Tankie is a pejorative for authoritarian communists.
This isn’t inside the group? It might be publicly viewable, but it’s still .ml. This is .ml territory. It specifically shouldn’t be an echo chamber.
I understand what you’re saying, but this is the in group.
I don’t think it’s full of yourself at all to consider time and place when being critical, but I think also that this whole idea of “strategic criticism”, simply put, looks- no, is- incredibly dishonest.
Is bad empanada a tankie? I’m not completely familiar. I don’t follow any big political content (I’ve seen hasan clips on youtube and like liberal stuff like dean on tiktok). I try to avoid being parasocial. It sucks bcos I didn’t know Andrew Callaghan was a sex pest or whatever bcos I was really into his on the ground independent reporting. I also have never read any theory. I’m not a particularly educated person- certainly lightyears ahead of the average American citizen just by merit that I did “gifted kid good” in k-12 and took some college courses.
I don’t know that all marxist leninists are tankies. Idrc much. Are you all authoritarian? If so, I do think I understand why mls would think a state authority (ran by the people) is good or at least can be good, but I also think a lot of them are inclined to be intellectually dishonest when it suits them. Me, too, sometimes.
I use tankie, personally, more often to refer explicitly to authoritarian communists who are willing to overlook atrocities committed by “their side”.
I understand it could be applied to any authoritarian communist, however, but I really don’t know that it would be fair to call you ALL tankies.
However, some people (Cowbee, for example) do like to intentionally conflate being a “tankie” with being a communist- which is CERTAINLY not true. It is debatable whether anarchocommunism is feasible, not debateable whether its adherents exist. So you can definitely be a communist and not a tankie.
Oh, we can’t “hold China accountable”? We can’t start a people’s movement to hold the bad actors accountable? Huh. Almost seems like that’s a giant fucking issue. The people have no means of holding the government accountable?
I’m not saying doing anti-China propaganda has a prerequisite of me hating China. I prettttty clearly laid out to you what propaganda is. You keep saying “I don’t know, what’s propaganda, what distinguishes it from political messaging that isn’t propaganda”. And then I told you. And then you said “yeah, guess we disagree, I don’t understand the difference.”
I’ll repeat it for you.
Target - propaganda has a target audience. It is aimed at specific people or demographics of people, or in specific locations where it will reach specific people or demographics of people.
Intention - This is done with specific intention to spread a particular political message.
Means of transmission: Who is being reached, how, how many.
A comment in a thread? Not propaganda. A singular conversation? Not propaganda. A post which creates the thread, generates attention, and is the first/main thing most people will see? Propaganda. A pattern of conversations with intention to spread a particular message? PropandaZ
I hope this is a nice conversation and you’re not frustrated; it’s nice for me!
inside
I don’t disagree it shouldn’t be an echo chamber; I’m glad you’re here (not that I have or should have any say in the use of the space!). Definitely not “inside” though. When I say “inside” I mean within a democratic centralist organization with some kind of political discipline. Organizations I’ve been part of would, from time to time, task members with researching and creating a report on AES countries, and then presenting their report internally to help develop well-considered positions on them. That’s the level of “internal” that I mean! Like…among people who trust each other, and only those people.
strategic criticism
If you mean that “strategic criticism” winds up just being “no criticism” I think that may be a fair critique of a lot of ML orgs.
Theory
Obviously the importance of theory is something people disagree about heatedly but to me, resistance to imperialism in the imperialist countries is so minimal that I’m happy to see a wide variety of tactics and let what happens happen. I got my theories but I ain’t gonna go out of my way to criticize someone else’s (hell, I was general Secretary of an IWW branch for several years…Marxist friends joke thay of course the anarchists made the Marxist be the organized one)
authoritarianism
When it comes to the word authoritarianism, I think a lot of Marxists have the same knee-jerk traction, which is to turn to Engels’ On Authority. Not for no reason, I think he makes a good point:
But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists.
So am I authoritarian? I mean I guess so, in that I believe in revolution. I believe “authoritarian means” may be appropriate. I don’t think any MLs see authoritarian means as a desirable feature in and of themselves. I think every ML wants to see them discarded as soon as they are no longer necessary. I think reasonable people can disagree about what that looks like, obviously…but that’s a difference of degree, not of kind, right? At least I would see it that way.
Big agree that intellectual dishonesty is bad. We should all think and speak and work as clearly as we can. Insofar as MLs (or anyone else for that matter) think unscientifically (worshiping books, class reductionism, etc), that’s bad!
I think some people can hold China accountable; Chinese people! When I say “we can’t hold them accountable” I mean “the internet.” (Of course I think people in the CPC have the most power and greatest obligation to hold the government accountable, but I understand skepticism about that, obviously. I don’t think that skepticism is merely a result of western propaganda or something. I worry about that too; they clearly don’t do a stellar job lol).
propaganda
You said your categories but not what you meant by them, just that they are important factors for you. So having a target audience makes something more likely to be propaganda, as does intention to spread a political message, as does the actual effectiveness of reaching people? That’s all fine; I don’t think these really help us come to agreement on what is or isn’t propaganda. Like…it looks to me like your messages in this thread have a target audience (tankies and/or potential tankies), they intend to carry a political message (comparing china and the us like this let’s China off the hook for its own evils)…maybe they don’t reach many people (maybe even just one?). But in the scheme of things I don’t think that factor particularly weighs in favor of anything on Lemmy being propaganda lol; way too puny for reaching any substantial number of people (And fwiw I would say the same thing about my own messages).
“Tankie” is just a pejorative for communists, used against those with views common to communists. No socialist state is perfect, of course, but many preconceived notions about socialist states are flat out wrong, so communists get called “tankies” for giving a more accurate picture.
No, again, you are intentionally trying to mislead readers into believing something false to be true. Not all communists are tankies, and whenever we call you tankies, it’s not because you’re communist.
Idk, maybe you should just use fucking google like an adult and understand that it is aimed at auth communists and that people using it to target nonauth communists is such an incredibly small number that it’s not even worth noting. The experience you are describing is within a vacuum of leftist infighting where liberals sometimes poke their head in to chime in with stupid fuck opinions. Obviously some stupid liberal fuck is going to see the criticism a genuine leftist levied at a genuine auth communist and not understand what the insult means.
Wow why do you feel the need to be so aggressive. I’m simply pointing out that no matter what Google tells you in reality it’s simply used as a slur leftists who don’t tow the anti-communist line right. If you don’t tow the anti-communist line just right it doesn’t matter what you are you will be called a tankie.
Anarchists aren’t communists in the sense that they aren’t advocating for Marxist communism. When one hears “communist,” they think “soviet union,” not Kropotkin. Anarchism and communism are entirely different things with different goals and methods.
Anarchism is primarily about communalization of production and distribution, while Marxism is primarily about collectivization of production and distribution.
When I say “communalization,” I mean anarchists propose horizontalist, decentralized cells, similar to early humanity’s cooperative production but with more interconnection and modern tech. When I say collectivization, I mean the unification of all of humanity into one system, where production and distribution is planned collectively to satisfy the needs of everyone as best as possible.
For anarchists, collectivized society still seems to retain the state, as some anarchists conflate administration with the state as it represents a hierarchy. For Marxists, this focus on communalism creates inter-cell class distinctions, as each cell only truly owns their own means of production, giving rise to class distinctions and thus states in the future.
For Marxists, socialism must have a state, a state can only wither with respect to how far along it has come in collectivizing production and therefore eliminating class. All states are authoritarian, but we cannot get rid of the state without erasing the foundations of the state: class society, and to do so we must collectivize production and distribution globally. Socialist states, where the working class wields its authority against capitalists and fascists, are the means by which this collectivization can actually happen, and are fully in-line with Marx’s beliefs. Communism as a stateless, classless, moneyless society is only possible post-socialism.
Abolishing the state overnight would not create the kind of society Marxists advocate for advancing towards, and if anything, would result in the resumption of competition and the resurgance of capitalism if Marx and Engels predictions are correct.
None of this was specific to Marxism-Leninism, but Marxism in general.
Okay, that was great and informative, but doesn’t disprove my point. Those people still identify as communist and that’s just as valid as your self identification as communist. The difference is still in the nature of it being authoritative, which is what gets you called tankie, not the communist bit. If you want to stop all communists from getting labeled as tankie, then stop identifying the two things as being interchangeable, especially when they aren’t interchangeable and the people using them are telling you exactly how they aren’t interchangeable.
When I said “tankie is a pejorative for communist,” I meant communist in the way most people think of the term. If you want to call anarchists communists, even if I think that is more confusing than clarifying due to the dramatic differences in communalization vs. Collectivization, then I’ll restate it for you: “tankie is a pejorative for Marxist,” then. While I have seen anarchists get called “tankie” before, it’s overwhelmingly used against Marxists, and when the average person hears communist they think of Marxism, not anarchism.
Tankie is a pejorative for authoritarian communists.
This isn’t inside the group? It might be publicly viewable, but it’s still .ml. This is .ml territory. It specifically shouldn’t be an echo chamber.
I understand what you’re saying, but this is the in group.
I don’t think it’s full of yourself at all to consider time and place when being critical, but I think also that this whole idea of “strategic criticism”, simply put, looks- no, is- incredibly dishonest.
Is bad empanada a tankie? I’m not completely familiar. I don’t follow any big political content (I’ve seen hasan clips on youtube and like liberal stuff like dean on tiktok). I try to avoid being parasocial. It sucks bcos I didn’t know Andrew Callaghan was a sex pest or whatever bcos I was really into his on the ground independent reporting. I also have never read any theory. I’m not a particularly educated person- certainly lightyears ahead of the average American citizen just by merit that I did “gifted kid good” in k-12 and took some college courses.
I don’t know that all marxist leninists are tankies. Idrc much. Are you all authoritarian? If so, I do think I understand why mls would think a state authority (ran by the people) is good or at least can be good, but I also think a lot of them are inclined to be intellectually dishonest when it suits them. Me, too, sometimes.
I use tankie, personally, more often to refer explicitly to authoritarian communists who are willing to overlook atrocities committed by “their side”.
I understand it could be applied to any authoritarian communist, however, but I really don’t know that it would be fair to call you ALL tankies.
However, some people (Cowbee, for example) do like to intentionally conflate being a “tankie” with being a communist- which is CERTAINLY not true. It is debatable whether anarchocommunism is feasible, not debateable whether its adherents exist. So you can definitely be a communist and not a tankie.
Oh, we can’t “hold China accountable”? We can’t start a people’s movement to hold the bad actors accountable? Huh. Almost seems like that’s a giant fucking issue. The people have no means of holding the government accountable?
I’m not saying doing anti-China propaganda has a prerequisite of me hating China. I prettttty clearly laid out to you what propaganda is. You keep saying “I don’t know, what’s propaganda, what distinguishes it from political messaging that isn’t propaganda”. And then I told you. And then you said “yeah, guess we disagree, I don’t understand the difference.”
I’ll repeat it for you.
Target - propaganda has a target audience. It is aimed at specific people or demographics of people, or in specific locations where it will reach specific people or demographics of people.
Intention - This is done with specific intention to spread a particular political message.
Means of transmission: Who is being reached, how, how many.
A comment in a thread? Not propaganda. A singular conversation? Not propaganda. A post which creates the thread, generates attention, and is the first/main thing most people will see? Propaganda. A pattern of conversations with intention to spread a particular message? PropandaZ
I hope this is a nice conversation and you’re not frustrated; it’s nice for me!
I don’t disagree it shouldn’t be an echo chamber; I’m glad you’re here (not that I have or should have any say in the use of the space!). Definitely not “inside” though. When I say “inside” I mean within a democratic centralist organization with some kind of political discipline. Organizations I’ve been part of would, from time to time, task members with researching and creating a report on AES countries, and then presenting their report internally to help develop well-considered positions on them. That’s the level of “internal” that I mean! Like…among people who trust each other, and only those people.
If you mean that “strategic criticism” winds up just being “no criticism” I think that may be a fair critique of a lot of ML orgs.
Obviously the importance of theory is something people disagree about heatedly but to me, resistance to imperialism in the imperialist countries is so minimal that I’m happy to see a wide variety of tactics and let what happens happen. I got my theories but I ain’t gonna go out of my way to criticize someone else’s (hell, I was general Secretary of an IWW branch for several years…Marxist friends joke thay of course the anarchists made the Marxist be the organized one)
When it comes to the word authoritarianism, I think a lot of Marxists have the same knee-jerk traction, which is to turn to Engels’ On Authority. Not for no reason, I think he makes a good point:
So am I authoritarian? I mean I guess so, in that I believe in revolution. I believe “authoritarian means” may be appropriate. I don’t think any MLs see authoritarian means as a desirable feature in and of themselves. I think every ML wants to see them discarded as soon as they are no longer necessary. I think reasonable people can disagree about what that looks like, obviously…but that’s a difference of degree, not of kind, right? At least I would see it that way.
Big agree that intellectual dishonesty is bad. We should all think and speak and work as clearly as we can. Insofar as MLs (or anyone else for that matter) think unscientifically (worshiping books, class reductionism, etc), that’s bad!
I think some people can hold China accountable; Chinese people! When I say “we can’t hold them accountable” I mean “the internet.” (Of course I think people in the CPC have the most power and greatest obligation to hold the government accountable, but I understand skepticism about that, obviously. I don’t think that skepticism is merely a result of western propaganda or something. I worry about that too; they clearly don’t do a stellar job lol).
You said your categories but not what you meant by them, just that they are important factors for you. So having a target audience makes something more likely to be propaganda, as does intention to spread a political message, as does the actual effectiveness of reaching people? That’s all fine; I don’t think these really help us come to agreement on what is or isn’t propaganda. Like…it looks to me like your messages in this thread have a target audience (tankies and/or potential tankies), they intend to carry a political message (comparing china and the us like this let’s China off the hook for its own evils)…maybe they don’t reach many people (maybe even just one?). But in the scheme of things I don’t think that factor particularly weighs in favor of anything on Lemmy being propaganda lol; way too puny for reaching any substantial number of people (And fwiw I would say the same thing about my own messages).
“Tankie” is just a pejorative for communists, used against those with views common to communists. No socialist state is perfect, of course, but many preconceived notions about socialist states are flat out wrong, so communists get called “tankies” for giving a more accurate picture.
No, again, you are intentionally trying to mislead readers into believing something false to be true. Not all communists are tankies, and whenever we call you tankies, it’s not because you’re communist.
Can you give some examples of “non-tankie” communists?
😭😭 literally anyone who would call themself an anarchocommunist for starters. Let’s not play dumb, shall we?
I’ve seen anarchists like Diva get called tankies for not towing the anti-communist line hard enough though, so it seems you’ve been misinformed.
Idk, maybe you should just use fucking google like an adult and understand that it is aimed at auth communists and that people using it to target nonauth communists is such an incredibly small number that it’s not even worth noting. The experience you are describing is within a vacuum of leftist infighting where liberals sometimes poke their head in to chime in with stupid fuck opinions. Obviously some stupid liberal fuck is going to see the criticism a genuine leftist levied at a genuine auth communist and not understand what the insult means.
Wow why do you feel the need to be so aggressive. I’m simply pointing out that no matter what Google tells you in reality it’s simply used as a slur leftists who don’t tow the anti-communist line right. If you don’t tow the anti-communist line just right it doesn’t matter what you are you will be called a tankie.
I feel the need to get aggressive because I don’t need to hear this drivel you’re pushing. A slur bro? Everything is a slur now? Grow the fuck up.
I would call myself an anarchocommunist, guess I’m not a tankie then?
Whoa! Exactly!
Lol. I’ll make sure to direct the endless hoard of shitlibs that call me one to you
Genuinely, do it
Anarchists aren’t communists in the sense that they aren’t advocating for Marxist communism. When one hears “communist,” they think “soviet union,” not Kropotkin. Anarchism and communism are entirely different things with different goals and methods.
Anarchism is primarily about communalization of production and distribution, while Marxism is primarily about collectivization of production and distribution.
When I say “communalization,” I mean anarchists propose horizontalist, decentralized cells, similar to early humanity’s cooperative production but with more interconnection and modern tech. When I say collectivization, I mean the unification of all of humanity into one system, where production and distribution is planned collectively to satisfy the needs of everyone as best as possible.
For anarchists, collectivized society still seems to retain the state, as some anarchists conflate administration with the state as it represents a hierarchy. For Marxists, this focus on communalism creates inter-cell class distinctions, as each cell only truly owns their own means of production, giving rise to class distinctions and thus states in the future.
For Marxists, socialism must have a state, a state can only wither with respect to how far along it has come in collectivizing production and therefore eliminating class. All states are authoritarian, but we cannot get rid of the state without erasing the foundations of the state: class society, and to do so we must collectivize production and distribution globally. Socialist states, where the working class wields its authority against capitalists and fascists, are the means by which this collectivization can actually happen, and are fully in-line with Marx’s beliefs. Communism as a stateless, classless, moneyless society is only possible post-socialism.
Abolishing the state overnight would not create the kind of society Marxists advocate for advancing towards, and if anything, would result in the resumption of competition and the resurgance of capitalism if Marx and Engels predictions are correct.
None of this was specific to Marxism-Leninism, but Marxism in general.
Okay, that was great and informative, but doesn’t disprove my point. Those people still identify as communist and that’s just as valid as your self identification as communist. The difference is still in the nature of it being authoritative, which is what gets you called tankie, not the communist bit. If you want to stop all communists from getting labeled as tankie, then stop identifying the two things as being interchangeable, especially when they aren’t interchangeable and the people using them are telling you exactly how they aren’t interchangeable.
When I said “tankie is a pejorative for communist,” I meant communist in the way most people think of the term. If you want to call anarchists communists, even if I think that is more confusing than clarifying due to the dramatic differences in communalization vs. Collectivization, then I’ll restate it for you: “tankie is a pejorative for Marxist,” then. While I have seen anarchists get called “tankie” before, it’s overwhelmingly used against Marxists, and when the average person hears communist they think of Marxism, not anarchism.