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this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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Define tankie for me? It's somewhat lost all meaning given that the Ukrainian government is calling the US government tankies now. This is a serious question for the record, I can't really say whether I am your definition of tankie or not without knowing it given that the definition seems to change for everyone.
Also since this is going to be political and we both live in the same country (I moderate /r/greenandpleasant), did you vote Corbyn or are you a tory?
Enclosure of the commons is 100% taught in the UK at GCSE level as part of the curriculum: https://www.tutor2u.net/history/reference/enclosure-elizabethan-england
Tankie is anyone that supports Lenin or anything more authoritarian marxist than that.
I didn't vote for Corbyn, because I wasn't old enough to vote at the time. (Was there even a general election at that time? I don't remember). It's a stupid question to ask given he hasn't been the leader of the labour party for years at this point.
I have never voted conservative. I think I voted green in the last election I voted in but don't remember. Didn't get to vote in the last local one as I was busy and forgot.
I never did history GCSE and I don't think most people did. You have to choose between that and other options like Geography so not everyone will be taught it.
So are you against the RMT railroad strikes because Mick Lynch publicly calls James Connolly his political hero and is an obvious marxist-leninist ?
Are you against Jeremy Corbyn, because he defends the Soviet Union and always has, and because he also promotes the Black Panthers who defended north korea (if you look in the corner of the video around 2:00 there's even a cute little soviet cccp statue).
Are you against Diane Abbott, because she's publicly defended Mao on national television.
Are you against John Mcdonnell who has said his job is to overthrow capitalism on the BBC, probably because he's quoted Mao and read his little red book in parliament?
Are you against the Durham miners gala? Where they march with communist banners and have done so for 137 years?
You have spent too much time in american anti-communist spaces where their brains are riddled with the historical legacy of two red scares, and you've spent absolutely zero time in British leftist spaces. You have riddled your mind with american brainworms against socialism and I implore you to join a union and actually go out and organise.
Hahahahahahahaha
Why on earth would you just assume something like that? That's completely ridiculous.
I actually became disillusioned from MLs partly by joining a Trotskyist organisation founded in England. Specifically Socialist Appeal which are part of the IMT.
Note I originally said I dislike Lenin and people who came after that (mao, stalin, trotsky, etc.). This is because I have seen what they do to other Communists they disagree with, and what China still does to real Marxists and Anarchists. Lookup Kronstadt if you want an example.
MLs only care about their specific subset of Marixst ideology and if you disagree you are imprisoned or killed. That's not communism, that's a cult!
I would hope that people like Jeremy Corbin are just mislead on the behavior of some of these people, and aren't up for a authoritarian "socialist" regime. Not that he is really relevant anymore anyway as I stated previously.
As for Marx I actually think he said some intelligent things for his time. That being said like his descendants he is too sectarian. I also think anarchists have some interesting ideas. That being said they all died long ago. I don't think it's healthy or progressive to hang on their every word as absolute truth - that's called religion. Religion should have no place in politics.
The jokers that don't actually do any organising at all and do nothing but show up to everyone else's events, put up their branding to make it look like they're involved and sell papers? Those ones? The ones literally everyone in the UK left hates because they contribute absolutely fucking nothing while larping and piggybacking on actual organising others do?
Not surprised then.
Kinda bizarre for you to be a trot and hate Lenin though. Trots love Lenin. Trotskyism isn't anti-authority either, in fact Trotsky's book literally says he would have done everything the Soviet Union did do. Have you actually read any Trotsky?
What? Anarchism is very alive in the UK they just don't participate electorally.
Uhh.. You realise it was Trotsky that wiped out the anarchists in the Kronstady Rebellion right?
A lot of this sounds a lot like you're making stuff up, only half know certain details, and are generally winging it through this conversation. It's ok to say you don't know something.
You didn't actually answer my question about the demsocs above. Are they all tankies to you?
You've completely misinterpreted half of what I said. I am not a Trotskyist! I left that group because it was all bullshit.
That's why I am against Leninists.
I never said Anarchists died long ago. I am trying to say people like Marx, Krapotkin, and Bakunin died long ago.
Some of them aren't relevant and the other half I have never heard of. So I am not gonna render and option there.
Right so you're right wing, a liberal and an anti-socialist then. Got it. I wish we'd gotten to this point 10 messages ago it would have wasted a lot less time.
What? I hate the right wing! The fuck is wrong with you?
I want socialism, I just don't support Leninists. I also think we need new ideas in the left wing rather than relying on people that died a 100 years ago. Reading Marx or Krapotkin is great but we can't just rely on them, we need to accept that they are limited by the time they lived in. Plus who actually likes reading old English?
I actually like the idea of market socialism and workplace democracy. It's the closest thing to a real economic model for socialism I have seen. I believe anarcho-syndicalism is similar to this but I am not really sure, my understanding of anarchism is fairly limited.
You really need to stop assuming that anyone who isn't an ML is a right wing person. I also don't get why you jump to random conclusions and misinterpret everything I say. It's like you want me to fit in one of several boxes in your head because it's easier to deal with that than actually talk to a real person.
I didn't. I very clearly laid out a bunch of lukewarm socdems who hold positions you would call them tankies for and go about your usual wrecker shit.
Your views on what socialism actually is are a mess, you have winged it through half the conversation because you barely understand the basic theory, and you very obviously don't understand what the difference is between several of these groups.
"Gravity is an old theory and we should accept that it is just something Newton came up with nearly 400 years ago and move on from it." Clown shit.
I think anyone who supports Stalin and Stalinism is an idiot at best. If you don't agree with me I really don't know what to tell you. I can understand Jeremy Corbin saying that comparing him to hitler is unnecessary as they aren't on the same level. Saying someone isn't as bad as Hitler isn't the same as saying you support them.
Okay what do you think socialism is?
As far as I am concerned it's where the workers control the means of production. If the government controls the means of production that government needs to be controlled by the people or else it isn't socialism!
That's why the USSR under Stalin can barley be called socialist, because Stalin had an outsized influence on the government. He could get you killed for disagreement with him.
You're really gonna argue physics with me?
Newton had great ideas, just like Marx had great ideas. Newton's equations though have largely been replaced by Einstein and his theory of relativity. It gives more precise understanding of the way forces and gravity work than Newton could dream of. Likewise Einstein was wrong about quantum physics and things like the behavior of light.
In a science we don't just sit on our laurels and blindly repeat past scientists. We constantly test, refine, improve, or reject old ideas.
We should be treating Marx like we treat Newton or Einstein. Had some great ideas, some are still true, some are close but need further refinement, some are just straight up wrong. That's the difference between an academic and a religious person.
Which of his books have you read? I suspect none. Why exactly do you feel authoritative on the subject without any actual knowledge?
Ok, but you called SWCC borderline fascism while stating you like titoism, despite both having more or less identical political and economic structures. The main difference being inclusion of MZT in the Chinese strain while that isn't present in Tito's strain. You kinda just sidestepped this when I brought it up and have avoided it ever since. What do you actually know about the fundamental structure of their electoral system? Why do you call it borderline fascism?
Yes and that's what marxism also does, which is why marxist-leninist theory today is not the same as it was when marx wrote his ideas, or when lenin contributed, or stalin, or mao, or tito, etc etc. You are once again demonstrating an extremely poor knowledge of the subject matter, marxism is a science, and marxist-leninists are not dogmatic.
You are literally describing the marxist-leninist approach. If what you said about being a member of Socialist Appeal is true then I suspect your experience was cult-like and dogmatic, and this probably coloured all of your views. It probably also doesn't help that they don't actually do anything of value except grift off of everyone else's work. (not true of some of the other international branches of socialist appeal, but certainly true of the UK one).
I wish you were a little more honest about what you do and don't know, and less of your responses felt like winging it on certain topics while hoping someone who has actually read the material won't notice. It would make it much easier to root out what the problem here is, and why you seem to hate literally every socialist that exists except the liberals that wear the aesthetics while spending all of their time engaged in nothing but anti-socialism.
I have never heard if Tito or Tionism. How could I have argued about someone I have never heard of. Maybe I described his ideas without calling him by name?
What SWCC? Any searches I ran came up with organisations not related to socialist politics.
I think you might be right about socialist appeal. People have actually called them a cult before. It wouldn't surprise me if they have turned people off marxism before. The issue is they are probably the best at recruiting young people, they were the only polticial organization to show up at my university for instance. They also have posters everywhere.
Liberals? What do you mean by liberals? If you mean the American party then I don't like them either, though they do beat the republicans. If you mean libertarian then all anarchists and even some marxists are libertarian. So are right wing capitalists and some people in between. It's a very broad term that basically equates to freedom of speech and some other freedoms.
I hope you don't actually support Stalin though. From what I have been told what he wrote in his theory is somewhat reasonable, but dosen't at all match what he actually did. The writing was mere propaganda. I have also spoken to people from ex-soviet countries, they basically all hate the USSR. It's what caused a friend if mine to stop being a Marixst-Leninist.
You are right that I haven't read much theory. Theory is incredibly boring especially given it's mostly in older English and hard to understand. Poltitics isn't something I plan to do for a living - at least not any time soon.
I have yet to see any evidence that marxism is a science. I also don't believe modern capitalist economics is a science either. I have a very high bar for these things. When has marxism done controlled studies of different economic or polticial systems? If you have never done a controlled study then your not a science. Maybe there are some studies on this that I don't know about. I would love if you could show me some.
Turns out I have you mixed up with someone else. Sorry.
This actually makes a complete mess of the conversation for me because I'm not sure entirely what I said that was responding to you correctly and what I mixed up with the user who brought up liking Tito.
Let's throw away the part where I called you a liberal, and some of the other accusations of not knowing what you're talking about. This was mostly caused by the other conversation I was having.
Hmm 70% good, 30% bad. There's a lot of historical context that needs to be considered, 2 world wars, 2 revolutions and a civil war supported by all the capitalist powers of the world. Also the fact that they were doing something nobody had ever done before, with no idea of the "what not to do" things. Mistakes were absolutely made. But at the same time you have to discard the rampant propaganda that portrays this man as a cartoon villain, the trots are absurd for this and the capitalists are obviously unreliable because they want him to be a villain for the fact it also makes socialism a villain. The reality is much more balanced. Winston Churchill is a bigger monster than he ever was and I don't think you view him through the weird "evil monster" lens created by the narrative and environment we have surrounding this man.
The ones that were under 10 at the end of the USSR should be discarded as irrelevant. They claim to have lived it but were too young to remember and grew up during a capitalist storm of anti-socialism. The capitalists who were disempowered (and their descendants) should also be carefully disregarded, such as the Cuban gusanos of Florida who are all basically descendants of the bourgeoisie who lost their businesses and land when the communists took power. Those that should be listened to? Anyone that was 20+ at the time the USSR disbanded, and the genuine working class rather than migrant bourgeoise elements
I strongly recommend interview videos like these ones, which include the bad and the good, to see and build an idea from the people who actually lived it. https://youtu.be/ui11x8vLQFI https://youtu.be/mGUAIwlVR9A https://youtu.be/rfrtr9hAFYs
You've not read Engels then? Socialism: Utopian and Scientific forms the basis of explaining this, and compares it to utopian socialism which is not at all scientific, mainly idealism.
A science is just a body of theories grounded in a materialist analysis that produces predictable and reproducible results. When it is not predictable or reproducible other theories are then evaluated, and so on and so forth.
There are three main parts to Marxian methodology which are interdependent on each other. These are the Labour Theory of Value, Materialist Conception of History and the theory of class struggle. The Labour Theory of value sets out the economic laws which regulate commodity production under capitalism. The Materialist Conception of History places the productive relationships of commodity production, wage labour and capital in the setting of history. And class struggle provides the setting for explaining social evolution in terms of a revolutionary process. All of this are analysed in a materialist rather than idealist way, and if/when results are not predictable we either evaluate whether the material conditions have been incorrectly analysed or whether the theory itself needs adjusting. We reject dogmatism and constantly reassess and adjust as things have changed historically, Marx existed pre-industrial revolution afterall.
Your experience with Socialist Appeal and the manner in which they treat Trotsky as a god and Stalin as a demon is itself incredibly dogmatic bordering on cultlike religious attitudes. We don't. We take the bad, we take the good, and we aim to analyse things clinically without moralising.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/ui11x8vLQFI
https://piped.video/mGUAIwlVR9A
https://piped.video/rfrtr9hAFYs
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Huh this is neat. Nitter for youtube? I can see good reason for this with them banning people who use adblockers (although I added a script that gets around it on like day 1 lol).