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.
You’re spun around, flipped upside-down, and confused as can be.
Very compelling, but have you considered
spoiler
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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 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.
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.
I’m a socialist but not a tankie. Criticizing tankies!= criticizing socialists
Being an anti-communist leftist still makes you an anti-communist
Being anti-tankie does not make you anti-communist.
“Being anti-woke doesn’t mean I’m conservative!”
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.
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.
Very compelling, but have you considered
spoiler
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.
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.
By your own definition you cannot, let alone by a definition of tankie that describes how libs actually use it.
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
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.
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.
I don’t call someone a tankie based on where they post, but in what they post. If you don’t want to be called a tankie, then don’t post tankie shit.
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How so? How is being against AES not anti-comminist?
Why does AES always seems to end up with forced labor camps? I don’t remember forced labor camps being a central part of socialist ideology…
A country can call itself socialist, that doesn’t make it so.
So the arbiter of what is socialist is you? Not the revolutionaries who have actually worked on socialist projects
Yes, I can have an opinion on socialism without having been a socialist-revolutionary. That is correct. Spot on.
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
I know you are, but what am I?
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.
As opposed to you/hexbear being sole arbiters?
So America is AES? We lead the world in prision labor.
America bad does not imply China good.
China doing good in the world while America does bad does imply that though.
Cause you can hate one thing but like an other version.
The world is not black and white.
Been thinking about getting one so I can just regurgitate trite Redditisms and feel content contributing nothing to the minds of others.
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How you like communism and hate communism at the same time? Its not black and white thinking, its just basic reality
Norway isn’t socialism.
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.
If your criticism was that the USSR was too heavy handed putting down the fascists, look at what’s happened since.
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).
Words evolve and change in meaning. Calling someone a tankie in 2023 is not a comment on their opinions of an event that happened a lifetime ago.
Right, now Tankie is all but useless because liberals and so-called leftists that criticize communism use it the same way conservatives use “woke”
I actually think conservatives usually use the term “woke” correctly, though? Like, everything they call “woke” is typically good.
Yeah, much like how everything liberals call “tankie” is actually good.
OK, is there a more recent case where you believe supporting the US over critically supporting its opposition is vindicated by history?
I don’t generally believe in supporting the US, since it is an emperialist, capitalist country.
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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.
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.
Patton really was correct about the Soviet Union.
What’s a tankie and how do you differentiate yourself from them as a socialist
A tankie is someone who blindly supports authoritarian regimes simply because they’re anti-west
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.
You say you’re anti west but every time the west says something about a bad guy you believe them
loving the absolute ratios these state dept shills are getting
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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.
What atrocities in particular do tankies accept
Soviet architecture.
you know what, fair, sorry brutalist comrades
I’m more of a fan of Socialist Classicism myself
To be fair killing nazis is pretty cool. We made some movies about it.
It is neat you are a fan of doing things where the ends do not justify the means. How do bathing moral decay like that feel?
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.
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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
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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!
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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?
And even with lib logic, the US kills its own people who speak out against the government.
See Fred Hampton, the suspicious number of Ferguson protest leaders who have since died in strange ways, etc.
Unless there’s a certain criteria which determines who are your own people…
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.
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.
Obviously killing people externally or internally is bad, but it’s more shocking in the same way that a parent murders their own child.
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
Why are you unable to explain it then?
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.
What do you think of Chile under Allende? Do you think it met this standard?
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 familiar with that example; do you have any reading on the subject I can access? I’ll do some research and get back with my thoughts
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.
And by blind. You mean checking the numbers on us propaganda and realize it is lies written in blood?
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.
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Yeah thinking criticizing Tankies is the same as criticizing socialism is tankie behavior
Classic tankie behaviour - > rather Clankie