• selokichtli ( selokichtli@lemmy.ml ) 
    6·
    6 days ago

    This is too fucked up. Yesterday, I was accused of being a rapist in an instance with a beef against “tankies”, and their behavior was really shitty and shady. These instance wars are plainly stupid and sad.

    • Narri N. (they/them) ( narr1@lemmy.ml ) 
      9·
      7 days ago

      https://lemmy.ml/post/53759200

      I shared it for you, to save you from the effort. Now I’ll admit that I don’t know really much about the Spanish civil war, or the Zapatista uprising in Mexico (the two examples of “non-tankie communism” mentioned in the comments), so if anyone has any good resources or insights on these I’d be happy to read those.

      First I’ll say I don’t have anything against anarchists or AnComs on principle. Whatever works in class struggle, we’re all comrades. That being said there seems to be some idealism and misconceptions related to the comments especially. Comments like

      Authoritarian and hierarchy types don’t have a lot of imagination and are kind of bad at creative exercises for building new ideas. Their creativity is iterative so requires an existing idea. There has only been Soviet style centralized authoritarian communism so that’s all they imagine. Literally unable to imagine any alternative (unless they read political philosophy).

      As we all know “authoritarian” is a meaningless term. This has been gone through so many times. Now if “there has only been Soviet style centralized authoritarian communism” is true, why is that bad? Why shouldn’t people work by what has been proven to be viable by past experience? Every socialist experiment has always been born to be besieged by imperialism constantly working towards its downfall using any means necessary. Idealism or “creating new ideas” is shunned among MLs because it hasn’t really produced any real change. It seems to me the commenters are actually only against “the tankies” because of “the tanks”, which usually refers to the Hungarian counterrevolution which itself was proven to be a CIA-backed counterrevolution attempt by recently declassified CIA-archives. It could refer to the tanks in Tiananmen Square, which was funnily enough also a similar attempt. Afaik there were organic protesting related to both incidents, but in both the government’s response was specifically towards the western aligned violent agitators.

      Furthermore one could argue against the statement itself, as for example Yugoslavia, China, and the Soviet Union itself engaged in different kinds of economic and authoritative decentralization, with differing results. So this seems to be a misconception.

      idk, just had some issues with some of the comments there. which are pretty much the same issues I have trying to present anarchism as a viable alternative: that is to say mainly the issue of armed struggle against imperialists (that would inevitably happen) without a central authority.

      • RiverRock ( RiverRock@lemmy.ml ) 
        5·
        6 days ago

        Authoritarian and hierarchy types don’t have a lot of imagination and are kind of bad at creative exercises for building new ideas.

        Me when my totally new and radical ideology where nobody makes me read theory simply leads me to recreate liberal political phrenology against liberalism’s enemies

        • Narri N. (they/them) ( narr1@lemmy.ml ) 
          4·
          6 days ago

          I was actually kinda expecting more from this person, I think they were in the comments claiming not to be attacking tankies. But I guess really just don’t have shit to say in defence of their ideology, or this commenter’s idealism. So my bad for being naive i guess.

            • Narri N. (they/them) ( narr1@lemmy.ml ) 
              4·
              6 days ago

              No no, it didn’t come out like that at all! No worries there :) Nah I just kinda hoped I’d get some kind of a reply, other than snark. idk, silly me

              edit: i see they’ve made another “shitting on the tankies” circlejerk meme. i don’t personally fuck with “shitting on the anarkiddies” circlejerking either, so maybe i had too high hopes of this individual :D

        • Cowbee [he/they] ( Cowbee@lemmy.ml ) 
          2·
          2 days ago

          When you hear “authoritarian,” are you referring to states in general as instruments of authority, specific forms of states, or a specific metric of, say, representation? The reason Marxists say authoritarianism is a meaningless descriptor is because it doesn’t analyze what authority actually is in a way that is useful. I believe in a more unitary system of governance with democratic control by the working class. Some may say the democracy bit makes it non-authoritarian, some may say the unitary aspect makes it authoritarian, some may say the fact that it’s a state at all makes it authoritarian, and yet these are all equally valid/invalid usages of the term because it isn’t based on objectivity.

          • Andy ( andrewrgross@slrpnk.net ) 
            1·
            2 days ago

            I think “authoritarian” is a principle of concentration and protection of power in the same way “democracy” is a conceptual term for structured collective guidance and oversight of an operation, and “anarchy” is the principle of maximizing agency of groups and minimizing the ability of any party to wield coercive power, etc.

            They’re concepts.

            My interest isn’t in categorizing and ranking nation states, it’s in examining and weighing the qualities of different approaches.

            When someone says that a term like “authoritarianism” is meaningless, I just don’t feel like having an arugment. It’s like ‘I don’t see color’ or ‘age of consent? I think maturity is what matters.’ Alright, have a great day, I’m gonna go over there.

            • Cowbee [he/they] ( Cowbee@lemmy.ml ) 
              1·
              2 days ago

              So if it’s a concept, but one that cannot be measured or objectively defined, then it loses its functional utility. The group “tankie” is a nebulous but acknowledged group of people that support existing socialist states, ones commonly referred to as “authoritarian” by “non-tankies.” Since this is not a measured approach, but instead a principle, this is now a meaningless allegation without someone doing the legwork to prove that unitary worker democracy negatively impacts individual agency beyond any other approach.

              To explain the Marxist position, nebulous allegations of “authoritarianism” have no weight because they do not explicitly address distribution of power, class dynamics, etc. All the allegations do is create categories of “authoritarian vs. less/non-authoritarian” that cannot be objectively understood from the allegations alone. This returns us to the idea that “authoritarianism” is meaningless, it isn’t a useful term and everyone has different ways of understanding its application to real systems.

              • Andy ( andrewrgross@slrpnk.net ) 
                1·
                2 days ago

                First: I don’t consider the term “Tankie” nebulous because I only apply it to people who self-identify as such.

                Similarly, I don’t go around bringing up authoritarianism. When someone else brings it up to defend it, I generally roll my eyes and move along.

                Personally, I find this line of reasoning about definitions semantic in the least productive way. It’s just Loki’s Wager. So with all due respect, I don’t wish to debate you. I answered your question in good faith and I’m content to leave it at that.

  • davel [he/him] ( davel@lemmy.ml ) English
    28·
    8 days ago

    On the one hand, Western Marxists and Marxist-Leninists are not the same, but on the other hand, both of them—and even anarchists sometimes—get called tankie by liberals anyway.