You must log in or register to comment.
Sure I’m a NATO apologist: I’m sorry NATO is necessary because Russia is such an antagonistic fuckwad.
Russia had a choice: play by the west’s rules, or play second fiddle to China. They chose the latter unfortunately for them and for us.
That’s just what happens when you go from tsarist serfdom state to a communist peasant regime to a “democractic” dictatorship while constantly greasing the gears with vodka and corruption.
Hey at least the alcoholism has gotten a little bit better, right?
lol before I realized what ml meant I made a comment that I thought that communism had never happened yet on earth but that it could one day. You wouldn’t believe the rage and attack from dozens of people who were inconsolable.
They also got mad when I said that there are only a few actual leftists in government in the US. Turns out that everyone is one, dontchano
“Read theory and you would know what I’m talking about.”
That is a common thought terminating response to any critique of communism. That being said, I learned to flip the table. Tankies talk about theory, so mention empirical and practical results. They tend to either shut down or ban you.
…what does the ml stand for?
Area code for Mali… and I assume shorthand for Marxist Leninist.
I see, thanks
Marxism Leninism
They are the original Lemmy devs which is why I joined there. Horrible mistake, reactionary idiots who project their insecurity on others while thinking that they are the only ones who figured out the secret sauce. Pretty much exactly sovereign citizen level quackery.
look up the word “tankies” to get an idea
Ah, I see
To be fair, how do westerners not treat capitalism and democracy with exactly the same weight? I think both sides would have good reason to argue that neither side has figured out the secret sauce as you say.
Not a huge stretch to think both the US and Russia treat their citizens poorly, and neither is a model for the rest of the world.
Because while both are shit, under capitalism I can at least say it’s shit without fear of incarceration or reeducation.
Russia is also capitalist, and I think you meant to say “democracy” instead of “capitalism” there since authoritarian capitalism is definitely a thing (see Russia and China).
What has capitalism got to do with freedom of speech?
Removed by mod
I think the pedantry is warranted. A lot of people like to conflate capitalism and democracy.
What does Stalin have to do with freedom of speech, because tankies support authocrats and dictators worldwide, but especially are fans of Stalin.
What you talking about bossman?
Your first sentence is not wrong; as I understand Marx’s writing. Essentially it is not possible to go from agrarianism straight to communism without first building an industrial society. That’s how Russia / USSR, China etc don’t “technically” count.
I’m referring more to the fact that Marx envisioned the populace rising up. What really rose in places like Russia and China was a group of self appointed elites who were really just reactionaries.
Tankies get mad because they believe that their utopia already exists and everyone else is an idiot for not ascribing to the same.
That, again, is another reason why they are not really communist. “Workers of the world unite”
Exactly. My point at that time was to say that it can happen but had not yet.
From my (very limited) understanding of Marx and Engels I suggest your point is correct. I don’t understand how a full-fat, red flag waving comrade could come to any other conclusion… but then I have no dog in this fight and no emotional need to be correct.
I think that’s why you and I aren’t tankies, militant vegans, hard evangelicals, etc. It’s not important enough to worry about.
What really rose in places like Russia and China was a group of self appointed elites who were really just reactionaries.
Are you suggesting the Red Guard didn’t exist and the Long March didn’t happen?
self appointed
What does that mean?
I’ll start over:
Me: self appointed elites did this
You: oh so you’re saying that none of it happened?
It’s a non sequitur, it has nothing to do with the conversation.
Me: self appointed elites did this
Again, you really need to go back and read the history of the Chinese Revolution of you believe this. I might - at a bare minimum - crack open a copy of Fanshen or Life and Death in Shanghai. The idea that the Chinese Civil War and Cultural Revolution were waged by “elites” in any conceivable sense is flatly wrong. It is ahistorical to the point of being the opposite of truth. Like insisting George Washington was a First Nations native person or asserting the French Revolution was orchestrated by the Hapsburgs.
At its ugliest, Chinese revolutionaries were arresting, beating, and executing anyone who might vaguely be defined as “elite”. You were having people fight over whether parents should be executed for being landlords over their children. The opening scene of the Netflix “3 Body Problem” wasn’t all that far from the truth - college professors were, in fact, getting hauled out in front of student committees for adhering to the texts of English and German physicists. The very idea of “elitism” was what was on trial during the hottest years of the revolution.
It’s a non sequitur
You don’t know your history. You’re saying things that are flatly, broadly, and totally incoherent.
Your first sentence is not wrong; as I understand Marx’s writing. Essentially it is not possible to go from agrarianism straight to communism without first building an industrial society. That’s how Russia / USSR, China etc don’t “technically” count.
Don’t worry, Lenin et co said you could do it if you believed extra super hard and gave all the power to a small clique of intellectuals. Lenin, like Jesus and the Gospels, takes precedence over prior teachings.
That’s a good analogy. The mental gymnastics needed to be Marxist-Leninist is akin to believing both the old and new testaments are - essentially - about the same guy. I’m particularly thinking about New Economic Policy existing in a communist state. Wild.
[Overthrows the SRs for daring to say capitalism must come first to industrialize Russia]
[Implements capitalism to industrialize Russia]
For a minute I thought SRs was a speech-to-text mistake for “Tsars” and was super confused - but then it all made sense. Been a long time since I’ve talked about this stuff.
It’s not a STT mistake of the word Tsar? What is it?
Socialist Revolutionary Party. Two capital letters and one lower case is how it’s written. Go figure. They were in the mix of Russian politics in that era.
That’s how Russia / USSR, China etc don’t “technically” count.
The Lenin government did experiment with a direct transition to full communism, but found - as Marx predicted - that they didn’t enjoy the industrial surplus needed for a post scarcity society. So he rolled back to the New Economic Plan, which Stalin inherited. Stalin went full tilt on industrialization, which upset a lot of agricultural workers and ended with him putting down a revolt in his native Georgia and tendering his resignation as a result.
The party wouldn’t accept the resignation, so Stalin had to come back and win WW2 as a result. Russia avoided the fate of many of the Eastern Bloc states thanks to that rapid industrialization.
After the war standards of living surged, in large part thanks to the Communist model. The kind of communal lifestyle possible under pre-WW conditions wasn’t attractive anymore, so Russians kept industrializing over the next 40 years. And when they couldn’t match the US + Japan speed of development, they fell over in the attempt.
But to say they weren’t “doing Communism”… The quality of life in the Eastern Block improved remarkably quick and access to resources was broad based and egalitarian. The economy was centralized and planned. The proletariat dictated the political agenda.
Certainly, at the time, American economists could tell the difference between the US and Soviet systems, even if they doggedly insisted central banks making private loans was freedom while central committees allocating jobs and resources was tyranny.
It’s only after the USSR collapsed that we got an earful about “Not Real Communism”.
Thanks. I have no reason to doubt any of that. Just to clarify that by “technically” I meant that, as far as I could see, they were not necessarily dialectically-created(?) as per Karl (&Fred’s) original theories. It was more a view about the processes they used rather the outcomes they achieved.
they were not necessarily dialectically-created(?) as per Karl (&Fred’s) original theories
That’s where you can argue that Lenin and Marx ultimately diverged. Trotsky was more of a Marxist hardliner, who insisted Russia simply wasn’t ready for a Soviet state. Stalin felt differently and went so far as to have a bunch of his detractors exiled/killed to prove his point.
The Maoist Revolution in China took a substantially more Trotskyist approach, slow rolling reforms at a speed the majority of the public was willing to accept. Deng proved to be more long termist than Krushchev in his planning.
And I guess history has proven which method was wiser.
how dare you critize the regime conrade
The most recent intervention they could find that supports their argument happened OVER 30 YEARS AGO.
Lmao of course this place is ran by hardcore war crime apologist PugJesus who advocates for jailing Edward Snowden and Julian Assagne.
Link?
Sorry, but nothing in there even mentions jail, Assagne, or war crimes.
Why obama wont pardon edward snowden
What do you think it means to not pardon someone? It means jail.
In Snowden’s case not really. Him not getting pardoned just means he remains in exile. And I’m not even seeing anything in explicit support of that.
Tell me more about how October 7 was Legitimate Resistance™. God knows you can’t get it up unless civilians are getting murdered.
Boo fucking hoo, you were wrong and come crying here about “tankies”? You are the exact same, just on the opposite side of the political spectrum. Get some self awareness. NATO is a bunch of warmongers who managed to get Putin to do the greatest PR coup for them just as they were losing significance - and now they could be important because at this moment Russian regime is the greater evil. But instead they do fuck all in helping Ukraine to a decisive victor, proving again that those shitstains just want to prolongue the conflict to line the pockets of their buddies in the military industrial complex. Disgusting fucks, all of them!
You are a brainwashed propagandist with that comment. Good for them. Can you explain to me why the US and NATO did not intervene with the genocide in Georgia? Make that TWO genocides. Who did? How much territory did they take? You know that counts in your inaccurate figure just as an example.
Americans are too stupid for the Internet.
Look, NATO is bad, that’s why it’s absolutely necessary for anti-imperialism purposes that Russia invades its neighbors before they can get into NATO!
Gentle reminder that blocking the entire Lemmy.ml instance has made this place a lot less … tankie
Those… aren’t even mutually exclusive opinions? NATO can exist for more than one reason.
There is only one good opinion at any time, citizen. The correct opinion (my opinion) can change any time, but any different opinion is doubleplusungood.
No no no, they said “what about–,” so the argument is over.
