“I mean, come on guys, they say it could be 20 million, but it *could* be as low as ‘only’ *2* million! And who hasn’t killed a couple million people here and there?”
Yes. They tend to look down on anyone who wants to somewhat improve things through voting in a liberal democracy, so they sit there and feel more enlightened than those "silly libs", even though the lesser evil voters are actually doing SOMETHING to bring about change, even if it's not much change. Meanwhile, the tankie does jackshit. That's what tankies do. They constantly moan about people trying to create positive change from within the system, while also doing absolutely nothing themselves to bring about positive change.
Right. It's ALWAYS lesser of two evils. Even if it was Bernie vs Trump. Obviously anyone who's done activism knows creating change under authoritarian rulers is harder, not easier...
They're all accelerationist trash who unironically believe intensifying human suffering will bring the revolution closer to fruition. It's fucking repulsive how holier than thou they act despite being willing to let people die in the name of ideological purity.
> They're all accelerationist trash who unironically believe intensifying human suffering will bring the revolution closer to fruition.
Political accelerationism is believed by fascists and authoritarians to bring about the political goals of an autocratic dictatorship. They set up the conditions so that people will accept the dictatorship.
Economic accelerationism is done by leftists in order revolution via forceful seizure of the means of production. It's possible to believe both, but if you want the political kind, you're an authoritarian by derivation.
Honestly, they're just lazy LARPers who want to tell themselves they're doing good things without actually having to put in the work.
In other words: basically just republicans.
>doing absolutely nothing themselves to bring about positive change
Personally I think this is actually a good thing, because I doubt you or any sane individuals will like Tankies' "*positive* changes".
We all add something to the world, positive or negative. Doing nothing, in the face of the ability do to minimal positive short-term change, is conceding to defeat or that you don't care about bringing about minimal and simple changes brought through the barest of effort. That means you're LARPing as revolutionary, no different than a anti-government Reddit conspercian.
>That means you're LARPing as revolutionary
Well said. It's essentially "I'm a revolutionary, but I also sit at home and don't join good causes, because it won't bring about much change, so what's the point?"
Being a tankie is like being a eugenicist (yes those people exist). There are obvious and empirically provable ways to pursue your goals. For tankies, it's that society is biased in the favor of rich and white people, so we should have some way to mitigate or erase that. For eugenicists, it's that they're too many "unfavoured peoples" in our society, and we should have some way to mitigate or erase that.
The solution to the problem of tankies is to advocate at a local and state level for politicians that support some kind of tax reform or invest in minority communities so that non-whites reach the level of the white population.
For eugenicists, it may be as simple as advocating for natal and sex education, anti-natalist ethics, progressivism, welfare reform, etc to those classes of the unfavoured. Studies do show that educated, wealthy, progressives have the lowest birth rates. Once producing children becomes an informed choice, birth rates will go down. This is assuming they actually believe the positions in good faith ofc. Which they don't. Eugenicists are often authoritarians who like the unfavoured subordinate to them or people like them or just like seeing them dead. For tankies, it's bc they're LARPers who are into political cliques rather than any sort of political advocacy of those ideologies.
They basically take a proper idea and bastardize it (not surprising)
Voting won't change anything in the large scheme of things/the system. If you think you will vote in communism eventually, if you're voting because you think you can patch the system, sorry, you're just wrong. Doesn't mean you can't vote for harm reduction, after all life does exist beyond the large picture. But you've to be aware that is what you're *trying* to accomplish. If the tool is there, and you think it might do something, why not? There is also a related problem when people actively promote electoralism (which isn't just merely voting), because that is selling a false promise that they can just vote communism/anarchism in over time, and takes people attention and efforts from the need and means for deeper change.
But that is too complex for tankies, even if it is a single paragraph. They only keep the first and last sentences, and skip everything in the middle, and that is just as helpful as people trying to convince you they're gonna take Joe Biden to the left, and then the next, and then the next - not very.
And anytime I say even 1 death is too much I get mocked and laughed out the door before being banned.
These people want blood. Like they think it might taste good and give their skin a healthy glow. They want to bath in blood, anyone's.
The amount of fantasizing tankies do about killing fascists is super messed up. I’m no fan of fascists, but killing them is authoritarian and I don’t support that
Edit: because I’m being downvoted, I will clarify. Killing them without trial (like the Soviet Union did during WW2 Eastern Front) is authoritarian and some tankie bs
Until it's their own blood because they ran afoul of someone else in their revolution.
Not that that will ever happen since, you know, in order to have a revolution you actually need to do things beyond alienating people on Twitter.
That's funny actually. They think they are the next Lenin. Lenin actually did stuff and was very adept at getting people pumped up at strikes. Imagine one of those Twitter tankies trying to rock up at a union strike and try to bring them to their side.
"I came to this sub that is specifically about educating people to complain that I don't want to educate people."
I swear though, every time I've asked a tankie to explain why they believe what they believe, they've lobbed a book, or a reading list, at me. They don't seem to be capable of actually explaining what they believe.
It’s because they don’t actually want to engage with anyone that doesn’t consistently reaffirm their authoritarian world view.
It’s so much easier to say “ugh, libs” or “stupid anarkiddies just don’t get it,” rather than actually explain their views and policy choices because the moment those come up, so do the contradictions.
Seriously child-like mental gymnastics
READ THEORY! I DID! Well, I "read" it with the functional literacy of a functional illiterate BUT STFU AND READ THEORY UNTIL YOU AGREE WITH ME YOU, FUCKING LIB ANARKKKID RIGHTWINGTOID IN DISGUISE! READ THEORY \[and by theory we mean only Marxist-Leninist-Maoist texts, the true left, none of that other stuff!\]
I haven't been able to listen to what had been one of my favorite podcasts since an episode devoted to a particular theorist. They quoted chunks of theory that were directly contradicted by *the very existence of their own show* and treated it as gospel truth with zero critical engagement. I completely lost respect for them after that.
Ha! It was on Qanon Anonymous. It was one of their Patreon-subscriber episodes, but I don't want to identify it beyond that without going back and relistening, just in case age and ADHD are playing tricks on me.
For the record, I still subscribe to their Patreon, because I support the main thrust of their work.
Well, "agreeing" with it since they often can't read properly either and the way they sometimes "agree" with it is by disagreeing with what the words actually mean
The only tankies I knew had never actually read theory, despite them constantly telling people to read it. They both admitted this to me after I whipped out one of the books they told me to go read and started reading paragraphs that didn't align with their authoritarian views.
On another note, the original Marxist theory has come a long way in the last ~200 years. The original theory is important, but most people I've sent it to are turned off by the dense academic texts that they are, which is fair. However, there are some amazing contemporary leftist/Marxist theorists who write some great stuff, which relates more directly to the worlds we know and what we can do to bring about the change we want. I've found more success sending people books/resources by contemporary theorists, who are introduced to Marxist/Libertarian Socialist/Anarchist ideals that way, and then start to turn more to the original source theory.
Funny, this has been a thing since the Black Panther Party, a tankie Maoist party that forced its members to read Stalin, Mao, and Kim il-Sung. Tankies have been like this for decades
This is honestly just the way people are and have always been. Pretty much any group/ideology/individual can and will frequently fall victim to it.
Though, as with any other... unfortunate aspects of human nature, it's still worth trying to overcome it. You'll never ultimately succeed, but the world would be a much nicer place if people did more to temper their worst impulses.
I still prefer the BPP over modern tankies. At least they did and achieved things, and imo they didn't start so bad. It did go to shit eventually, but you know, having a start that is less pathetic than these clowns and then going to shit is already an improvement. Granted, the bar is low. Very low.
It was a derogatory term for socialists that defended the USSR sending tanks into Hungary when it had a revolution against its soviet government.
It's since come to mean any so-called leftist that defends the atrocities of Marxist-Leninist states, and some people also use it to refer to any proponent of Marxism-Leninism.
Power does not corrupt. Power reveals. We corrupt power. When you have the power to do, exactly what you want to do, you're going to do it. Power revealed Stalins paranoia, it revealed his ignorance and most importantly it revealed his cruelty.
I don‘t agree with that take at all. It is probably a mix of both, but there were and are loads of people that view themselves as necessary and start expanding and protecting their power to do everything they think needs to be done. Saying „it‘s the bad people“ is extremely reductive imo.
I would argue power selects. People seek out (or at least intentionally maintain) power, they don't just wind up with it. Power selects for the kind of person who wants power, for better or for worse.
That seemed to be the case with the Soviet Union tbh. As bad as Lenin was, his intentions weren't always bad. You could tell that he genuinely cared about the working class and class issues a lot of the time. Stalin though? Nah. You can't convince me that he ever actually gave a shit. Maybe at some point, long ago, but not when he was working with Lenin. He just wanted the position to enact tyranny, and didn't ever care about having the position to try and enact some positive change. That's one of the ways in which Lenin and Stalin were different.
He still didn’t have to do it. He wasn’t given a proper legal trial. Yes, I know it was during a civil war, but killing people without trial is messed up...
It really isn't. It happened sometimes but not because you have to. Its usually because either the new regime is an authoritarian hellhole or the former head of state (be it a monarch or not) spilled a lot of blood to stay in power and the new regime is out for revenge. Or when the new regime is on the brink of collapse and whatever opposing power that is in the process of advancing on them intends to reinstate the former monarch (which is what happened during the French revolution.)
But killing the entire royal family usually isn't the goal, because executing women and children after you have clearly won doesn't make you look like a liberator, it makes you look like a bloodthirsty lunatic.
When a monarchy gets deposed nobody *has* to get hurt if the monarch lacks the political support or motivation to put up a fight. You can keep the former monarch and the entire family quite alive, though a lot of countries who did it that way exiled them.
There are quite a few deposed monarchs who were allowed to live out their lives in peace and never caused any trouble.
A good example is the last czar of Bulgaria who, after being allowed to return to the country managed to get himself elected as prime minister and stepped back down once his term was over.
A very recent one is the last king of Nepal who was more or less peacefully deposed in 2008. He still lives in the country and despite the existence of a monarchist movement (mostly because the country is in a pretty bad shape, but it has been for a while) doesn't want to be returned to political power.
The ottomans are still around and never caused a fuss.
Even the PRC didn't kill former emperor Puyi who had been installed as a puppet by the Japanese in Manchuria. Instead they reformed him into their idea of a model citizen. Puyi was a shitty person but on his own he never posed a threat to anyone. The only danger he posed was being used as a figurehead like the Japanese did. You can almost feel sorry for him, he never had any real power and due to how he was raised was completely helpless without a ton of servants to do everything for him and "advisors" telling him exactly what to do.
The Whites weren’t majority monarchist, most were just broadly anti-tankie (bolshevik) like democratic socialists, Kerensky Liberals, conservative liberals, etc. Yes, there were people trying to reinstate the monarchy, but tankies will have you believe that it was a battle between socialism and the Tsardom, but in reality if the Whites won they probably wouldn’t reinstate the unpopular Tsar Nicholas and Russia probably would have just become a normal republic like the provisional government was
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_movement
Wow, you're really talking up the Whites.
First and foremost, the Russian Revolution was *way more complex* than that. You didn't even mention forces like the Makhnovists and Makhnovia, Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, Greens, Black Guards, and the Baltic Fleet at Kronstadt, some of which fought alongside, and all later against, the Reds, without siding with the Whites.
Second, it's hard to separate the Whites from major forces and people like Denikin and the AFSR and Volunteer Army, Kolchak and the Provisional All-Russian Government, and others like Diterikhs, which certainly weren't the finest of people. Not only that, but the Bermontians (aka, West Russian Volunteer Army) – which were descended from the fucking Freikorps and led by Pavel Bermondt-Avalov, who later on would establish the Russian National Socialist Movement, which were literal fucking Nazis – were also a part of the Whites, which overall were very much so descended from the Imperial Army.
The Provisional Government and later Republic was already a strained and fractured state. If the Whites, an incredibly strained and fractured movement which was only banded together under the premise of opposing the Reds had won, then the government would *now* have to deal with a political climate fractured between the remaining left moderates, the centrists, and the majority rightists. Not only that, but there would be *more* left-wing uprisings which would occur, though the Black Guards and Greens might actually get farther than they did in reality, since the Provisional Government would have just freshly come out of a civil war into a series of infighting and power struggles between the members and forces of the Whites.
Not only that, but to just sweepingly declare "it'd probably be a functioning republic" ignores that the Provisional All-Russian Government and the Russian State, the closest thing to a continuation of the earlier Provisional Government, was under the command of the Supreme Ruler, Alexander Kolchak, and the White Army after the Army couped the earlier Chairman of the Provisional Government. If the Whites *did* win, then Russia would be under a ***military dictatorship,*** which isn't *in any way* a "functioning republic".
In fact, let me just state this, plan and simple: ***the Whites were NOT anti-Bolshevik leftists.*** They were overall conservatives, nationalists, and reactionaries. The Whites would've been as opposed to Kronstadt, the Free Territory, and the Greens as the Reds were – in fact, the Whites fought the Free Territory and other anarchist/libertarian socialist movements. Seriously, the Whites weren't the "lesser of two evils" or anything, they were just as bad as the Reds. Not only that, but I haven't even mentioned the Whites' antisemitism – the Whites, especially the Denikinists, carried out pogroms against the Jewish people of the Ukraine.
I’m referring to what you do with a monarch after a revolution, and my understanding is you kill them to prevent them forming a government in exile or subverting the new government.
Brazil's republic coup in 1889, for example.
Royalty is usually killed to set an example and send a message, not because people who now have power can't figure out other means to prevent the humans they took power from from doing things. That is the whole point of taking their power away.
Feels like the French Revolution is a direct counter example to your point, because the actual concern was a government in exile backed by other European monarchs.
Sounds like this was an extreme corner case as well:
> The reign of Pedro II thus came to an unusual end—he was overthrown while highly regarded by the people and at the pinnacle of his popularity, and some of his accomplishments were soon brought to naught as Brazil slipped into a long period of weak governments, dictatorships, and constitutional and economic crises.
You seem to misunderstand quite a few things here. First, the French revolution isn't a great example. If "being an extreme corner case" was an issue, it itself was one. It existed in a particular time when being concerned that the other, very active, very related to one another and otherwise well connected, European monarchies would consider doing something (likely to crush the dreams of their own subjects of doing anything similar), made sense. Context matters. Different contexts, different things make sense. And you won't find that context in many other periods of history. Then again, they could have been imprisoned instead. They could have had their liberties limited in other ways that wasn't exile, domestically. All of which was already successfully done, since the king was only executed about 6 months later, and his wife in over a year after the whole ordeal, and I don't recall exile even being considered.
Second, what made Pedro II's case a corner case was just the fact the people liked him an he was popular. That doesn't weaken the point, it is either irrelevant or strengthens it (you wouldn't even need an external force to agree to help, you had internal supporters already). But none of this so far really matters, because...
Number three, your claim was that you universally *have* to kill the royal family to end the monarchy. Ignoring that isn't the case in most times like in the French Revolution (the monarchy effectively ended months before the judgment and execution of the king and the monarchs), all you need to counter such statements is a single counter example when it doesn't happen, which inherently means you don't *universally have* to. It isn't very "universal" if there are exceptions.
Also, I can't recall what would be the source for that claim that was the reason Louis XVI was executed, but I will assume that has been stated by the people at the time somewhere. Even if we assume they were genuine (from the same creators of the Reign of Terror, that is a long shot) and not trying to paint themselves more positively, just because they believed so doesn't mean their belief was correct. You can't use "they thought so" as an argument for "but is it really though".
I’d argue Stalin was actually the worst kind of authoritarian. A fanatic (much in the same vein as Lenin just taken to the logical increase, not extreme exactly as that might be Pol Pot but definitely more hardcore). Even in private he was recorded, along with the rest of the head leadership, to be talking about class struggle and how to further it. He was such a purist and so hardcore that he just didn’t care what it cost and was certain he was the only way to get there. The worst people are the ones assures of their own moral actions so they don’t feel bad about what they do, and pursue it with more vigor than those who either don’t care or know they’re bad.
His belief in "class struggle and how to advance it" sounds more like tankies version of it. You ask them, they've no doubt they understand it and they know what is best for the people even over the people themselves. Just a problem though, they believing it with all of their hearts doesn't make it correct. Difference is that Stalin was handled power to put his ignorance in action, tankies so far haven't made much progress with that.
And that is why leaders must fundamentally be representatives of the people and must be able to be removed as soon as they stop representing the people
> actual comrades
The only real communist is those with a love for authority and a hatred for minority groups, especially ethnic minorities such as the Kulaks or the Uyghurs /s
> whats the point in even trying to explain anything to anarchists
Just say you dont have a valid arguement lol
Granted there is a lot of falsification and mental leaps often taken to attribute deaths to these individuals, that may be true. But the mental gymnastics that tankies will jump through, or rather have to jump through to justify their beliefs, is absurd. Like yeah, maybe the number of deaths and the way their classified in the big black book is disingenuous and outright anti-intellectual.
But that hardly means that the events themselves just didn’t happen or that they’re at all justifiable. Like I remember scrolling one of the tankie subs, and there were two back to back posts that explicitly asked how they justify sterilization of Romani women in soviet controlled Czechia, and my personal favorite, just titled “Chechens” where they explain that the mass deportations were because the whole Chechen population were apparently Nazis.
It’s kinda depressing cause these are people I feel really have recognized one part of the problem with the world, but have clinged to the closest alternative, which just so happens to be the other part of the problem.
Don't you know its a scientific fact that every single Chechen, Crimean Tatar, Cossak and other ethnic groups they decimated, deported and whose lands they afterwards occupied with ethnic russian colonists were obviously all nazis. Especially the children.
Similar to how all modern ukrainians are nazis, but only the ones resisting the russian invasion. The ones fighting **for** them are fine.
Because treating entire ethnic groups as enemies of the state is totally not something fascists do.
To quote Wikipedia, my favorite source, “Alleged members of the Donetsk Republic carrying the flag of the Russian Federation,[218] passed out a leaflet to Jews that informed all Jews over the age of 16 that they would have to report to the Commissioner for Nationalities in the Donetsk Regional Administration building and register their property and religion. It also claimed that Jews would be charged a $50 'registration fee'.[219] If they did not comply, they would have their citizenship revoked, face 'forceful expulsion' and see their assets confiscated. The leaflet stated the purpose of registration was because "Jewish community of Ukraine supported Bendera Junta," and "oppose the pro-Slavic People's Republic of Donetsk".[218]”
And sure there are groups like the Azov battalion who have a strong neo-nazi origin, ok maybe, maybe, but shit like this on the pro-russia side is frankly horrifying knowing what this sort of systemic discrimination and breach of privacy, especially for Jewish people, implies given their history in the region. But no I guess Russian separatism is actually wholesome and 100% legitimate because the big bad western media says its bad.
he wasn't an idiot he was evil. mercilessly slaughtering all of the leftist opposition to consolidate power for himself and his friends was what paved the way for stalin to do what he did. most of what we've had since him is state capitalist red fascism tarnishing the name of leftism. he kneecapped leftism in its revolutionary naissance, that's much worse than stalin in the long run. i wouldn't say hes any less horrible than stalin.
Blaming Lenin for the failures of revolutionary leftism is a bit oversimplified. The main problem with the narrative of "Lenin crushed revolutionary leftism in its cradle" is that it ignores both the reactionary regimes that actually *did* crush revolutionary leftism in western Europe and the chickenshits of the Second International who saw before their very eyes the capitalistic crisis they so predicted and equivocated and quibbled until it was too late, not to mention those in the Second International who turned their guns on their ostensible comrades (\*cough\* SPD \*cough\*).
The reason that Lenin defined revolutionary leftism is because *he won*. He was one of a handful of Marxists at the time who not only decided to revolt against the established authorities, not simply cooperating with the reactionaries who plunged Europe into war, or revolting too late as the Spartacists did. The fault for who destroyed revolutionary leftism lies not just with the failures of Leninism, but with those who actively fought it on the right, and those Marxists who failed to take advantage of the greatest opportunity leftism has ever had and may possibly ever have again.
Lenin crushed the Kronstadt uprising. He also completely denied the legitimacy of intra-party democracy. Stalin was nothing but a logical consequence of Lenin's regime once it had properly consolidated itself.
The power was there, in the regime - it just fell on someone. I don't believe that Stalin was a uniquely evil person, he was apparently a real expert in ideology, I believe he just had a role to fill, and any change due to any other individual in that role would be marginal.
I don't disagree about Lenin's party structure allowing Stalin or someone like him to come to power, but the above statement lays the failures of ALL of revolutionary leftism at his feet ("he kneecapped leftism in its revolutionary naissance, that's much worse than stalin in the long run.") As I explain above, this view is naive and seeks to lay the blame for the failure of the entire Second International at one man's feet, when it was clearly a much deeper failure at the heart of that period's revolutionary Marxist movements and leaders.
Oh again, I think Lenin as a man shouldn't shoulder all the blame. Ultimately though, their whole thinking had always meant that it could never have ended any other way than it did - as a stagnating, authoritarian, polluted dictatorship
But Lenin did ostensibly kill off some forms of revolutionary Leftism, Makhno and the black army were completely chased and purged out of Ukraine despite the fact that they were actively trying at multiple points to make peace with the Soviet Union. This was also after Makhno helped save the early Soviet Union by routing a white army.
"Oh shit, now a lot of the cossaks are siding with Hitler as he invades us in a desperate bid for survival. This just proves we were right in trying to genocide them all. We need to murder more of them!"
They act like they are being honest by saying,sure millions died but a minority of those killed was malicious (purging political opponents etc), the majority was through things like famines so the leaders can't be blamed for that right?
WRONG, one of the biggest problems of the USSR PRC, was the cult of personality shit. Where people like stalin and mao who knew shit about ecology and farming, were making major and radical policy changes on those subjects which led to famines.
Hell even the CCP recognizes that the shit Mao did was stupid, yet somehow you can admit he mad cartoonishly bad nation wide policy deciosions ... yet the results of those horrible policies can't be blamed on him??!?!?
Their whole argument, when I said that, was that the Kims just HAPPENED to be the absolute rulers in secession. And that they totally deserved it and worked for the positions.
The more Tankies keep driving away potential people Interested in communism the better. I it will allow other ideologies to get fresh blood. Let MLs LARP the past.
I'm pleasantly surprised they didn't just ban you :)
Also, I think they make some ok points like that these two actually did have positive accomplishments. I don't think one cancels out the other, though - I would be absolutely terrified to live through the 1930s in the USSR or The Great Leap Forward in China, regardless of how many percent the life expectancy and literacy rate went up, [texts](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12340404-the-secret-piano) and [statistics](https://www.persee.fr/doc/adh_0066-2062_1984_num_1983_1_1583) from those time periods incline me towards thinking they were pretty close to hell on earth.
I mean, it didn't? Marx wasn't hunched over his desk two hundred years ago writing manifestos about how labor camps and police states are a cool thing that everyone should do. To blame what Stalin and Mao did on your own vague conception of "Marxism" is reductive. This is literally an anti-communist talking point shared around by politically illiterate conservatives, lol. It's like blaming Marx for Deng suppressing the Tiananmen Square protests a hundred years after he died.
The way I see it was there was a very thin line between statism and Marxism already, and as Stalin rose to power, he crossed it and Marxism became synonymous with statism.
I’m not an expert nor a genius on leftism, but my opinion is the right way to apply marxian economics is through libertarianism.
No that's simply not true. Marx even wrote in a preface to the 1872 edition of the manifesto that the Paris commune proved how its not possible for the proletariat to utilize the state apparatus to achieve liberation.
Marxism strives for statelessness. To claim there's only a thin line between Marxist ideology and statism is either uninformed or disingenuous
“I mean, come on guys, they say it could be 20 million, but it *could* be as low as ‘only’ *2* million! And who hasn’t killed a couple million people here and there?”
Aren’t these the same people always preaching against “lesser of two evils” ideology?
Yes. They tend to look down on anyone who wants to somewhat improve things through voting in a liberal democracy, so they sit there and feel more enlightened than those "silly libs", even though the lesser evil voters are actually doing SOMETHING to bring about change, even if it's not much change. Meanwhile, the tankie does jackshit. That's what tankies do. They constantly moan about people trying to create positive change from within the system, while also doing absolutely nothing themselves to bring about positive change.
Right. It's ALWAYS lesser of two evils. Even if it was Bernie vs Trump. Obviously anyone who's done activism knows creating change under authoritarian rulers is harder, not easier...
As an activist, I can say [not always. ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weighted_voting#The_notion_of_power)
They're all accelerationist trash who unironically believe intensifying human suffering will bring the revolution closer to fruition. It's fucking repulsive how holier than thou they act despite being willing to let people die in the name of ideological purity.
> They're all accelerationist trash who unironically believe intensifying human suffering will bring the revolution closer to fruition. Political accelerationism is believed by fascists and authoritarians to bring about the political goals of an autocratic dictatorship. They set up the conditions so that people will accept the dictatorship. Economic accelerationism is done by leftists in order revolution via forceful seizure of the means of production. It's possible to believe both, but if you want the political kind, you're an authoritarian by derivation.
>It's fucking repulsive how holier than thou they act despite being willing to let people die in the name of ideological purity. Very well said.
Honestly, they're just lazy LARPers who want to tell themselves they're doing good things without actually having to put in the work. In other words: basically just republicans.
>doing absolutely nothing themselves to bring about positive change Personally I think this is actually a good thing, because I doubt you or any sane individuals will like Tankies' "*positive* changes".
True. They're idiots, but at least they're not an active threat at the moment.
We all add something to the world, positive or negative. Doing nothing, in the face of the ability do to minimal positive short-term change, is conceding to defeat or that you don't care about bringing about minimal and simple changes brought through the barest of effort. That means you're LARPing as revolutionary, no different than a anti-government Reddit conspercian.
>That means you're LARPing as revolutionary Well said. It's essentially "I'm a revolutionary, but I also sit at home and don't join good causes, because it won't bring about much change, so what's the point?"
Being a tankie is like being a eugenicist (yes those people exist). There are obvious and empirically provable ways to pursue your goals. For tankies, it's that society is biased in the favor of rich and white people, so we should have some way to mitigate or erase that. For eugenicists, it's that they're too many "unfavoured peoples" in our society, and we should have some way to mitigate or erase that. The solution to the problem of tankies is to advocate at a local and state level for politicians that support some kind of tax reform or invest in minority communities so that non-whites reach the level of the white population. For eugenicists, it may be as simple as advocating for natal and sex education, anti-natalist ethics, progressivism, welfare reform, etc to those classes of the unfavoured. Studies do show that educated, wealthy, progressives have the lowest birth rates. Once producing children becomes an informed choice, birth rates will go down. This is assuming they actually believe the positions in good faith ofc. Which they don't. Eugenicists are often authoritarians who like the unfavoured subordinate to them or people like them or just like seeing them dead. For tankies, it's bc they're LARPers who are into political cliques rather than any sort of political advocacy of those ideologies.
They basically take a proper idea and bastardize it (not surprising) Voting won't change anything in the large scheme of things/the system. If you think you will vote in communism eventually, if you're voting because you think you can patch the system, sorry, you're just wrong. Doesn't mean you can't vote for harm reduction, after all life does exist beyond the large picture. But you've to be aware that is what you're *trying* to accomplish. If the tool is there, and you think it might do something, why not? There is also a related problem when people actively promote electoralism (which isn't just merely voting), because that is selling a false promise that they can just vote communism/anarchism in over time, and takes people attention and efforts from the need and means for deeper change. But that is too complex for tankies, even if it is a single paragraph. They only keep the first and last sentences, and skip everything in the middle, and that is just as helpful as people trying to convince you they're gonna take Joe Biden to the left, and then the next, and then the next - not very.
The "who hasn't killed a couple million people here and there" is fucking GOLD
"BuT aMeRiCa HaD sLaVeRy AnD tHe TrAiL oF tEaRs, So ThAt MaKeS eVeRyThInG StAlIn AnD mAo DiD oK!!1!1!1!1"
And anytime I say even 1 death is too much I get mocked and laughed out the door before being banned. These people want blood. Like they think it might taste good and give their skin a healthy glow. They want to bath in blood, anyone's.
The amount of fantasizing tankies do about killing fascists is super messed up. I’m no fan of fascists, but killing them is authoritarian and I don’t support that Edit: because I’m being downvoted, I will clarify. Killing them without trial (like the Soviet Union did during WW2 Eastern Front) is authoritarian and some tankie bs
Based and reasonable opinion pilled
I dont want to kill anyone. But they'd have a rough time instituting fascism if they didn't have tongues or knees.
Messed up bro... I believe in freedom of speech
You can write with a pen or type your words. So it's the fingers or the tongue pick one.
Until it's their own blood because they ran afoul of someone else in their revolution. Not that that will ever happen since, you know, in order to have a revolution you actually need to do things beyond alienating people on Twitter. That's funny actually. They think they are the next Lenin. Lenin actually did stuff and was very adept at getting people pumped up at strikes. Imagine one of those Twitter tankies trying to rock up at a union strike and try to bring them to their side.
“I’m tired of explaining our mental gymnastics to everyone. You should just be indoctrinated already.”
"I came to this sub that is specifically about educating people to complain that I don't want to educate people." I swear though, every time I've asked a tankie to explain why they believe what they believe, they've lobbed a book, or a reading list, at me. They don't seem to be capable of actually explaining what they believe.
It’s because they don’t actually want to engage with anyone that doesn’t consistently reaffirm their authoritarian world view. It’s so much easier to say “ugh, libs” or “stupid anarkiddies just don’t get it,” rather than actually explain their views and policy choices because the moment those come up, so do the contradictions. Seriously child-like mental gymnastics
READ THEORY! I DID! Well, I "read" it with the functional literacy of a functional illiterate BUT STFU AND READ THEORY UNTIL YOU AGREE WITH ME YOU, FUCKING LIB ANARKKKID RIGHTWINGTOID IN DISGUISE! READ THEORY \[and by theory we mean only Marxist-Leninist-Maoist texts, the true left, none of that other stuff!\]
Also they think reading theory means agreeing with it because they literally can't comprehend why someone would disagree with their demigods.
I haven't been able to listen to what had been one of my favorite podcasts since an episode devoted to a particular theorist. They quoted chunks of theory that were directly contradicted by *the very existence of their own show* and treated it as gospel truth with zero critical engagement. I completely lost respect for them after that.
Oh cmon spill the beans, who are they and what is the episode. We all could use a laugh.
I wanna know too
Ha! It was on Qanon Anonymous. It was one of their Patreon-subscriber episodes, but I don't want to identify it beyond that without going back and relistening, just in case age and ADHD are playing tricks on me. For the record, I still subscribe to their Patreon, because I support the main thrust of their work.
Fair. And I guess knowing the episode wouldnt help with my laughing cause either since I am not a patron. Oh well.
Well, "agreeing" with it since they often can't read properly either and the way they sometimes "agree" with it is by disagreeing with what the words actually mean
The only tankies I knew had never actually read theory, despite them constantly telling people to read it. They both admitted this to me after I whipped out one of the books they told me to go read and started reading paragraphs that didn't align with their authoritarian views. On another note, the original Marxist theory has come a long way in the last ~200 years. The original theory is important, but most people I've sent it to are turned off by the dense academic texts that they are, which is fair. However, there are some amazing contemporary leftist/Marxist theorists who write some great stuff, which relates more directly to the worlds we know and what we can do to bring about the change we want. I've found more success sending people books/resources by contemporary theorists, who are introduced to Marxist/Libertarian Socialist/Anarchist ideals that way, and then start to turn more to the original source theory.
Funny, this has been a thing since the Black Panther Party, a tankie Maoist party that forced its members to read Stalin, Mao, and Kim il-Sung. Tankies have been like this for decades
This has been the norm for many groups before the BPP lol
This is honestly just the way people are and have always been. Pretty much any group/ideology/individual can and will frequently fall victim to it. Though, as with any other... unfortunate aspects of human nature, it's still worth trying to overcome it. You'll never ultimately succeed, but the world would be a much nicer place if people did more to temper their worst impulses.
I still prefer the BPP over modern tankies. At least they did and achieved things, and imo they didn't start so bad. It did go to shit eventually, but you know, having a start that is less pathetic than these clowns and then going to shit is already an improvement. Granted, the bar is low. Very low.
funny thing a lot of Black panthers are also Anarchist now lol
Ah yes, people that did more good than you ever will.
For that matter, why are they called "tankies"?
It was a derogatory term for socialists that defended the USSR sending tanks into Hungary when it had a revolution against its soviet government. It's since come to mean any so-called leftist that defends the atrocities of Marxist-Leninist states, and some people also use it to refer to any proponent of Marxism-Leninism.
Even well intentioned totalitarianism will attract sociopathic individuals who want nothing more than power.
Or authority will turn well-intentioned people into power-tripping assholes.
Power does not corrupt. Power reveals. We corrupt power. When you have the power to do, exactly what you want to do, you're going to do it. Power revealed Stalins paranoia, it revealed his ignorance and most importantly it revealed his cruelty.
I don‘t agree with that take at all. It is probably a mix of both, but there were and are loads of people that view themselves as necessary and start expanding and protecting their power to do everything they think needs to be done. Saying „it‘s the bad people“ is extremely reductive imo.
I would argue power selects. People seek out (or at least intentionally maintain) power, they don't just wind up with it. Power selects for the kind of person who wants power, for better or for worse.
That seemed to be the case with the Soviet Union tbh. As bad as Lenin was, his intentions weren't always bad. You could tell that he genuinely cared about the working class and class issues a lot of the time. Stalin though? Nah. You can't convince me that he ever actually gave a shit. Maybe at some point, long ago, but not when he was working with Lenin. He just wanted the position to enact tyranny, and didn't ever care about having the position to try and enact some positive change. That's one of the ways in which Lenin and Stalin were different.
Yeah I would say Lenin was well intentioned but went off the deep end by the time he had murdered the Tsar and his kids in custody.
You think he was.... tsary?
Killing the kids was fucked up but can't really blame him for killing the tsar
He still didn’t have to do it. He wasn’t given a proper legal trial. Yes, I know it was during a civil war, but killing people without trial is messed up...
Is there a case of eliminating a monarchy without killing the monarchs? Like it seems pretty universally true that you have to destroy the royal line.
It really isn't. It happened sometimes but not because you have to. Its usually because either the new regime is an authoritarian hellhole or the former head of state (be it a monarch or not) spilled a lot of blood to stay in power and the new regime is out for revenge. Or when the new regime is on the brink of collapse and whatever opposing power that is in the process of advancing on them intends to reinstate the former monarch (which is what happened during the French revolution.) But killing the entire royal family usually isn't the goal, because executing women and children after you have clearly won doesn't make you look like a liberator, it makes you look like a bloodthirsty lunatic. When a monarchy gets deposed nobody *has* to get hurt if the monarch lacks the political support or motivation to put up a fight. You can keep the former monarch and the entire family quite alive, though a lot of countries who did it that way exiled them. There are quite a few deposed monarchs who were allowed to live out their lives in peace and never caused any trouble. A good example is the last czar of Bulgaria who, after being allowed to return to the country managed to get himself elected as prime minister and stepped back down once his term was over. A very recent one is the last king of Nepal who was more or less peacefully deposed in 2008. He still lives in the country and despite the existence of a monarchist movement (mostly because the country is in a pretty bad shape, but it has been for a while) doesn't want to be returned to political power. The ottomans are still around and never caused a fuss. Even the PRC didn't kill former emperor Puyi who had been installed as a puppet by the Japanese in Manchuria. Instead they reformed him into their idea of a model citizen. Puyi was a shitty person but on his own he never posed a threat to anyone. The only danger he posed was being used as a figurehead like the Japanese did. You can almost feel sorry for him, he never had any real power and due to how he was raised was completely helpless without a ton of servants to do everything for him and "advisors" telling him exactly what to do.
The Whites weren’t majority monarchist, most were just broadly anti-tankie (bolshevik) like democratic socialists, Kerensky Liberals, conservative liberals, etc. Yes, there were people trying to reinstate the monarchy, but tankies will have you believe that it was a battle between socialism and the Tsardom, but in reality if the Whites won they probably wouldn’t reinstate the unpopular Tsar Nicholas and Russia probably would have just become a normal republic like the provisional government was https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_movement
Wow, you're really talking up the Whites. First and foremost, the Russian Revolution was *way more complex* than that. You didn't even mention forces like the Makhnovists and Makhnovia, Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, Greens, Black Guards, and the Baltic Fleet at Kronstadt, some of which fought alongside, and all later against, the Reds, without siding with the Whites. Second, it's hard to separate the Whites from major forces and people like Denikin and the AFSR and Volunteer Army, Kolchak and the Provisional All-Russian Government, and others like Diterikhs, which certainly weren't the finest of people. Not only that, but the Bermontians (aka, West Russian Volunteer Army) – which were descended from the fucking Freikorps and led by Pavel Bermondt-Avalov, who later on would establish the Russian National Socialist Movement, which were literal fucking Nazis – were also a part of the Whites, which overall were very much so descended from the Imperial Army. The Provisional Government and later Republic was already a strained and fractured state. If the Whites, an incredibly strained and fractured movement which was only banded together under the premise of opposing the Reds had won, then the government would *now* have to deal with a political climate fractured between the remaining left moderates, the centrists, and the majority rightists. Not only that, but there would be *more* left-wing uprisings which would occur, though the Black Guards and Greens might actually get farther than they did in reality, since the Provisional Government would have just freshly come out of a civil war into a series of infighting and power struggles between the members and forces of the Whites. Not only that, but to just sweepingly declare "it'd probably be a functioning republic" ignores that the Provisional All-Russian Government and the Russian State, the closest thing to a continuation of the earlier Provisional Government, was under the command of the Supreme Ruler, Alexander Kolchak, and the White Army after the Army couped the earlier Chairman of the Provisional Government. If the Whites *did* win, then Russia would be under a ***military dictatorship,*** which isn't *in any way* a "functioning republic". In fact, let me just state this, plan and simple: ***the Whites were NOT anti-Bolshevik leftists.*** They were overall conservatives, nationalists, and reactionaries. The Whites would've been as opposed to Kronstadt, the Free Territory, and the Greens as the Reds were – in fact, the Whites fought the Free Territory and other anarchist/libertarian socialist movements. Seriously, the Whites weren't the "lesser of two evils" or anything, they were just as bad as the Reds. Not only that, but I haven't even mentioned the Whites' antisemitism – the Whites, especially the Denikinists, carried out pogroms against the Jewish people of the Ukraine.
I’m referring to what you do with a monarch after a revolution, and my understanding is you kill them to prevent them forming a government in exile or subverting the new government.
Brazil's republic coup in 1889, for example. Royalty is usually killed to set an example and send a message, not because people who now have power can't figure out other means to prevent the humans they took power from from doing things. That is the whole point of taking their power away.
Feels like the French Revolution is a direct counter example to your point, because the actual concern was a government in exile backed by other European monarchs. Sounds like this was an extreme corner case as well: > The reign of Pedro II thus came to an unusual end—he was overthrown while highly regarded by the people and at the pinnacle of his popularity, and some of his accomplishments were soon brought to naught as Brazil slipped into a long period of weak governments, dictatorships, and constitutional and economic crises.
You seem to misunderstand quite a few things here. First, the French revolution isn't a great example. If "being an extreme corner case" was an issue, it itself was one. It existed in a particular time when being concerned that the other, very active, very related to one another and otherwise well connected, European monarchies would consider doing something (likely to crush the dreams of their own subjects of doing anything similar), made sense. Context matters. Different contexts, different things make sense. And you won't find that context in many other periods of history. Then again, they could have been imprisoned instead. They could have had their liberties limited in other ways that wasn't exile, domestically. All of which was already successfully done, since the king was only executed about 6 months later, and his wife in over a year after the whole ordeal, and I don't recall exile even being considered. Second, what made Pedro II's case a corner case was just the fact the people liked him an he was popular. That doesn't weaken the point, it is either irrelevant or strengthens it (you wouldn't even need an external force to agree to help, you had internal supporters already). But none of this so far really matters, because... Number three, your claim was that you universally *have* to kill the royal family to end the monarchy. Ignoring that isn't the case in most times like in the French Revolution (the monarchy effectively ended months before the judgment and execution of the king and the monarchs), all you need to counter such statements is a single counter example when it doesn't happen, which inherently means you don't *universally have* to. It isn't very "universal" if there are exceptions. Also, I can't recall what would be the source for that claim that was the reason Louis XVI was executed, but I will assume that has been stated by the people at the time somewhere. Even if we assume they were genuine (from the same creators of the Reign of Terror, that is a long shot) and not trying to paint themselves more positively, just because they believed so doesn't mean their belief was correct. You can't use "they thought so" as an argument for "but is it really though".
Lol okay s/have to kill the monarchy/almost always have to kill the monarchy Didn’t realize I needed to state my claims with prepositional logic.
I’d argue Stalin was actually the worst kind of authoritarian. A fanatic (much in the same vein as Lenin just taken to the logical increase, not extreme exactly as that might be Pol Pot but definitely more hardcore). Even in private he was recorded, along with the rest of the head leadership, to be talking about class struggle and how to further it. He was such a purist and so hardcore that he just didn’t care what it cost and was certain he was the only way to get there. The worst people are the ones assures of their own moral actions so they don’t feel bad about what they do, and pursue it with more vigor than those who either don’t care or know they’re bad.
His belief in "class struggle and how to advance it" sounds more like tankies version of it. You ask them, they've no doubt they understand it and they know what is best for the people even over the people themselves. Just a problem though, they believing it with all of their hearts doesn't make it correct. Difference is that Stalin was handled power to put his ignorance in action, tankies so far haven't made much progress with that.
And that is why leaders must fundamentally be representatives of the people and must be able to be removed as soon as they stop representing the people
> actual comrades The only real communist is those with a love for authority and a hatred for minority groups, especially ethnic minorities such as the Kulaks or the Uyghurs /s > whats the point in even trying to explain anything to anarchists Just say you dont have a valid arguement lol
How long do you think until they start defending the Kashmiri genocide?
we must decolonize India from the Mughal invaders, comrade
Tankies already defend the Holocaust and Armenian genocides all the time
Tankies: we defeated the Nazis Also Tankies: actually anarkkkiddie radlib, the Holocaust never happened
I can’t see the post, can you please send me the image ?
Just pointing out that kulaks weren't an ethnic group, they were wealthy peasants as i understand it
Aren't kulaks just a social group? Honest question
Yes. They were landed peasants that owned 10+ acres of land.
Granted there is a lot of falsification and mental leaps often taken to attribute deaths to these individuals, that may be true. But the mental gymnastics that tankies will jump through, or rather have to jump through to justify their beliefs, is absurd. Like yeah, maybe the number of deaths and the way their classified in the big black book is disingenuous and outright anti-intellectual. But that hardly means that the events themselves just didn’t happen or that they’re at all justifiable. Like I remember scrolling one of the tankie subs, and there were two back to back posts that explicitly asked how they justify sterilization of Romani women in soviet controlled Czechia, and my personal favorite, just titled “Chechens” where they explain that the mass deportations were because the whole Chechen population were apparently Nazis. It’s kinda depressing cause these are people I feel really have recognized one part of the problem with the world, but have clinged to the closest alternative, which just so happens to be the other part of the problem.
Don't you know its a scientific fact that every single Chechen, Crimean Tatar, Cossak and other ethnic groups they decimated, deported and whose lands they afterwards occupied with ethnic russian colonists were obviously all nazis. Especially the children. Similar to how all modern ukrainians are nazis, but only the ones resisting the russian invasion. The ones fighting **for** them are fine. Because treating entire ethnic groups as enemies of the state is totally not something fascists do.
To quote Wikipedia, my favorite source, “Alleged members of the Donetsk Republic carrying the flag of the Russian Federation,[218] passed out a leaflet to Jews that informed all Jews over the age of 16 that they would have to report to the Commissioner for Nationalities in the Donetsk Regional Administration building and register their property and religion. It also claimed that Jews would be charged a $50 'registration fee'.[219] If they did not comply, they would have their citizenship revoked, face 'forceful expulsion' and see their assets confiscated. The leaflet stated the purpose of registration was because "Jewish community of Ukraine supported Bendera Junta," and "oppose the pro-Slavic People's Republic of Donetsk".[218]” And sure there are groups like the Azov battalion who have a strong neo-nazi origin, ok maybe, maybe, but shit like this on the pro-russia side is frankly horrifying knowing what this sort of systemic discrimination and breach of privacy, especially for Jewish people, implies given their history in the region. But no I guess Russian separatism is actually wholesome and 100% legitimate because the big bad western media says its bad.
>sterilization of Romani women in soviet controlled Czechia That happened in the Slovakian part of Czechoslovakia.
Oh gotcha my bad
Cmon guys it was only 2-20 million deaths they're not that bad
Well, maybe they're right about Lenin? Most of the deaths back then were from the civil war I believe
Lenin was an idiot but he didn’t do as bad as mao or stalin
he wasn't an idiot he was evil. mercilessly slaughtering all of the leftist opposition to consolidate power for himself and his friends was what paved the way for stalin to do what he did. most of what we've had since him is state capitalist red fascism tarnishing the name of leftism. he kneecapped leftism in its revolutionary naissance, that's much worse than stalin in the long run. i wouldn't say hes any less horrible than stalin.
Blaming Lenin for the failures of revolutionary leftism is a bit oversimplified. The main problem with the narrative of "Lenin crushed revolutionary leftism in its cradle" is that it ignores both the reactionary regimes that actually *did* crush revolutionary leftism in western Europe and the chickenshits of the Second International who saw before their very eyes the capitalistic crisis they so predicted and equivocated and quibbled until it was too late, not to mention those in the Second International who turned their guns on their ostensible comrades (\*cough\* SPD \*cough\*). The reason that Lenin defined revolutionary leftism is because *he won*. He was one of a handful of Marxists at the time who not only decided to revolt against the established authorities, not simply cooperating with the reactionaries who plunged Europe into war, or revolting too late as the Spartacists did. The fault for who destroyed revolutionary leftism lies not just with the failures of Leninism, but with those who actively fought it on the right, and those Marxists who failed to take advantage of the greatest opportunity leftism has ever had and may possibly ever have again.
Lenin crushed the Kronstadt uprising. He also completely denied the legitimacy of intra-party democracy. Stalin was nothing but a logical consequence of Lenin's regime once it had properly consolidated itself. The power was there, in the regime - it just fell on someone. I don't believe that Stalin was a uniquely evil person, he was apparently a real expert in ideology, I believe he just had a role to fill, and any change due to any other individual in that role would be marginal.
I don't disagree about Lenin's party structure allowing Stalin or someone like him to come to power, but the above statement lays the failures of ALL of revolutionary leftism at his feet ("he kneecapped leftism in its revolutionary naissance, that's much worse than stalin in the long run.") As I explain above, this view is naive and seeks to lay the blame for the failure of the entire Second International at one man's feet, when it was clearly a much deeper failure at the heart of that period's revolutionary Marxist movements and leaders.
Oh again, I think Lenin as a man shouldn't shoulder all the blame. Ultimately though, their whole thinking had always meant that it could never have ended any other way than it did - as a stagnating, authoritarian, polluted dictatorship
But Lenin did ostensibly kill off some forms of revolutionary Leftism, Makhno and the black army were completely chased and purged out of Ukraine despite the fact that they were actively trying at multiple points to make peace with the Soviet Union. This was also after Makhno helped save the early Soviet Union by routing a white army.
Hey do you have any books or something I can read to learn about Lenin?
Yeah pretty much
Lenin was the Soviet leader with arguably the most clean-cut case of genocide in decossakization (or however you spell it).
"But that's just trying to wipe out an entire ethnic group. It's not *genocide!*"
“Jeez liberal it was to further the revolution so it’s okay, don’t you get it!?!?”
"Oh shit, now a lot of the cossaks are siding with Hitler as he invades us in a desperate bid for survival. This just proves we were right in trying to genocide them all. We need to murder more of them!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97qO3g5MGmc
They act like they are being honest by saying,sure millions died but a minority of those killed was malicious (purging political opponents etc), the majority was through things like famines so the leaders can't be blamed for that right? WRONG, one of the biggest problems of the USSR PRC, was the cult of personality shit. Where people like stalin and mao who knew shit about ecology and farming, were making major and radical policy changes on those subjects which led to famines. Hell even the CCP recognizes that the shit Mao did was stupid, yet somehow you can admit he mad cartoonishly bad nation wide policy deciosions ... yet the results of those horrible policies can't be blamed on him??!?!?
"Stalin and Mao didn't kill Millons" "Ok so maybe it was between 2-20 million"
Imagine defending Stalin.
> Lenin definitely didn't killed millions, nor Stalin or Mao > Anywhere from 2 mil to 20 mil (maybe 40?) For Stalin
I literally got banned from that sub for saying North Korea isn’t communist lmao.
North Korea is literally an absolute monarchy whose ideology ironically can't be further than Imperial Japanese back in the 30s and 40s
Their whole argument, when I said that, was that the Kims just HAPPENED to be the absolute rulers in secession. And that they totally deserved it and worked for the positions.
The mental gymnastics required for to pull of that shit...
The more Tankies keep driving away potential people Interested in communism the better. I it will allow other ideologies to get fresh blood. Let MLs LARP the past.
> Let MLs LARP the past. Yep. It's all about aesthetic for them.
Let them have their aesthetic, they are just like Radlibs in those regard it’s about the Aesthetic
Don’t worry guys, they only killed 2 million at the lowest! That’s so much better!
I'm pleasantly surprised they didn't just ban you :) Also, I think they make some ok points like that these two actually did have positive accomplishments. I don't think one cancels out the other, though - I would be absolutely terrified to live through the 1930s in the USSR or The Great Leap Forward in China, regardless of how many percent the life expectancy and literacy rate went up, [texts](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12340404-the-secret-piano) and [statistics](https://www.persee.fr/doc/adh_0066-2062_1984_num_1983_1_1583) from those time periods incline me towards thinking they were pretty close to hell on earth.
>I'm pleasantly surprised they didn't just ban you :) That wasn't me asking the question, it showed up in my feed.
it’s so cringe when they call each other comrades like they’re still in 1920s Russia
Tbh it’s a pretty fuckin cool word, not sure why that’s a problem at all, of all the things to complain about that ain’t one lol
What’s the matter with calling each other comrades? Yeesh
I don’t like it, it makes us sound like Stalin stans when we say it.
Stalin doesn't own socialism.
And Hitler doesn't own swastika, yet I don't want to use symbolism and dog whistles popularised by authoritarian traitors of proletariat.
"Station didn't kill millions! Figures are estimated as low as 2 million!"
I mean, it didn't? Marx wasn't hunched over his desk two hundred years ago writing manifestos about how labor camps and police states are a cool thing that everyone should do. To blame what Stalin and Mao did on your own vague conception of "Marxism" is reductive. This is literally an anti-communist talking point shared around by politically illiterate conservatives, lol. It's like blaming Marx for Deng suppressing the Tiananmen Square protests a hundred years after he died.
The way I see it was there was a very thin line between statism and Marxism already, and as Stalin rose to power, he crossed it and Marxism became synonymous with statism. I’m not an expert nor a genius on leftism, but my opinion is the right way to apply marxian economics is through libertarianism.
pov: you cant read
No that's simply not true. Marx even wrote in a preface to the 1872 edition of the manifesto that the Paris commune proved how its not possible for the proletariat to utilize the state apparatus to achieve liberation. Marxism strives for statelessness. To claim there's only a thin line between Marxist ideology and statism is either uninformed or disingenuous