Claiming to understand Marxism better than tankies is unlawful behavior, comrade!
Claiming to understand Marxism better than tankies is unlawful behavior, comrade!
To be fair. Confronting people about their religion doesn't usually go well.
I respect the effort, but telling ML they're wrong is basically the definition of pissing into the wind.
I dislike you very much and hope you get better one day.
My sides
Whenever Tankies quote pasages from the rantings of century-dead old men, I'm reminded Christians citing Biblical passages to prove the universe is only 6000 years old.
Damn, I wish I had a GF that went around bopping tankies like that. That was some verbal jiu-jitsu.
Damn. I like the cut of that person's jib!
"Bullshit" is how I feel about some of the Lemmy moderation. If you outline clear expectations I can follow them. Don't expect me to read your mind.
Okay, I just finished up reading Anti-Duhring after a few months and that's kind of a misrepresentation. Things had to be centralized in order to wield effective power against the bourgeoisie. The whole "The Bolsheviks betrayed the revolution" thing is also a bit off, since IIRC the biggest difference between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks was that the Bolsheviks believed that collaboration with the economic ruling class was futile and worked against winning the class war.
Y'all... without some sort of "authoritarian" element, how can the working class enforce its will upon the ruling class? I want the working class to be in charge and for the means of production (factories and shit like that) to be owned by the workers who use those machines for the benefit of themselves and the rest of the working class. We aren't gonna get those factories, land, etc without being "authoritarian" and dictating terms to our oppressors. And since we can't peacefully force these oligarchs to give up their assets we'll have to use force, and force means that we really need tanks and people who are more militaristically minded.
Maybe instead of shitting on "tankies" maybe understand that they're working towards the same goal of the empowerment of the working class, and try to ally with them? You might not agree with their ideology but if we can work together towards a better future for the working class, then why shit on them?
Idk. Maybe this is too nuanced for a community that seems to be focused on dunking on "tankies" (I'm still not really sure what that exactly means, I'd appreciate comments with people's personal definition of what they consider a "tankie"), but I genuinely think we'd be better off trying to reconcile and work together.
Alright, first off - the difference between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks was not the view that collaboration with the economic ruling class was futile. Left-SRs, Bolsheviks, and Mensheviks all agreed that cooperation with the bourgeoisie was unnecessary. Bolsheviks demanded a narrow 'vanguard' party, Mensheviks demanded an 'open' workers' party, and Left-SRs desired a parliamentary democracy without anti-intellectualism.
Second, the Bolsheviks absolutely betrayed the revolution unless your view is that the revolution's purpose was to create an anti-democratic terror state (yes, under Lenin, even before Stalin worsened the situation) which oppressed the workers and the peasants and dictated terms at the point of a gun. One might regard this, even, as the natural conclusion of a faction which thought that concentrating powers into the hands of a small number of people in total agreement with each other (as per 'democratic centralism') was core to the functioning of their ideal revolutionary government.
Third, the Bolsheviks changed their view on cooperating with the bourgeoisie with the NEP, so clearly it was not THAT important to refrain from collaboration.
Fourth, a tankie is someone who supports authoritarian states simply because they profess a purportedly-left-wing ideology, regardless of their actual actions or effects - like the Bolsheviks rolling tanks into Hungary in 1956 to crush the extremely dangerous and reactionary demand of (checks notes) workers' democracy.
Fifth, every goddamn time tankies and other leftists 'ally' with each other, it ends with the MLs backstabbing the other leftists at the first opportunity - very often before the reactionaries are even dealt with, for that matter. Most of us are wary of volunteering for a bullet in the back of the head, and that's all that allying with tankies results in.