I don’t think getting seals out of your home is part of marine biologist training. He might be better-equipped to identify the species of seal and lecture on its mating habits.
As someone who has worked extensively with the homeless, I’ve seen quite a few examples of where supposedly anti-homeless takes have been attempts to inject more nuance into discussions than simply being pro- or anti-homeless, both of which are practically meaningless positions.
In this case however, OP just has some awful opinions about people he assumes are homeless. So not really any nuance here, just sugar-coated classism and general bigotry
You’re right: you were being a condescending asshole. And then OP replied in good faith, and you proceeded to look like a dumb condescending asshole with nothing to say. Great job.
I am begging you too to read a book, any book. In good faith I am recommending to you Shut Up, Stop Whining, and Get a Life by Larry Winget. Some people, not me, have called him the ‘Pitbull of Personal Development’ so you may get something out of the 272 pages. ISBN 9781118024515
Were they engaging in good faith when they posted this massive thread moaning about getting banned for “slight criticism of tankies communities” when it was actually for hating homeless people?
You don’t give someone infinite chances to engage in good faith while they keep moving the football like Lucy from Peanuts, fuck OP.
There is a healthy and honest way to appreciate communism, Russia, the CCP and even DPRK.
And then there are people who are completely shilling the CCP Russia DPRK as communist uptopias. These people are tankies.
If you are unable to recoginze the atrocities commited at any point in history, by the USA China, Russia , or any other country for that Matter. You’re a chump.
You engage when i call you a LIB but not when asked questions, like why Sankara is the one good “authoritarian?” or people asking what you about your thoughts on anarchism beside “authoritarian bad.” You just link to wikipedia and use that LIB -ass word tankie
Do you even read the Wikipedia articles you link people to? The Afghans were asking for Soviet aid against insurgents backed by the US. The invasion happened when the USSR feared their allies in Afghanistan were not capable of handling the US supported insurgency that they thought would institute a theocracy there as had happened in Iran. Which is exactly what ended up happening there.
That’s not what happened during the US invasion of Afghanistan. That invasion was a cover for war profiteeering, mineral extraction, and opiate production. Rhe US extracted value and resources from that region to enrich capitalists in the imperial core. That’s what makes it imperialist.
Its bullshit to paint an invasion as aid. This is what imperialist do.
The soviets invaded afaganistan for the same reasons as the us did later and Briton did before.
To protect their borders from afar,
To create and protect trade deal favorable to their country,
To spread their ideology.
And by the way I read a book about the history of afaganistan called: Games Without Rules: The Often Interrupted History of Afghanistan.
It outlined how the three main invasion of Afghanistan all followed the same basic lines, motivations and results. They devastated Afghanistan and created a situation where they would be invaded again.
How could the USSR have invaded Afghanistan for the same reason as the US?
The USSR was there to oppose the US by fighting their proxies and defend the socialists in Afghanistan who supported them during the invasion.
The US invaded under the War on Terror pretext as a war profiteering entrerprise. They brought Unaco, Haliburton, KBR, PMCs, and other contractors in to extract value from the region to bring profits to the imperial core.
The issue is that it isn’t imperialist. You are unable to demarcate between what you consider unsavory actions and imperialism.
I’m not saying that i agree with all of the USSR’s actions. I never said i was in support of this particular action for that matter. I am saying that the USSR was not imperialist because it did not engage in capitalist extraction or monopolization.
Soviet period (1979–1989) Edit After a Soviet-backed left-wing government in Afghanistan failed to gain popular support, the Soviets decided to invade. A number of resistance leaders concentrated on increasing opium production in their regions to finance their operations, regardless of its haram Islamic status, in particular Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Mullah Nasim Akhundzada, and Ismat Muslim. The production was doubled to 575 metric tons between 1982 and 1983.[15][16] (At this time the United States was pursuing an “arms-length” supporting strategy of the Mujahideen, the main purpose of which was to cripple the Soviet Union slowly into withdrawal through attrition rather than effect a quick and decisive overthrow.) Hekmatyar, the leading recipient of aid from the CIA and Pakistan, developed at least six heroin refineries in Koh-i-Sultan in southwestern Pakistan, while other warlords were content to sell raw opium. Nasim Akhundzada, who controlled the traditional poppy growing region of northern Helmand, issued quotas for opium production, which he was even rumoured to enforce with torture and extreme violence. To maximise control of trafficking, Nasim maintained an office in Zahidan, Iran.[17]
You asked for more communists i support and I listed some and now Im anti-communist because I don’t support the ones who created police states. Were you just waiting for me to engage so you could call that?
Lol you make me want to call more people like you tankies because it is so applicable.
MLs who think the only path to revolution is thru police states, are authoritarian by nature.
I wouldn’t consider any AES a police state. They are states, they utilize state power to defend themselves from threats from the capitalist class both internally and extermely, because those threats are reality.
Thats why Sankara was assasinated, Rosa Luxembourg was assassinated, why the Black Panthers were assassinated or imprisioned. The capitalist class kills its enemies utilizing the power of the state. And the Black Panthers, Sankara, and Luxembourg were well aware of that.
Believing in using the power of the state is part of ML doctrine, not creating police states, but utilizing that power for the proletariat. I don’t think you actually differentiate between state and police state, or a capitalist state from a socislist one (since you conflate the Russian Federation with the USSR which are not the same thing).
Except, you do seem to able to differentiate, but only in cases were our revolutions failed, like in Burkina Faso, the Black Panthers, and Luxembourg. I’m not sure why all the communists you support are one’s who failed.
What is “authoritarian” communism? Sounds like some political compass bullshit that doesn’t exist in the real world.
Yeah it comes from a disagreement amoung British socialists between people who correctly supported the USSR committing military force to safeguard Hungary from a coup, and some libs who were against it
I’m not acting like you made it up. I answered your question about where it came from accurately. But it gets thrown around today as a meaningless thought terminating cliche like “woke” is by american conservatives/fascists. So, if you’re saying it, I’m going to ask you to clarify, because it doesn’t mean anything, except that you don’t like it.
Resorting to “google it” is such cope“Authoritarian” communism is not a real thing. Its some made political compass bullshit
While the term was invented first to describe the event you have stated.
It is also used to describe the actions of the USSR toward the republic of spain during the spainish Civil war. Specifically how the USSR would not openly support the anarchist government fighting a facist coup backed by nazi germany.
Which is my whole point. The USSR was more freindly toward capitalist governments of Briton & USA at the time. Becuase they are a state and it was more benefical for the USSR to not support an active leftist revolution begging for their help.
This is why I use the term Tankie. Hierarchical goverments regaurdless of their economic principles will enevitablly trend toward fascism and authoritairnism. It is only a matter of time. The ussr cpc and other “communists” conuntries are no exception.
Communists have never truly support anarchist.
“Authoritarian” communism is not a real thing. Its some made political compass bullshit
Honestly reading this statement makes me so depressed. It makes me want to call more communist tankies because it fits so well.
Are you so foolish that you don’t think a large government ran by a small group of people could not become authoritarian?
I think your use of authoritarian is idealist nonsense and has to basis in materialism. I’m a marxist so that is my veiwpoint. If you are a utopian socialist then we will disagree because your veiwpoint is not grounded in a materialist perspective
In fact I find it is a better measure of oppressive goverment than most indicators.
What you really mean to say is most goverments are oppressive and authoritarian. Show me a country with a large prison population and I will show you an authoritarian country.
Please see the zapatistas. For non police state goverment.
If those are your beliefs then they are infantile, and its no wonder you are openly against AES and people who support real world projects in socialism. The new world will be built by people around the world while left anti-communists whine about how they are doing it wrong because they don’t understand the theoretical basis communist are using in these states, and they refuse to understand the real material contexts in which these societies struggle to survive against the US imperialist world order.
There are many anarchist comrades on Hexbear who regularly get called “tankies” by people like you and are able to understand the difference between criticizing some AES without being anti-communist. We have a non-sectarian rule there so we don’t argue about our specific tendencies. You should maybe soeak to some of them to form a more nuanced view of AES. As an ML i can’t really do that, because i do have some fundamental theoretical differences, such as veiwing the term of authoritarian as kind of pointless, thst hoes back to Engels arguing with anarchists about the Paris Commune basically.
If you’re open to a book about left anti-communism and how its driven a wedge between yourself and people you call tankies, i recommend Micheal Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds …wordpress.com/…/michael-parenti-blackshirts-and-…
“You see a simple search of reddit will clearly show that my point of view is the chad wojack, while you tankies are the soy wojack.” -this lib probably
We aren’t uncritical of the USSR, China, and the DPRK, we just think they broadly did (and do) much more good than bad.
Also, “CCP” isn’t a country or even a party (CPC), it’s China or the PRC. I assume when you say “Russia” you mean the Soviet Union that hasn’t existed in thirty years as Russia is a capitalist country now.
Communist Party of China, CPC. The country that they are in is China (PRC). A billion people do not live in the “CCP”, that’s like saying Japanese people live in the LDP, and your imprecise use of these terms makes you look uninformed. Unless, of course, you just constantly say “CCP” because you don’t want to recognize that they are the legitimate and popular government of China, you know, a country.
I speak of russia generally so I can include USSR and the current state of affairs. I realize they are different but they are both authoritarian. They be capitalist but they call themselves communists.
This is a meaningless statement. Any government that wields power to accomplish things is “authoritarian”. It’s silly to equate the USSR with the Russian Federation when they are two very different administrations with distinct ideology and policies. Russia for the past 30 years is a capitalist country with an administration originally installed by the US. Putin is a right-wing figure and an anti-communist. I don’t like Putin and the other rightists in charge of Russia, but I hope NATO doesn’t win out in the East because I don’t want the US Empire ruling over the whole world.
saying it like you do, the imperialist media/state department way, puts emphasis on the “Chinese” part, which we object to for reasons that should be obvious
You don’t seem to support anything remotely called communism, except for comrade Sankara. He’s great, but why is he the one good ML? How was he not “authoritarian” like the rest of us?
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!
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.
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].
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.
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)?
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.
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.
Your going to have to rewrite, this i dont understand what you are saying. Are you referring to me or Sankara?
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.
Other people understood that I was being sarcastic as well.
Can you be more concise? Your run on sentences make me want to stop talking to you.
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.
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.
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”?
Your going to have to rewrite, this i dont understand what you are saying. Are you referring to me or Sankara?
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?
Other people understood that I was being sarcastic as well.
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.
Why did you single Sankara’s Burkina Faso out when speaking of exceptions to authoritarian communism
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.
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?
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.
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?
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?
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.
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).
I feel anarchy is the only real way to gaurentee long term that people will be continually liberated
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.
They once had revolutionary components which I support. But those begin to dwindle the minute they took power and likey before.
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.
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?
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?
“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.”
Lenin’s warfare against Anarchist tendencies has assumed the most revolting Asiatic form of extermination […] it is for the Anarchists and AnarchoSyndicalists, in particular, imperative to take immediate action toward putting a stop to such Asiatic barbarism
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?
the Communist Government attacked, without provocation or warning, the Anarchist Club of Moscow
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.
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.
Alls I hear is a lot of what aboutism.
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.
By merely mentioning an informal fallacy I have torn your argument asunder! You are the one who has proven nothing.
You sound like a jackass when you write this way. imo.
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).
We’ve read plenty of Sankara, time you to to read a little Jakarta Method
This was another very difficult question I had to ask my interview subjects, especially the leftists from Southeast Asia and Latin America. When we would get to discussing the old debates between peaceful and armed revolution; between hardline Marxism and democratic socialism, I would ask:
“Who was right?”
In Guatemala, was it Árbenz or Che who had the right approach? Or in Indonesia, when Mao warned Aidit that the PKI should arm themselves, and they did not? In Chile, was it the young revolutionaries in the MIR who were right in those college debates, or the more disciplined, moderate Chilean Communist Party?
Most of the people I spoke with who were politically involved back then believed fervently in a nonviolent approach, in gradual, peaceful, democratic change. They often had no love for the systems set up by people like Mao. But they knew that their side had lost the debate, because so many of their friends were dead. They often admitted, without hesitation or pleasure, that the hardliners had been right. Aidit’s unarmed party didn’t survive. Allende’s democratic socialism was not allowed, regardless of the détente between the Soviets and Washington.
Looking at it this way, the major losers of the twentieth century were those who believed too sincerely in the existence a liberal international order, those who trusted too much in democracy, or too much in what the United States said it supported, rather than what it really supported—what the rich countries said, rather than what they did. That group was annihilated.
If you are unable to recognize atrocity propaganda by the US and/or Nazi collaborators or evangelical wackos who believe God tasked them with destroying a country, you’re a chump.
Its a good thong that that I do recognizes these these events. i just also know that russia has also commited atrocities. Much like most imperialist nations.
There is a healthy and honest way to appreciate communism, Russia, the CCP and even DPRK.
Agreed
And then there are people who are completely shilling the CCP Russia DPRK as communist uptopias. These people are tankies.
I would agree with you, if you simply called them dumbasses instead of using the equivalent of “woke” that’s virtually meaningless now. I have seen communists, anarchists, liberals, and even Zelensky being branded as “tankies”
You all use tankie exactly the same way republicans use woke. As a meaningless thought-terminating cliche deployed against literally everyone to your left to avoid actually learning anything.
Not really? The only thing you ever say to us is “tankie” or accuse us of being bots of some sort. You never actually engage in any discourse. That’s why you have this terminology, it functions as a method of literally dodging any engagement with anything we say, effectively by calling someone a tankie you give yourselves a socially acceptable way to avoid learning anything from socialists. It’s thought-terminating.
If you have anything worth saying that’s actually in good-faith I will completely engage with you. The point is that you deploy this word to avoid any engagement. The tactic is exactly the same tactic as the conservatives use to avoid any right-wing people engaging with anything to the left of them, if it’s “woke” they can switch off their brain and exercise avoidance to learning anything about it that might make them think differently.
Liberals, of both the conservative and democrat variety, both use exactly the same tactic on the people to their left.
Talk to me about something a marxist has just dismissed you on with the use of “lib”. I am happy to talk to you about it. What do you want to say? We call you libs because you ARE libs. You support Liberalism. The ideology of capitalism. Our actual analog to “tankie” is calling you dronies.
It’s a vibes-based invective liberals use the same way chuds use “woke” to dispel any cognitive dissonance that might crop up whenever they discover information they find displeasing because it might mean the rest of the delusions they’re immersed in might not be all that airtight. Just a thought-terminating word with absolutely no meaning. Just like “whataboutism,” it’s a weasel’s way out of addressing someone else’s argument in good faith (which I have yet to see you display in this thread).
Personally, it’s absolutely fucking hilarious to see how much these words get thrown around, especially when it comes from so-called “leftists.” If you truly are one, you ought to quit it with that bullshit.
I know it gets used like shit but do you think there’s any utility in the term ‘whataboutism’ if the definition is strict? Like I always understood it to be pointing out ludicrous pontificating about things that’ll never happen. Obviously that’s not how it’s used at all in reality and your description is much more apt.
I see, my mistake, though from a descriptivist standpoint a meaning that a word long-since lost and one that it never had are virtually the same thing on a functional level
The term (or the term whataboutery, which it emerged from) was originally used by pro-British newspapers during the troubles to complain that when people would whine about IRA activities others would respond by pointing out that their direct opposition, the British, were committing atrocities.
It’s always been a tool for Western hegemony to avoid criticism and accusations of hypocrisy.
Wow that was definitely an enlightening read on the etymology, so the word was fucked from the get go haha…
Sean O’Conaill (1976) - 'I would not suggest such a thing were it not for the Whatabouts. These are the people who answer every condemnation of the Provisional I.R.A. with an argument to prove the greater immorality of the “enemy”, and therefore the justice of the Provisionals’ cause: “What about Bloody Sunday, internment, torture, force feeding, army intimidation?”. ’
It’d be tough to get everyone to sign on, but I’d be down for your definition. It sounds like it better matches the word itself. Feels like a term I could use as a synonym for brainstorming, or when I talk about transit expansions in my city
I know it gets used like shit but do you think there’s any utility in the term ‘whataboutism’ if the definition is strict?
Nope. Because the argument always goes like this:
non-neutral party brings up problem about non-western place
someone says “well this is actually a bigger problem in the west” after which they get le downvoted
the rationale is “well we’re not talking about the west right now so that’s whataboutism”
The actual problem starts at step 1, and it’s started by westoids and their news media outlets who constantly a) attack free non-white countries (and Russia) b) stay silent about the (usually much worse) stuff the west is currently doing
For example, how many westoids have ever said anything about the EU overfishing Indian Ocean waters? Instead it’s always China overfishing X, or making Y animal extinct, even though westoids consume 4x more resources per capita and 90% of the rhino and elephant populations were killed by whites since the 1800s. Fuck mayos and fuck anyone who even reasons within their moronic bullshit paradigm
Ok great. Honestly I’m getting tired & running out of steam arguing with people.
Truth is this. When one of the first big lemmy jumps from reddit came I heard that hexbear was cool a leftist space. so hopped on. I was honestly disgusted by the comments i saw. I saw so many people arguing blindly for CPC and DPRK. Saying they were better than the US and calling anybody critiquing the bold claims they were making libs. such as “Cpc is the future socialism.” And "all the bad things people say about the CPC is american propaganda. "
Basically same thing that happend here when I defined tankie as authoritarian communist . In fact I saw this kind of thing on reddit too alot.
I dont give a fuck what you say or what other commenters post. I’ve seen this phenomena myself. I’ve been called a lib, So many times, simply for posting that I don’t support Russia or the CPC in leftist spaces. I’m sick of it.
So what are we arguing about? Is hexbear not as bad as I thought it was? Ok cool. Im wrong.
I know there are people in “your” community that are actual tankies. I’ve argued with them myself. Are you trying to say these people don’t exist? Cuz If you are, You’re the one that is full shit.
Have you ever heard of supporting ideas and not concepts as a whole?
What I’m saying (and I assume others on Hexbear) when I mention CPC, the USSR or DPRK is taking ideas that are meant for empowering the working class, not the whole concept. The problem is that in the current world the CPC have much more empowerment of the working class than say many of the western countries, with the US being one of the worst offenders.
So if you call that blindly supporting the CPC, then I guess we can’t have a conversation about Marxist (or any other political thought) at all.
Like let’s say for example Mao and his views towards landlords mao-aggro-shining it’s not as much the hatred towards a landlord as a person (sure there is some animosity) but more of a hatred towards the idea of landlords.
Honestly if you really are a critical-thinker Hexbear is a place where that critical thought can flourish as you’ll get called out on bullshit as much as you’ll get great sources of information if you ask for them.
Gulag just means prison in Russian. I don’t know what they call prisons in China, but its not gulag. The prison system refered to as “the Gulag” in the west only existed for like 20 years or so. Less people were imprisioned in that system than at any time under Czarist russia, and far less than in the US now.
Just because it has a foreign name doesn’t make it anything other than just a prison. I know you’re an anarchist and for prison abolition, which is cool. But don’t act like there are some kind of extra bad prisons in AES
When did my personal opinions on Russia or China come into any of this lol all I said was that “tankie” has no definitive meaning as used and that leftists using it is dumb and makes them sound like liberals. That the term to you equates to uncritical support of AES and Russia kind of proves the point in both respects.
How do you build a future for leftism if you’re going to just call people tankies and tell them to fuck off back to hexbear and lemmygrad? They’re about the last place I’d expect fascism to be celebrated based on my experience.
Sankara is a tankie by everyone’s definition here. He came to power via a coup, held military tribunals trying people for corruption, formed armed groups to defend the revolution, and was vehemently against NATO, the IMF, and other western powers.
What does anti-authoritarian mean to you if Sankara is anti-authoritarian
Also arrested trade union leaders and got into it with a teacher’s union. I obviously support Sankara, and like you say he’s really not different from any other communist leaders except that he was assassinated and his work undone.
He came to power via a coup, held military tribunals trying people for corruption, formed armed groups to defend the revolution, and was vehemently against NATO, the IMF, and other western powers.
You think trying people for corruption make you authoritarian?
Okay so if being “authoritarian” is bad and means you shouldn’t be supported, and Sankara ran a state, making him authoritarian, by a definition you’re now agreeing with (again, anyone who runs a state) why are you pretending you don’t think he’s an authoritarian and trying to use him as a cudgel against people who actually share an ideology with him?
Is whether or not something is “authoritarian” to you simply determined by vibes, or is it actual actions? By all measures, you should hate Sankara as well. Be consistent.
By all measures, you should hate Sankara as well. Be consistent.
i dont think. so sankara did some really cool things.
The USSR did some cool things too , AT FIRST: then they started murdering anarchist and consolidating power and becoming a police state. As an anarchist I oppose this.
Maybe Sankara would have done the same if he lived. But he didn’t. He was murdered in a US back coup. He was murdered for being an anti imperialist.
The USSR is not anti imperialst. Neither is the CPC. These communists experiments became police states. Sankara didnt.
Sankara fought for nitrution, literacy anticorruption anti imperialism. He put more women in government snd fought against female genital mutilation. Anarchist support all of these things.
What we dont support is police states. Among other things.
Sankara was a supporter of the USSR and a Marxist-Leninist. Sankara isn’t a non-tankie just because he didn’t live to the tankie phase, he was always acting as an ML. If that makes you sympathize more with MLs, or makes you hate Sankara as you do tankies, either is your choice.
Sankara isn’t a non-tankie just because he didn’t live to the tankie phase, he was always acting as an ML.
I believe there is a difference in being ML and having police state aspirations/trending authoritarian. Which is when I use the term tankie.
Maybe I’m wrong tho you tell me. I liked what sankara did and I dont want to negate the cool things he did simply becuase he got murdered and we dont know what he was going to become.
There is nuance in his life that I can accept. But what I cannot accept is modern day MLs who look fondly on the actions of the USSR, russian federation and the modern day CPC. they are large authoritarian states that I cannot support as an anarchist.
Everytime I bring this up tho. I get called a lib.
It’s pretty simple. Most MLs critically support ML states. Almost all of them, for example, hate that Stalin banned homosexuality. At the same time, they can also appreciate how both Mao and the USSR doubled life expectancy and ended famine. By metrics, both states improved rapidly.
As an Anarchist, you can learn a lot from MLs on how to actually get stuff done. Anarchism is a beautiful dream currently, outside of fringe cases like Revolutionary Catalonia it hasn’t actually existed to a meaningful extent. I’m not saying you should become an ML, but MLs typically take their routes because it gets results, even if the Means aren’t pretty at all.
He set up Popular Revolutionary Tribunals to prosecute public officials charged with political crimes[12] and corruption, considering such elements of the state counter-revolutionaries.[15] This led to criticism by Amnesty International for human rights violations, including extrajudicial executions and arbitrary detentions of political opponents.[16]
Statists using tribunals to try other statists is the use of state authority and the use of the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force. If “Authoritarian” means anything at all then using the power of the state to prosecute people who are doing state stuff in ways you don’t like is authoritarian.
“Communist utopia” is the strawman of any support whatsoever for China and the DPRK, they’re arguing in bad faith. They know this but it will be fun to see their example (probably a shitpost from 2 years ago).
I don’t think I called you racist to start with, but my point was that just because something is called by X name in one context by one group of people and Y in another context by another group does not mean both names are equally valid. When it comes to political entities, typically the belief is that the group itself decides on its own name (like Kiev officially becoming Kyiv in English, to take a recent example). The CPC says that its name is the CPC. Western journos who want their readership to hate the Party call it the CCP. These are not equally valid bases for what to call something.
You’re arguing that it’s okay to call a group a term used almost exclusively by their political enemies who want them completely destroyed, I think it’s pretty obvious that you’re a racist.
We’re mainly waiting for you to say “Yes, I was wrong, Hexbear doesn’t shill for Russia/China/DPRK and call them communist utopias, and I guess tankies is kind of a meaningless term.”. I think that was the point.
I mean as I stated in other comments i went to hexbear a few months ago and saw a bunch of people doing this very thing. So if you want yo say that experiance was a fluke ok. But stop trying to paint me as a liar.
Also tankie has real meaning to anarchist. So I dont feel it is meaningless.
Putin does not care about the well-being of Ukrainian citizens
Of course not, he has never. He is acting in self-interest because Ukraine and the US are escalating violence. Do you remember the lethal aid Biden sent? Where do you think that lethal aid went? Who do you think it was shot at?
we’re teetering on Putin apologia and sharing RT news uncritically.
Putin is a corrupt bastard. I think many on this site cannot tell the difference between not viewing him as satanic vs licking his boot. I wasn’t going to try to argue this until your post came up.
So, China is clearly better than the US, considering that workers in BRI countries complain about price dumping, but countries in the American sphere complain about death squads. That said, we need to listen to workers and socialists who aren’t in power. The NPA says they’re getting shot with Chinese bullets. Workers in China still go on strike. Class struggle still exists in China, even if the state and party buffer it.
Oh wow, it’s almost as if the tiny parcel of land that China controls (less than 10% what the capitalists have) is not sufficient in resources to change the world on its own, so they have to partially adapt to the already existing system in order to have a chance against the west, while still keeping in place socialist policies like eliminating homelessness, small individual plots of farmland, limits on buying real estate on credit, etc
“OMG this POC must hate themselves because they speak english!” <---- This is you
What stops China and the DPRK being utopias is resources, not the CPC or WPK. The CPC and WPK are both forces of good. (What stops Russia from being a communist utopia is that the bourgeois democracy is actively working towards creating a capitalist dystopia).
American are like “cut 37/64 and 52 thousandths of an inch off your 2 by 4 inch piece of wood, that’s obviously not 2 by 4 inches”, and don’t get me started on wire gauge.
By “being slightly critical” they mean even slightly implying that China is not in every way a completely perfect utopian paradise incapable of doing wrong.
I’m from hexbear, people are critical of it all the time on hexbear. You just can’t criticize China and not know the people there are far better off than those in the US
Mao killing the sparrows during the four pests campaign was bad. The cultural revolution produced excesses that didn’t need to happen if it was handled better.
Oh look nobody on hexbear is going to hate on this comment.
Modern day China is both capitalist and emperialist and has a disregard for basic human rights. It is not in any way shape or form a communist state. Oh, and it actively tries to censor and erase the fact that it ran down its own citizens with tanks.
How is China imperialist? The other stuff you’re saying us wrong too, but i know the propaganda you will point to to get there. But imperialist? You mean Belt and Road? Building hospitals in Africa?
You mean the theocratic slaver state of Tibet that was liberated by the PLA? That’s a fine place to start to show that you are just another western left anti-communist.
Edit: I’d recommend Blackshirts and Reds to understand the phenomenon of left anti-communism in the West. If you’re serious about communism, it might help you understand the rift driven between you and the people you call “tankies” …wordpress.com/…/michael-parenti-blackshirts-and-…
There’s a big a difference between the two actions. Let’s start with the US. They “liberate” Iraq and Afghanistan and proceed to extract value out of the country. Byzantine networks of private contractor orgs: Haliburton, KBR, Blackwater all making money, along with the military industrial profiteer complex. These countriee were hollowed out for profit and foreign extraction. US empire nakedly acts to make money for the ruling class.
Now, where is that in Tibet? Where is the capitalist extraction? Where is the hollowing out and using up of resources? People in Tibet are now freer, and better educated, and live better lives now than when they were slaves to the lamas. Its not cynical double speak to call what happened in Tibet liberation the way the US government claimed to he liberating Iraq. They freed an enslaved people, that’s not an act of imperialism just because it involved an army. An army literally named the People’s Liberation Army
You don’t know how to actually counter what i said because you don’t really know about Tibet or the PRC, or understand that while its not yet operating under full socialism, it does have a dictatorship of the proletariat guided by a revolutionary vanguard party. Not understanding these things, yet having an opinion about the PRC is charitably naivete
Walks like a duck, talks like a duck, swims like a duck, annexes other countries like a duck. But it insists it’s a platypus so I guess we’ll pretend it’s a mammal.
Cool. It was one i found very clarifying when i was trying to learn more about AES and sort through the reality of those countries as opposed to the Western version of them
Oh, and it actively tries to censor and erase the fact that it ran down its own citizens with tanks.
Are you saying that China doesn’t censor or try to hide this? Can I just go to Tienanmen square and start talking to locals about what happened there and they’ll openly talk about how awful it was?
What do you think happened at Tienanmen Square? Because you might want to figure that out before you start grinning like a moron while asking a Chinese person about “how awful what happened at Tienanmen Square was”.
Not at Tienanmen Square. Confirmed by western reporters at the scene along with contemporary US diplomatic cables later leaked by Wikileaks. Western media is really attached to that image of the guy in front of a tank, so everyone just pretends it was the site of a mass murder. Really odd.
It is. The only evidence of a massacre of protestors in Tienanmen Square presented in that article is Wu’erkaixi’s claim that he saw 200 people shot, but he had actually left the protests hours before the final protestors left, and literally everyone else present (including western journalists) says that the last protestors left peacefully.
Edit: Here’s an overview from the former Beijing bureau chief of The Washington Post, who was in Beijing covering the protests in 1989.
While we’re on the subject of propaganda: what was it that made you believe China “ran down its own citizens with tanks”? What is the actual source of this belief.
Do you see how dishonest it is to claim that even slightly criticism of China is forbidden on Hexbear and then when the person speaks to you offers substantial criticism, your counterpoint is that we disagree when you say extremely bad shit about China?
What is a slightly negative thing about China that you feel you couldn’t share on hexbear.net?
How do you differentiate yourself from them as a socialist? What is your theory of power and how it relates to authority, revolutions, and the working class that causes you to make this separation between supporting non-western communist countries and not?
I never said that I don’t support communist countries. What I do not support are abuses of power by authoritarian leaders, even if they claim to be abusing their power in order to bring about a communist state.
Tankies accept most/all atrocities committed by so-called communist leaders with a “the ends justify the means” attitude that I do not share.
Have you never heard the phrase “the ends justify the means” before? It’s a pretty common phrase.
It means that any action, no matter how unethical or morally reprehensible, is acceptable as long as it is done to accomplish a goal that is deemed good.
This is the tankie attitude.
To reject this means that there are limitations on what actions are acceptable in pursuit of a goal. That there are some actions that are too repugnant to be justified.
That’s correct. I think in the real world that doesn’t come up. What is the hypothetical? would you murder an innocent little girl to save your child. That isn’t a gotcha. That wouldn’t work. Even if it did work, the ends of that is that everyone has to wory about their children being scrapped for spare parts. That logic works under cpaitlaism. That situation infact happens today for capitlaism. There just aren’t situations where if you accurately assess the ends it justifies terrible means. Under capitlaism we do terrible means for terrible ends. We are so used to thinking of that that it us hard to think of alternatives, but your failure of imagination doesn’t make you morally right.
That’s just thought-terminating. There’s no universal truth that ends do or do not justify means.
Is locking up a sex offender to prevent further victimization justifiable? Is taking bread from a store to feed a starving person justifiable? Is banning false advertisement justifiable? Is requiring licensure for medical practice justifiable? Those actions are all means that directly violate some conception of liberal human rights.
Additionally, there’s often not a clear delineation, in the real world, between means and ends. The real world is made up of complex networks of powers and interests competing against each other, regardless of what can or cannot be justified. We believe in advancing working class power, interests, and rights, which by definition necessitates undermining the power, interests, and rights of the ruling class and its enforcers/enablers. Within that framework we accept and perform criticisms of the methods used to progress those goals, but only inasmuch as those critiques can help to refine strategy and inform future liberatory movements. Otherwise it’s either carrying water for US interests or squabbling about the moral standing of dead people.
I don’t think you said anything meaningfully different from what I already said.
You do not consider the abhorrent unethical nature of certain actions as being a valid argument against taking those actions in the pursuit of establishing a communist society. The only criticism you’ll entertain is that certain actions may be ineffective or inefficient at accomplishing that goal.
I’m sorry, maybe I’m misunderstanding here. I think the delineation between authoritarian regimes and non-authoritarian governments is pretty clear - are you implying that all socialist and communist influenced governments are necessarily authoritarian?
No, I’m suggesting that authoritarian is a meaningless term unless defined specifically and was asking what theories of power and authority they had for making the delineation they are.
The derogatory term authoritarian is always leveled at socialist or communist countries, and never capitalist ones even though capitalist countries restrict rights for the majority of their populations by the very nature of the inherent power structure in capitalism. Even though communist countries usually enjoy far more decentralised authority, better voting rights, and higher political involvement in the populace, they are labeled as “authoritarian,” the implication being that they need “freedom” aka capitalism
What? The term authoritarian is thrown at non-communist/capitalist nations all the time. Syria, Nazi Germany, Libya, Franco’s Spain, Modern Russia, and a million other instances. Authoritarian is a clearly defined term and is in no way exclusively applied to communist nations in almost any circles. It also happens to have been applied to most “communist” countries because most of them have been authoritarian
It’s not clearly defined at all; try to give a definition of authoritarianism that applies to all of the countries frequently described as authoritarian, but not to any of the ones that aren’t, and you’ll see how vague a term it is.
Countries frequently have authoritarian tendencies without being overwhelmingly described as an authoritarian nation. When a nations primary mode of function is in authoritarian action it ceases to be a country I would consider something anyone should aim to emulate, which is why most people have problems with tankies and their support of the USSR or the CCP. It is fine to point at those countries and say “hey for all of their faults they managed to do X pretty well” but an entirely different thing to look at them and say “if only they came out on top, the world would be a much better place today”.
When a nations primary mode of function is in authoritarian action it ceases to be a country I would consider something anyone should aim to emulate
ALL nations and ALL governments’ ‘primary mode of function’ is ‘authoritarian action’. You can’t run a water main without using ‘authoritarian action’ to secure right of way.
God this is just like being in college again. You can’t be serious, as you must understand the difference between using eminent domain vs a pogrom. Like maybe I’m being dramatic, but I think that the Uyghurs might be slightly more inconvenienced than someone who at worst is getting a paycheck in order to move their house. There’s is a significant difference in how countries even go about implementing shit as well, as eminent domain in a modern democracy vs eminent domain in a authoritarian dictatorship could be executed radically differently.
You are however disregarding how a nation conducts itself internationally, instead focusing entirely on domestic policy. Should we not consider how a nation acts towards people outside of its own borders as this authoritarianism? If we include a country’s imperialism, you’ll find the overwhelmingly most violent, brutal and authoritarian nations are the USA, the EU, and the west in general.
While I wholeheartedly agree with you that there are serious human rights problems in the way the EU and US has conducted itself overseas in the past, you are grossly underestimating just how fucked up other countries behave themselves when operating past their own borders
Sure, you’re right, but again, you are downplaying atrocities by other nations far greater right now. Would I like the US to conduct itself better? Of course. Do I advocate and vote in a way that supports that? Of course. Do I think the US is the worst compared to other countries? Not even close
Who do you vote for to put a stop to US support for the occupation of Syria? Which US politicians are you voting for to end the murderous sanctions against Cuba, Iran the DPRK and Venezuela? Which US politicians have pledged to quit murdering civilians in Yemen? Which US politicians support Palestinian human rights or at least want to quit bankrolling the open air prison they live in? Which US politicians support ending the concentration camps at our borders? Or slowing down all the refugee deportations to Latin American countries we’ve devastated with all of our “interventions?”
Oh wait, there are none with any power or possibility of getting serious power. Actually the only one putting a stop to the bloodshed in Yemen is China.
The fact is that you probably vote for the Democrats because you wouldn’t be shameless enough to vote for Republicans and then claim that you vote against the US’s mass murdering behavior, but the Democrats don’t have any intentions of ending any of these atrocities and if you’re claiming that they do you’re either a gullible fool or a murder-supporting liar.
Maybe you vote Green? They might be less evil than the GOP and DNC but they will NEVER hold power so they have no impact on how evil the US is.
The external imperialism of western countries far outweighs the danger, threat, and damage to human life than even the most cartoonish and absurd claims about the alleged internal authoritarianism in countries like Cuba, China, and the DPRK. It’s such a massive disconnect and it’s also not even a dialectical comparison.
The external imperialism of western nations is precisely what generates the security apparatuses that are developed within modern socialist countries. Most of the time what you regard as gross and needless authoritarianism is in fact socialist states defending themselves from external aggression. Go listen to Parenti talking about the measures Nicaragua had to take in regards to capitalist encirclement.
And furthermore, the decision to not use the term authoritarian to describe western nations constantly confuses me. Is it because the term imperialism is more accurate? If you want my gut feeling on this: authoritarian, totalitarian, and related terms were all cooked up by liberal historians like Hannah Arendt to make the USSR sound like the same type of thing as Nazi Germany, which is frankly Holocaust trivialization.
I disagree and I don’t appreciate people splitting hairs when very obviously it is not the case. Anyone can sit down and stare that “oh well this is authoritarian because if you don’t pay your taxes you lose your home”, and it’s completely irrelevant to any legitimate conversation. There’s a difference between the United States and Pol Pots Cambodia, and if you’re gonna try to argue that they’re the same then I’m done
It’s not splitting hairs, it’s literally the entire point of the discussion. I understand that you’ve had the idea that there’s some fundamental, qualitive, difference between the authoritarianism of Western counties and the authoritarianism of foreigners so deeply instilled in you that the idea of questioning it, or even having to justify it, is absurd to you. But the fact of the matter is that it is perfectly reasonable “legitimate conversation” to actually ask you to back up your claims, and you trying to assert that it’s just “obvious” that you’re right and if anyone tries to argue “you’re just done” just makes it clear that you’ve never actually examined why you hold these beliefs and you refuse to do so.
There’s a difference between the United States and Pol Pots Cambodia, and if you’re gonna try to argue that they’re the same then I’m done
You’re right, there is a difference: an order of magnitude more people have been killed and emiserated by the USA.
Incorrect. In the past I had been a dues paying member of socialist/leftist organizations, I went to school for politics and philosophy, I’ve spent years of my life having conversations with people like you and reading arguments and following these topics. I’m not done because I’m ignorant or unwilling to face a truth, I’m done because I think you’re wrong, and that you’re unable to see reason. I’ve had this conversation dozens of times. No rational person would look at how an atrocity like the Pol Pot regime conducted itself and say “Yeah that wasn’t fun but look at America! That’s where the real evil is!” It’s insane. For that reason I hope you have a nice evening, I will not be continuing this conversation.
Incorrect. In the past I had been a dues paying member of socialist/leftist organizations, I went to school for politics and philosophy, I’ve spent years of my life having conversations with people like you and reading arguments and following these topics. I’m not done because I’m ignorant or unwilling to face a truth
Didn’t ask, don’t care.
I’m going off the actual content of your statements, and that content is that you take liberalism as axiomatically true and you fundamentally are unwilling to examine that axiom, instead writing off anyone who challenges it as “not rational” or even “insane” and refusing to engage further.
Notice you didn’t name the United States which is just as authoritarian as modern Russia by any definition we choose (voting rights? participation in political process? allowed dissent? access to clean water? basic access to healthcare? food desserts? policies meant to keep people in poverty?). That’s my point. It’s an ethereal term unless properly defined.
We’ll have to set Libya aside since after given “freedom,” there are now literal slave traders everywhere.
I don’t particularly care as that wasn’t my point. My point was to disagree with your comment prior which stated that authoritarian as a term was mainly used as a truncheon against communist nations in order to increase support for capitalism, which it isn’t.
Yeah, what they should have said is that authoritarianism as a term is mainly used as a truncheon against non Western countries in order to increase support for Western hegemony, which it absolutely is.
Yeah, but you doing that is unhelpful. It is confusing people because that is not a reasonable place to find criticism with the argument. Too much precision is not helpful in arguments and the CIA literally ran propaganda programs to get people to try to bog down any discussion of communism with meaningless minutiae. So, do better or something.
My guy, that’s an awful lot of assumptions to be making about the general mindset of multiple nations, each of which contains millions of people. Derogatory? I’m pretty sure that authoritarianism has a dictionary definition lol. “Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting.” From Wikipedia, just as a quick Google grab.
So do you think that, say, WW2 Italy wasn’t authoritarian? Or same-era Japan? Fascist nations are (by the above definition) authoritarian, so that actually includes tons of non-communist nations, both current and historical. Similarly, just because a nation is communist, does not make it magically except from having corrupt, authoritarian government. Id even say that America is well on its way to authoritarianism, and the right/neo-libs continue to salivate over the chance to completely fuck over the common person in exchange for a quick buck.
Genuinely, because I’m always looking to learn more; how does capitalism as an economic system inherently restrict rights? My understanding of the core premise is that it turns labor into a conceptual currency that we then use to acquire goods. It’s not, theoretically, at least, inherently oppressive. In practice, it’s been clearly a shit-show that causes more suffering than just about anything else on the planet.
As a side note; I’m deeply anti-capitalist, I’m also deeply anti-fascist and anti-authoritarian. I hate the idea that a human being is only worth the utility they provide, and I also hate the idea that oppression is a necessary consequence of an attempt to liberate the people of a nation from hyper-capitalist wagemongering. I’d like to think there’s a world where we can live and not oppress anyone, can genuinely engage in discourse and learn from each other without judgement.
thanks for the interaction here, and thanks for pushing back. you’re getting at what i was hoping to demonstrate, that all political systems inherently have a system of authoritarianism with the possible exception of anarchism – I don’t know enough about anarchist theory to talk through that and don’t want to be sectarian to my anarchist comrades, but your questions about it would be welcome at hexbear. we have a comm dedicated to theory. Bakunin (one of the big names in anarchist theory) wrote about authority, and Engels replied (he was not a fan). you might like their essays. theory has come a long way since then, but it’s worth looking at some foundational texts. this topic is what caused the marxist-anarchist split.
capitalism restricts rights by alienating the working class from the means of production. thus, workers have no say over their labor and have the value of the labour extracted. as more exploitation occurs and wealth imbalance increases, the ruling class will always move to consolidate power to protect their capital and positions in society, which naturally leads to one society of the bourgeouise and another for the labourers. this is at the basical level but it is much wider than this and effects all levels of society, e.g., the bourgeouise control media outlets to prevent ideas from taking root (e.g., newspapers in 1800s-1900s) whilst selling the idea of a “free press.” It means that all aspects of society are not focused on creating products useful for society but on creating products useful to make capitalist money through further exploitation. It needs to feed and crushes all who oppose it, even ideologically.
that’s a decent starting point, I think, but yeah come join us at hexbear. you can jump into the theory comms with questions or head to “askchapo” or just jump into the daily mega thread. we’re all nerds over there, so where I don’t know something someone else will jump in
I appreciate the super open and honest discourse! I’ve only studied a little bit of Marx/Engels and then some of the Frankfurt School and some post Marxist and post structuralist stuff, I’m looking forward to engaging and learning more.
A few things to keep in mind in addition to our comrade’s reply:
I’ve never met or talked online with any tankie who is happy with the fact that the “authoritarian oppression” is necessary. We often just take the position of Marx’s quote “we won’t make excuses for the terror.” You don’t have to want it, but because it’s necessary according to history and theory, we don’t bother with the whole game of waiting for the perfect excuse, because then it’s often too late for a movement.
The goal of tankies is to also reach that world of no necessary oppression and liberation from it for all through dialectical progression, however long and arduous that task is. We just try to be technical, tactical, and strategic about it. It can seem callous, but it’s a mistake to think we can stay on the emotional/values-only plane of thought while attempting large scale socio-economic changes because the enemies of those changes have a system behind them which fulfills all these tasks with low effort.
When we say authoritarianism is meaningless, we mean that the dictionary definition you gave is all encompassing at state-level analyses, rendering it meaningless for distinctions. There is no power which doesn’t fulfill all of those conditions (even just a low-level manager performs the contents of that definition, despite the form it takes being small scale. Like “reductions of the rule of law” can be as simple as asking you to do tasks on outside of your contract). The only difference is a vibe created in the mind of the user of the term.
The end of this authority at societal scale is communism. Countries sometimes called communist are better called socialist countries led by communists or something. The whole discussion is rendered confusing by mistaking a process/movement for some definitional standard. No socialist country is socialist for meeting definitions/conditions; they are socialist because they recognize and continue the process to progression to communism. See point 2 for the strategy which countries led by communists are doing.
Come talk with us, we have interesting ideas and people
I appreciate the reply and break-down of some of these concepts in context. I struggle with the necessity of authoritarianism, not because of the required restrictions on freedom necessary to protect others from oppression, but by shielding a system from criticism as opposed to allowing critique to be heard and resolved through collective discourse. I definitely also recognize that’s an arduous process that requires a necessary undermining of governmental authority, but I feel like there’s a sort of unintended arrogance in the idea that any system could be free enough of flaws to be above criticism- or that it’s good enough to be worth the oppression of the few without hearing their voices and honestly considering their plight.
I’m happy, always, to learn more and engage in conversations about this, I look forward to talking with folks on Hexbear and growing my understanding of these concepts!
any system could be free enough of flaws to be above criticism- or that it’s good enough to be worth the oppression of the few without hearing their voices and honestly considering their plight.
I don’t think there’s many MLs that would argue against you here, at least as far as ideals go. In fact you’ll find a lot of internal criticism of past socialist experiments. It’s just not really criticism if it’s not taking into account historical context and/or if it’s based largely on western misinformation.
What most western criticism of AES lacks is key historical context (this comment is very stream of consciousness so forgive me for being all over the place):
Threats of invasion, sabotage, espionage, assassination, etc have always been a threat to vested power, but even more so against revolutionary movements. Rosa Luxembourg was killed. Lenin was nearly assassinated (may have caused him to die early). Stalin may have been assassinated. Castro somehow survived hundreds of attempts and plans. Che was killed. Allende was overthrown (and maybe killed). Árbenz was overthrown. Malcolm X was killed. Fred Hampton was killed. Sukarno was overthrown. Sankara was killed. All this just off the top of my head, there’s plenty more examples.
The Soviet Union had 20 years to somehow industrialize well enough to face European invasion, withstanding both internal and external attacks. The alternative was quite literally death.
The absolute strength, size, and resources of the US empire are unprecedented, which significantly alters the material conditions and thus the strategies that must be employed by revolutionary movements for survival. US intelligence agencies have become very good at manufacturing or manipulating social unrest to destabilize a country and set up a coup. Check out The Jakarta Method for an overview of some of these strategies.
So yes, ideally we would all interact freely in the marketplace of ideas, and bad ideas would be refuted by facts and logic. But the unfortunate reality is that bad faith actors and saboteurs have proven incredibly effective at materially undermining revolutionary movements, and thus any criticism of those movements must take that into account or it’s a useless criticism.
If capitalism isn’t authoritarian why do we spend most of our federal budget on making sure people can’t leave the system?
Why does my boss get to decide my hair color?
Why is everything in my life dictated by the authority of money. How is living with that authoritarian boot on my neck freedom? I would be less free in a country like Cuba where I can marry who I want and leave my job without losing access to medicine?
When you say making sure people can’t leave the system, do you mean the military budget? Which is for sure super fucked- no doubt there. I think the driving force behind most warmongering is profit, as opposed to oppression for the sake of preventing dissent. Obviously CIA operations in foreign countries (and within the borders of the US) through time have shown we’re certainly willing to kill and ruin economies for control, however my (admittedly limited) understanding of a lot of those instances is that they are primarily built upon promises of extending geopolitical control as opposed to pursuing pure capital.
I think about the difference between the gulf war/Iraq/Afghanistan, which were for sure about extending control in an area rich with a resource that is incredibly valuable, and Korea and Vietnam -huge examples of attempting to avoid allowing political rivals to accumulate power globally.
Honestly I think workers rights is for sure an example of modern American policy being vastly (intentionally, in part) unequipped for modern capitalism. I don’t know if I think that it makes the core concepts of capitalism flawed- workers will need to work regardless of the economic system, and as long as people are working, there’s a power dynamic between workers and those who are utilizing their labor- the farmer will always need to sell their crops, and they can’t control if buyers won’t associate with them due to their hair color, or religious preferences, etc.
I don’t have an answer for that last bit- I think that’s where a just government that serves its people would be able to step in and provide for people who need it. I know countries are toying with Universal Basic Income, but ultimately it’s a complicated issue that doesn’t have an easy answer that I’m aware of.
I’m not sure how capitalism inherently prevents you from marrying who you’d like - could you elaborate on that? Do you mean things like marrying into debt? I definitely agree that the American healthcare system is oppressive - that’s absolutely a symptom of late-stage capitalism and the GLORY OF THE “INVISIBLE HAND” of the unregulated market. I think that’s one of those areas where a just government would be providing for its citizens.
What do we do with the economies once we controll them? We open the markets to our businesses and they raid the place. As our government is cpaitlaist all the decisions are based on making money. All those politicians that decide who to go to war with own stock in the companies that will profit. There is no difference between those drives.
Why did we not want rivals to gain power? Just vanity? No. The risk to future profits. When you look at wages and workers rights when the USSR fell the Capitalists had no competition. Wages were lowered everywhere as conditions would permit. After all, where else could people go,?
As to workers rights it is pretty simple. All that needs to be is that workers are given dignity. My boss can fire me and I might starve to death. If my survival wasn’t based on pleasing the most greedy people then I could make better decisions about how to use my time. So, just more money and safety. As communists we have a very specific idea we have about how to acomplish that.
Depending on what sate you live in you could very easily be fired for being queer. Because your ability to survive us based on money anything that riskes that is effectively not permitted by capitalism.
I’m in no way here to argue pro-capitalist rhetoric. I’m not super committed to capitalism as opposed to other systems of economic management, I am however willing to posit that the system of trading work for money does not inherently oppress- absolutely late stage capitalism is an unabashed fuck-show responsible for more misery than acceptable by almost any ethical standard. I hate the idea that, ultimately, you’re only worth what you can produce. I think that workers rights should be paramount, and there’s no amount of money that would be an acceptable profit margin to sell human suffering, full stop.
On the geopolitical scale, I think many decisions during the cold war were driven by fear of nuclear warfare. There’s for sure profit in controlling puppet states, but with Cuba on their doorstep and Russia very clearly taking the role of an international superpower, I think that there was some rationale about their ability to become more politically important and influence the world beyond the west’s ability to push back, and with nuclear armaments proliferating at a genuinely insane rate, there was a very real threat of apocalypse on the horizon. Do I think that justifies warmongering, interference in legal elections, and killing dissidents? Of fucking course not. But I don’t think it was motivated by money alone. Money is just a gateway to power, like anything else.
I think personally, the idea that you can use work to produce capital that you can then spend on other things is not necessarily authoritarian. It’s also definitely not a single catch-all solution to “how do we make a society that is just”- obviously unregulated markets go brr. I think the counterbalance needs to be systems that allow for people who can’t work to live a high quality of life, regardless of how much they can provide.
That is where history disagrees. In the bargain of trade the people who need money to live can never make deals on an even playing field with those that don’t. If trade determines your survival and we know it can’t be done fairly than we have created conditions that can only snowball into misery.
I see no reason to belive the people running an apartide government that used weapons of mass destructions on civilians should be given any benefit of the doubt. There is no evidence they were kind or altruistic in any other endeavor. Why would it be different here?
If the cycle was work -> value. Than I would agree that is what socialism calls for. However the accumulation of capital makes it impossible for a worker to get fair and just value for their labor.
I definitely think that if any theoretical government would be capable of making that core work-to-value cycle work, it certainly would look pretty radically different than the US, I mostly live here because I was born here, I have a support system here, and my ancestors were literally bled to death here lol
Yeah, you could make something work. I could make my car fly, it would just be easier to use a plane though.
Most of history worked just fine on other systems. Most of the time this system has worked terribly. The system we had was just the first one to encorporate the scientific method and rationality. It is a historical accident. We can do better.
I think that there’s quite a bit to be said for the ability to abstract something like labor and turn it into a common resource that can be utilized by anyone- if I need to buy a Japanese computer part from a very small manufacturing organization, that’s about the only way to make sure that all parties are seeing value in a transaction, seeing that there’s no guarantee that I have anything they would want or need, and I may never interact with them again.
I agree, we can for sure improve on the concepts involved, but that doesn’t mean that they’re accidental, and there’s a reason that the system was even marginally successful.
I think like, evolution is a great example of a similar process - the biological functions formed by evolutionary processes aren’t intentional, because intention implies cognitive processes that a natural law isn’t capable of; but they do serve purpose. They aren’t accidents, because the system is by its nature iterative and of course something would work eventually. Is there a theoretically more efficient structure than the one that we currently have for the human heart? Sure! That’s just not the structure that evolved through selective pressure.
Again, not to say we shouldn’t try to improve on systems of economy and government, but more to say that there’s still lessons to be taken from what we currently have; it worked in some small way, which means we probably wouldn’t benefit from throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.
Well no. In the example of buying a small computer part they probably see little value in the transaction. Between parts, overhead, shipping, materials. Ths majority of the economic signal there is lost to inefficient rent seeking, bloat, corrupt middlemen, and management costs. Who in this situation are we concerned about? The people who designed it? The people that assembled it? The people that mined the materials? The people that handled shipping? The market abstracts all this so people.habe a very hard time feeling the relationships between each other. Then rent seeking behavior overshadows all that and makes market forces effectively noise.
I do agree with the idea of evolutionary solutions. Consider the horse. Useful. When we abandoned the solution that evolved and created purpose built solutions we got way cooler and way more effective answers. Like, would you say the rocket ship was just an overcorrection to the inefficiency present in water buffalo based transport? No. It was the application of science, logic and reason to create good answers to hard problems. Every time we try to make something cool we do so. It’s rad. We should to do the economy what we have done every other technology
I think that for sure one of the drawbacks of the labor to currency system is the blind consumerism and the unethical conditions necessary to, say, make a bacon cheeseburger. I think the unethical parts of that interaction have more to do with corporate price-gouging and abuse of labor than the consumer themselves, who (in our current system) is kept intentionally blind to the real cost of their meal.
I think that for sure rent-seeking is one of those things that, in this theoretical government, would need to be addressed. Landlords and speculators are clearly opportunists with no connection to the stuff they milk value from, and that’s problematic.
On reflection, ultimately I have no problem with the premise that people don’t necessarily need to understand how to grow wheat, or even know someone who owns wheat, in order to consume the labor of a farmer- so long as that farmer is capable of truly leveraging their labor favorably and also benefits from that interaction. In that scenario, the farmer also uses the abstraction, which allows them to really utilize all of their labor through a larger base of people to sell to. They can also put this theoretical currency towards things that contribute to their fulfillment and that of their family members without knowing the person who produces those things personally, and so on.
I think one place I’m struggling with this is I’m having a hard time conceptualizing how people with more ephemeral skills would be able to leverage that skill into the resources necessary to obtain other types of fulfillment without a way to hold and transfer the value they generate. I’m sure there are philosophers who’ve written books on books about it, and I just need to find their work lol.
I think that we stopped using horses and adapted systems to do similar work, for sure, but that was after we had already iterated into the saddle, the cart, the wagon, carriage, etc. Horse to car is a big step if we look at the two of them without the greater context, but it was thousands of years of technology and iteration before we got there. They’re fundamentally interrelated- I mean heck, we even measure the power of an engine by horses.
I agree that the natural next step economically is coming, and that’s a fact- the questions in my eyes are: what’s the horse, what’s the carriage, and what are we replacing the horse with?
Cybernetics. The needs of people are essentially known and predictable. We can just make them and give them to people. That is also kinda how most of human history worked and it was fine then. It could be fine now, even better with computer data analysis and rational processing.
Sure there will be exceptions like little Japanese computer parts. However some democratic process could be used. Plenty of writers and scifi stories have possible systems. We can figure that out when we get there.
I’m actually not not into the idea of being able to instantly and accurately judge the needs of a whole nation of people. I mean shit, we already collect so much data through smart watches that once we are able to accurately measure metabolic rate, that’s like 90% of it right there I think lol
There is a book, the people’s republic of Walmart.
Basically every company with sufficient money does exactly this and they are very effective at it. Just what if instead of using the tech to make Walmart slightly more money we used it to make some public goods cheap and effective
seriously though, we live in a late-stage capitalist hellscape and it’s always funny to be when people use government monitoring fears to justify removing core social safety nets while simultaneously Walmart, Google, etc. Know when your balls ache because they have collected data on you from when you were prepubescent.
Those companies use the money they squeeze out of you to buy politicians to make your life worse. So life under capitlaism has trained everyone to mistrust that kinda thing. People have simply never lived in a world where anything like that was likely to improve their lives. So pessimism is a reasonable response to the conditions we find ourselves in. However a better world is possible.
hard agree. I think the only way we can improve our lives and the lives of those in our communities is to unflinchingly believe in the fact that we deserve better, and we can get better
All governments are inherently authoritarian by their nature, but there’s a scale and I think in most people’s minds there’s a line.
The line is probably drawn where people are prosecuted or even killed when they publicly criticise the ruling regime, where you have to “escape” to simply leave, where there’s a culture of fear that your neighbour or friends or even family could report you for disagreeing with the government. More often than not there’s no way for the public to change the government through democratic means.
Ok, but if that’s the case, why are we drawing a line at a nation’s internal population and disregarding their external policies? The USA killed three million people in the War in Iraq, including Iraqis who were very critical of the American presence. The USA has assassinated Latin American presidents for speaking out against the USA and replaced them with more America-friendly dictators. And yet everyone who talks about authoritarianism doesn’t include western nations in their discussion, they instead make up a cartoon idea of what countries outside the west are like. Your definition of what is or isn’t tankie/authoritarian has some kind of nationalist bias built into it.
Every time someone describes what authoritarianism is, it makes me think that America and the EU are the worst perpetrators of this behavior, but they mainly export all their violence rather than use the worst of it domestically. Domestically they use private sector means to distribute violence, such as poverty, prisons, and the facilitation of ambient racism.
This reminds me of the dividing line that liberals use, which is when they say things like “that dictator killed HIS OWN PEOPLE.” As if killing people externally is more excusable crime?
Because authoritarianism is about the internal control of its own populace, not how a nation state acts against other nation states.
The illegal invasion of Iraq wasn’t authoritarianism. And I’m not going to start defending the actions of any nation that assassinates other leaders to try and get them under their influence.
And yet everyone who talks about authoritarianism doesn’t include western nations in their discussion
I think there’s very few western nations that fit that line I described in an earlier comment. That’s not to say none have authoritarian traits, the UK is always criticised for being a bit too much of a surveillance state, for example.
This reminds me of the dividing line that liberals use, which is when they say things like “that dictator killed HIS OWN PEOPLE.” As if killing people externally is more excusable crime?
Obviously killing people externally or internally is bad, but it’s more shocking in the same way that a parent murders their own child.
If invasions, sanctions, assassinations, and complete immiseration of other nations isn’t authoritarian then what is it? Why are we arbitrarily deciding there’s a distinction with how a country’s internal and external policies? These things inform one another. If a nation like America is doing far worse things than authoritarianism, except externally, why can’t we say that’s what it is?
Obviously killing people externally or internally is bad, but it’s more shocking in the same way that a parent murders their own child.
That makes no sense. Joseph Biden is not my dad and my shared nationality with him means nothing because he represents an economic class at war with my own. Was Hitler the father of German Jews? What the fuck are you talking about
I literally just said above. Why are you arguing about the definition of it? It’s like you’re trying to fit western nations under the term because you don’t like them to try to make a point.
Yeah they do fit the definition, because the distinction between external and international policy you’re making is arbitrary and meaningless. I’m a communist. My nation is the working class.
No they don’t fit the definition, it’s not meaningless or arbitrary. I don’t know why you’re arguing this, it’s not like I’m defending the actions of western nations here, or even labelled any particular countries as being authoritarian.
I’m a communist. My nation is the working class.
No idea what the point of saying this is, but just to provide some useless and irrelevant facts to this discussion, the telescopic ladder I have is 3 metres long.
I’ve got an easier one for you that should help you to understand. The policy of colonies regarding the population within its borders counts as “internal”, don’t they? What shall we say for the colonial occupation of Afghanistan? Shall we call this liberal?
Come to think of it, what do you think of non-citizen permanent residents, because America sure likes killing those within its borders and treating the rest quite brutally.
I’m not American and have no issue criticising them on their actions through history. I don’t even know why you’re bringing them up though? I just talked about what people define as an authoritarian state and you’ve gone off on some anti US tangent.
I don’t know if there is such a thing as a perfectly free, truly democratic society wherein everyone is capable of existing free of oppression lol, but I think there’s definitely a spectrum of authoritarian policy and sentiment, often correlated with nationalist and fascist fervor.
I may, as a person of color, experience more oppression in a country where I do not fit the standard vision of what a citizen looks like, and less in a country wherein which I do meet that criteria. That’s usually more an issue with nationalist rhetoric than systems of governance - unless that nationalism is codified and enforced by the government, which is the case in many governments that I would consider “more authoritarian.” America is one that has tended towards that, historically. Certainly, though, there are others that have also instituted systems explicitly designed to oppress.
I’d say, in general, I have many rights and privileges in current-day America that a truly authoritarian government wouldn’t allow. And that’s not to say that I think America is the greatest, or even good lmao. We’re constantly on the verge of disenfranchisement, and the fact that we’re constantly fighting for things that should be just baseline isn’t exactly a good look. But, in all, I’m allowed to openly state my thoughts in the court of public opinion, I’m able to vote to elect a representative, able to practice religion as I’d like, etc.
For sure, the validity of all of that is affected deeply by the corruption of capital in those arenas, but there’s something to be said about the power to openly share ideas and influence fellow citizens without active censorship. Keeping in mind things like COINTELPRO and Fred Hampton, etc, I obviously can’t say in good conscience that the government has never censored it’s citizens, but the purported adherence to the first amendment and being “the land of the free” at least makes them work for it.
Sorry for the novel lol. It’s a complicated subject and there’s a lot of nuance to try and tease out
I think the dictionary definition is as I mentioned in a below comment, but the colloquial meaning has more to do with censorship by the government and restrictions on freedoms than go beyond those necessary for the health and welfare of other citizens.
So just based on a small snippet of reading about them, I think in general I have a favorable opinion of Allende’s policy. Part of it is hard because, while he did some things that I agree with 10000% like increasing access to education and making basics like bread accessible, I don’t have enough context to accurately judge my feelings on some of the other policies that he enacted, like land seizure. The other half of that is it’s hard to see the long-term effects of policies that were then invalidated by a CIA-led coup and Pinochet.
Do you know of any places where his policies actively (for the context of our previous conversation) would be considered “authoritarian”?
I’m not the person you’re replying to, but I think you missed the whole point of GarbageShoot asking you specifically about Allende.
just based on a small snippet of reading about them, I think in general […]
I think this is the main problem here: a lack of knowledge about the historical context of “authoritarian” socialist projects, but nevertheless making generalized statements about them without even considering the material reasons why they were by necessity “authoritarian.” Read up more about the history of Chile and consider what happened to Allende and the hope of a socialist Chile. Who came after Allende (and almost as important, who installed that successor)? Why do these events seem so familiar when learning about every other attempt, successful or not, to bring about a communist society? When you’ve done that, you will at the very least have a leg to stand on when criticizing so-called tankie authoritarianism.
I’d also suggest reading The Jakarta Method. Here’s a somewhat relevant quote from it:
This was another very difficult question I had to ask my interview subjects, especially the leftists from Southeast Asia and Latin America. When we would get to discussing the old debates between peaceful and armed revolution; between hardline Marxism and democratic socialism, I would ask: “Who was right?”
In Guatemala, was it Árbenz or Che who had the right approach? Or in Indonesia, when Mao warned Aidit that the PKI should arm themselves, and they did not? In Chile, was it the young revolutionaries in the MIR who were right in those college debates, or the more disciplined, moderate Chilean Communist Party?
Most of the people I spoke with who were politically involved back then believed fervently in a nonviolent approach, in gradual, peaceful, democratic change. They often had no love for the systems set up by people like Mao. But they knew that their side had lost the debate, because so many of their friends were dead. They often admitted, without hesitation or pleasure, that the hardliners had been right. Aidit’s unarmed party didn’t survive. Allende’s democratic socialism was not allowed, regardless of the détente between the Soviets and Washington.
Looking at it this way, the major losers of the twentieth century were those who believed too sincerely in the existence of a liberal international order, those who trusted too much in democracy, or too much in what the United States said it supported, rather than what it really supported – what the rich countries said, rather than what they did.
I was aware of Pinochet and the general CIA coup, but not Allende in particular; I don’t think it’s a failing to admit that the knowledge any one person has access to is limited. That’s why my immediate response was one of attempting to find resources, not trying to generalize about something that I was deeply unequipped to speak on. The world’s big, sadly I can’t claim to have knowledge of everything on it.
My little reading on Allende makes it sound like he was democratically elected and pretty widely loved among the left-leaning members of his country - again, the only potential authoritarian charges I see levied against him are the socialization of private sectors, which I personally have not enough economic background to really have a stance on either way. If that’s the only thing that he’s called authoritarian for, I’d say that my understanding of the colloquial definition is probably more focused on aspects like freedom of speech, religion, etc. being limited, as opposed to market freedom.
But maybe my internal understanding of what makes a nation authoritarian is flawed! I’m happy to be wrong if it means I learn something. Maybe there’s internal conflation of fascism and authoritarianism happening, and I need to re-draw some of the distinctions between the two.
I appreciate the book recommendation - the study I’ve done has focused less on political theory and more on philosophy, so if you have any other recommendations that cover things like the Marxist/anarchist split, etc., I’d be grateful!
, the only potential authoritarian charges I see levied against him are the socialization of private sectors, which I personally have not enough economic background to really have a stance on either way.
If someone is complaining about socializing private sectors – not that the profits of the now-public enterprises were used to enrich bureaucrats, but that the act of socialization itself inherently infringed on the rights of the capitalists – the correct response is to spit in their face. That’s not always the practical response, so I certainly am not telling you to go out and do it, but it’s the correct response. Anyone complaining about “market freedom” as though it is remotely comparable to “human freedom” rather than a tool to be used or put away as the people see fit is either a fool or takes you to be a fool.
In a third world country especially, private companies are frequently the basis of staggering siphoning of wealth from the third world to the imperial core, which is why movements to repatriate them are so popular (see also the oil industries of both Egypt and Brazil right before their respective coups).
Being transparent about things, your comments read as one of the relatively rare cases of someone who is deeply submerged in neoliberal ideology but also intellectually honest and open about it. I’d be happy to discuss things with you from a Marxist perspective if you like.
Well, since you like reading (which is cool and good!) there’s a neat book on Cybersyn, but I was actually going in a slightly different direction. I respect the project Allende lead, but it’s undeniable that it was a catastrophic failure. Allende is one of many examples of attempting a gentle touch and underestimating the sheer brutality that is the reality of capitalist encirclement for a socialist state.
Allende was conciliatory when he should have been firm and his lax approach to purging (i.e. basically not doing it) is what very directly laid the groundwork for the coup that was the death of him and many other Chileans under one of the most vicious dictators the world has ever seen.
Someone recently reposted a Michael Parenti quote that I think discusses elements of this well:
You can look at any existing socialist country— if you don’t want to call them socialist, call them whatever you want. Post capitalist— whatever, I don’t care. Call them camels or window shades, it doesn’t matter as long as we know the countries we’re talking about. If you look at any one of those countries, you can evaluate them in several ways.
One is comparing them to what they had before, and that to me is what’s very compelling. That’s what so compelling about Cuba, for instance. When I was in Cuba I was up in the Escambia, which is like the Appalachia of Cuba, very rugged mountains with people who are poor, or they were. And I said to this campesino, I said, “Do you like Fidel?” and he said “Si si, with all my soul.” I remember this gesture, with all our souls. I said “Why?” and he pointed to this clinic right up on the hill which we had visited. He said, “Look at that.” He said “Before the revolution, we never saw a doctor. If someone was seriously ill, it would take twenty people to carry that person, it’d go day and night. It would take two days to get to the hospital. First because it was far away and second because you couldn’t go straight, you couldn’t cross the latifundia lands, the boss would kill you. So, you had to go like this, and often when we got to the hospital, the person might be dead by the time we got there. Now we have this clinic up here with a full-time doctor. And today in Cuba when you become a doctor you got to spend two years out in the country, that’s your dedication to the people. And a dentist that comes one day a week. And for serious things, we’re not more than 20 minutes away from a larger hospital. That’s in the Escambia. So that’s freedom. We’re freer today, we have more life.”
And I talked to a guy in Havana who says to me “All I used to see here in Havana, you call this drab and dull, we see it as a cleaner city. It’s true, the paint is peeling off the walls, but you don’t see kids begging in the streets anymore and you don’t see prostitutes.” Prostitution used to be one of the biggest industries. And today this man is going to night school. He said “I could read! I can read, do you know what it means to be able to read? Do you know what it means to be able not to read?”
I remember when I gave my book to my father. I dedicated a book of mine to him, “Power and the Powerless” to my father, I said “To my father with my love,” I gave him a copy of the book, he opened it up and looked at it. He had only gone to the seventh grade, he was the son of an immigrant, a working-class Italian. He opens the book and he starts looking through it, and he gets misty-eyed, very misty-eyed. And I thought it was because he was so touched that his son had dedicated a book to him. That wasn’t the reason. He looks up to me and he says ‘I can’t read this, kid” I said “That’s okay dad, neither can the students, don’t worry about that. I mean I wrote it for you, it’s your book and you don’t have to read it. It’s a very complicated book, an academic book. He says, “I can’t read this book.” And the defeat. The defeat that man felt. That’s what illiteracy is about, that’s what the joy of literacy programs is. That’s why you have people in Nicaragua walking proud now for the first time. They were treated like animals before, they weren’t allowed to read, they weren’t taught to read.
So, you compare a country from what it came from, with all it’s imperfections. And those who demand instant perfection the day after the revolution, they go up and say “Are there civil liberties for the fascists? Are they gonna be allowed their newspapers and their radio programs, are they gonna be able to keep all their farms? The passion that some of our liberals feel, the day after the revolution, the passion and concern they feel for the fascists, the civil rights and civil liberties of those fascists who are dumping and destroying and murdering people before. Now the revolution has gotta be perfect, it’s gotta be flawless. Well that isn’t my criteria, my criteria is what happens to those people who couldn’t read? What happens to those babies that couldn’t eat, that died of hunger? And that’s why I support revolution. The revolution that feeds the children gets my support. Not blindly, not unqualified. And the Reaganite government that tries to stop that kind of process, that tries to keep those people in poverty and illiteracy and hunger, that gets my undiluted animosity and opposition.
Here I mean to most emphasize the last paragraph, though the preceding paragraphs are certainly relevant. “Are there civil liberties for the fascists?”
I believe they are suggesting that, if “authoritarian” means anything, that every large state that has ever existed was “authoritarian,” though some diffuse the authority through things like enclosure of the commons combined with strict property laws or other, older methods like religious law.
That’s fair- where the line of “authoritarianism” is drawn depends on historic, social, and economic context. I think modern colloquial usage is certainly shaped by western values, simply because America’s primary export is culture, and that’s what happens when you shout loud enough over enough time.
This basically shows that what you care about is whether someone is anti-west or not. You are a western nationalist. Not a socialist, and certainly not an internationalist.
I’m anti-west. I don’t care at all if someone is anti-west, and in fact encourage it. But just because a regime is anti-west, that does not mean they’re in the right or should be blindly supported.
See that’s the thing: the fact that the west lies doesn’t mean that the east tells the truth. You are heavily skeptical of what the west has to say (good) but mostly uncritical of what any communist government has to say (bad).
Capitalist countries have done horrible things, but so have self-proclaimed communist countries
I have entire history books about how the west lies.
There is not a similar body of data about the loss of the east. Is it perfect? No. Do we have any reason to belive they are as bad or bad in the same kind of way as the people who oppose them? No.
General note: Most authors publishing critical material of the west in the (free speech) west don’t get silenced (edit: although professional blacklisting is all too common). Yes, I’m sure there are exceptions. You might not want to do that openly in China, Iran, or Russia these days, because the risks are well known/accepted. It definitely makes life harder for scholars and historians.
Do you have any evidence of China suppressing criticism? We know the western media openly brags about making up stories about the east.
I can find plenty of stories of publishing houses declining to publish material. That is effectively censorship but because it is done by a company we don’t care
Russia and Iran are more like the US than China so considering them as one unit is not helpful.
China seems to be far more about censorship and self-censorship. When public figures disappear from the public eye, they often reappear at some point. I hold great hopes for China’s future, and its potential as a successful & peaceful role model. Xi worries me a bit though.
They are not liberals. Here in America the anivaxx movement has kill tens of thousands to millions depending on how you do the math. In a better world stuff like that would have been censored. It only causes hardship and wastes resources. China does censor stuff like that. Now, does China have boomers that take that instinct too far? Probably. However they don’t have school shooters ever single day. They have 3x the population of us and that doesn’t happen there. So something is working there and something isn’t working here. A full rejection of their system is silly given how well it seems to work for most of them most of the time. Especially since, in every single case we can observe our system failing us most of the time.
I’d rather have big fat warning labels than censorship, to be honest. The issue is that many governments and people end up in a spiral of distrust & broken trust (justified or not).
Covid was/is a shitshow though. Where was the world class PsyOps then? Perhaps too busy scaring the hell out of everyone to notice that it might not be the smartest strategy.
I know you want that. I want to eat cookies for breakfast. Some things just aren’t good for you however. Ask any person drowning to death in their own lungs if they were happy they had the freedom to choose to smoke. Given a sober assessment of the situation they would have chosen other than their wants. The world would be better if cigarettes were banned. Their blood is on the hands of the people who gave them freedom they weren’t responsible enough to handle. Science has proven we are not fully rational creatures. We have biases and we need to protect and take care of eachother as we can to prevent that from causing harm.
The psyop around covid was to keep people from masks and vaccines. The million plus dead prove that was very successful.
Too many smokers continue to smoke after developing serious symptoms. People continue with poor diets and too little exercise despite their own doctor’s advice. We stare at screens for many hours per day. I’d still rather big warnings and community health initiatives than forced exercise/diets/screen-time-limits. Human rights / self determination is important. But organised efforts to appropriately highlight bullshit in public forums isn’t bad at all. In both approaches, the Q is how categorization happens, and can it be trusted.
Who was behind the anti-vax/mask psyops campaigns? To me, it seems to have been rolled up together with pro-trump, pro-russia/anti-ukraine, anti-LGBTQ, climate-change-denial streams. At least, these talking points are what a few older people (non-US-based) that I know started repeating. It looks like a giant pot of discontent, with a few usual suspects adding ingredients, no doubt with some profit opportunities along the way.
Except we know that mostly doesn’t work. It is weird to me that your preference is to waste resources and not help people.
It is a combination of antivaxx and general pro business types. If covid isn’t real you don’t need to stay home. You can go back to work and make your boss some money.
Except we know that mostly doesn’t work. It is weird to me that your preference is to waste resources and not help people.
I’m not against effective measures, but I’ve seen too many kind and well-meaning people make a lot of bad decisions over the years. I think this is often the case for politicians too, for which we expect high standards and judge harshly when they inevitably fail. I like to leave room for people to make mistakes, and the opportunity to admit & correct mistakes.
Maybe we need fewer politicians and petty dictators on soap boxes making claims and promises and more no-nonsense elbow grease bureaucracy, with more direct feedback loops, and KPIs that benefit the population.
I don’t belive that. I belive you have seen people who say they have good intentions. I simply think they weren’t telling the truth. Or they were wrong in obvious ways that that didn’t care to hear about.
The problem with politicians is to be one you have to be good at capitalism. Which is amoral at best and immoral most of the time. So the same people that decide them making money is more important than children having food and medicine are the ones that get to make policy. Unsurprisingly all their policy ends up with them making more money and the needs of people unaddressed.
That last thing you said, that sounds nice. However in terms of how the world actually works it is meaningless. The assumption that makes is that politicians simply don’t understand how to fix problems. They do, they just are the most highly bought into the capitalist system. The only problem they actually care is fix is how to make more money for them and theirs.
What exactly was wrong with Kruschev’s decision to send the tanks into Hungary to stop the fascist uprising?
Given the historical context of the literal genocides the US was facilitating in asia and south america at that time, even if you ignore the literal fascist collaborators hijacking the movement and pretend it was just a bunch of liberals fighting for “freedom”, keeping them from falling within the west’s claws would have been justified.
B-b-but have you heard of Nestor Makhno! Yeah, it’s pretty underground but he was this totally rad anarchist that shot a bunch of tankies (um, somebody call the BASED department!?!?) and was totally productive in doing other things like . . . Stopping some of the people who he armed and trained after they went and committed pogroms and . . . Uh, well, he had a newspaper in France where he totally stuck it to the tankies and also every other leftist around him until he died in near complete social isolation, but . . . Um . . . He helped kill that fascist leader that one time (by being very ineffective in trying to dissuade the Jewish anarchist who actually did kill that fascist).
Let’s take a look what started that “fascist” uprising. Years of economic mismanagement, opression, and being forced to pay a big chunk of their gdp to the Soviets for war reperations were all factors that lead to the Hungarian Revolution.
And who did these “fascist” pick as their leader? Imre Nagy, the man who was ousted from power by the soviets for having the audacity to be a more moderate communist than hardline stallinists.
The US doing something bad doesn’t justify someone else doing bad. Think about a nazi who uses that reasoning, they would sound like a nazi apologist.
Yes, the US did some bad stuff, but I still view them as the lesser evil when compared to the USSR or China.
Also Hungary doing something 65 years later doesn’t justify the actions of the Soviets.
Whether the initial protesters had good reason or not, fascists quickly co-opted the movement in the same way they co-opted the liberal protests in Ukraine.
Hungary doing something 65 years later doesn’t justify the actions of the Soviets.
Their actions 65 years later prove there were significant numbers of nazis waiting in the wings, and that the soviets were insufficiently oppressive.
I couldn’t find a single mention of a fascist movement in the uprising. So either it was neglible in size, or you are just lying.
“Insufficiently oppressive”. What? Hungary was a really oppressive nation during that time, and you wanted it to be more oppressive?
And opressive to who? Fascist? They can just lie about not being a fascist. That leaves out to just guess who is a fascist and that sounds like a wonderful time for the citizens.
What have you actually done to help socialism then?
Are you a union organiser? Are you in a union? Which one? What party are you in? What projects do you support? What are you actually doing as a socialist? Other than voting for a liberal party every few years I mean.
My partner is a teacher and is in a union. We are both active in organizing and supporting. There are no unions for the industry I work in, so I work with hers.
Then you should know better than this bullshit, because you would be working with several of us. There is definitely not a teaching union that is not filled with MLs, education in particular has the highest number of us.
if your political activism starts and ends with being in a union you are useless to any socialist project, you even elevate yourself above others because of your union membership; liberal complancy, please boss uwu be nice and give us a raise.
Well your political activism starts and ends with posting Lenin quotes in online discussion boards, so I don’t know that you are in any position to be calling other people useless.
I am a union member too, I just also go out and organize on top of that; right now im trying to arrange a rent strike in my local community, I feed the homeless at soup kitchens and I attend every single march and protest for allinged interests that im able too.
Wait till you learn that there are right wing unions, and that union membership should be evaluated on a case by case basis;
Nah, I fully know you as a person, including everything you’ve ever done and everything you ever will do, from just a couple of internet comments, and I judge you useless. So give up. Stop being a socialist. I, an internet stranger, know you are not contributing anything of value, so why bother?
Sure you can have an opinion, but if its about something you know nothing about, and have not investigated then it is worthless. Not just to other people, but to yourself as well
person above wasnt claiming to be the sole arbiters, dumb comment
il take the largest communist projects in the world, the word of millions + people who study marxism and practice it in reality everyday over a liberal who would struggle to define the word ‘socialism’ and whos political education starts and ends with there high school history class + 10 years spent on /r/politics
When people say “anti-woke”, they actually mean that they are anti-doing anything about the awareness of systemic inequality that wokeness indicates. By definition, someone who is against change/progress is a conservative, so when someone says they are anti-woke, they are by definition expressing a conservative stance. That is, wanting to do something about systemic inequality is synonymous with having a progressive stance on systemic inequality.
Being a tankie, on the other hand, is not synonymous with being a comunist. Tankies are just one form of communist (militant).
And when people say they are “anti-tankie”, they actually mean that they are anti doing anything about the awareness of systematic inequality that tankie indicates. By definition, someone who is against change/progress is a conservative, so when someone says they are anti-tankie, they are by definition expressing a conservative stance. That is, wanting to do something about systemic inequality is synonymous with having a progressive stance on systemic inequality.
Being a tankie, on the other hand, is not synonymous with being a comunist. Tankies are just one form of communist (militant).
Other way around: communists are just one form of tankies, the word is also used to refer to anarchists and some soc-dems.
You’re spun around, flipped upside-down, and confused as can be.
Tankie is a term that specifically refers to one particular kind of communism; namely, the kind that supports authoritarian regimes that try to impose communism through the use of force to repress dissent.
You can be a communist and not be a tankie. You cannot be against progress and be a progressive.
Tankie is a term that specifically refers to one particular kind of communism
No, it’s used to refer a wide, vague blob of vibes, just like the word woke. The people who use it can can do use it to refer to all kinds of communists, most anarchists, and anything to the left of Elizabeth Warren in general.
that try to impose communism through the use of force.
As opposed to the kind of communism where you ask nicely for revolution? Have you actually read any Marx? I guarantee he was not a pacifist.
You can be a communist and not be a tankie
By your own definition you cannot, let alone by a definition of tankie that describes how libs actually use it.
As opposed to the kind of communism where you ask nicely for revolution? Have you actually read any Marx? I guarantee he was not a pacifist.
You deliberately misquoted me by cutting off the end of that sentence so you could have a nice soft strawman to swing at. The full sentence said
that try to impose communism through the use of force to repress dissent.
Forceful revolution by the workers against the capitalist class is a completely different matter from forceful repression of dissent by the state against students and professors.
Forceful revolution by the workers against the capitalist class is a completely different matter from forceful repression of dissent by the state against students and professors.
even anarchist communes have use of force, those moltov cocktails being thrown at police officers arent non-violent and even recent projects like CHAZ/CHOP had para-police forces setup within them to hold order togther
Tankie is a term that specifically refers to one particular kind of communism
Nope, tankie originally referred specifically to British labor party members supporting the USSR’s actions against the coup in Hungary, and today is used to refer to any anti-imperialist leftist, regardless of tendency. Of course all of you claim otherwise, but these claims are provably empty, as nobody who uses the term today, including you in this thread, bothers to check for the actual political views of the people you call tankie, you see something that may go against the state department narratives that are spoonfed to you by V*ush and the reddit front page or whoever else has done this pseudo-leftist brainworming to you and you start yelling tankie at the top of your liberal, western-chauvinist lungs. A good number of the people posting on hexbear are anarchists and DemSocs, but you will label all of them tankie as long as they critically support China or question the narrative on the new forever war in Ukraine, which to you equals “thinking today’s Russia is true communism” and similar nonsense. Your understanding of politics is damaged beyond repair by being socialized as a smartass debatelord who has become entirely incapable of forming judgements not based on learned reflex and of engaging in good faith conversations. I would pity you if people like you wouldn’t be such a disaster for the Western left and for anybody in the Global South suffering from the continued imperialism you help enable by fighting the last genuine critics of genocidal US policies that are left in the West. You CIA tool, you psyop casualty, you neocon bootlicker.
If showing solidarity with victims of Amerikan imperialism makes me a tankie, i’ll prefer that over being a white supremacist warmonger who justifies the bombing of brown people in “shithole countries” like literally everybody who calls people a tankie online.
So what if i say “China is far from perfect, but the people there are a lot happier with their government than the Amerikans, they are much less of a threat geopolitically, maybe we should leave them alone because it’s honestly none of our business how the Chinese govern themselves”? Is it the usual 50 cent wumao genocide denier tinaman square then?
That’s not how the world works in the year 2023. Isolationism just isn’t a conceivable possibility. All countries are interconnected, and what’s happening in one country influences what’s happening in other countries in major ways.
I mean yeah, if you want to understand the devolopment of physics you are required to understand the foundations it was built on, this is basic study.
Its like telling someone they should read the bible if they want to be christian, or telling someone they should read the instruction manual if they want to actually know what the terms they are using mean.
Yeah, you should read Marx if you want to understand the historical development of socialist ideas, but if that’s where your reading ends, then your ideas are stuck in the past.
Socialism isn’ta religious dogma that is inflexible and unchanging. It’s an intellectual idea that grows and becomes more refined over time.
Tankie usually refers to Marxism-Leninism (as well the ideologies that derived from it such as Maoism). But there are communist ideologies that don’t derive from ML such as Orthodox Marxism, trotskyism, libertarian Marxism, bulshevism, etc.
Because you only advocate for ideas that dont exist in reality, and deride actually existing marxism as ‘tankie’, you can continue to advocate for idealist positions, but it requires you to build a coherent movement around it otherwise its just masterbation and contrarianism.
It’s speculation because you don’t know what the future holds. And just because you’re not interested in a particular ideology or don’t think it has merit doesn’t make it any less communist.
My only point is that words do in fact have meaning, Marxist-Leninism is not synonymous with communism. Therefore, one can be anti-tankie without being anti-communist.
“Orthodox Marxists” can hardly be said to exist, because the classical formulation of Marxism has long been empirically refuted, hence the need for new schools. Even Luxembourgists are more respectable than “Orthodox Marxists”.
How would Trotskyism be any less “authoritarian” Than marxism leninism ? Also almost every claims on some level to be “orthodox marxist”, lenin most of all and MLs as well
I used to think that Marx was overrated because I never needed to read him but holy shit it’s clear that 95% of the populace cannot form coherent ideologies without being taught them
That isn’t how Lenny works, though. Anybody can fire up an instance for any type of community. They could be pro-socialist, anti-socialist, liberals, Nazis, goldfish fanciers…you name it. If you don’t like them, you can defederate from them.
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