this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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Am I a tankie? I like socialism but think communism (total state control) is too far. We need, as AOC said, "an end to unregulated capitalism", but we can't go the authoritarian route of China or North Korea. I envision socialism as Norway and Sweden, these nations that have achieved harmony through peace and cooperation with liberal capitalism; we need nations that don't put down pro-democracy protests or have "socialist" attitudes around immigration/investment which restrict genuine freedom. I have seen several "tankies" (I hope I am using this right) say, verbatim, "North Korea is heaven on earth and a genuine utopia in every way", which really worries me. I tried to show them Yeonmi Park videos and Human Rights in North Korea articles but they all just laugh at me. Honestly I've considered leaving this instance, since even anarchism seems too far to me (how will capitalism be regulated without a state?), plus a lot of anarchists here are tankies as well, and they have no regard for human rights or the genocide China is currently committing. My only shining light of hope is the people like you who check these attitudes with credible sources and expose these lies in detail. Slava ukraini and freedom to all!
This post is proof Tom Lehrer was wrong about exactly one thing
You're not a tankie. Tankies deny the oppressive nature of Russia, China, North Korea etc., deflecting all critique with whataboutism by pointing at shortcomings or atrocities of Western nations. Some like to call you Nazi or imperialist if you disagree with them, while in many aspects their ideology and that of their paragon countries is much closer to Nazism than that of liberal democracies like the ones you mentioned.
Unsure how this could be the case. Norway and Sweden both exploit the third world and have horribly racist attitudes towards immigration. And of course both cozy up to the United States, the country which inspired Nazi Germany in the first place [1] [2] [3].
No you are not a tankie. You are very painfully a liberal.
Please keep reading and understand there is a difference between authoritarian communism and communism
Please see Thomas Sankara.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sankara
I was trolling. Thomas Sankara was executed in a U.S.-backed coup. Do you think maybe he should have exercised more authority, better strengthened defenses and built up a stronger base for combatting imperialism, that he could have avoided this (I don't have an exact policy path, and it's not like Sankara didn't put down certain reactionary movements when necessary)? I'm sympathetic to Sankara of course, but if your ideal system of resisting authority succumbs to counter-authority, then maybe you don't have grounds to condemn greater authority exercised to these ends. I don't know how a "communist" could see authority in a vacuum to the point of accepting "authoritarianism" as anything other than the singling out of the authority of certain systems over others in safeguarding and expanding interests.
Your not doing very good job. Your just coming off as an idiot too me.
Can you be more concise? Your run on sentences make me want to stop talking to you.
Im not here to go over the specifics of Sankaras's Decisons: But From what I do know. He fought corruption, he pushed literacy programs and fought malnutrition. All While resistsing western imperialsm.
Im sure he made mistakes and did some problematic things. As an anarchist I can appreicate the good things he did and be open to the concept that he also did bad things as well.
Just like the USSR CPC and other communist governments.
Your going to have to rewrite, this i dont understand what you are saying. Are you referring to me or Sankara?
Other people understood that I was being sarcastic as well.
And you dishonestly dismissing my direct response proving you were incorrect about Hexbear critiquing Russia/China makes me want to stop talking to you, yet here we are.
Why did you single Sankara's Burkina Faso out when speaking of exceptions to authoritarian communism, yet now defend your position by tying it into the CPC, which you specifically called "authoritarian"?
Rephrased: If your one exception to "authoritarian communism" is a government that was overthrown by imperialism, what does this say about the use of authority in revolutionary states?
Well you got me. Maybe im not in the mood for jokes. I am so tired of having these conversation. It makes me so sad to see people supporting these countries.
Russia and china are not examples of a good government. Neither is the usa. I feel like im taking crazy pills.
Because i know about him and agree with many things that he did. Not everything, but he didnt build an imperialst nation. He fought for literacy and nutrition and anti corruption.
He didnt build a survelence network or invade another nation to my knowledge.
He fought for his people using the principles revolutionary communism and ML. This I support.
Just like i can recognize that the CPC does provide many valuable things to it citizens . While also recognizing that they are still authoritarnian.
I dont know. Im not here to tell you how sankara could of avoided assassination. But I do feel that acting like Sankara is the same as the cpc/russia in any real way is kinda absurd.
Cuba is better example of communism than cpc. Once again they have problems.
Ultimately i am an anarchist, i dont think communism is the solution long term, but i would work with communists, As long as they didnt support large authoritarian governments.
What are your specific critiques of the CPC? What abuses of authority do you point out?
Do you mean socialism? Communism is the absence of the state and the withering away of class distinctions.
So is the USSR not communist by your definition?
It was communist in the sense that it was commanded by a communist party and was oriented towards communism (some would say socialist-oriented rather than socialist), but it had not achieved “communism”, and was squarely in the socialist camp with the proletarian monopoly on capital (USSR literally means United Socialist Workers Republics). I would have no issue with you stating the USSR was communist in the same way Vietnam could be called socialist (in goal and in guidance), but stating that “communism isn’t the solution long term” makes no sense. Do you understand the distinction?
I feel this is like syamtics. Anarchist are socialists as well. but if some told me "I dont think anarchy is the way foward"
I dont think it would be fair for me to say to " no you mean socialism, Anarchy is the Goal! not the current situation"
It doesnt make sense to think that communism isnt the solution? This makes me feel like communists are unable to have real discussion with anarchists about the flaws within communism.
I feel anarchy is the only real way to gaurentee long term that people will be continually liberated. I think that any real hierarchical system will enventually turn back into a police state. We saw this in the USSR. And we see in in the CPC too.
They once had revolutionary components which I support. But those begin to dwindle the minute they took power and likey before.
From the origins of revolutionary communism came a police state. How do MLs deal with the flaws shown in The USSR? By saying that it wasn't communist?
This is what I mean when I say i dont think communism is the solution long term. That communists governments have a tendency to turn toward police states. Call it what you want but lenin was a marxist from my understanding and marxist are considered communists. Right?
Syamtics lmao; What are the flaws within communism?
Explain how we saw this; explain how you refute the question of class succession with regards to the state, or the necessity of the state in a revolutionary situation (of which we can point to numerous socialist/anarchist projects that failed due to reactionary intervention; ex. the second the Bolsheviks took power, the imperialist countries backed the white guard army to overthrow them).
We cannot simply look at the best potential system, but must instead analyze what trends exist and what society history is tending towards. This can only be done through the recognition of class struggle/underdevelopment as the motive force, from which it naturally follows that the proletariat will take hold of the state machinery and reconfigure/"smash" the old norms to form a truly mass "state" (which is differentiated from all former states in that it is headed by and protects the interests of the masses against the minority rather than the inverse); see Lenin's State and Revolution.
I wonder why the CPC enjoys over 90% support by the people, has been able to eradicate extreme poverty, and may build a state which truly serves the people through the mass party (with ~10% as members) and mass line through all levels. Let's talk specifics: tell me when these revolutionary components dwindled and in what way.
The police perform a markedly different role under the DOTP [ex. "the behavior of the police in China was a revelation to me. They are there to protect and help the people, not to oppress them. Their courtesy was genuine; no division or suspicion exists between them and the citizens. This impressed me so much that when I returned to the United States and was met by the Tactical Squad at the San Francisco airport (they had been called out because nearly a thousand people came to the airport to welcome us back), it was brought home to me all over again that the police in our country are an occupying, repressive force" -- Huey P. Newton (founder of the Black Panther Party), Revolutionary S--cide, p. 322]. Yes, Lenin was a communist, and Marxists are by definition communists, but "communism is not the answer", if you are referring to the method and work (aka. Marxism/ML), is something that you have asserted but not proven. What holes have you exposed in the theory of Marxism? What errors in materialism and class struggle/the principle of state control have you pointed out?
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-alexander-berkman-bolsheviks-shooting-anarchists
"But of all the revolutionary elements in Russia it is the Anarchists who now suffer the most ruthless and systematic persecution. Their suppression by the Bolsheviki began already in 1918, when — in the month of April of that year — the Communist Government attacked, without provocation or warning, the Anarchist Club of Moscow and by the use of machine guns and artillery “liquidated” the whole organisation."
Emma goldman
Orientalism, plain and simple. Wonderful. I wasn’t able to find much information on the extolled Lev Tchorny, but his wiki states that: “On September 25, 1919, together with a number of leftist social revolutionaries, the Underground Anarchists bombed the headquarters of the Moscow Committee of the Communist Party during a plenary meeting. Twelve Communists were killed and fifty-five others were wounded, including among the wounded the eminent Bolshevik theorist and Pravda editor Nikolai Bukharin.” So the organization Tev (this wonderful anarchist martyr) was a part of was actively engaging in adventurist terrorism against the communists (and great that “rumors” are suitable for a mention in this article, classic wikipedia). Strange that Goldman adds no mention of anarchist terrorism in her letter, although perhaps this is suitable to the false narrative of Bolshevik betrayal and anarchist victimhood which she is attempting to create.
And let us assume the words of these bigoted children are true: does the undue prosecution of anarchists in the volatile beginning of the revolution when the bolsheviks were being terrorized at all sides from SR assassinations, imperialist-backed white guards, and the landed remnants of Tsardom indicate some foul and total condemnation of Marxism? Plus what relation does this have to the CPC?
No mention that the latter was mobilizing the Black Guard into a military force against the Bolsheviks. The anarchists are of course a real enemy of Marxism, in that their ultimate goal is to undermine the workers state and create a vacuum of power which may only be filled by the bourgeoisie and DOTB thereof. They are, then, the true enemy of the masses as well, since they deny the revolutionary character of the proletariat and present no alternate scientific historical framework for the inevitability of mass power, suiting themselves instead with taking up the role of the utopian socialists that Marx and Engels had banished into obscurity, then basking in their empty purity; anarchism also lends itself to Euro-fascism from this angle, which you demonstrated with your own source.
Do you have any evidence that this is false or do you just not like it?
Alls I hear is a lot of what aboutism.
"Emma goldman is writing about anarchist being murdered but whatabout the the bad things anarchists did? "
Emma goldman was a russia born anarchist critiquing The USSR.
Are you going to respond the to claims they are making or are you going to cherry pick out the racist stuff?
We can stop honeslty. if you believe that anarchism is eurofacism we have very little to talk about.
Great rebuttal. "Cherry pick about the racist stuff" yeah no, you clearly didn't read what I linked about this or you would understand where this "cherrpicking" fits in.
God I hate that term. Demanding the mention of anarchist terrorism (including terrorism by the organization admitting several of the "victims" mentioned) rather than one-sided references to Bolshevik terrorism? A basic call for consistency? Whataboutism! By merely mentioning an informal fallacy I have torn your argument asunder! You are the one who has proven nothing.
Yeah the racist Republicans in the US use whataboutism all the time to skirt around actual critiques. They really hate it when you call them out on it
Did anarchist attack and kill communists during that time period? Yes. Does that make thier critiques about soviet authoritarianism invalid or make emma Goldman letters false. No. It just means there is nuance in history.
I dont categorically support emma goldman. And Im not surprised they said some racist things. Thats why I am able to separate the good things they did while critizing the bad.
You should try it!
It is a known fact that the USSR consolidated power within russia after the october revolution. They killed and jailed anarchists and many other opossing groups.
And when lenin died and stalin took over, he did it too. This is what large goverments must do to maintain power.
The fact that you can't admit that means you a defintiately a tankie.
You sound like a jackass when you write this way. imo.
Thx.
You didn’t address the connection between the racism in the anarchist critique of Bolshevism and fascism, which I linked a full explanation of. I already discredited Goldman by showing that the “martyr” she was praising was involved in an organization that was actively bombing communist institutions (she didn’t mention this, and pointing this out is not whataboutism but again, a basic call for consistency). You didn’t address this. And “authoritarianism” will never be a real concept; it’s just the ignorance of authority to which the accused movement is responding. No movement or world-historical system maintains itself without authority. I already mentioned the circumstances the Bolsheviks were under, why can’t you dispense with this idea? You know that if they let up authority for a second the white guards and imperialists would decapitate every revolutionary in sight, because revolutions are not a peaceful affair. A bombing is not slight, assassinations of revolutionaries (by SRs) could break apart the worker’s power. Anr I never said anarchist critiques of “Soviet authoritarianism” were discredited by their own use of authority (this is not authoritarian for some reason). I specifically critiqued anarchism in general as well as pointing out terrorism, which proves I never thought the latter refuted anarchist theory. Everyone recognizes that governments must use authority to maintain power, but this is exactly why the blanket opposition to authority is counterrevolutionary (it condemns the DOTB and DOTP on the same grounds and is neither revolutionary nor nuanced).
@robinn2 @Sprinklebump, it is because it is so easy to deceive people with labels, be it socialism, communism or democracy. All of them have been or are dictatorships ruled by an elite. It does not matter a "communism" where an elite of supposed representatives governs or a democracy where these representatives of lobbies govern instead of the people.
A country where there is no sovereignty of the people is still a feudal dictatorship of capital, that sooner or later always fails.
Think on it until you do, because as of now you're useless
How could it be bad trolling if you fell for it
The last part reads as being in reference to you, since the socialist states you hate took measures to survive whereas ones like Allende's Chile folded and their progress brutally reversed.
If Sankara had been more effective in protecting the revolution, you very likely would hate him too because he would be smeared just like Fidel and the rest as "authoritarian" etc. Imo this wouldn't be because of whatever specific measures he took, but the mere fact that he would have posed a more substantial ideological threat to the west for living and being able to keep making progress.
Sankara was ML, like me and all the people you're calling "tankies" or "authoritarian" communists
We've read plenty of Sankara, time you to to read a little Jakarta Method