On lemmy.world I posted a comment on how liberals use ‘tankie’ as an invective to shut down dialogue and received tons of hateful replies. I tried to respond in a rational way to each. Someone’s said ‘get educated’ I responded ‘Im reading Norman Finkelstein’s I’ll burn that bridge when I get there’ and tried to keep it civil.
They deleted every comment I made and banned me. Proving my point, they just want to shut down dialogue. Freedom of speech doesn’t existing in those ‘totalitarian’ countries right? But in our ‘enlightened’ western countries we just delete you.
omg i just had the misfortune of wandering into this thread, https://lemmygrad.ml/post/806853 i am so glad we have our own space where we can safely laugh at these fools. omg.
That whole thread:
“These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world”
My favorite Engels tweet.
hmm, I wonder who controls the socialist state
I am guessing that their response would be ‘the bureaucracy’ (which would be inaccurate).
It’s partly because liberal westerners can see how shit their system is, see how shit their lives are or are becoming, see how much shit they have to take from unaccountable people, and then cannot fathom how people who they’ve been taught to see as subhuman could possibly achieve anything better. So a combination of racism and self-hatred. The only way out begins with self-reflection.
We only know the fucked up, one sided abusive relationship we have with our capitalist governments, so we can’t imagine anything different.
🏅🏅🏅<–In lieu of hexbear medal emojis
😊
Not long after I wrote this, I poured a cup of tea and picked up Stokely Speaks: From Black Power to Pan-Africanism by Kwame Ture (a name he took later, leaving behind ‘Stokely Carmichael’). He writes (p. 29–30, emphasis added):
DA SEE SEE PEE
That’s another one. Leftoid nubs and self‐identified anticommunists usually see governing communist parties as highly élitist and exclusionary institutions (which is pretty dubious, to say the least).
Just because a state brands itself socialist doesn’t say anything about the level of democracy or workers’ control of it.
That’s why Marxists reject idealism and rely only on material analyses.
sure, but if we were talking about non-socialist states that call themselves socialist, we wouldn’t call them socialist states
Well IMHO both USSR and China shows how gaining workers control and keeping it, or moreso making significant headway towards communism, is just much more complicated. Representative worker ownership of the means of production through the state doesn’t have a compelling track record. I think it’s dishonest, reactionary and anti intellectual to laugh off arguments like that of comrade spood from the screenshot above.
Edit: checked out my claim on calorie intake and discovered it was dubious. Removed, but letting the main argument stay.
The USSR was eventually compromised, so it technically failed in that sense, but how is China an example of failing to retain worker control? If you’re claiming that capitalists control China’s government, I’d challenge you to provide some evidence
Lack of press freedom, organization freedom, social credit system, great firewall of China, over 2000 work hours pr year (France has 1500), severely low scores in democracy rankings. This doesn’t smell much like worker control, more like authoritarianism. But then again, I’m very much from the West. Happy to be educated on my shortcomings in understanding 👍
Compared to what country? What exactly are workers not allowed to say or write in China that is allowed in the West?
Compared to what country? There are hundreds of protests every day across China
You mean the “system” that’s been debunked many times by various Western capitalist media outlets?
Maintaining Internet sovereignty from the imperial core and having workers in control of the government are not mutually exclusive
Citation needed
Whose rankings, and why do you consider them relevant?
No one should control the state because there shouldn’t be a state. If there is a state then there’s oppression.
Oppression of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat, absolutely; the point is to eventually eliminate the bourgeois class. When class distinctions no longer exist, the state will, by definition (a tool for oppression of one class by another), cease to exist. How would you go about abolishing the state while classes still exist, or abolishing classes within a bourgeois dictatorship?
The issue is that where there is a state, definitively there will be still social classes - those with power within the state, and those without. If your position is “we can’t abolish the state until there are no class divisions” then you’ve got an infinite loop.
Obviously with the way the world is there is no way to go straight from the current situation to communism, but the goal is still the abolition of the state, and so many leftists seem to get angry with the concept that we should (and have to) abolish the state. That’s all I am saying - reading any deeper into my comment than that isn’t recommended!
I’m not sure if anyone is getting angry that you’re saying the state must be abolished. MLs fundamentally agree with that. It’s what revolutionaries are aiming for.
The criticism is that you seem to be saying that revolutionaries cannot use the state because it’s an incoherent notion:
By this do you mean to say that the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat is logically contradictory? That it won’t work? You seemed to agree, above, that you don’t think that’s the case (i.e. you think the state can be used as a tool), but here you appear to be saying just that?
It may be helpful here to reiterate the dialectical element of Marxism-Leninism. It’s not a step-by-step sequence of events. First one, then the other. It’s a dialectical development.
The plan isn’t to seize the state, then to use the state to abolish classes. That won’t work. It’s anti-dialectical.
The idea is that by seizing the state and wresting control over the means of production from the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie will become redundant and whither away. This will take a long time. The state is needed to keep the reactionaries in line in the meantime.
It’s taken China over half a decade to start the process and most of the rest of the world hasn’t even begun the task yet. The DotP and the abolition of classes and the state are one process. They’re interrelated.
Have you read State and Revolution or ‘Better Fewer But Better’ by Lenin?
As an ML I actually agree with you, the state is a weapon and i would like to see it one day outlive it’s usefulness and wither so that communism can be achieved. However, it’s a weapon that you absolutely cannot discard until capitalism has been destroyed, and until then, unilateral disarmament is guaranteed suicide for a revolutionary movement.
I could not have put it better myself, thank you for your illuminating comment.
As is blind faith in a revolutionary movement’s ability to wield such a weapon in the interest of the proletariat and towards communism. Seems like a lot of people in this thread are forgetting Mao’s critique of the USSR.
"The revisionist Khrushchov clique abolish the dictatorship of the proletariat behind the camouflage of the “state of the whole people”, change the proletarian character of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union behind the camouflage of the “party of the entire people” and pave the way for the restoration of capitalism behind that of “full-scale communist construction”. - Mao - marxists.org
But is this not equally true for China today?
It is not.
It’s as much analysis as you can expect from the userbase of Tumblr lite.
Tumblr lite, or tumblr alt right?
Let’s be fair to them, at least they aren’t reactionary. Still, unfunny “uwu” memes mixed with Lockheed Left behaviour does not paint a much more enjoyable scene.
Lockheed Left is reactionary though.
“…which is why we won’t do shit, but raise a lot of stink, until communism just kinda happens on it’s own.”
Holy shit what an insufferable group.
“Define Tankie”
Who defines a buzzword with a buzzword ffs.
Also! (Paraphrasing)
'scuze me what the fuck? Who here says genocides are cool and good actually? We are like the first fuckers to point them out and scream about them???
And even more!
Now that’s dose of Anarcho-Debilizm let me tell you. “Just press the communism button Xi and we’ll succeed no problem! They will just let us exist and everyone will love each other :3”
And it just still keeps going!
Motherfuckers I read too much compared to your sorry asses.
Yeah it was torture. I tried to keep it civil and lighthearted and actually engage but they are so programmed it’s almost knee jerk comment reaction at this point.
Also fun and great that so many Lemmy instances won’t federate material that threatens their worldview. I mean, I’m 100% anti Nazi anti fascist and anti authoritarian but what does that even matter right? How dare I say there might be a different way to view say Cuba China Vietnam or North Korea…
Always the 196 shitheads.
I say that Mao’s landlords genocide was pretty neat actually. Please don’t tell the libs.
😑
I will make an exception.
Landlord is not a racial/culturalreligious/natural group, therefore not genocide
Please continue to be based tho
Their education:
I refuse to believe there’s actually 1.6gb of anarchist literature in existence that’s not supplemented with lots of random unpublished PDFs and saved blog posts that are rife with poor grammar and spelling errors.
It could be a bunch of breadtube videos.
There’s a lot - it’s the default organization structure for humans.
Friend groups are more often than not anarchist. Valve (the makers of steam) is designed as an anarchist company where workers freely start and join projects (they’re not the only ones with a similar structure, but their employee handbook is an interesting read). The fediverse is generally anarchist
There’s very few pure ideological systems out there - certainly there’s never been a pure capitalist or pure dictatorship. There have been pure anarchist communities out there, because it’s not rule by consent or through will of the people, all it takes is people coexisting with an aversion to hierarchy
Gotta break some myths here because despite Valve making some of my favourite games of all time I can’t let you call them anarchist.
“I have” doesn’t mean “I’ve read”, what a pretentious dumbass.
In the second part of this pic she tells the reader not having read any of it.
it’s real lmao
So when she said 1.6GB of litterature, it was basically two audiobooks. That’ll show them how litterate she is for sure lmao
This is so on brand. Especially the “I lack the discipline to regulary sit down and read a book, so I tell people I have ADHD even though we all know no licensed professional ever diagnosed me”-attitude.
Hilarious how she doesn’t even have a problem admitting it’s all a matter of fitting the edgy cyberpunk aesthetic of blue hair, computers, skateboards and slapping stickers around. All about individual image and no political dedication.
And I can understand listening to theory audiobooks instead of reading them, although I think it’s worse as it’s harder for you to re-read lines and take notes, but… While skateboarding? Can you imagine yourself attempting to make any sense of a Das Kapital audiobook while playing basketball? Probably just to be able to say “yeah i’ve already read it” and nothing else. Once again, all about aesthetics.
For a lot of anarchists it’s just an edgy aesthetic to use, not about political philosophy
I also refuse to believe this person is a real human being and not some Fed or Fed adjacent bootlicker. lol
Wow, they managed to burn all of anarchist literature into one USB thumb, that must have been hard praxis!
Context aside: Am I the only one who thinks having actual usable flash-drives as ear rings would be kinda… neat?!
It is kinda neat, but I prefer having a pendrive on my keychain tbh.
the brainworm infestation has proved devastating
And I had the misfortune of not resisting to participate in it. Do not recommend.
Thank you for your service comrade o9
oh dear. I told myself i wouldn’t engage. (narrator: but he engaged). Just trying to gently nudge an anarchist towards materialist analysis, i’ll try resist getting sucked into any arguments for my own sake.
Like moths flying into a bug zapper: we know it will hurt, but we just cannot help it.
I mean, in the end it is kinda hilarious how hard they will push strawman arguments and just outright ad hominem attack to defend what? Their ambiguous ivvective terminology? LoL I shall call thee a spoon. You, my internet interlocutor are a spoon. Wide at the top fillable with soup or antifreeze. It matters not. You are a spoon.
Tbh I’ve spent a long time without libs to bully and now I’m on lemmy I feel like a demon someone released from a stone