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[–] 5 points 1 month ago (97 children)

Most of them are incapable of understanding any kind of nuance. To them every issue is black or white.

posted on a thread making a black and white caricature about all marxists and anarchists as 'tankies' i-cant

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  • [–] 12 points 1 month ago (9 children)

    "Tankie", as used in online discourse, just means "person to my political left making an argument I can't refute".

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  • [–] 12 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    Yes, that's the hyperbolic slander it tries to assert when in reality it is just a buzzword for imbeciles to use when they want to stop engaging with the argument.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Authoritarian is a useless word. The US is far more authoritarian than anybody those supposed "dictatorships", but the serious people in suits you've outsourced all your thinking to would never say it out loud.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago

    And there's the ShitLib thought-terminating cliches we know and love.

    Once you've called them "Tankie" you don't have to engage with any actual arguments they made, you can just dismiss them! And obviously any comparison between evil Tankie dictatorship and glorious free democracies is just "whataboutism", so you don't have to think critically about it at all!

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago (11 children)

    okay then please tell that to everyone calling me a tankie plsss

    the reality is that 'tankie' is one of those terms that gets stretched until it's just a pejorative for anyone to the left of the person using it.

    started as a specific reference to people who defended the soviet invasion of hungary in 1956, then it gets applied to anyone who doesn't denounce every socialist state on demand, now it's anyone who doesn't want to vote for biparitsan war consensus

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  • [–] 9 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    You appear to be trying to claim that OP is portraying everyone who says ‘both sides are the same’ as tankies

    he is tho

    in the same way that ‘liberal’ doesn’t actually mean ‘everyone who votes Democrat’.

    yeah plenty of liberals are also republicans

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

    it's a heavily sanctioned garrison state that emerged from a brutal colonial occupation and a war that killed a third of the population.

    i dont particularly care for any states, but i have special contempt for the US. that makes it hard to share in the fearmongering about the US's designated enemies on the other side of the planet from where i live.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    "Tankies" just means people who support existing socialist states. Typically we are Marxist-Leninists, but anarchists and socdems also fit this sometimes and are targeted.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 month ago (51 children)

    You're telling on yourself. I just said tankies, if you choose to identify with that, and make it about all marxists and anarchists, that's on you.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    I organize in real life, my perspective is based on what I actually do as an organizer and activist as well as someone who studies Marxist-Leninist theory and history so as to apply it better. Just because I oppose the democrats doesn't mean I support the republicans, I oppose the entire capitalist system. My goal is socialism, and like all Marxists, I believe that this can only be established through revolution, which means I do spend a fair bit of time combatting misconceptions surrounding reformism.

    I haven't reported any of your comments yet, btw. You have this absurd caricature of me that lives on in your brain, this must be the second dozen comment you've made about me specifically with no actual substance. Take a break, touch grass.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (8 children)

    Leninism is not a replacement of Marxism, Leninism refers to Lenin's own advancements on Marxism. Lenin used Marxist analysis to bring Marxism to a new era, from the era of industrial capitalism to the imperialist stage of capitalism. The primary advancements of Leninism are the following:

    1. The Leninist strategy and tactics of revolution
    2. The Leninist critique of Imperialism
    3. The Leninist understanding of the national question, and the right of self-determination.

    Marxism-Leninism is called as such because the basis of Marxism-Leninism is Marxism. Marxism-Leninism carries over the 3 basic fundamentals of Marxism:

    1. Dialectical and historical materialism as the guiding worldview
    2. The Marxist critique of capitalism based on the Law of Value
    3. The scientific approach to socialism, grounded in class struggle.

    In the modern era, the number of Marxists that reject Lenin are incredibly fringe. Lenin's work as a Marxist is incredibly obvious to anyone who has read both Marx and Lenin, and it's very clear that Lenin was history's greatest Marxist, after the deaths of Marx and Engels. MLs are the dominant form of Marxism in the modern era, and most relevant historically, so trying to claim Marxism-Leninism isn't Marxist requires an enormous level of justification on your part.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (6 children)

    No, you said Marxism-Leninism isn't Marxist. Marxism-Leninism is Marxist. All of Marxism in the modern day has historically evolved from the era of Marx, be it through accepting ideas, changing them, or rejecting them. There is no such thing as a Marxist that has no opinion on Lenin one way or the other, for example. The ideology "Leninism" is used to refer specifically to Lenin's advancements, "Marxism" to the ideology created by Marx and Engels, and "Marxism-Leninism" as the unified ideology created by Lenin and forged in practice.

    You then make vague references to the Russian Civil War without actually contextualizing them. The Bolsheviks did not "lose fair elections," and fighting amongst the Soviets did coalesce around the Bolshevik line, as the Bolsheviks were supported by both the proletariat and peasantry. The fighting between the communists and anarchists wasn't some one-sided betrayal either, it was a civil war and some sections of the anarchists that did not join the Bolsheviks took up arms against the soviets.

    Further still, the soviet state was not some "permanent fixture." Such an idea is inherently against Marxist understanding of dialectical materialism, as nothing in the world is permanent, as well as the economic basis for the withering of the state. The USSR was a socialist state gradually building towards communism.

    As for "Marxist-Leninism," no, I mean Marxism-Leninism, as understood by Wikipedia, science direct, and Stalin when coining the term. You're very confident about this point despite being trivially proven wrong.

    As for Merleau-Ponty, yes, Western Marxism is incredibly fringe in the global and historical context.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    Yeah, people need to stop conflating MLs with Marxists, because Leninism and Marxism are not the same thing at all.

    Leninists appropriated the “Marxist” label to lend credibility to their own ideology. Hence it’s “Marxist-Leninism,” not “Leninist-Marxism.”

    Nobody is out there calling actual Marxists “tankies.” We’re calling MLs tankies, and then they retreat behind a mote and bailey by saying “yOuR cAlLiNg AlL mArXiStS tAnKiEs?!1?1?!1?1??1?1!!”

    You quite explicitly made the claim that "actual Marxism" and Marxism-Leninism are two separate things, stating essentially that Marxism-Leninism is fake Marxism.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    It's pretty simple, Marxism-Leninism is the largest and most significant subset of Marxism. Much of Marxism-Leninism is just Marxism, and as such it shares with other branches of Marxist thought. When pertinent, it is more useful to use Marxism, rather then Marxism-Leninism, such as discussing the Marxist law of value or theory of the state, neither of which Marxism-Leninism meaningfully deviates from.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago

    In a single word, "fringe." Marxism-Leninism isn't just the most historically relevant branch of Marxism, it's also the most important in the modern era. It isn't a "false equivalency," I never made the claim that all Marxists are Marxist-Leninists, just that much of peoples critiques of Marxism-Leninism are more accurately critiques of Marxism itself, Lenin's work not being relevant in that particular critique.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    post summary:

    'tankies bad, i'm not a tankie, anyone who disagrees with me is a tankie'

    hate to break it to you but liberals learned a new word and it's just a left-facing pejorative now.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago

    it's called paraphrasing, you wanted to make it very clear that you're one of the good ones for the liberals, as opposed to tankies who are the bad ones. i don't think i misrepresented you.

    the term is literally a left facing pejorative the way it's used, especially how you were using it.

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  • [+] 3 points 1 month ago (34 children)
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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 child)

    Liberals don’t even know what a tankie is, let alone call anyone that.

    lmao have you been on the internet in the last few years? it's their latest word that they learned.

    the reality is that ‘tankie’ is one of those terms that gets stretched until it’s just a pejorative for anyone to the left of the person using it.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (21 children)
  • [–] 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (20 children)

    i'm just being observant, an overwhelming amount of people calling others 'tankies' are perfectly fine with team blue sending in the tanks/bombs/drones.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 month ago (18 children)

    the "good society is a mix of isms" line is classic lib dead-enderism. it sounds reasonable but it's a way of never committing to anything that would actually challenge capital.

    i am opposed to a system that unpersons people just because they can't pay rent, your 'way left of biden' horizon stops way short of that.

    you seem to resort to thought-terminating cliches to shut down any serious discussion of a change to that system and without engaging with the material conditions those states that did challenge that system operated under.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (14 children)

    yes i get that you're a social democrat, you already made that clear. you goals are to stay entirely within capitalism with a handful of minor reforms to attempt to manage capital rather than actually challenge it.

    what's your plan for when capital pushes back against your reforms? i don't think your framework has an answer outside of wishful thinking.

    What do you commit to? So far I’m not sure.

    i vote in every fucking primary, municipal election and offyear election. i don't participate in electoral campaigns because it's a waste of energy. my organizing work is with antiwar groups and other anarchists making sure people in my city have food.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 month ago (12 children)

    disagreeing with your politics isn't a purity test... its a political disagreement. it is also a pretty transparent double standard on your part. in this thread you felt free to complain about 'tankies' as a broad and poorly-defined category, but people being opposed to preserving capitalism is a purity test.

    Capital only cares at all when you hit them in the wallet, so I try to do that wherever possible.

    it sounds like you agree with me, but then refuse to engage with politics that is motivated to actually do that

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  • [–] 12 points 1 month ago (10 children)

    i already stated what i am doing. my work is primarily in mutual aid and antiwar protesting. ie making sure people in your immediate community can eat, building non-commodified spaces that demonstrate things can work differently. for antiwar protests i've done everything from letter writing to bird-dogging my reps/senators. i've been doing tenant union organizing for years. i do other things too, but i'm not going to broadcast those here.

    none of it is glamorous but it builds real relationships and real power outside the state and capital, which is the point.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 month ago (8 children)

    as a start?

    decommodify housing, end arrests for homelessness and public camping, universal healthcare independent of employment, universal childcare, free higher education, universal free pubic transit, dismantle the military-prison-border complex and use all of that money towards social infrastructure, abolish the supreme court, abolish the senate, destroy every nuclear weapon

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (7 children)

    Agreed on all points. For the abolishing supreme court and senate part, I agree in theory, but I'd require a detailed plan for what comes after legally, so as not to just invite a new breed of corruption to take the place of the old.

    We aren't enemies, or even very ideologically opposed at all, and we need as many standing in solidarity as possible to have even a chance of toppling the capitalist behemoth in any meaningfull way.

    Wishing you the best in your efforts to help your community.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    I'd support all of that, while keeping a keen eye out for corporate interests trying to co-opt and corrupt any new rule set to maintain their stranglehold on power.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    good to hear. the point of decommodifying housing and abolishing/nationalizing the various monopolies dominating our lives is so that those corporate interests do not exist and cannot exert power on the political economy.

    i fear that trying to control these capital formations without crushing them first is going to be a losing battle no matter what changes you try to make. that's my main criticism of the liberal track, i don't think there's any real way these things can be controlled.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    I hear you. I just don't know how that happens without violent revolution , which I'd never rule out entirely, but my reading of history leaves me very skeptical that would end up where I want it to.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    my reading of history leaves me very skeptical that would end up where I want it to.

    it rarely does, and i certainly don't pretend that i have any special knowledge about how to shape that. however, what we have now is not sustainable, it's been effectively uniparty capitalist rule. yeah the colors and culture wars change, the line goes up, but the political economy has fundamentally been in stasis. a political stasis is not a stable situation, it's a powder keg waiting to go.

    the reason i prefer to work on dual power is because when it does go up the only path forward from there that i see is to have an existing network of people i already know who want to work on shared goals (opposing and undermining capitalism). that network of people i have so far is a lot of marxists and anarchists because they're the ones actually seeing the problem and willing to put in the effort now.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    if they are pro capitalism, yes it does; i know many communists/marxists who are also in DSA that the label does not apply to.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago

    believe it or not there are people in the reformist org who are not interested in seeing capitalism go; the org is not a monolith.

    have you even been to a DSA meeting? i feel like i have probably been to more DSA meetings than you.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    I don’t see any anarchists in this comic what are you talking about? Maybe the person voting…

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    If you don’t think anarchists vote then you do not know what anarchism is.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    well i'm an anarchist and i literally vote in every primary and every year for municipal/nonpresidential elections, so it was nice to have you identify me correctly.

    what was funny to me is that this comic is so dishonestly framed, like take panel 1, my trans comrades have already been getting arrested by democrats for protesting their abandonment of trans kids healthcare in favor of institutions and placating trump. 'i don't want to arrest trans people' is clearly not the same as 'i won't arrest trans people'.

    the way the comic is structured is like actually nonsensical too, the person being anti-voting says stuff after the vote has already been cast, and then when it fails we're supposed to blame the those two? i blame the democrats for losing more than i do voters.

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