sufficiently beaten this horse.
How are those meetings with the billionaires going? Screwed any labor movements over yet?
who are these people, i've only heard of marx and engels. Didn't they found the commie ideology?
Yes, and this is why...
There are two sides to the left... and they are violently incompatible. You've never heard of that other left because both tankies, fascists and capitalists like pretending that there is only one.
huh? So the USSR dudes are the same as capitalists?
im confused really
Like Marx and Engels were a bunch of book writers weren't they? What so bad compared to the other book writers? I thought yall just hated those soviets and chinese, but didn't marx invent communism?
There's nothing wrong with reading Marx and Engels. They are the fathers of socialism. What isn't cool is defending authoritarian practices and genocide. I don't give a fuck if someone was too mentally weak to understand the garbage they were reading that led them to defend Mao and Stalin. They're a tankie. Not my problem that they're too stupid to know that their ideology is terrible. And leaving the door open for fascists to turn against the programming? Nah. It's 2023. People have made their choice.
No, they are not.
Good job peddling ableism there... do tell - what kind of leftist are you again?
Were you fed the ideology you hold onto now since birth?
MODERN socialism. Jeez. Didn't know I was being graded here.
And yes, I don't give a fuck if someone was mentally weak enough to believe garbage. Believing garbage makes you kind of a garbage person. I don't need to educate anyone to feel good about myself. They need to read more effectively.
And no, I wasn't fed any ideology that I've blindly clung to since birth. I came to the conclusion that socialism is the most moral political philosophy by reading and observing current events and macro trends in finance, employment, and technology.
What kind of leftist am I? A non-pretentious one that doesn't think I alone am responsible for educating tankies on how to be less authoritarian. They know damn well what their beliefs entail.
There's nothing "modern" about socialism.
Considering how quick you are to grade others I assumed your perfect "non-mentally weak leftism" would pass scrutiny without a hitch. Are you trying to tell me that's not the case?
Sooo... I take it you didn't know? And don't tell me that's just a USian problem - it's not going much better out here in the extraction zones.
And while we're on the subject of reading... perhaps you should follow your own advice - your entitled edgelord leftist schtick means less than nothing to the people whose liberation the left purports to be all about in the first place.