Incase anyone tells you that lemmy.ml is not a tankie instance.
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
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MeanwhileOnGrad
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lol before I realized what ml meant I made a comment that I thought that communism had never happened yet on earth but that it could one day. You wouldn’t believe the rage and attack from dozens of people who were inconsolable.
They also got mad when I said that there are only a few actual leftists in government in the US. Turns out that everyone is one, dontchano
i like the idea of using inconsolable to refer to grown ass adults. Pure comedic value.
Cheers!
"Read theory and you would know what I'm talking about."
That is a common thought terminating response to any critique of communism. That being said, I learned to flip the table. Tankies talk about theory, so mention empirical and practical results. They tend to either shut down or ban you.
Your first sentence is not wrong; as I understand Marx’s writing. Essentially it is not possible to go from agrarianism straight to communism without first building an industrial society. That’s how Russia / USSR, China etc don’t “technically” count.
The Lenin government did experiment with a direct transition to full communism, but found - as Marx predicted - that they didn't enjoy the industrial surplus needed for a post scarcity society. So he rolled back to the New Economic Plan, which Stalin inherited. Stalin went full tilt on industrialization, which upset a lot of agricultural workers and ended with him putting down a revolt in his native Georgia and tendering his resignation as a result.
The party wouldn't accept the resignation, so Stalin had to come back and win WW2 as a result. Russia avoided the fate of many of the Eastern Bloc states thanks to that rapid industrialization.
After the war standards of living surged, in large part thanks to the Communist model. The kind of communal lifestyle possible under pre-WW conditions wasn't attractive anymore, so Russians kept industrializing over the next 40 years. And when they couldn't match the US + Japan speed of development, they fell over in the attempt.
But to say they weren't "doing Communism"... The quality of life in the Eastern Block improved remarkably quick and access to resources was broad based and egalitarian. The economy was centralized and planned. The proletariat dictated the political agenda.
Certainly, at the time, American economists could tell the difference between the US and Soviet systems, even if they doggedly insisted central banks making private loans was freedom while central committees allocating jobs and resources was tyranny.
It's only after the USSR collapsed that we got an earful about "Not Real Communism".
Thanks. I have no reason to doubt any of that. Just to clarify that by “technically” I meant that, as far as I could see, they were not necessarily dialectically-created(?) as per Karl (&Fred’s) original theories. It was more a view about the processes they used rather the outcomes they achieved.
That's where you can argue that Lenin and Marx ultimately diverged. Trotsky was more of a Marxist hardliner, who insisted Russia simply wasn't ready for a Soviet state. Stalin felt differently and went so far as to have a bunch of his detractors exiled/killed to prove his point.
The Maoist Revolution in China took a substantially more Trotskyist approach, slow rolling reforms at a speed the majority of the public was willing to accept. Deng proved to be more long termist than Krushchev in his planning.
And I guess history has proven which method was wiser.
Don't worry, Lenin et co said you could do it if you believed extra super hard and gave all the power to a small clique of intellectuals. Lenin, like Jesus and the Gospels, takes precedence over prior teachings.
That’s a good analogy. The mental gymnastics needed to be Marxist-Leninist is akin to believing both the old and new testaments are - essentially - about the same guy. I’m particularly thinking about New Economic Policy existing in a communist state. Wild.
[Overthrows the SRs for daring to say capitalism must come first to industrialize Russia]
[Implements capitalism to industrialize Russia]
It's like how the Saudi activists who called for women to be allowed to drive remained in prison after it was legalised; it's not about the policy itself, it's about defying the ruler.
For a minute I thought SRs was a speech-to-text mistake for “Tsars” and was super confused - but then it all made sense. Been a long time since I’ve talked about this stuff.
It's not a STT mistake of the word Tsar? What is it?
Socialist Revolutionary Party. Two capital letters and one lower case is how it’s written. Go figure. They were in the mix of Russian politics in that era.
Gotcha, thanks!
I’m referring more to the fact that Marx envisioned the populace rising up. What really rose in places like Russia and China was a group of self appointed elites who were really just reactionaries.
Tankies get mad because they believe that their utopia already exists and everyone else is an idiot for not ascribing to the same.
Are you suggesting the Red Guard didn't exist and the Long March didn't happen?
self appointed
What does that mean?
I'll start over:
Me: self appointed elites did this
You: oh so you're saying that none of it happened?
It's a non sequitur, it has nothing to do with the conversation.
Again, you really need to go back and read the history of the Chinese Revolution of you believe this. I might - at a bare minimum - crack open a copy of Fanshen or Life and Death in Shanghai. The idea that the Chinese Civil War and Cultural Revolution were waged by "elites" in any conceivable sense is flatly wrong. It is ahistorical to the point of being the opposite of truth. Like insisting George Washington was a First Nations native person or asserting the French Revolution was orchestrated by the Hapsburgs.
At its ugliest, Chinese revolutionaries were arresting, beating, and executing anyone who might vaguely be defined as "elite". You were having people fight over whether parents should be executed for being landlords over their children. The opening scene of the Netflix "3 Body Problem" wasn't all that far from the truth - college professors were, in fact, getting hauled out in front of student committees for adhering to the texts of English and German physicists. The very idea of "elitism" was what was on trial during the hottest years of the revolution.
You don't know your history. You're saying things that are flatly, broadly, and totally incoherent.
Jesus fucking Christ.
It was the process of creation of an entrenched counter-elite - a process which had been ongoing since at least WW2 in the CCP.
Lol found the tankie. You all simply can’t avoid making it personal. You’ve managed to affirm everything I’ve been saying in this thread.
What?
Yet they refuse to go live there
Good observation!
Marx thought that the revolution would need leaders, and so the self-appointed elites aren't totally out of keeping. It's just that they were then supposed to step down and let the people govern themselves.
That, again, is another reason why they are not really communist. “Workers of the world unite”
Exactly. My point at that time was to say that it can happen but had not yet.
From my (very limited) understanding of Marx and Engels I suggest your point is correct. I don’t understand how a full-fat, red flag waving comrade could come to any other conclusion… but then I have no dog in this fight and no emotional need to be correct.
sadly there are many stalinists and moaists. the Russian revolution ended when stallin took power.
I think that’s why you and I aren’t tankies, militant vegans, hard evangelicals, etc. It’s not important enough to worry about.
…what does the ml stand for?
Marxism Leninism
They are the original Lemmy devs which is why I joined there. Horrible mistake, reactionary idiots who project their insecurity on others while thinking that they are the only ones who figured out the secret sauce. Pretty much exactly sovereign citizen level quackery.
look up the word “tankies” to get an idea
To be fair, how do westerners not treat capitalism and democracy with exactly the same weight? I think both sides would have good reason to argue that neither side has figured out the secret sauce as you say.
Not a huge stretch to think both the US and Russia treat their citizens poorly, and neither is a model for the rest of the world.
Because while both are shit, under capitalism I can at least say it's shit without fear of incarceration or reeducation.
What has capitalism got to do with freedom of speech?
I think the pedantry is warranted. A lot of people like to conflate capitalism and democracy.
Alot of people also confuse freedom with capitalism and democracy. The propaganda runs deep
What does Stalin have to do with freedom of speech, because tankies support authocrats and dictators worldwide, but especially are fans of Stalin.
What you talking about bossman?
Unless you're a whistleblower
Russia is also capitalist, and I think you meant to say "democracy" instead of "capitalism" there since authoritarian capitalism is definitely a thing (see Russia and China).
Ah, I see
Area code for Mali… and I assume shorthand for Marxist Leninist.
I see, thanks