Shamelessly stolen from r/MarxismMemes
Want to get your feet wet with Marxism-Leninism? Check out the intro Marxist-Leninist reading list I made.
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Even funnier is when “left” liberals think we’re conservatives, because no one but conservatives has ever pushed back on them before.
Happening here already, lol.
Not sure if you included in that list and maybe a separate one for more history focused stuff would be good but Malcolm Harris’ Palo Alto and Paulette Steeve’s Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere are also really great and tie in well with the decolonial side of things.
I’d love to argue with a Conservative, I just haven’t been able to find an actual one in the past decade or so.
They’re all over the place in the US Empire.
If you’re looking to argue with conservatives (or let’s be real, fascists), your SoL.
Lemmy is by far mostly actual leftists and fake leftists like tankies.
Reddit and discord have conservatives, but mods on both are generally basement dwelling incels, and the moment you say something that isn’t Weenie-Hut Jr. acceptable, you get banned.
Facebook you’ll find conservatives, but their minimum age is 70 and they all have dementia.
4Chan you’ll find conservatives in their most true to selves. But all you’ll get is a barrage of slurs, Nazi memes and cuck porn.
Lastly, you can try real life. You’ll win every argument but you’ll never get any satisfaction. They’ll just throw a temper tantrum like the adult toddlers they are and will never change.
Lemmy is by far mostly actual leftists and fake leftists like tankies.
I know I have a scary .ml handle, but please bear with me, because I genuinely want to understand.
Marxism-Leninism, whatever you think of the vicissitudes of its theoretical claims, has been the form of socialism which has seized power, more than any other.
Otherwise there are maoist insurgencies that dot south Asia, some anarchist projects throughout the world, and Trotskyists haven’t made Revolution anywhere.
If you ask me, those other tendencies are still my comrades, I support their struggles, and their histories are mine as well. But I don’t see them proliferating themselves much further than they already have.
What Socialist experiments would you consider “real”, and how are they more real than ML?
I’m always skeptical of those that claim to be “real” leftists while using anti-communist pejoratives like “tankie.”
“Tankie” isn’t an anticommunist pejoratively.
Its a faux-communist pejorative.
Tankies are objectively not real leftists, nor do they hold any real beliefs, let alone any beliefs in the principles of communism.
We don’t actually have an issue with the label, just the strawman version of a Red Scare nightmare the label entails. Lots of us call ourselves tankies, but when it’s used as an insult and a caricature to terminate discussion it becomes a problem.
“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.
"The special correspondent of the Yugoslav paper, Politika, (Nov. 13, 1956) describing the events of those days, said that the homes of Communists were marked with a white cross and those of Jews with a black cross, to serve as signs for the extermination squads. “There is no longer any room for doubt,” said the Yugoslav reporter, “it is an example of classic Hungarian fascism and of White Terror. The information,” continued this writer, “coming from the provinces tells how in certain places Communists were having their eyes put out, their ears cut off, and that they were being killed in the most terrible ways.”
“But the forces of reaction were rapidly consolidating their power and pushing forward on the top levels, while in the streets the blood of scores of massacred Communists, Jews, and progressives was flowing.”
“Some of the reports reaching Warsaw from Budapest today caused considerable concern. These reports told of massacres of Communists and Jews by what were described as 'Fascist elements’ …” (N.Y. Times, Nov. 1. 1956)
“The evidence is conclusive that the entry of Soviet troops into Budapest stopped the execution of scores, perhaps thousands of Jews, for by the end of October and early November, anti-Semtic pogroms - hallmark of unbridled fascistic terror - were making their appearance, after an absence of some ten years, within Hungary.”
"A correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Maariv (Tel Aviv) reported:
During the uprising a number of former Nazis were released from prison and other former Nazis came to Hungary from Salzburg . . . I met them at the border . . . I saw anti-Semitic posters in Budapest . . . On the walls, street lights, streetcars, you saw inscriptions reading: “Down with Jew Gero!” “Down with Jew Rakosi!” or just simply “down with the Jews!”
Leading rabbinical circles in New York received a cable early in November from corresponding circles in Vienna that “Jewish blood is being shed by the rebels in Hungary.” Very much later-in February, 1957-the World Jewish Congress reported that “anti-Semitic excesses occurred in more than twenty villages and smaller provincial towns during the October-November revolt.” This occurred, according to this very conservative body, because “fascist and anti-Semitic groups had apparently seized the opportunity, presented by the absence of a central authority, to come to the surface.” Many among the Jewish refugees from Hungary, the report continued, had fled from this anti-Semitic pogrom-like atmosphere (N.Y. Times, Feb. 15, 1957). This confirmed the earlier report made by the British Rabbi, R. Pozner, who, after touring refugee camps, declared that “the majority of Jews who left Hungary did so for fear of the Hungarians and not the Russians.” The Paris Jewish newspaper, Naye Presse, asserted that Jewish refugees in France claimed quite generally that Soviet soldiers had saved their lives."
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.
I recommend the Prolewiki article on “Tankies,” as well as Nia Frome’s essay “Tankies.” That should give you a more well-rounded view.
We “tankies” absolutely do have real beliefs, I myself made an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list to help others with theory. By trying to paint the caricature of a “tankie” as this irrational, nonsensical strawman, and call anyone supporting socialism in the real world a “tankie,” you’re terminating discussion and erasing that we communists do have coherent beliefs, and are admitting that you cannot effectively engage with them.
Yeah… I’ve seen this tankie bullshit before. Let me simplify it in reality.
The term “tankie” originates from British psuedo-communists who supported the USSR using tanks against the Hungarian resistance, notably civilians, to impose their authoritarian and colonial rule upon them.
The USSR was never a country that embodied any core principles of Marxism, nor did it ever seek to after Stalin took power.
The USSR was an authoritarian state-capitalist shithole that practiced the same measure of imperialism as the West, not to counter the West, but to consolidate power for its leadership.
The modern use of “tankie” when used accurately, portrays exactly what they are. Fake communists who embrace the same horrors of authoritarianism and imperialism of the West, so long as it doesn’t come from the West.
The victim blaming of the Hungarian resistance is just the cherry on top. I could go on and on about the major suppression and oppression of Jewish people under the USSR, especially under Stalin, but as you said you’re a self identified tankie. And I don’t expect a tankie who’s posting tired old Kremlin propaganda as if it holds any merit to listen to the actual historical and current facts on the matter.
P.S. Your justification of the atrocities committed against the Hungarian resistance is giving the same exact energy as the IDF’s propaganda to justify their genocide in Palestine.
“Tankie bullshit” lol they cited sources for their assertions, you have none, you lose
The term “tankie” originates from British psuedo-communists who supported the USSR using tanks against the Hungarian resistance, notably civilians, to impose their authoritarian and colonial rule upon them.
My comment already debunked this, so I’ll simply restate that you are defending literal Nazis jailed during and after World War II, and those who enabled them, simply because they opposed socialism.
The USSR was never a country that embodied any core principles of Marxism, nor did it ever seek to after Stalin took power.
False. The USSR was the first consolidated, multinational socialist state in history. Marxism was studied in the Academy of Sciences, the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other Marxists were pondered and debated, studied and practiced. Public ownership was the principle aspect of the economy, production was oriented around satisfying the needs of the people, and the working classes were in charge of the state. Syzmanski’s Is the Red Flag Flying? is a fantastic overview of the soviet union’s political economy.
The USSR was an authoritarian state-capitalist shithole that practiced the same measure of imperialism as the West, not to counter the West, but to consolidate power for its leadership.
The USSR was socialist, as I already stated, public ownership was the principle aspect of the economy, production was oriented around satisfying the needs of the people, and the working classes were in charge of the state. State capitalism refers to countries where private ownership is the principle aspect and the bourgeoisie in charge of the state, like Singapore, the Republic of Korea, and the US Empire. The USSR was not imperialist either, it was not dominated by a financial oligarchy nor did it have any colonies or neo-colonies to extract from. It was a multi-national federation.
The modern use of “tankie” when used accurately, portrays exactly what they are. Fake communists who embrace the same horrors of authoritarianism and imperialism of the West, so long as it doesn’t come from the West.
This is what anti-communists always do. They simply equate socialism with capitalism and imperialism at a rhetorical level, without backing up anything they have to say to support this. The fact is, socialism in real life brought dramatic improvements in the lives of the working classes. In Russia alone, life expectancies doubled, literacy rates multiplied by 3-5 times to full literacy, the economy and state were democratized, real wages dramatically rose while working hours fell, equality of the sexes rose dramatically, and for the first time in history a country went from a semi-feudal backwater to space in the span of half a century. Anti-communists like yourself cannot grapple with reality, and so must restrain yourselves to arguments purely in the ideal realm.
The victim blaming of the Hungarian resistance is just the cherry on top. I could go on and on about the major suppression and oppression of Jewish people under the USSR, especially under Stalin, but as you said you’re a self identified tankie. And I don’t expect a tankie who’s posting tired old Kremlin propaganda as if it holds any merit to listen to the actual historical and current facts on the matter.
I will not call putting down a fascist counter-revolution “victim blaming.” The Nazis were evil, and lynching Jews and communists is evil. You cannot go on and on about “suppression and oppression of Jewish people under the USSR, especially under Stalin” because the USSR was vehemontly against anti-semitism, punishing anti-semitism with up to the death penalty. Nazis even spread lies about “Judeo-Bolshevism” because of the USSR’s opposition to anti-semitism. I’m posting modern analysis that is consensus among communists in the modern day, while you’ve provided nothing but your word.
P.S. Your justification of the atrocities committed against the Hungarian resistance is giving the same exact energy as the IDF’s propaganda to justify their genocide in Palestine.
No, it isn’t, because Israal is a fascist settler-colony committing genocide on Palestinians while the Hungarian counter-revolution was a western-backed pro-fascist movement.
…but the people who coined the word Tankie were also MLs
I love how ‘people I disagree with’ becomes ‘people without principles’
While a lot of libertarians end up being conservatives that want to be cool, I’ve met quite a few who believe strongly in the fundamental principles.
I disagree with them precisely because they are principled. I don’t feel the need to deny them their capabilities of believing something.
Is this just you being unable to imagine people who legitimately disagree with you?
Tankies objectively lack principles.
The countries they hold up as the best examples of communism or the path to it are some of the furthest from its core principles, and show no signs of revisiting them without their people overthrowing the state.
You are clearly not capable of objectivity
Only secret conservatives use the term tankies and punch left though, like your comment
False
Conservatives don’t know the difference between neo-liberals and anarchic communists, or anything in between.
Tankies are a real group. They are fascists without any real beliefs who cosplay as leftists/socialists/communists, just like Stalin for whom the original Tankies adored.
Sorry, its just reality. Tankies aren’t real communists.
“Tankie” is just a pejorative for those that support socialism in the real world. recommend the Prolewiki article on “Tankies,” as well as Nia Frome’s essay “Tankies.” Stalin was a committed Marxist-Leninist, not a fascist, and this is clear to anyone that actually attempts to understand the political economy of the soviet union and the theoretical basis of Marxism. Stalin wasn’t a saint either, most orgs put him at 70/30 good/bad, so “adoration” isn’t the correct term.
We “tankies” do have a solid and grounded understanding of communism and fascism, I even created an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list to help others learn theory as well. Communism is entirely different from fascism, in that communists support the working class using the state to oppress fascists, capitalists, and landlords for the good of the working classes, while fascists use the state to entrench bourgeois rule and crush worker organizing. The soviet union was unquestionably socialist in structure.
Cowbee my sourced savior 🙂↕️
Thanks comrade 🫡
Marxist-Leninism is an entirely made-up ideology by the Stalinist USSR that to this day has no clear definition due to its constantly changing definition that fits whatever the ruling party’s agenda is at the time
Ex: “communism with Chinese characteristics” completely dismissing China’s abandonment of proletariat rule, abandonment of giving the means of production to the proletariat, and embracing the system of capital.
Again, no need to waste time on tankie cope posting. Especially as the sources you provide are all just that.
You want an accurate picture of what communism should be? How about instead of reading g revisionism, you read the works of Marx.
Fun fact: he loved democracy. Wanna know why? He saw it as the most stable path to socialism.
You know who doesn’t love democracy?
Fascists and tankies… who are just red fascists.
Marxist-Leninism is an entirely made-up ideology by the Stalinist USSR that to this day has no clear definition due to its constantly changing definition that fits whatever the ruling party’s agenda is at the time
Marxism-Leninism is the synthesis of Marxism with Lenin’s revolutionary advancements on Marxism, chiefly his analysis of imperialism and organizational theory. It’s very well-understood.
Ex: “communism with Chinese characteristics” completely dismissing China’s abandonment of proletariat rule, abandonment of giving the means of production to the proletariat, and embracing the system of capital.
It’s Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, and it’s still dominated by the proletariat. Public ownership is the principle aspect of China’s economy, and capitalists are held on a tight leash to focus on developing the productive forces. The large firms and key industries in China are publicly owned, it’s only the small and medium firms that are private.
Again, no need to waste time on tankie cope posting. Especially as the sources you provide are all just that.
More rhetorical gibberish from yourself, you pull the “tankie” thought termination card to excuse yourself from engaging in discussion.
You want an accurate picture of what communism should be? How about instead of reading g revisionism, you read the works of Marx.
I have. Are you trying to make this a reading competiton? Not that this would prove anything, but I’ve read at least the following from Marx alone:
- Manifesto of the Communist Party
- Third Economic Manuscript of 1844
- Critique of the Gotha Programme
- Theses on Feurbach
- Wage Labor and Capital
- Value, Price, and Profit
- Marx to Ruge
- Capital: Volume 1
- Capital: Volume 2
- Critique of Hegel’s Dialectic and General Philosophy
Not to mention various small other bits here and there, or the works of Engels, Lenin, and other Marxists I’ve read. Your argument that I haven’t done the reading doesn’t work, I’ve clearly done so, which is why your thought-terminating argument doesn’t work.
Fun fact: he loved democracy. Wanna know why? He saw it as the most stable path to socialism.
Marx was a revolutionary, and supported socialist democracy. From Marx:
The revolution is essential not merely because the dominant class cannot be overthrown by any other means, but also because only in the course of the revolution can the class which overthrows cleanse itself of the mire of the old society and become fit to create a new society.
Revolution is necessary to fully transform society into a socialist one.
You know who doesn’t love democracy? Fascists and tankies… who are just red fascists.
More gibberish. Marxist-Leninists love democracy for the working classes, you should read Soviet Democracy and This Soviet World. From the latter:
The basic unit for government is the working institution, the factory or office; in rural districts it is the village. Deputies are chosen to the local government, the village or city soviet.[25] The basis of representation and size of the local soviet depends on the size of the community: Gulin village, whose election I visited, has one deputy for every forty voters and a village soviet of thirteen members. Moscow city elects one deputy for fifteen hundred voters and has more than two thousand members in its city soviet. These local deputies meet soon after election to form the new government. They divide among themselves the various departments, which range from the five sections of Gulin village—farming, livestock, culture, roads and finance—to twenty-eight sections, each with over forty deputies, through which Moscow city does business. Besides the more commonly known functions, these local governments own and manage local industry, which in a large city like Moscow includes many municipally owned factories, the street-cars, subway, lights, water, and housing. They receive revenue from public properties, but their budgets may also be augmented by taxes and state loans. Some cities actually bring in revenue—it will be remembered that they get all the house rents; others need help from the higher governments.
On these local governments is built up the whole structure of central government.[26] Local soviets elect deputies to a congress of soviets; the township congress elects to the province, and so on up to the All-Union Congress of Soviets, the highest body in the country. Each of these congresses elects its executive committee and the heads of its various departments; for the highest government these are the great Commissariats of heavy and light industry, finance, health, and so forth. Local departments are both horizontally and vertically controlled, by local governments and by the corresponding department in the higher government. Thus a township health department is responsible both to the township executive committee and to the provincial health department. If orders clash, if a local soviet takes the hospital for some other use, its health department appeals to the provincial health department which brings pressure on the local soviet through the provincial government in the interests of public health.
The greater part of this intricate yet unified system of government is carried on by unpaid work. Elected deputies, whether to village or the All-Union Congress, receive no salaries of office. They draw their usual wages from the factory or institution which sends them and in which they keep on working, except insofar as they may be “released from production” for the needs of government; this varies with the importance of the work they do. There is thus no hard and fast line between the citizen and the man in office. Deputies are a link between the collective life of the factory and the larger collective life of the country. Any worker may approach them conveniently any day in their place of work to ask about the fulfillment of instructions given by the voters. They may be recalled by their constituents at any time simply through a factory meeting.
If voters thus constantly call on their deputies, the deputies are equally entitled to call on the voters for help in carrying out the election program they have voted. A deputy is no substitute for the people, no ruler; he is the representative who organizes them in their own tasks of voluntary government work. Millions of citizens take active part in the sections of the government—housing commissions, school commissions, taxing commissions, labor inspection and so on. Those who develop a taste for running public affairs will be chosen at some election for more continuous and responsible work. Those who specialize in some field, such as health, courts, housing, may be sent on pay for some months or years of study and become full-time civil servants in these departments.
The growth of democracy in the Soviet Union thus depends directly on the extent to which citizens can be interested in taking part in operations of government. This interest is in part assured by the fact that government is so clearly the direct organizing of all aspects of the citizen’s life. In a million matters the citizens give direct instructions during the election. They order the increase of school-houses or sound films, the improvement in the quality of bread, the increase of retail stores, the transport of goods in big cities by night; they demand the breaking-up of housing trusts into smaller co-operatives, or the introduction of a less specialized education in the schools. All of these were part of some 48,000 instructions issued directly by Moscow voters to their city government, which reported within three months on the fulfillment of many hundred demands and on the disposition made of all. When instructions clash, as when some citizens want an odorous industrial plant removed from their neighborhood while others want it to stay, commissions are formed which try to satisfy not merely the majority, but as nearly as possible everybody, not through a showing of hands in opposition, but through various adjustments to the suggestions made by all. Capitalist ownership of private property limits the citizen’s participation, in government to an approval or rejection—expressed in conflict—of general policies. Socialist ownership causes government policies to grow directly and naturally from the correlated demands of millions of people, all of whom are interested in improving the country’s wealth.
You have no points, only posturing and rhetoric. Fascism and socialism are entirely incompatible and have historically served opposed classes, Blackshirts and Reds is an excellent overview of this.
You’re losing
