this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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The "tankies" are absolutely not utopian. There was a great big schism about this very question more than a century ago, with Marxists roundly rejecting the utopianism of the libertarian socialists (Anarchists). Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Engels is a good starting point.
Look, as I said in another post I am a member of a leftwing party in my homecountry, and that party has two big strains inside, which are pretty much the older generation (people in their late 60s+) most of which tend to be old style socialist/communist (though not fans of the local Communist Party, who they see as self-serving and with a deep authoritarian strain) and a newer generation in their 30s, sons and daughters of the high middle class, who don't really have a concrete ideology and make the politics up as they go, with not exactly great competence.
About a decade ago the old generation very purposefully made way for the new one, hence why that 2nd strain is so "narrow in their age range and social origins" (and quite blind to their own ignorance about how the other 95% or so of the population trully live and think).
Anyways, all of this to say that when the Russian Invasion of Ukraine started, I actually argued with one of those old guys, whose kneejerk reaction was to defend Russia (because in his worldview "Russia good, US bad"), and I convinced him to change his mind by pointing out that there was but one aggressor and one victim in this War and how it was entirelly consistent to be against the actions of Russia here as it was to be against the actions of the US in the second Iraq War as both were agressors killing people who did no harm to them, and further it was entirelly consistent with in life in general side with the victims against the aggressors.
If I understand the definition correctly, a "tankie" is what this guy was in his kneejerk pro-Russia reaction, yet I did manage to convince him to change his mind and did so with an entirelly humanist argument of siding with the victims, so I would say that his heart was in the right place.
More in general, my judgement of the old-school lefties I've been in contact with mainly through being in this party is that their intentions are good but they're often stuck in a slogan-heavy view of things which is severely outdated and rigid and which they learned in their early adulthood, often resulting in things like this kind of kneejerk defense of present day Russia because of what a very different Russia meant to them half a century ago, but as I described, it's still possible for their view to change when somebody gently and with some good examples points out that they're "sidding with the guys harming others" in their unthinking "taking a side" reaction.