Yeah, there's nothing authoritarian about overthrowing the entire superstructure and killing anyone who tries to stop you, what a crazy idea!

There's a big difference between the ideal democracy and the bastardization of a democratic process we have in America, much like how Marx's vision of communism is hugely different from any actual communist implementation. I personally don't believe that any one governing/socioeconomic system taken in a vacuum is the right answer, they all seem to rely on humans being fundamentally good-natured but it just isn't true for much of the humans attracted to positions of power.

I struggle with the term "Tankie". Who is a Tankie? What makes them a Tankie? What makes them so frustrating? This term feels so vague that it just makes it easy lump all leftists into the term.

As far as I can tell, you're a leftist if you're not unpleasant to deal with and you're a Tankie if I find you unpleasant.

It sounds like some Boogeyman I've never seen or spoken to but I'm obligated to dismiss everything they say even tho I've never seen one.

Oh okay that makes sense now

“Lol. Lmao even” and other cringy Reddit-speak should be banned on Lemmy

Not all leftists blindly support Russia or China just because they're anti-western. Tankies seem to ignore all the evil shit Russia does just because they're not the U.S./E.U/Israel.

Good point, they seem to be authoritarian with the extra requirement that government should also control the means of production.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

If they have a god damn wiki definition, I'm not sure where you think its vauge. You just literally never looked.

Yeah.
I dont know exactly what I would call them but the German "far"-"left" splinter party BSW just supported the actually far-right party AFD in voting for the first far-right state governor since the Nazi era... that's not exactly behavior that anybody would seriously consider left.

an ideal democracy would be a democracy where the people have power, as opposed to one where money rules. such is the case in the fake 'democracies' under capitalism. it's not just america and it's nothing to do with humans needing to be 'good natured'.

I simply recognize that I can't change anything about China and it isn't my place to even try. The only reason I have an opinion about China is because I want to try and learn from their successes. China provides a good example of how to subordinate capitalist development to the will of a powerful political party. Markets can be disciplined.

The border disputes in the South China Sea are coming from every country involved, by the way. It isn't just big bad China bullying smaller countries, all countries involved are violating each others' territorial waters:

Minister Susi Pudjiastuti revealed in a statement that ANTARA received here on Monday that 26 of the 556 illegal boats were Indonesian-flagged ones, while 321 Vietnamese, 91 Filipino, 87 Malaysian, 24 from Thailand, two of Papua New Guinea, three from China, and one each from Nigeria and Belize.

But you only hear about China because they are the Designated Bad Guy.

No, the essence of the term is "bad leftist" - it has outgrown its historical context.

The majority of discussions about "tankies" are about leftists that refuse to vote in an approved manner: anarchists are "tankies" according to social democrats, social democrats are "tankies" according to liberals, etc etc. You use it to mean "leftist that supports Marxist-Leninism" but that just isn't how its used by the majority of people. For the majority it's just a snarl word.

Meanwhile, non-tankies blindly ignore the evil shit the west does on a much larger global scale and blindly accept the western narratives about Russia and China just because they’re too propagandized to realize they’re being lied to and misinformed. Not sure who the “blind” ones in this scenario are.

Except that the range of human behaviors is largely determined by the system. A better system allows for better behaviors.

That's a hidden No True Scotsman fallacy. The primary superpowers which have historically claimed to be communist were or are authoritarian. Does that mean that they weren't communist from a purely Marxist perspective? Perhaps, but if the people actually doing the supposed communist revolutions are consistently founding authoritarian states, then it doesn't matter what you say communism is, or even what Marx said communism is. You should be decrying that those states are misrepresenting what communism is supposed to be. Call them out specifically for not being communist. Don't fall back on claiming that the person you're talking to just doesn't know what communism is. The fact is that saying "I'm a communist" means siding with the people most visible in the world who say "I'm a communist", unless you specifically distance yourself from those others in some meaningful way, and those others are Soviet Russia and the PRC under the CPC, both totally authoritarian states throughout the majority of their existence.

Keep coping.

No, they weren't communist by their own claims. They were social dictatorship looking to bring about the conditions for communism.

Ok but we all agree that the US/Israel is the greatest evil on Earth right? Like sure Russia does bad stuff, but like the US is worse.

That's debatable, I don't call FAFO authority, but I guess I could see how someone could argue that being limited in doing whatever the fuck one wants is authoritarianism.

In any case, the entire premise of the initial question is flawed and this argument makes little sense

Freedom is slavery.

The point is that authoritarian is a vague term that depends on who is holding authority and who is having authority exerted on them.

The point is it's not a contest, and we should be opposed to it no matter which country is doing it.

If youre talking about the inevitability of outsiders coming to dominate a free people, send them to their sky daddy that they love so much.

If youre talking about those trapped within the confines of their neighbors delusions, the best we can do is open our arms and borders to refugees.

I feel a big problem with humanity is their attempt to fix things that will always remain broken. We show people we are right by living our best and most free lives. Forcing our way of life on others drags us down to the cave peoples level.

They're both guilty of imperialism on a world wide scale and all the evils that includes, but aside from it's early days the US has generally been a better neighbour by pointing their evil overseas, Russia has largely been a menace to it's neighbours in every era of history. I would say that's the biggest difference.

Yeah but if your goal is to bring the most good to the world, you'll get closer to your goal by fighting against the US than you will fighting against Russia.

The problem is "the people" in a democracy literally just amounts to "the majority", and would thus favor the average and the interests thereof over the interests of underprivileged minorities. Can we count on the average person to be concerned about the well being of those who lack the collective power they enjoy? As of now, I would say definitely not.

Again, you're making this into a two-sided contest between two huge turds. I don't choose either of them. I choose to fight the bad ideas and behaviors they're known for, at all scales and in all walks of life, regardless of comparisons between them.

That's only true if a stronger Russia somehow would be a better country than a strong USA. There's absolutely FUCK ALL to suggest that's remotely true.

It also a false dichotomy. You can hate Russias imperialism AND USAs imperialism.

Real Life™ is a joke, and deserves no respect. My opinions that i have shared are not a joke.

Hope you find your way to peace stranger. The block button is below my comment.

And pretending "authoritarian" isn't a useless word used to make a false equivalence between communism and fascism should be banned from life, but here we are nevertheless.

Yeah, like I'm trans and it seems like the majority of people want to erase me for it. Do we just let that go on until we have a democratic consensus that trans people actually do exist while 3,000 people are socially murdered in the time we wait?

It's the same for capitalist and imperialist oppression. Pro-imperialist or pro-capitalist ideologies or ideologies that comprimise with capitalism or imperialism are not neutral and shouldn't be respected just because a majority of people have them. People who who end up supporting liberalism or fascism should be oppressed.

One man in charge of a country for the rest of his life without elections is pretty authoritarian, whether it’s fascism or not, don’t you think?

That’s China, Russia, and North Korea, comrade.

Use of force is by any state is unchecked state power, and having multiple parties does not imply democracy, nor make things more democratic.

But yes, I actually do support giving proletarian communists (specifically women and minorities) guns, so that the state can be terrorized into not making reactionary compromises that will lead to doom.

It is your choice to fall for and participate in bourgeois language abuse.

On reflection, can you see how all your comments are toxic? I don't have time for this nonsense

Pointing out the flaws in some democracies is not a great argument when every other system is so clearly inferior. To answer your question, democracy requires a culture that supports it. It won't work everywhere and it doesn't work overnight.

A Tankie is anyone who self-identifies as a Tankie.

I don't apply the term to folks as insult, I'm just acknowledging people who choose to identify as such.

Democracy works, the problem is we don’t have a true democracy. We have corporate capitalist democracy. It’s a system that makes most people think it’s democracy — but it’s not.

Democracy and capitalism can not exist in the same stratosphere if democracy is to succeed.

Red fascists

It's incredible what wild opinions people have about marxist theory when they've onviously never read any.

"He had different phases in his life, some more philosophical some more economic" what the actual fuck is that even supposed to mean

Lol keep exposing how little you know of humanity's history.

The term originally comes from a divide amongst Anglo communists between those who supported the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, and those who were critical. The tankies were the ones who supported “sending in the tanks.” These days it’s a disparaging term for any authoritarian socialists.

Well, thanks for pointing out that you don't know the difference between a lack of term limits and AuThOrItArIaNiSm!!!!1!!!!one!!!!

Leaders popular in their own countries tend to get re-elected, more news at 11!

I think It means they liked the Wikipedia summary of the Manifesto but Capital was way too dense for them...

The tankies were correct.

https://www.joewrote.com/p/jfk-files-reveal-the-cia-role-in

In 1996, journalist Michael Smith published a book where MI6 officers, a branch of British intelligence, admitted they trained and armed Király’s fighters.8 The officer told Smith:

"We were taking them [fighters] into the mountains and giving them a crash course. I would be told to pick somebody up from a street corner at night in the pouring rain. Graz was our staging point. Then, after we'd trained them — explosives, weapons training — I took them back. We were training the agents for the uprising."

Nagy admitted such factions were active during his October 28th radio speech.

“The Government condemns the viewpoints according to which the present formidable movement is a counterrevolution [against socialism]. Without doubt, as always happens at times of great popular movements, this movement too was used by criminal elements to compromise it and commit common criminal acts. It is also a fact that reactionary and counterrevolutionary elements had penetrated into the movement with the aim of overthrowing the popular democratic regime.”

Here’s the newly released, un-redacted version.
It reads:

The Hungarian Freedom Fighters were Agency sponsored.

The “Agency” in question was, of course, the Central Intelligence Agency. In the context of the JFK assassination, the CIA was suggesting anti-Castro groups meet with Béla Király, likely to replicate the Hungarian uprising in Cuba to oust the communist government.

Undoubtedly, some will downplay this revelation and claim the CIA’s role in the Hungarian Rebellion was minor, insisting it was always a popular movement against Soviet-style communism. As has been since 1956, I’ll be called a tankie for suggesting the American foreign policy establishment was 100% honest and weren’t the pristine Good Guys of History. Oh well. It won’t be the first time and it won’t be the last.

In my opinion, there is more than enough circumstantial evidence to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the Central Intelligence Agency encouraged, if not instigated, the bloody fighting that swept through Budapest in 1956. I don’t doubt the students and protestors shared Nikita Kruschev’s desire for de-Stalinization. But as that movement went from a demand to readjust the Hungary-Soviet relationship to outright destruction of the Soviet Union’s defensive pact in less than two weeks, there was obviously a secondary, driving force that compelled Nagy to go further. As these documents admit, Béla Király and the broader combative force were supported, trained , and armed by the CIA and MI6; you don’t need to be a genius to figure out who was pushing the Hungarian Uprising to move from civil protest to alignment with Washington D.C.’s geopolitical goals.

I hope this is a bit. The idea of a real person believing Putin, Xi, and the Kims keep getting reelected under fair, democratic processes is just too sad to contemplate.

Trotsky was right

By precisely the same logic, the USA isn't truly capitalist, as there's no free market! Federal regulations hinder a true capitalist utopia, and so the USA is just a republic trying to establish the conditions of true capitalism. That's bullshit and you know it. Tell any card-carrying member of the Communist Party of China that they aren't communist, and let me know how that goes for you.

Sure, I’ll summarize what I remember of what Bakunin wrote the year before On Authority came out, What is Authority?, which you can guess by the name is an anarchist perspective on authority.

Engels claims organization requires authority, but it really only requires agreements, coordination, and sometimes rules; a strict hierarchy isn’t a necessary requirement for that to exist. Engels also says production requires obiedience, which doesn’t require an absolute authority as Engels asserts. Union elections, leaders accountable through recall votes, etc are also means of guiding production without relying on an absolutist revolutionary vanguard. The same goes for revolutionary leadership. It requires coordination, not domination by a central party.

It really boils down to do you think obedience is imposed or agreed upon. I’d like to live in a world where the workers have a voice rather than an authority telling them what they must do. It’s needlessly paternalistic and infantilizing in my view.

The SRs supported the Whites during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922, but the White movement's anti-socialist leadership increasingly marginalized and ultimately purged them.

Seems like a very successful political ideology right there.