- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Cross-posted from “TRUE communism!” by @[email protected] in [email protected]
You must log in or register to comment.
Commenting on the most commented* post in db0’s history!!!
That’s not even close. I have one with 1k+ angry hexbear comments
Which one is that?
Oof that was somewhere in autumn 2023
Wow! Where does the time go?
Well, that was quite entertaining.
I understand that this is an anarchist comm, so you’re free to post whatever you want, but I don’t think it’s productive to take a stance that fundamentally rests on misrepresenting what you’re critiquing. Since you invoked my username in one of your comments here, I’d figure I’d give the Marxist stance its fair representation.
First, there is no such thing as “true communism.” The obsession over purity in politics is a result of dogmatism and book workship.
Secondly, for Marxists, the stance isn’t that you “do a state” and then “stop doing the state.” For Marxists, not just Marxist-Leninists, the state is purely a body that resolves class contradictions through class oppression. It isn’t hierarchy, and it isn’t organization. Communism in the marxist conception, as a stateless society, is stateless in that once all property is collectively owned and planned, there is no class distinction. Administration remains, and is not to whither, as that’s a necessary product of mass, industrialized production.
Taking that into account, the state can only disappear if all class disappears, and class cannot be abolished until all global production is collectivized. There has never been that point, you cannot have communism in one country. You can be socialist, in that public property can be the principle aspect of the economy and the state can be proletarian in character, but the state can never whither until all states are socialist, interconnected, and borders fading away into one democratic system.
Socialist countries like the PRC do rely on commodity production to engage with the global economy, as they must for the time being. They can’t achieve a global system as one single country. As long as the state holds control of the large firms and key industries, and resolves class contradictions in the favor of the proletariat and against the bourgeoisie, then as the economy develops and grows it will continue to take on an increasingly socialized character. You cannot “declare socialized production” with the stroke of a pen, it’s something that must arise from development. That doesn’t mean the character of an economy that is dominated by public ownership is capitalist, either, just that it is on the “socialist road,” ie it is socialist, and working its way to higher levels of socialization until communism is achieved.
This is all starkly different from the anarchist position, that we can develop from the outset a decentralized, horizontalist society. I’m not going to debatelord here, this is an anarchist comm, but if you’re going to misrepresent the views of Marxists, then I feel you’re doing a disservice by making anarchists less prepared to engage in productive conversation with Marxists.
That doesn’t mean the character of an economy that is dominated by public ownership is capitalist, either, just that it is on the “socialist road,” ie it is socialist, and working its way to higher levels of socialization until communism is achieved.
This is the crux of the disagreement between anarchists and MLs. I would argue that state ownership - if the state does not adequately represent the will of the people - is not public ownership. A hierarchical state with a flawed and bureaucratic democracy that is prone to corruption inevitably creates and maintains a class of bureaucrats with social, political, and economic privilege. The state - in order to preserve itself - maintains a monopoly on collective ownership, preventing workers from organizing on their own terms.
This is what anarchists mean when they call something “state capitalist.” They are arguing that the state itself is a private entity pretending to represent the will of the people.
I’d say the real crux of the argument is in full centralization and collectivization, or full horizontalism and decentralization. The endpoints are different, so the means are different.
Either way, I don’t agree that administrators represent a class. Public property is not bourgeois property, it doesn’t exist in the M-C-M’ circuit of production, it’s collective and planned. Even if there’s administration, it’s a physical, real thing. There will be flaws, there will be issues, but to let perfect be the enemy of progress is an issue. It’s less about some metaphysical “will of the workers” and more about material relationships to the means of production and the sublimation of property.
Secondly, the state doesn’t “preserve itself,” at least the Marxist conception of the state. The state isn’t a class, it’s a representative of a class, and when all property has been sublimated, there is no class, and no state. There still exists administration, but not special bodies of armed men to oppress other classes, as there are no classes to oppress.
It feels a bit disingenuous to hear the following:
to engage in productive conversation with Marxists.
I mean I got your point the other day, that I shouldn’t necessarrily argue about Communistic dogma without reading all the literature, but I had to fight tooth and nail to get to that point and not just be waved away as a bad faith actor. So I was already working hard just to be told to go and read up.
OP is using the same intensity hammer you guys got going on over there. Is it fair?
I don’t remember having this convo with you, so I don’t have any reference for that convo. OP is misrepresenting the Marxist stance. It’s one thing to critique the genuine positions Marxists have, it’s another entirely to invent a strawman to argue against. The intensity of the argument isn’t the problem, the illegitimacy of the argument is.
11·1 day agoI don’t think it was with you specifically, more hexbear in general? https://lemmy.ml/post/28545991
Oh, good catch!
I sure do love being treated like I’m a part of a hivemind, and that everyone on Hexbear is interchangeable with no individual characteristics… 🫠 /s
Seriously though, I thought that was an odd statement, but that makes sense.
Yup, that was me. Sorry for mixing you up. I guess you spoke to me like a human there first, that’s why your name stuck.
I feel it still doesn’t take away too much from my argument. While OP’s post is outright malicious and is meant to start a fight, I wasn’t doing that on what I thought was a proper place for discussion.
Again, I don’t want to jump to conclusions, and I did make a mistake, but don’t you see what I’m trying to get at?
Personally, I try my best to adhere to the principle of “no investigation, no right to speak.” I’m not perfect at that, but I do my best. Someone who has a strong stance on a subject without doing the due dilligence to justify that strong stance muddies the water. I believe you were guilty of it over in that thread, and I believe OP is guilty of it here. Does that make sense?
Goodness, does it ever.
But my problem was that the group put me in a box. Nobody wanted to know my level of education, just if I read this or that book on communism.
It is a totally fair reason not to engage in argument. It’s just… How can I put it…? Just because I didn’t read a book, I can’t be knowledgable on a subject?
My guesses are that your community is so exposed to bad faith arguments, so you cannot give everyone the time of day. I haven’t gone back to reread the thread, but you can probably see how I was basically backing into a corner through the whole thread.
The intensity of the argument isn’t the problem, the illegitimacy of the argument is.
Yeah, I know OP is trolling. I see it is causing calls to not pull apart. Sure, maybe not every thread goes for the jugular on the hex server, but it fept by going against the grain I was a pariah immediately.
I mean at the end of the day it is petty squabbles on the internet, I just feel that we’re missing out if we don’t make a connection. Like, you seem smart, well read, and have a pretty novel world view that would interest me. I grew up in the context that communism is not of the devil, so it was terribbly disjarring that I finally saw a safe space to talk about the fallies of communism with hobby scientists on the matter.
I dunno, maybe I was devil’s advocating and triggered a healthy response. It still feels off that I felt shut up there and now I see members of that community pleading for more open communication here.
Hexbear is a space for communists and anarchists to hang out, and there’s a culture of cedeing no ground to ill-informed takes in order to help protect that space in a deeply anticommunist English-speaking internet. There’s a strong culture of requiring well-sourced, developed, and informed takes in order to go against the grain.
The reason OP is coming under attack is because it’s obviously just left-punching and baiting a response, and the post itself is ill-informed and misrepresentative.
I suggest that if you want to learn more on Hexbear, you try to use more open language. I see in that thread when you tried to be more clear that you aren’t just another anti-communist, you got kinder responses.
I did get kinder responses, that is true. Though my main take-away wasn’t a ‘wow, these guys are awesome, I wanna read everything’, more like a ‘I’ll only comment on anything political when and if I get past the literature they recommended’.
It is alright, I am sure the revolution will do just fine without my organizational skills. I am just arguing that OP is right to troll in this instance.
Again I want to emphasize, that I am really digging this convo, but I guess I have very little to lose as well. It feels like we are communicating, but I don’t think I need to ‘be the bigger man’ by understanding the other side (these are my neuroses, no shade towards you, just where I’m coming from).
I feel you do understand me, yet don’t really concede any points or validate them.
I understand you, I even agreed with what you guessed, that Hexbear gets a ton of bad-faith users and that sours interactions with better-meaning users that aren’t on their A-game. However, I also disagree, I don’t think OP is “right” to troll. As we already agreed, OP is doing so based on clear misrepresentation, it would be one thing if it had merit, but it doesn’t, so that brought on a ton of users correctly debunking OP and pointing out that left-punching isn’t productive to begin with.
You don’t need to join Hexbear, it’s totally fine to never go there if it isn’t a good fit for you. At the same time, Hexbear isn’t under the requirement to accomodate users that are antagonistic (which you at least appeared to be in the beginning, hence the backlash). It’s totally fine for you to make dbzer0 your home and maybe peak into Hexbear if you see a good meme or two.
Well, thanks for being open. I feel we still didn’t really address my concern, but that’s alright. I see OP’s post as a legit reaction to the emotions I got from there, even if they are clearly bad faith posting here.
Hey, maybe I’m just butthurt you didn’t spoon feed me where I’m wrong, so no love lost.
As long as the state holds control of the large firms and key industries, and resolves class contradictions in the favor of the proletariat and against the bourgeoisie, then as the economy develops and grows it will continue to take on an increasingly socialized character.
When has this been achieved in communism?
Cuba, USSR, PRC, etc, though these are/were socialist. Communism, in the Marxist sense (not anarchist), must be global, fully collectivized, etc, while these are examples of single states in the context of a globally capitalist-dominant system. Nevertheless, they are all examples of socialism, where as they developed as socialist countries their economies became increasingly developed and collectivized.
The USSR dissolved for myriad reasons, such as liberal reforms that set elements of the system against each other, and the PRC at one point under the Gang of Four tried to shortcut its way to communism out of a dogmatic approach to socialism, but post-reform as the PRC has been developing, it has steadily been increading the socialized character of its production. The large firms and key industries are firmly held by a proletarian state, and over time as the small and medium firms grow, these are more and more controlled by the public sector.
The USSR dissolved for myriad reasons, such as liberal reforms
The USSR collapsed because of internal contradictions and oppression.
The former is partially true, (though not intrinsic to socialism, but the unique flaws in the later years of the soviet system), the latter, no. The large majority of the people supported the system and wished to retain it until the very end due to the social instability at the time, and the larger majority regret its fall. The “internal contradictions” were the liberal reforms that added elements embodied into the system that worked against a collectivized and planned economy.
The soviet economy was relatively strong, but towards the end because of liberalization, as well as problems from needing to dedicate a large proportion of production to millitarization to keep parity with the US, it began to decrease the rate of growth that was so rapid earlier on.
More importantly, it’s absolutely true that the dissolution of the USSR was avoidable. The mistakes made by the soviets towards the end don’t need to be repeated, we can learn from what worked so well with the socialist system while also not repeating their mistakes. The torch is carried on by countries that have learned, like Cuba, the PRC, etc.
Marxism is a science, and is improved through practice.
Marxism is a political religion with sacred texts, prophets, a promised paradise on earth, and superficial pseudoscientific trappings. It has killed more people than any other ideology in history.
- No, political theory is not the same as religion.
- No, there are no sacred texts in Marxism. One of the key elements of Marxism is Dialectics, it’s an ever-evolving theory. One of the more important works is Oppose Book Worship.
Whatever is written in a book is right — such is still the mentality of culturally backward Chinese peasants. Strangely enough, within the Communist Party there are also people who always say in a discussion, “Show me where it’s written in the book.” When we say that a directive of a higher organ of leadership is correct, that is not just because it comes from “a higher organ of leadership” but because its contents conform with both the objective and subjective circumstances of the struggle and meet its requirements. It is quite wrong to take a formalistic attitude and blindly carry out directives without discussing and examining them in the light of actual conditions simply because they come from a higher organ. It is the mischief done by this formalism which explains why the line and tactics of the Party do not take deeper root among the masses. To carry out a directive of a higher organ blindly, and seemingly without any disagreement, is not really to carry it out but is the most artful way of opposing or sabotaging it.
- No, Marxism does not promise “paradise on Earth,” in fact it directly tackles the Utopians that tried to make such a paradise, like Robert Owen and Saint-Simon.
- No, it doesn’t have “superficial pseudoscientific trappings.”
- No, it has succeeded in lifting billions out of extreme poverty, ended famines common to feudal countries like nationalist China and Tsarist Russia, and more. Meanwhile, liberalism created industrialized mass-murder in the Holocaust, caused Chuchill to divert food from India to the deaths of millions, has created the conditions for mass murder, genocide of Palestinians, and so much more. The death toll of liberalism, both by ratio and in total, far surpasses Marxism and it isn’t close.
You’re deeply unserious.
Marxists will always have a wall of text full of theoretical facts and logic to point to. Practice looks very different. It means no diversity of opinion, oppression, secret police, gulag, millions of deaths.
Contrary to you I actually know people who have lived in socialist countries. I even have a former high ranking party member in my family.
lifting billions out of extreme poverty
Industrialization did that, not Marxism.
Bait used to be believable…
disengage
Traditionally your kind only does that when all the other leftists are dead and it’s time to sign treaties with fascists.
Remember when after signing Molotov Ribbentrop, Stalin was best buddies with Hitler, they split Poland, and nothing happened afterward? No particular thing, no largest land war in human history, no 27 million dead Soviets who were killed by the fascists that the UK and other Western European allies had… also signed treaties with?
my kind? what is that supposed to be referring to?
Red fascists.
quite a conclusion to jump from ‘disengage’ to that, plus I’m an anarchist
You wrote that explicitly to shame people from using a rule meant to cool down comment sections, and you wrote that to promote the “left unity” delusion by jumping on the attempted bullying bandwagon, so their assumptions are rational at least.
You wrote that explicitly to shame people from using a rule meant to cool down comment sections,
that’s quite an accusation, I think it’s reasonable to infer insincerity from my words, but shame? I think that’s coming from somewhere else. I was mostly being glib responding to someone calling your post bait.
you wrote that to promote the “left unity” delusion by jumping on the attempted bullying bandwagon, so their assumptions are rational
that’s an awful lot to read into one word. I’m pretty sure I was just making a joke, sorry that it was at your expense but I don’t think that’s bullying.
Follow up question: if that was bullying then what does that say about the people doing red scare smear campaigns based on what server people are on?
Are you the leader of anarchism that gets to decide who is and isn’t an anarchist? I’ve been trying to find whoever is in charge of the anarchists, it’s an honor to meet you!
It’s so fucking tiring with these people.
That does tend to happen when you step out of your world of alternative facts.
Soviet simping “anarchist” on the .ml instance who posts like a hexbear, huh. Bold claim, let’s see who’s dumb enough to believe it.
Soviet simping “anarchist”
Love the scare quotes, do you do any actual organizing as an anarchist or do you stick to posting?
I have plenty of criticisms of the USSR, I just don’t care to participate in red scare circlejerks and that clearly rubs some people the wrong way.
on the .ml instance who posts like a hex
I’ve been here for years, it was literally my first instance and it was the most annoying Lemmy users constantly whining about hexbear that got me to start digging though their modlog and checking it out in the first place lmao.
Can you actually point to anything she’s done that disqualifies her from being an anarchist? Like, I can show receipts of you going to the right of the US State Department to defend American Imperialist narratives about Taiwan (nice leftism you got there, Chiang Kai-Shek!). Has she done anything specific that is objectionable?
Man hexbear is pissed and just can’t help but defend their lust for authoritarians. Then ask for left unity when we won’t want to be with people who uncritically support China and North Korea.
Maybe someday hexbear will learn better but today isn’t that day.
A good communist is suspicious of all leaders. Because nobody fucks the working class like leaders
Well said!
Then ask for left unity when we won’t want to be with people who uncritically support China and North Korea
Feel free to ignore if you’re organizing in South Korea or Vietnam, but how do the leftists around you “supporting” the DPRK or China impact their actions at all? Do they want their governments to start giving military aid to those countries and that’s something you disagree with? Do they want to change their country’s diplomatic stance towards those countries and that’s an issue you draw a line in the sand over?
Edit: just to make my point clear so I don’t have to drag us around in the Socratic method for 5 hours: regardless of whether you “support” China, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, Venezuela, Burkina Faso, and the DPRK, it makes absolutely 0 difference on what you’re doing locally[1], if you can accept the basic principles of sovereignty then it’s really stupid to get up in arms about there being pro-Xi people in your leftist org when you’d rather some other policies be implemented in China. Dude, you don’t get to decide that for them. It’s simply not our business.
unless you live in a country where relations with those countries are a nuanced issue, such as the ROK with the North and Vietnam with China ↩︎
They got so upset some of them resorted to ableism. Just astounding stuff.
I’ve seen them using ableist slurs, i try to report them when they do.
Such radical leftists they just use disabilities as insults.
And that guy who pretends that hexbear doesn’t tolerate ableism while you can hear crickets from them when Yog-something is, to paraphrase him, “calling into question the functioning of someone’s brain [which] is pretty neuronormative” in every other dot ml’s c/worldnews’ post… Pure gold 🤣
Edit: I can’t see replies from hexbear on piefed, but I’m still lurking the thread on db0.
So, Sphere laddie:
Yogthos isn’t a Hexbear, and .ml’s worldnews comm is not a Hexbear comm. Good try, though!
Since when did that prevent you folks from jumping at someone’s throat? You called out that pedo mod I don’t remember the name, then Nutransphobic. What prevents you from calling out Yogthos if not a lax stance on ableism?
“We take ableism very seriously, we just don’t ban people who are on our instance for it.” - Hexbear
Can you point to some specific time that Hexbear’s mod team or admin team should have banned someone or removed their comments for ableism and didn’t?
[email protected] is full of em
here’s all the results for “ableism” inside that comm. Many of them are from a 10 month old thread where the OP is no longer visible. I guess it’s possible that the ableism referenced is coming from someone aligned with Hexbear or Lemmygrad, but it seems more likely that they’re just discussing ableism pretty generally.
Can you provide an example, if that comm really is full of them elsewhere?
You called out that pedo mod I don’t remember the name, then Nutransphobic. What prevents you from calling out Yogthos if not a lax stance on ableism?
Not to excuse ableism, but there’s a pretty big difference between a mod going to bat for allowing drawn or AI generated CP, an admin actively espousing transphobic views (and this was called out most actively by Marcie, who is an ml user, though Hexbear joined in on criticism), and a user that might use problematic language sometimes. I mean, first of all, if you do take this seriously then why not show us some examples of what this user is doing that we’re failing to call out? It really helps to make your criticism actionable.
Yogthos isn’t a Hexbear, and .ml’s worldnews comm is not a Hexbear comm. Good try, though!
Since when does that stop Hexbear from calling out people on Lemmy?
There’s probably a million comments made every day across Lemmy that Hexbear doesn’t make an endorsement or condemnation of. Are we supposed to be the Lemmy police? We call out some stuff that gets directed our way, sometimes we call out things that are directed more generally that we think are bigoted or problematic, but unless you’re arguing that we have a responsibility to police every interaction on the platform and pick a side to endorse every time, I don’t see the problem here.
Where? Hexbear takes ableism very seriously so I’m surprised to hear this.
Users here were banned for ableism, start there.
So that completely refutes your own point. You do realize that right?
No, it was db0 mods banning people for ableism. And these accounts haven’t been banned on hexbear.
Clearly the tankie brain cannot comprehend criticism from the left…
Not ableismquick, explain how that’s ableism. Like holy shit you peeps are completely shameless in trying to do quick gotchas.
Notice how they didn’t explain it but will say they don’t support or tolerate ableism when their users have been banned here for ableism.
Wanna take bets they don’t ban the users from Hexbear? I’ll give db0 $10 if they do.
Why did you leave this comment 8 hours ago when 19 hours ago @[email protected] already explained why it was ableist?
Also, this is just my opinion, but it seems like everyone here is throwing accusations of ableism performatively. I don’t think Cascade honestly believes that db0 was being ableist towards tankies just for saying that tankies can’t take criticism, he’s just rhetorically paying back the equally cynical accusation of ableism. I don’t believe there’s a single instance of ableism in this whole thread, honestly, just people trying to get one ups on each other with varying levels of evidence to back up their claims, and using appeals to neurodiversity or ableism to protect poorly researched positions.
“Cynical accusation of ableism” meaning when I explain my ND compulsions and coping mechanisms and got gaslit and told I’m just making it all up because I’m actually just a coward. Yeah Hexbear doesn’t tolerate albeism at aaaall when they cover up for the ableists among them. The self-righteous fucking accusation by more than one hexbear that I’m “using my neurodivergence as an shield” or “weaponising neurodivergence”, like every other fucking neurotypical tells us all our lives, being the cherry on top of this shit cake. Clearly ableism is using the R-word and nothing else. Go on, continue to dig that hole further.
I think Professor Owl already did a pretty good job of showing how you’re behaving pretty cynically here. For the record, I’m autistic too, and I also get into arguments pretty compulsively. I think that what you’ve done here shows a tendency to avoid personal accountability, though, because you’re just inflaming conflict then taking shelter behind your ability to problematize the people trying to hold you accountable.
Calling into question the functioning of someone’s brain is pretty neuronormative.
I’m not being that serious though, because I also can’t find any example of someone being ableist to you beyond calling you stupid (it was me, I did that).
Hexbear has probably the lowest tolerance for ableism of any place I’ve seen on the internet. The raiding parties you see coming into your instance to bash liberals on the internet and correct their disinformation are not really representative of the tone of conversation on the actual instance itself between people who aren’t spoiling for a rumble, not that I would expect ableism even then. The mods of Hexbear are very strict about that kind of thing, so watching clown-to-clown communication between you and your buddy as you just outright lie on the internet about the nature of another online community, in a farcical echo to how your forebears fabricated lies about socialist states, demanded comment.
disengage.
Removed by mod
Start the argument
Disengage
Hey do you think it’s kind of weird and self aggrandizing that you named the whole website after yourself?
Disengage
To be fair, the instance is just on a subdomain of db0’s personal site.
I’d do the same to avoid paying for a domain name.
That’s the main premise of anarchism
Then the admin here should stop shit flinging at people that hold that same ideal. It isn’t 1920 anymore…
Holy Jesus am I glad my new account is on an instance that defederated the tankie triad. Looking at this thread without logging in is something else.
This happens like clockwork whenever a meme makes fun of authcoms from a typical anarchist perspective. Always! You should see the 1000-comment salt mines of the very first such post I made.
It’s too bad you have absolutely zero personal control over who db0 federates with!
I kind of miss them. Seeing their unhinged political opinions made me feel normalish.
The Marxist equivalent of “but the GDP…”
You’re so right, it would have been way better for everyone in the territory of the USSR to be illiterate and poor and starving, so they wouldn’t have cared so much when the Nazis effortlessly murdered everyone from western Poland to eastern Siberia. Who even needs industrial output when you could have a “”“horizontally-organized”“” bandit kingdom named after its unelected leader?
Ye ofc the only alternative the the Stalin regime was stagnation and defeat, clearly nothing else could have possibly have happened…
Why would there need to be an alternative? It was already the best possible version of what could have happened, within the bounds of a crushing siege by the entire capitalist world on one hand, and basic human fallibility on the other. There is no other political leader in history with a higher proportion of correct decisions to mistakes than Stalin, and they were mistakes, as in consequences not intended from actions taken earnestly to protect the people of the USSR - unlike the actual unspeakable atrocities being committed constantly by every single imperialist nation at the time, as well as before and since.
Even just on its own terms, the USSR was unimaginably more humane than what came before:
what existed outside of it:
and what came after:
This is called the “Eastern Cross” by the way, a demographic phenomenon unique to former nations of the USSR, where the death rate and birth rate suddenly cross over each other in the 90s. It’s way better that this happened, of course, than the USSR being run by “”“authoritarians”“” who would protect their people from sabotage and murder using the necessary amount of violence (that is, still less than their enemies).
But I forgot, we’re comparing an actual nation that had to actually exist in the dirt and blood of the real world, to the geometrically perfect platonic anarchist society that lives in your head, so I guess I have to concede. I’ll go tell all the communists in the third world to pack it up and disband their organizations and scratch out all the hammers and sickles so you can go tell them how to avoid being assassinated by the CIA the right way.
just to add thisThanks, and to add even further, this had global effects too
High living standards and strong workers’ rights and compensation in the USSR forced capitalist nations around the world to make concessions to their workers. Once the USSR had been destroyed, the concessions could be rolled back and the profits guzzled by the capitalists.
Nice list of pre-prepped propaganda.
Did pootin give you those?
It’s crazy that the absolute lowest mortality rate the empire ever managed was still like double the Soviet Union’s mortality rate during the middle of WW2.
it’s not like stalin purged the census statisticians for months when he didn’t get the statistics he wanted
It’s way better that this happened, of course, than the USSR being run by “”“authoritarians”“”
eh we all know capitalist oligarchies are always worse comrades
is it just me or is literally every single liberal rebuttal in this thread purely spoken from an armchair deep within a mind palace?
Damn, I didn’t know you could bluff the Wehrmacht with fake industrial output. Who knew you could just lie about how much steel you were producing and simply will more divisions of tanks into existence?
Also, more importantly than that, what the fuck are you talking about? Do you have a single shred of evidence to back up that claim? In fact, do you have a single shred of evidence to back up ANY of your claims? I’ve never even heard a claim like that before. Did you just make it up off the cuff? Do you care about evidence? Do you read books? Have you even the slightest singlest iota of interest in the actual factual history of the world, or are you just a larper who prefers a particular set of drapery on the society they idly daydream about?
I care because these were people who actually lived and fought and bled for a better world and I will not have some imperial core shitstain besmirching their name by drooling out the cheapest CIA propaganda ever produced. Are you stupid? What do you think living inside a successful propaganda campaign would look like? Have you ever considered why your opinions align exactly with the interests of the US State Department? Go and read Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti, it’s short and you’ll learn something.
I didn’t say anything about Soviet voluminous military output or the prowess of determined command planning under Stalin at rapid industrialization. I was talking about their human statistics, their mortality statistics.
https://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/knigi/polka/gold_fund08.html is Soviet academia rehosted on Demoscope, a neutral website on the publications in demography—not democracy.
I’ve read that part of that book. On the topic of prison mortality, it just repeated the historical consensus of 799,455 official executions between 1921 and 1953, and 1.5–1.7 million additional deaths in the Gulag out of the 18 million that passed through between 1930 and 1953. 1.5 million ÷ 18 million is over 8%. Meanwhile, the review article “‘A Dark Cloud Will Go Over’: Pain, Death, and Silence in Texas Prisons in the 1930s” lambastes the suffering of state prisoners, weeps over “the prison population swelled from 5,000 prisoners in 1930 (itself cause for much concern in prison Annual Reports) to crisis levels of 7,177 in April 1939, making the Texas Prison System one of the largest in the country” and denounces the 68 deaths per year. ( 68 + 21 lynching deaths ) ÷ 5,000 is 0.178%.
Removed by mod
no?
Yeah, doing the same thing without imperialism, massacres, oppression, population displacements, secret police, thought crimes, and other stalinist atrocities was just not possible. I understand now. Those are things are a necessary path to a society which will eventually transform into a liberal capitalist cleptocracy.
Likewise imperialism, slave trade, enclosures, exploitation was clearly the only way for the UK to transform into a democracy you see, and they too fought the fascists so they were clearly on the right side of history.
I swear, MLs and their fetishizing of stats are exactly like the nroliberals fetishize GDP growth.
Oh shit yeah, I forgot about all that bullshit the CIA made up.
Wait a second, THOUGHT CRIMES??? THOUGH CRIMES??? Do you think ‘Thought Crimes’ were a real thing that existed outside of the anticommunist screed ‘1984’?
Anyways, on to your next point, oh, it’s the most unreasonable fucking false equivalency I’ve ever seen in my life. The UK is not and has never been a democracy, it is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie that has occasional political pageantry where it pretends the people have any power at all, just like every single nation that is not communist. Fighting the Nazis is the literal only time the British Empire did a single good thing, and their problem with German fascism was the German part, not the fascism part. And then they immediately started drawing up ‘Operation Unthinkable’, the plan to resume an invasion of the USSR using mainly Wehrmacht soldiers, a plan I assume you support wholeheartedly as it would have destroyed what was obviously the most evil nation in the world at the time, the one whose soldiers liberated Auschwitz.
Fighting the Nazis is the literal only time the British Empire did a single good thing
didnt they fight the boers at one point. would have been much better if they beat the amerikkkans too tbh
it is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie that has occasional political pageantry where it pretends the people have any power at all, just like every single nation
that is not communistFTFY
Wait a second, THOUGHT CRIMES??? THOUGH CRIMES??? Do you think ‘Thought Crimes’ were a real thing that existed outside of the anticommunist screed ‘1984’?
… They said while “AES“ China is massively oppressing it’s LGBT populace from expressing LGBT ideas.
But I know the typical delusions of campists, any criticism about “communist” nations is “CIA lies”, (until it’s irrefutably proven, at which point it becomes an “unfortunate mistake”) much like any criticism of fascist nations is “fake news”. Just one of those wacky coincidences.
That is in fact very obviously true. If they hadn’t developed their economy far faster than any other society in history, they couldn’t possibly have produced enough food and war materiel to defeat the Nazis, which I hope we can agree was an extremely important thing for the Soviets to be able to do.
The revolution which was betrayed by the bolsheviks in its infancy would have achieved the same results and not devolved into an authoritarian dystopia in the process.
“A type of economic success achieved multiple times under “the tankies” and under literally nobody else would definitely have been achieved under the liberal government that the October revolution overthrew” is too farfetched and historically unfounded to even make a good historical fiction what if novel.
Funny how you still sound like the liberals who talk about the economic success of liberal capitalist revolutions based on cherry-picked metrics. Much like they ignore the imperialism and exploitation which powered those results, so do you ignore the exploitation and oppression that powered yours. Both are insufficient by anarchist standards and therefore we criticize them instead of having a naive deterministic view that this is the only way it could have happened.
But I’m sure you don’t get it again, so I doubt I’ll try to explain it once again after you reply with some delusions about the grandeur of the USSR.
lol just take up a hobby or go do some productive labour, why do you do this to yourself
I’m autistic. I know I should just disengage but sometimes I can’t help it.
plenty of better ways to spend your time, is all i want to say. like, is this really fulfilling for you or does it just feel empty afterwards?
Again, I’m autistic. I can’t always help myself from replying to goading and disinfo. It’s a waste of time for everyone involved.
: The revolution that feeds the children gets my support.You, apparently: fuck those kids
What a stupifyingly disingenuous statement, but then again about right for a campist.
You looked at a chart that outlined improvements in quality of life that included a boom in agricultural output, aka, literally feeding the children and called it
The Marxist equivalent of “but the GDP…”
Clearly the tankie brain cannot comprehend criticism from the left…
It’s alright, don’t worry about it.
Being so ideologically rigid that you’d let children starve to avoid “state authoritarian bureaucracy” is not actually something to be proud of, lib
Disengage
what is your opinion on left coms (i.e. like, bordiga fans/council communists that like lenin but hate the USSR from like 1922 or whatever onwards)
The comments are going to be normal.
db0 does this on purpose because they have a humiliation fetish or something.
Nothing humiliating to db0 though on here, just some angry hexbears.
I see a bunch of us giving you all far more patience and grace than you deserve in the face of ignorance and insults so yes when you keep going on about shit in the way you and some others here are to the point you veer into double genocide theory and downplaying western atrocities you forfeit your moral high ground.
When db0 starts weaponizing neurodivergence to excuse shitty behavior yes we get pretty pissed. Fuck y’all.
Yay, 4th upvoted hexbear ableism apologist in this thread alone.
You should go and whine about it in yet another defed thread you open, shit bird. Now fuck off.
Always good to fight other leftists as fascism closes its grip on the imperial core. Great strategy.
(Posts like this aren’t allowed on Hexbear, and for good reason. What value is there in shitstirring like this? Why be needlessly antagonistic? I really don’t get it.)
Authoritarian leftists and marxist lenninists are not leftists.
Never were. Never will be.
-
Belief that someone relinquishes power after seizing it is just childish, at best. Borderline moronic given the historic evidence.
-
If you like authoritarian assholes in power, one that purges the ranks, seizes power and gets control of the eeconomy. All for the good of people. That is Fascism. Capital F. Get. Fucking. Real.
-
The whithering of the state is not “relinquishing power.” The state, for Marxists, is made up of the elements of society that perform class oppression. It isn’t administration, nor is the state a unique class. Once all property is collectivized, concepts like special bodies of armed people to uphold class oppression have no need to exist, as class doesn’t exist and doesn’t have class contradictions. There’s no “abolish the state” button, it simply has no use when you have a fully collectivized and planned economy.
-
No. A democratic state that oppresses the bourgeoisie and uplifts the proletariat is not fascism. Read Blackshirts and Reds.
Marxists are absolutely leftists, if your definition of leftism is exclusionary towards Marxists and only accepts anarchists, then you’re being deeply unserious.
Dont care
So you have no clue what the Marxist position is, no clue what fascism is, and don’t care to learn either, yet are comfortable left-punching? Deeply unserious behavior.
Dont care
-
-
You don’t get it we’re not leftists, we’re red fascists.
Also
So on Hexbear, attacking communism as capitalism is not allowed, but attacking anarchism as fascism is?
Nobody attacks anarchists as fascists, they attack illiterate “anarchist” liberals who spend all their time crying about “red fascist tankies” as being the ignorant morons that they are, especially when they coincidentally and repeatedly repeat literal U.S. State Dept propaganda in their efforts to argue with the “red fascists” i.e. the fucking uigher genocide hallucination that you fucking morons are still on about
No, he’s referring to communists there.
Ah, I misunderstood. Sorry.
anarchism as fascism is?
I think your reading comprehension is poor, or you’re referring to something outside of this thread. This is definitely not allowed in Hexbear.
I think so. It’s a tankie space. Their shit posts still average high qualitu.
We’re not a “tankie” space, we’re a left-unity space where most of our users just happen to be MLs. We actually have rules against sectarianism and left-infighting.
We have a fair number of anarchist users, though to be fair they’d probably also be called “tankies” by most online anarchists as they’ve got more nuanced positions on AES than you guys.
they’d probably also be called “tankies”
Happens to me all the fucking time lmao.
shit on this account I’ve been accused of being a tankie for having positions like: hating and fearing china is pretty stupid given their lack of militarism, massive improvements in quality of life for the working class, and frankly astounding technological progress in sustainable technologies.
Apparently wanting to end hierarchy and being sceptical of stateist projects means I have to ignore when they work at all and be constantly at war with like the entire world for not being pure enough. There’s enough shit keeping me busy in my own life to make up drama about the spooky red threat that seems to be a surveillance state like… every other highly industrialised society right now.
If they find my hexbear account I will be thrown out of town ;)
We don’t ban hexbears just because they’re from hexbear. I’ve known you’ve had an account there for years.
I once said something about hating tankies and got name-checked into a thread there. I explained that I don’t care for authoritarianism of any kind, and one mouthy punk kept trying to rile me up.
Y’all got a reputation for a reason.
(There were others who were chill about it, but people tend to remember loud assholes better than chill people.)
Hexbear and its influences have been a disaster for the fediverse.
How would left unity work?
Anarchism and MLism are so different from each other that any unity between supporters of either would be short lived. Like the unity between the USSR and the USA during WW2.I don’t agree with that at all. We all have fundamentally the same goals, just slightly different ways of organising and reaching them. There are far, far more things we agree on than disagree on, and on the latter we’re able to disagree on things respectfully.
You’ve also got to remember, we’re not revolutionaries or a party, we’re just people on a webforum. If a revolution was suddenly magicked out of thin air we might have a falling out, but until then what’s the problem? Most of our posting now is just criticism of our current world anyway, which is something we’re all very much aligned on.
Sure, but those methods are severly different.
FWIW: I think left unity is pretty important now, during another rise in fascism, but I don’t think it will last long.we’re just people on a webforum
That’s a really good take, actually.
We all have fundamentally the same goals,
Since when was it anarchist’s goal to enslave the working class to party bureaucrats?
In my ideal postrevolutionary society, there would be special political/economic zones where anarchists could live and try to build a model for the society of the future, sheltered from external threats by the communist state. I don’t think anarchists and MLs necessarily need to be at odds.
That’s an interesting idea
we’re a left-unity space
Soooo… a tankie space.
No? We’re majority ML but we have lots of anarchist members? Unless you’re saying anarchists can be tankies or something?
Terminally online radlibs call me a tankie too so apparently yes…
Your MOM gas a more nuanced position on AES than us.
Would she consider a lecture series?
Or… Or maybe an intimate one on one explainer over coffee?
Your MOM gas a more nuanced position on AES than us.
She’s a liberal but she’s well-travelled so she unironically does.
…well?
I’m too much of a coward to askher myself.
Yep, Russia did the thing.
In the meme image.
Authoritarian Communism broke, then it flipped back to Authoritarian Capitalism.
Yep, it had enemies.
Yep those enemies were very involved in helping it to break.
But this still is what happened.
Yep, it took a while.
Sorry the comic is ~80 years long?
Horrible line of reasoning. Anarchist projects have all reverted to capitalism much faster than the Soviet Union did.
Not without being conquered by fascists or red fash. I.e they’re internally consistent.
Imagine equating a state and related movements that massively improved working-class people’s lives, including in terms of life expectancy, literacy rates, including by providing guaranteed housing, universal healthcare, fundamental women’s rights that are taken for granted today, and which not only fought off settler-colonialism in the form of the Lebensraum and the Holocaust, but also helped many other countries liberate themselves from European powers, with things like Germany under NSDAP, the US, Pissrael, and NATO in general.
Okay, so stop being a literal child and draw that thought out to its logical conclusions. I did that fifteen fucking years ago and realized, oh, hey, China isn’t Literally Evil for Doing Authoritarianism. They exist in a world with the fucking CIA, and all the feel good anarcho idealism in the world isn’t going to protect them from their literal fucking terrorism.
If you actually use your fucking brain you’d understand that it matters what “authority” is used “for.” Let me spoil it for you- using it to defend a revolution from internal and external reaction and imperialism IS GOOD, UNLESS YOU’RE A FUCKING REACTIONARY.
You don’t need hierarchies to defend against imperialism
You don’t need hierarchies to defend against imperialism
Anarchist projects have all reverted to capitalism much faster than the Soviet Union did.
Not without being conquered by fascists or red fash.
You sure you don’t need those hierarchies buddy? You suuuuuuuure?
this is why people like me just laugh and call you a fucking child, because like, what are you even on? What does your revolutionary society look like? How is it organized?
You just out yourself as an ignorant, illiterate fuck who doesn’t realize that political anarchism is about the abolition of unjust and arbitrary hierarchies, not some idealist bullshit ass “we need a non hierarchical society” and a belief that you just get there by fucking magic. You are going to need to have a political organization of some kind, and guess what? The establishment of that is inherently fucking hierarchical!
What makes it good is not being a hierarchy based on fucking nobility or property ownership or oppressive class relations, dipshit. You are better off jerking yourself to death in your goon cave than chasing after some platonic ideal of A Lack of Hierarchy when here in the fucking real world the bourgoisie, fascists and cops are closing the noose around your neck and mine.
I’d tell you to grow the fuck up but I know you’re just going to keep crying about authority and hierarchy while every single fucking lying weaselly ass statement from your mouth assists the imperialists and the bourgeoisie, whether you know it or not
the only good revolution is the one that fails
The USSR was also destroyed by encirclement and (nearly 100 years) of pressure from reactionaries.
But again, you and and the people on the comm you named after yourself are the ones hypocritically positing that any socialist project that fails is evidence that that project’s ideology inevitably leads to capitalist takeover. None of the “tankies” on Hexbear are saying that because it’s asinine, but if you actually believe it, to be ideologically consistent, would require condemning anarchism also.
red fash
Deeply unserious
The USSR was also destroyed by encirclement and (nearly 100 years) of pressure from reactionaries.
Yeah, right… it had absolutely nothing to do with the batshit-insane economic and social blundering of the CPSU.
Nothing at all.
It was literally the fastest growing economic system of all time. It went from wooden hand-drawn plows to spaceflight in a single generation, while defeating the most devastating invasion in human history. The nation once called “the India of Europe” became the first interplanetary civilization.
Then, after the entire collective might of the capitalist world had slaughtered dozens of millions of the bravest and most committed communists, it started falling apart because liberals took over. It was dissolved illegally, against the wishes of 70% of the population that voted in a referendum to keep the Union, in a bloody coup that killed over 2000 people fighting against its destruction. By the end of the 90s there had been 7-10 million excess deaths above the death rate of the 80s in Russia alone, making it one of the worst non-war human-caused humanitarian disasters of all time.
In short, the people of the USSR were revolutionaries and heroes, whereas you are a grotty little chauvinist from the imperial core who doesn’t want to improve the world, because if you did you would want to win, and if you wanted to win you would read history, and if you read history you would come to the same conclusion.
Disengage
Internally consistent, externally non-existent
lol we murdered all the people who were doing that, so it’s not valid.
If your ideology can’t stand up against outside forces then surely it’s just not a good ideology?
I was an anarchist myself for a long time, and I’m still really sympathetic to anarchist ideas and movements, but for me it’s just hard to see it as anything but utopianism when, despite all the good intention and internal consistency, it just can’t ever seem to survive contact with the real world.
Yep, it had enemies.
Yeah… the main one being the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
This is so disgustingly wrong it actually pisses me off. Our enemies were fascists and imperialists for the most part. Fuck dude Lenin even aided Makhno.
The commenters on that site use Pol Pot as an example lmao. I cannot take them seriously.
Also this drivel.
do you have a link? were the “less authoritarian” factions under the libertarian socialist umbrella? if we just listed every massacre or genocide by marxists, we’d be here all day.
Anarchism is a branch of communist thought, socialism is a branch of communist thought, “libertarian” was a rebranding of anarchism originally in places where it was made illegal to disseminate anarchist literature and speak of anarchist philosophy. So libertarian socialist is an oxy-moron and no less contradictory than American modern Libertarians who simply want corporations to supplant the state.
Like it or not we have to take a diversity of tactics to build duel power and engage in a prolonged defensive war against the forces of reaction and that means aligning with others whose ultimate goal is communism. This goes doubly so within the imperial core. Weakening the core takes pressure off of besieged socialist movements in the periphery, and support for anti-imperialist forces against the west makes the empire less capable of repression at home having to exert force on more and more fronts.
Actual anarchists are teaming up with people of all sorts of tendencies and groups like Palestine Action are quite diverse. The people doing the most effective below ground action aren’t arguing about 100 year old mistakes and ideological hangups, they are learning together from them and doing what needs to be done.
This is so disgustingly wrong it actually pisses me off.
What are you going to do about it, tankie?
Our enemies
There is no “our” here, tankie - you are the enemy here.
Lenin even aided Makhno.
Really? Is that why the Bolsheviks perpetrated mass-slaughter in Ukraine to repress the Makhnovists? To “aid” them?
Because people need to be reminded of the lessons anarchists learned the hard way to prevent another Spain, Ukraine and even Russia.
The anarchist understanding of Spain is so weird. You must realise it takes two to tango; infighting absolutely came from both sides. The May Days specifically started when anarchists were fucking around with government telephone calls, and rose up when government forces made them stop. It wasn’t a communist coup or anything like that, the communist just had solidarity with the Republican government and its war effort. Also, importantly, the May Days ended when anarchist leadership told their radicals to stand down. Again, not some communist purge.
And surely the communist ‘war first, revolution later’ position was vindicated by the fact that revolutionary Barcelona crumbled at first contact with the fascists, while communist-dominated Madrid held out for years? I’m not saying the Republicans would have definitely won if the anarchists had committed more to the war effort over their revolution, but it would have surely helped.
The anarchist understanding of Spain is so weird.
No surprises there… anything that isn’t tankie propaganda seems “weird” to tankies.
The May Days specifically started when anarchists were fucking around with government telephone calls
Prove it.
the communist just had solidarity with the Republican government and its war effort.
Really? Is that why all Spain’s gold reserves (the third largest in the world at the time) ended up in Moscow?
Tankies have a weird understanding of the term “solidarity.”
I’m not saying …
I’m not saying that the only reason Barcelona didn’t fall to the fascists right at the start of the war was because of the anarchists… oh, wait - that’s exactly what I’m saying.
I’m not saying that anarchist plans to turn Barcelona into a death trap for the fascists was quashed by the cowardly Negrin-regime (the very same Negrin that helped Stalin steal all of Spain’s gold reserves)… oh, wait - that’s exactly what I’m saying.
Come, tankie… let’s see how well your faux-history holds up.
reads a history book
Oh I see, they’re called ‘tankies’ because the USSR gave 731 tanks to the Republicans, being the only nation to provide them any material support
Oh I see, they’re called ‘tankies’
What would you prefer we call you? Considering that the Bolsheviks managed the greatest single gold heist of the 20th century (from a nation being invaded by fascists, of course), would you prefer we call you “Goldies?”
Me when I’m an anarchist who cares about state gold reserves.
Anyway, it was payment for the
- 242 aircraft,
- 703 pieces of artillery,
- 731 tanks,
- 1,386 trucks,
- 300 armored cars
- 15,000 heavy machine guns,
- 500,000 rifles,
- 30,000 sub-machine guns,
- 4,000,000 artillery shells,
- 1,000,000,000 machine gun cartridges,
- over 69,000 tons of war material, and
- over 29,000 tons of ammunition
That the USSR provided. Should they have given it for free? Should they have not given support at all? Would it have been better for the Republicans to just accept they were going to lose anyway and die with their gold? Would you prefer that gold to have been captured by the Fascists?
Besides, the actual greatest gold heist of the century was during Indian independence, when their entire gold reserves were airlifted to the UK in exchange for… nothing. Which I’m sure you knew about, having devoted a proportional amount of your time to looking into the actual crimes of capitalist nations as you have the fictional crimes of socialist ones.
Me when I’m an anarchist who cares about state gold reserves.
I don’t care much for gold… but it seems to be one of the few things you tankies actually do care about.
But hey, tankie… good news! Now at least we know that there are at least two reasons tankies would actually bother to fight fascists at all, eh?
Anyway, it was payment for the
That is all the third largest gold reserve in the world at the time paid for? Just that measly amount of “aid?”
The Soviet Union got 7,411 aircraft from the western allies during WW2 - was Tankie Nr.3 forced to ship all his gold reserves to Washington DC, perhaps?
On: “the May Days specifically started when anarchists were fucking around with government telephone calls”
This is really lazy but I’m just gonna link a source another poster posted here. You seem well read enough on the subject to know who Paul Preston is, but if you haven’t read his books I highly recommend.
Really? Is that why all Spain’s gold reserves (the third largest in the world at the time) ended up in Moscow?
What’s the issue here? My understanding was that the Republic voluntarily sent its gold to Russia to avoid it falling into fascist hands. If you’ve got a source on the contrary I’d be genuinely interested.
And the Soviets, whether in solidarity or because they were paid in gold, sent considerable vital war materiel, and organised the International Brigades. They were the only power to support the Republican effort. Their policy, and the policy of the aligned Spanish communist parties, was supporting the Republic and the war. Again I’ve seen no evidence to suggest that this wasn’t genuinely the case.
I’m not saying that the only reason Barcelona didn’t fall to the fascists right at the start of the war was because of the anarchists… oh, wait - that’s exactly what I’m saying.
Yeah, I absolutely think the Republic would have stood a better chance of defeating Franco if the anarchists had been more committed to the war and less focussed on immediate revolution, I’m just not saying they would have definitely won. I understand their desire for revolution, and the work they did in Catalunya and Aragon was fantastic, I just think their priorities were in the wrong place if they wanted to sustain it.
On: “the May Days specifically started when anarchists were fucking around with government telephone calls”
Horseshit, tankie.
“The news of the attack spread rapidly. Informed of what had taken place, the Regional Committee of the CNT called the Ministry of Internal Security on the telephone and demanded an explanation. Who gave the order to occupy the building? It did not come from the Council of the Generalitat, which had never deliberated such an action. After further inquiries, the Councilor of Internal Security, the republican Ayguadé, said he did not know anything about it. In fact, the order to occupy the building that Rodríguez Sala had presented bore his signature….”
Revolution and Counterrevolution in Catalonia – Carlos Semprún Maura
Seems like Azaña’s (alleged) “interrupted phone call” didn’t bother Azana enough to declare war on the anarchists - if such an event ever ocurred at all.
My understanding was that the Republic voluntarily
Right, right… the Republic decided democratically to give all it’s gold reserves to one of the most untrustworthy realpolitickers of the 20th century, eh? You tankies have a weird understanding of the term “voluntary,” too.
They were the only power to support the Republican effort.
Support it or hijack it? Can you tankies actually tell the difference?
Yeah, I absolutely think the Republic
Yeah, I absolutely think the Republic would have stood a better chance if the liberals holding hands with tankies were more interested in fighting the fascists than sabotaging the anarchists.
Ok, I’m just gonna disengage. You’re being really hostile, your understanding of history is bad, and you’re weirdly bitter about events you have absolutely nothing to do with. Please remember we’re just on the internet, not on opposite sides of the barricades.
Removed by mod
Disengage
We’re not ‘engaged’, what are you talking about?
You can just not reply if you don’t want to reply.
I don’t want to be seen as conceding the point when I’m not in the mood to argue with tankies.
I think it comes across as more of a concession to be honest…
This is just a silly webforum though, you’re under no obligation to reply to anyone ever if you don’t feel it’s worth your time, so no hard feelings either way.
Spain?
Was the lesson that they stop doing literally what you’re doing here?
Disengage
Sure thing. I encourage others seeing this to read this article, on the guardian of all places, however.
… You don’t get it?
This is an Anarchist instance.
Anarchists are extremely critical of the concept of ‘the State’ itself, tend to want to either totally abolish it, or at least strip it down so much or break it apart that it essentially isn’t a ‘State’ any more.
Tankies embrace, and essentially worship the State.
… Also, in basically every single recorded instance of a succesful or attempted leftist revolution in modern human history, tankies ally with anarchists to overthrow the existing State, and then murder all of them after they’ve established themselves as the new State or proto-State.
One could argue that it seems to be in the material interest of authoritarian statists to extend false allyship to ‘fellow leftists’, and then betray them as quickly as they abandon their ideal of a ‘classless society’ and begin to assert themselves as the new ruling class.
There’s a 101 level answer for your ‘why so antagonistic’ question.
Tankies historically cry ‘Unity! Unity!’ and do exactly what you are doing, trying to shame those who are skeptical… and then the rhetoric flips on a dime and the cry switches to ‘Purity! Faith!’
…
Also worth noting is your framing of this as antagonistic in the first place.
I guess you find the evidence of history thus far to largely be antagonistic to your worldview?
I don’t know, I wouldn’t want to put words in your mouth, but that is my assumption.
I could be wrong though.
The way you liberals need to define ideologies the US government taught you to hate as “religions” is pretty interesting to me.
I’ve studied economics and poli sci academically, have degrees in both, did my own independent research, came to the conclusion that the anarchist perspective is ultimately the most useful approach to analyze and critique… all societies, throughout all history, with the least ideological blindspots, with the most at least broadly accurate predictive power.
But sure, ok, I am one of the liberals whom I frequently argued against and critqued, ok.
Anyways, do you have an actual retort, or just a form of ideologically flavored ad hominem?
-yawn-
My wife also has advanced degrees in economics, she’s a senior economist professionally and has also studied world history indepth. She disagrees with your assessment and thinks a vanguard and a socialist state are necessary intermediaries to get any kind of lasting libertarian anarchism.
I could easily find 100+ economists with better credentials who disagree with both you and my wife so what’s the point of jerking off your qualifications? If you have something persuasive to say just say it; vaguely telling us why you’re qualified is weak as hell. Why don’t you post your resume or link to any of the books you’ve published if you’re such an expert?
Your wife sounds like she’d be potentially interesting to talk to then, genuinely.
But uh, I wasn’t ‘flashing my credentials’ to assert authority by way of the number of fancy pieces of paper I have.
I was responding to the charge of having been ‘brainwashed’ by the US government, and mentioned my academic pursuits to hopefully be able to indicate that I have spent an inordinate and uncommon amount of time and effort attempting to do my own research and learn more.
…
I don’t have anything that I think would be persuasive to say, in general, to an ML Vanguardist.
Mostly because they tend to be very, very ideologically inflexible.
Again, I was responding to a single general concept with that section of what I wrote:
The idea that an ML/Tankie does not understand why Anarchists are skeptical of left-unity.
Apparently my error was to assume that the person I was responding to was… being serious, actually expressing that idea in good faith, earnestly.
…
I will not be posting my resume or any PII as I value my privacy here on lemmy.
…
You’re so very hostile and demanding of people you claim are or should be your allies…
…almost as if we have a fundamentally, radically distinct approach to basic human to human communication, to say nothing of how to grow a mass political movement.
So just to be clear, you’re the only free thinker and everyone who doesn’t agree with you is a mindless sheep blindly following their ideology as a religion?
Am I the only free thinker?
No, of course not?
Do all tankie/MLs engage in what could otherwise be an actually productive and insightful conversation with the absolutely most badfaith and toxic rhetoric that is humanly possible, immedeately, right out of the gate, like rabid cult members defending their beliefs?
In my experience, not 100% of the time, but 95% of the time, yes.
So I guess thanks to you that 95% is getting closer to rounding over to 96%.
You got anything other than an ad hom?
In constantly calling all your interlocutors cultists, you’re making it pretty hard to see anyone else as the bad faith adhom abusers here
In constantly calling all your interlocutors cultists,
Pot calling the kettle black, holy shit that’s hilarious.
“not everyone, just almost everyone” isn’t the gotcha you think it is.
just a form of ideologically flavored ad hominem?
Ridiculous statement for someone who incessantly calls the most predominant socialist tendency on earth a “religion.”
Edit: also lmao poli sci and economics degree
“Excuse me, the only real socialists are people with professional level liberal ideological education”
You claimed I was brainwashed by the government, I told you I wasn’t.
Your response is ‘Ridiculous!’ and then a strawman.
… this is evidently your strategy for fostering left-unity, to just attempt to rhetorically insult me until I submit to your way of thinking?
You ‘argue’ like a power tripping narcissist sociopath, it is actually funny to me that you seemingly lack awareness of how vindictive and manipulative you come across.
I guess the only good revolution is the one that is openly antagonistic to tbose whom it claims to represent, speak for, advocate for with unity.
I’m not trying to foster left unity with you, because frankly to consider you an anarchist would be such rank anti-anarchist sectarianism that Hexbear mods would be correct to permaban me. You’re a liberal.
Btw, I think that accusing anarcho-communists of having an ideology that inevitably leads to ecocide is pretty sectarian also (or again, maybe not sectarian. It’s not sectarian for a liberal [you] to be anti-anarchist, just shitty), and you haven’t engaged with this point but you’re posting ziq’s articles and this is one of their states positions so that’s something you need to deal with for yourself.
You called Marxism a religion before my comment, which was about your initial ad hominem comparison to religion, and frankly suggesting that the ideologies that you are opposed to are the ones the US government wants you to oppose is an objective fact.
posting ziq’s articles
LMAO holy shit what a toolbag
Ah yes, the evidence of history. Like all the successful anarchist revolutions?
I am not aware of any anarchists that even predict that some kind of anarchist revolution is any kind of inevitable.
And if there were some, I would disagree with them.
I am not purpoting to have some kind of perfect plan to ‘achieve anarchism’.
I don’t need to.
It’s ya’ll that tend to have a dogmatic, ideological faith in a perfect way to do things, that things should be done, that things inevitably will be done.
…
Anyway, the evidence of history I am referring to is that basically all self described ‘Communist’ states/societies haven’t ever really come close to Marx’s utopian conception of a classless society at the proverbial ‘end’ of Communism…
They mostly either reform or transform themselves into a highly state-managed form of capitalism, or into something with less overt direct state control over a hybrid state/capitalist economy, allowing private businesses and capitalists to operate under fairly significant levels of regulation…
Both of those will almost always only ever allow a single political party, clamp down on freedom of political association/expression, speech, etc… these societies very much still do have significant wealth disparity, ergo, social classes.
…
And those’re pretty much the best case scenarios.
They can also just collapse into… well basically, roughly fascism; a totalitarian, nationalistic, jingoistic central state that works with, grants favors to various capitalist oligarchs, corporations, as opposed to directly managing them or heavily regulating them…
In these societies, wealth disparity and thus class disparity tends to be even more significant… and they tend to put on a show of pretending to be liberal and democratic, though the extent of that effort ebbs and flows back toward social and governmental illiberalism over time.
It can get worse than that, but then we tend to get into ‘thats not real communism’ or basically just meme/schrodinger’s irony level argument territory, at least in my prior experience or discussions with tankies.
…
I don’t have a problem admitting that no anarchist revolution has succeeded in making a stable anarchist society at the scope and scale of a nation-state, with some kind of … assumed authoritative forceful control over a defined physical region.
Partially because… that isn’t really what at least I personally view as any kind of useful goal of my idea of anarchism.
…
If you doubt the history of tankies back stabbing anarchists… hold please, will update with source.
EDIT:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ziq-tankies-and-the-left-unity-scam
There it is!
No sense in me retyping all of this myself.
EDIT 2:
Or maybe its this one:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/various-authors-always-against-the-tanks/
This person’s works also include Burn the Bread Book, an anti-Anarcho-Communist screed in which they advocate for the end of civilization, and return to each person producing all their own food, an idea that is openly ecofascist and would kill billions, first and foremost a large number of disabled and chronically ill people.
I think you should carefully consider where your ideas are coming from.
People can can have some ideas or writings that are good, and some ideas or writings that are bad.
Other people can use their own brains to pick through those ideas on their own and formulate their own worldviews.
Which other genocidal anti-communist, anti-anarchist authors do you suggest have “some good ideas?”
Marx’s utopian conception of a classless society
Tell me you don’t understand Marx without telling me you don’t understand Marx
Edit: LMFAO YOU CITED ZIQ BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
but then we tend to get into ‘thats not real communism’ or basically just meme/schrodinger’s irony level argument territory
That was fast!
Sorry, I was trying to specifically use Lenin’s conception/phrasing of “socialism” as the progressive process that builds society toward the idealized, but possibly not ever truly, perfectly achievable “communism”.
Thats what I get for trying to use ML terms with an ML, I suppose.
So anyway, if a classless society is not the ultimate end goal of Marx, of Marxism… what would you describe the end goal of Marxism as?
You don’t think perhaps it was the word “utopian,” a word which in the discussion of various different socialist tendencies generally refers to the Utopian Socialists, a group that Marx vocally criticized?
(Which anyone with a decent understanding of Marx would know, and therefore avoid using the word in a description of Marxist goals.)
Oof yeah, words can have multiple meanings in different contexts and change over time as well.
I meant it in the more common lingo that normal people mean by the word utopian, an idealized human society that is the best for all its members of any possible society.
Sorry, I don’t spend that much time getting into online arguments with MLs and Socialism Understanders these days, as they tend to be so very, very pedantic and unproductive.
See how you almost got me to not notice you didn’t even attempt to answer my most pertinent question?
Ukraine for example, before the “allied” communists betrayed and hunted down the anarchists
Look, I’m not trying to justify everything the Bolsheviks did during the Russian Civil War. I don’t know enough of the history to make a judgment call on most of that stuff. So I’m going to leave the question of morality entirely aside on this one.
But I don’t think you can call your revolution successful if, within a few years, some external force is able to show up, wreck everything you were doing, and take over. It’s not enough to just temporarily wrest control away and set up your committees and your resource distribution system and declare victory. You have to establish long-term security and stability. If you don’t, you haven’t had a successful revolution.
Valid point. I’d say that it’s inevitable for a large force with popular legitimacy and support to best a force with a similar percentage of but less-due-to-geographical-resources popular legitimacy and support, but I see arguing that would be moving the goalposts. So to engage that directly I would say that the AANES (Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, commonly known as Rojava) is as anarchist as the USSR was communist. It’s been there for well over a decade now.
I could quibble over the circumstances (and, unfortunately, likely outcomes in the near future), or argue about your dig at the USSR, but honestly I’m more inclined to cede the point on this. I don’t really have anything against anarchists or anarchism; I was mostly just giving a flippant answer to that other commenter, who was being a smug jerk.
Tankies <—> Liberals. Same thing, different imperial branding.
is this horseshoe theory?Removed by mod
It’s almost as if corrupt sociopaths are drawn to positions of authority regardless of stated values, and a vanguard party is no exception. Church, State, HOA, offer a crumb of power and bastards will say anything they can to snatch it up. The value of an organizational system has very little to do with its aspirations, and everything to do with the obstacles it erects to obstruct corruption. Build a dictatorship of the proletariat, and the proletariat will be abandoned by the dictatorship.
This sums up my thoughts on human behavior quite nicely. I really want to believe “true communism” is possible but I just don’t see how when power-hungry assholes exist. My thoughts are that it can only happen at small scales where you know everyone in your “tribe”. It’s far easier to oppress nameless strangers than it is to oppress Jenny with a heart condition a sick kid.
I’d be very interested in an honest answer about how this is handled from someone with more knowledge on communism.
It’s more that the user you replied to made a strawman of Marxist socialism.
First of all, “true” communism isn’t a thing, there’s no such thing as a pure system and to think of purity as a requirement is to make the perfect wonderland in out heads the enemy of flawed but real progressive movements.
Second of all, administration isn’t inherently corrupting, nor is it impossible to have democracy and recall elections in case of bad actors, like socialist states have.
Finally, the Marxist conception of communism, as a post-socialist system, can only be global, as class is only abolished when all property is collectivized and planned. A small-scale society cannot be “stateless” in the Marxist sense (though anarchism can exist, it uses different definitions of the state).
Well said!
The good old “revolutionary state capitalist” Often comes with some nice totalitarianism and atrocities sprinkled in.
Oppress, exploit, and kill the masses for the benefit of the masses!
