I’m sorry if this breaks a rule for this sub or isn’t in the right place.
I really don’t know, most of the time I just lurk. I had an alt on Hexbear because they get defederated all the time, and I really enjoy their content, but it got banned because I called out Nazi propaganda about Ukraine(It’s why I was banned. I’m not trying to talk politics I would like to focus on Lemmy), and I’m just very confused. The rules they referenced for the ban seem to barely apply to what I said, and in general, the server seemed like a cool place to be. I definitely felt like I was in a community where I belonged.
I’m just boggled and could really use some hand-holding on this one. In general, the rules of the Lemmyverse confuse me. I want to see everything, but the places I like most are usually defederated from the larger communities.
If this isn’t right please please, just point me to where I can ask.
Thanks!
It is one of the three major Tankie federations. Lemmygrad, Hexbear, and .ml. For starters, Tankie is a term originated as a pejorative on those that advocated for the Warsaw Pact invasion into Czechoslovakia in 1968. Nowadays, Tankies happen to be uncritical towards places like China and North Korea, viewing them as good places that the CIA lies about to make socialism look bad (let’s not mention that China is more corporatist, even in Tankie responses when you point out that billionaires in China are a thing), and lots of them also happen to be campists, aka people that support a country as long as it claims to be anti-US. Don’t get me wrong, the US did a lot of shit that is not talked about, but when you claim to be a Marxist-Leninist and support the theocratic Iran over the Iranian MLs…
And also, they love banning people they disagree with. Probably the most coherent thing about their ideology, given their authoritarianism.
A few notes:
“Tankie” originated from a split in the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1956, not 1968, regarding the Red Army answering the request of the Hungarian government to assist with putting down fascist pograms and lynchings of Jewish people and communists. Fascist elements had let out Nazis from prison, and were slaughtering communists and Jewish people.
Communists are plenty critical of the PRC and DPRK, but their critique comes from a sympathetic position and not the standard western position. This is what appears to be “uncritical,” but you won’t find people even among communists saying either country is perfect.
The PRC is a socialist market economy, not “corporatist.” The economy is driven primarily by public ownership in massive State Owned Enterprises, and the state is run by the working classes. Private ownership is meant for less-developed, non-essential industries, and highly competitive ones, which allows the social surplus to be directed primarily towards infrastructure and long-term development, rather than profits for the few.
Nobody supports a government based on claims of opposing the US Empire, but based on actual movements undermining western imperial hegemony. For example, Iranian MLs are in a difficult position, needing to contest both the Iranian state while preventing the CIA and Mossad from taking advantage of instability to restore the monarchy and create a western vassal state. Building worker power to the point that it becomes dominant is what allows revolution to potentially succeed, rather than backfire.
Regarding “authoritarianism,” all this really means is that Marxists support workers having state power. Capitalists support capitalists having state power. Authority is related to its class character, not something nebulous.
I don’t know about that, but given your name, I would need a neutral source. I know, I know, neutral is capitalist propaganda to you.
I know MLs that are critical towards the PRC and DPKRK. I am not equating Tankies with all MLs, because those two are different terms. “Their critique comes from a sympathetic position” implies there is critique of those, which I haven’t seen amongst those that like the PRC. Any time you criticize China, they roll out in defense, so it’s hard to see the criticism of it. See next.
Why do Tankies tell me that the reason China has so many billionaires is because they’re controlled by the party? Isn’t that fascist mode of production? Also, having lots of public ownership while permitting private ownership is just social democracy, and no one of us claims Norway is any way socialist because of that. In fact, the Tianmen Square incident, that for a lot of you is fake news, was driven by Maoists who were protesting the turn from Maoism to a market economy.
Hard to argue that when the term “color revolution” is used on any act against the non-Western powers that be. It’s funny you claim that the Iranian MLs need to resist attempts at monarchy, when they condemned the Ayatollah’s actions Tankies claimed they were CIA pawns suddenly. There is nothing about Khomeini that is “building worker power”.
Workers having state power is not enough, just like workers becoming owners doesn’t bring on communism, a worker turned politician will also act more like a politician than a worker, and by such act centralizing the power. This is what essentially happened in all ML and derivate states, no matter if ML, Maoist or any other such ideology. The solution is to create a true dictatorship of the proletariat, in building a socialist society that the people will be willing themselves to defend. That means liberation, and not oppressing.
And don’t claim MLs and derived are the only Marxists. There are non-authoritarian forms of Marxism, like Luxemburgism, Autonomism and Dutch Left-Communism/Council Communism. The ML-derivate dominion on Marxism has hurt Marxism more than it helped it.
#1 is correct. The entomology of Tankie is that communists were supporting the Soviet Union in crushing a local revolution that didn’t follow Soviet imperial policy.
The criticism behind Tankie isn’t that someone is a communist, but that they are a hypocrite who supports their side in all actions over the base politics they support. After all, how can you say you support anti-imperialism when you support a stronger nation using force to prevent a grass root revolution in order to maintain their sphere of influence?
In-depth answer
It’s essentially a pejorative for “communist.” I recommend the Prolewiki article on “Tankies,” as well as Nia Frome’s essay “Tankies.”
“Tankie” was a pejorative for Marxists that support socialism in real life then as well as now. It originated in the Communist Party of Great Britain. The term was coined because of the British tendency towards silly-sounding insults, and because the Soviet Union sent in the Red Army to stop the western-backed fascist insurrection. This caused a split in the party (as it always does in western orgs).
The Hungarian revolt in 1956 was infested with anti-semitic pograms. MI6 funded, supplied, and trained the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries. These counter-revolutionaries were allied with fascists who were lynching Jewish people and Communists. The Truth About Hungary by Herbert Aptheker heavily relies on citing western sources like the New York Times. Aptheker backs up his claims heavily.
Further, the CIA also backed Hungarian resistance forces:
Prague in 1968 was a similar fascist uprising in both cases there were some elements of progressive protest, but these were greatly overshadowed by the fascist movements. Dubcek wanted to sell out to the IMF, and restore capitalism. The idea that any of this was about “democracy” or “freedom” is silly, it was always about Cold War tactics to destabilize socialism.
TL;DR imagine if the January 6th rioters were armed and trained by foreign governments, started lynching officials and Jewish people, and the US sent in the army to put down the insurrection. The MAGA chuds would claim that it was about “freedom” and “democracy,” but we all know that they just wanted Trump in office.
Nowadays, it’s used by any random anti-communist to refer to anyone that supports socialist states or doesn’t buy into the imperialist narrative about global south countries. It was the ones they call “tankies” that knew the stories of WMD and Saddam’s forces leaving babies outside of incubators were both bullshit to manufacture consent for war, but now that its decades later the anti-communists all suddenly have collective amnesia about their willing participation in spreading the lies of empire to murder hundreds of thousands of people.
“Tankie” is a pejorative for communists, not an ideology. Critique is not valid by its mere existence, it must be factually based. If I say China is bad because they employ widespread child slavery, this isn’t critique based on fact, but based on fiction. If I say gay rights in China, though gradually improving, still have a very long way to go, this is based on fact.
There’s a lot to break down, here, so I’ll go line by line.
If anyone told you that the reason the PRC has billionaires is because they are controlled by the party, they are confusing things. The PRC has billionaires because secondary industries, and highly competitive non-essential industries (like tech) are generally privatized. The reasoning for this is because the CPC made a decision to allow in foreign capital in special economic zones to boost development and help catch up to developed capitalist countries, as this is how they can best integrate with the global economy and protect themselves.
Billionaires are prevented from having political power through the already established worker-state, and by holding the commanding heights of industry, the principal aspects of the economy as public. The rubber factory has power over the rubber ball factory. As markets do their thing and centralize, this makes these industries easier to fold into the public sector, and this is how the PRC advances to higher levels of socialism.
Nope, fascism is when the capitalist state intervenes to prevent the working classes from siezing control of the economy, usually in crisis.
Not quite. It isn’t about raw amounts, it’s about which aspect is principal, ie rising and dominant, public or private, and which class controls the state. Norway has private ownership as principal and a bourgeois state, and is reliant on the western imperialist system.
Partially true. The part that is “fake news” is the idea that the PLA committed a massacre on Tian’anmen Square itself, what’s true is that conflict between the PLA and rioters across Beijing resulted in hundreds of deaths (the CPC reports 240+ on June 4th, 1989). Further, by the time of June 4th, the Gang of Four supporters that protested Reform and Opening Up were largely gone, leaving the western-backed student movement that wanted to liberalize the economy. The Gang of Four supporters and the students actually disagreed with each other.
Iran is not a working class state. At the same time, it is a sovereign state. MLs in Iran need to overthrow it while building up mass, popular support, as a coup would collapse into western supported monarchy.
Administrators are not their own class, but a subset of a broader class. Marxism-Leninism has established socialism successfully.
MLs aren’t the only Marxists, just the vast majority. The idea that MLism has hurt Marxism more than helped it is nonsense, western-chauvanism. No non-ML ideology has ever successfully established socialism, only Marxism-Leninism has. None of the ideologies you listed has made any real impact, and mostly serves as a way for westerners to finger-wag global south communists for not “doing it the right way” (nevermind that this “right way” is both non-existant and not necessarily better than existing socialism even if these western Marxist ideologiws were to establish socialism).
You have an entirely unearned smug attitude throughout this comment, it’s really nonsense.
I’m probably going to regret this question, but why do they need THREE instances
Lemmy.ml is the dev instance and is the most default of the three. While it hosts a lot of “default” communities, the devs/admins have encouraged creating more instances over one default instance.
Hexbear.ml comes from the former subreddit r/chapotraphouse and was created as a new place when the old sub got banned. They shitpost the most loudly out of the three.
Lemmygrad.ml is the most “academic” of the three. If you hear anyone say to “read theory”, the discussion about it will likely happen there. It attempts to be the most serious of the three instances and actually tries to analyze some modern communist writings.
All three are banned in China, but lemmy.world can be read in China.