https://discuss.online/post/29250428/18869440

I thought I’d try my hand at explaining why this meme fundamentally misunderstands communist theory and that I’d better move it here after I posted it, because the people on that community sure love downvoting and/or removing any good point made against the tankie dogma.

Oh, and remember to always lead by challenging tankies’ attempts to portray themselves as the ingroup of communism and any critics as the outgroup. That’s a tactic they love using, they construct their opinions as the absolute communist truth, and brand any opposing opinion as liberal and capitalist, while also strawmanning it. If you open by criticising their communist credentials, they can’t dismiss you as a liberal and pretend they’re arguing in good faith.

  • Best_Jeanist@discuss.onlineOPEnglish
    5·
    9 days ago

    That’s a good one, but I fear tankies might misuse the immediately following quote for evil:

    They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers’ candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All such talk means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled. The progress which the proletarian party will make by operating independently in this way is infinitely more important than the disadvantages resulting from the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body.

    In 2016, the USA’s Green party took enough votes in swing states that had those votes been for the Democrats instead, Clinton would have won.

    In December 2018, two reports commissioned by the US Senate found that the Internet Research Agency boosted Stein’s candidacy through social media posts, targeting African-American voters in particular.

    So, Russia intentionally conned black people into voting for the “workers” party and it lead to a fascist becoming president. Marx might have underestimated the danger on that one.

    • PugJesus@piefed.socialEnglish
      5·
      9 days ago

      I like to think that the threats of the imperial presidency and the necessity of a united front in that case, there being only one presidential position, would be recognized by Marx. He does, after all, qualify that the gains of such an operation outweigh the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body. Especially considering his praise of Abraham Lincoln, who was not even the most radical candidate in 1864.

      Even if one took that as a universal injunction, it necessarily only dismisses reformism, not the necessity of harm reduction in the face of the total capture of the state apparatus, or at least the capture of the most influential parts of it. It would, I think, be much more applicable to those voting third party for reps - not that the any US third parties actually put in an effort to run serious candidates for the fucking legislature.

      Tankies will twist anything to their own fuckwit uses, of course. Red fash, like their brownshirt brethren, play with words because words mean nothing to them.