Nothing eliminates more nuance than viewing some of the broadest and most substantial social upheavals in world history through the lens of Great Man Theory. To write off the struggles and sacrifice of millions of people, their successes and their failures, and lay them at the feet of one man. To treat history like this is to believe that the vast majority of its participants are unthinking, uncritical beats of burden with a predisposition to subservience. (The same applies to contemporary “hate the government, not the people” discourse, in which we are to assume the majority of Chinese citizens are helpless, brainwashed victims of totalitarianism)
When you treat history like this, you open up a lot of convenient shortcuts for yourself. You can claim that the October revolution was a much needed intervention, but then drop it immediately after the honeymoon period is over with some hamstrung claim that Stalin was too stupid or too selfish to understand what Lenin was trying to accomplish, or maybe Lenin himself was too stupid to understand Marx and the whole project was doomed. Or that we would be living in fully automated luxury communism right now if Trotsky had taken power.
None of this discourse delves into the actual social or economic conditions involved, nor the theory and practices which emerged from the crucible of revolution. Most importantly, it never makes any attempt to LEARN from this history, so previous mistakes can be avoided, and so proven effective strategies can be developed further and incorporated into contemporary struggles. It is navel gazing bullshit which conveniently discards the whole thing. The only lesson you learn from this treatment of history is that revolution leads to dystopia and that we shouldn’t even bother. The takeaway we end up with is that the people who disintegrated the Third Reich and put the first humans into space were better off when they were a backwards feudal monarchy.
And today, among the English-speaking online left, any time somebody comes along and argues “You know what, maybe we shouldn’t stick the entire history of the USSR or the PRC into a furnace. There are some valuable lessons in here.” they get derided as a Tankie by some vote blue no matter who wacko.
I’m going to take this point in good faith, even though I disagree with it. The people that scream “tankie” often use the word in exactly the same meaningless way that the people who scream “woke” do, then they claim it has a specific meaning but clearly apply it very very broadly to basically anyone who is a marxist and waves a red flag.
But, since you suggest you’re willing to get into nuance. I’m going to throw reel off a few groups, people and countries. Would you mind telling me which ones you consider tankie and evil, vs which ones you consider good?
The Black Panthers
Fred Hampton
Huey Newton
Albert Einstein
Nelson Mandela
Che Guevara
Fidel Castro
Thomas Sankara
Chavez
Cuba
Venezuela
Bolivia
Vietnam
Laos
Nepal
Nicaragua
Angola
Kerala district of India (governed by the Communist Party of India)
It’s ok to not know one way or another too btw, I’m just interested in a “tankie” “not tankie” “never heard of them” response on each of them.
Saying tankie is tongue-in-cheek, or simply to upset the people that scream it constantly. I’m a marxist-leninist, formerly an anarchist. I would still be an anarchist if climate change weren’t putting a time limit on the need to get something done too. I decided that I could not sit by knowing hundreds of millions of people were going to die in 30 years (closer now tbh but it was a few years ago that I moved to a leninist toolkit now) while also knowing that anarchism was not equipped to generate the needed revolutions required to save any of those lives. Marxism-leninism and dem-cent parties on the other hand have a proven track record of creating revolution within that kind of timeframe.
I will probably return to anarchism when such timelimits are not in effect. It’s just not morally justifiable for me to sit around using a toolkit that’s not equipped for the time limit when we know what we know.
God this is so boring mate. It didn’t. Nobody likes Russia. Russia is a capitalist shit hole. The only takes that the left has which is used to claim we support Russia is that the war was caused by nato and that pouring weapons into does nothing to save any lives, on the contrary it just enriches the billionaires to the military industrial complex and vastly increases the number of deaths on both sides.
China on the other hand we have some nuanced takes on but because you all know absolutely nothing about it and behave like they’re animals incapable of independent thought and self-governance discussing anything with you ends up a case of bashing our heads against a wall because you don’t have real conversations about it. You don’t listen and don’t learn anything. You don’t even say the name of the party correctly (it’s cpc not ccp). If I told you 95% of Chinese citizens are happy with and support their government you’d claim I’m wrong and when I provide evidence for that you’d claim it’s only because of propaganda/information control and when I provide evidence that it’s not because of that you’d find some new deflection or topic to divert to. So what’s the point?
On the offchance you actually want that nuanced discussion we can have it but you need to start behaving more academic and stop talking like a terminally online reddit teenager. Come on.
Sounds like you struggle with nuance.
Tankies are a very specific subset of “the left”.
They support stalinist policies specifically.
Thats very narrow in comparison to a vague “the left”
ed. downvote me, idgaf. But maybe reply, discuss your position
Nothing eliminates more nuance than viewing some of the broadest and most substantial social upheavals in world history through the lens of Great Man Theory. To write off the struggles and sacrifice of millions of people, their successes and their failures, and lay them at the feet of one man. To treat history like this is to believe that the vast majority of its participants are unthinking, uncritical beats of burden with a predisposition to subservience. (The same applies to contemporary “hate the government, not the people” discourse, in which we are to assume the majority of Chinese citizens are helpless, brainwashed victims of totalitarianism)
When you treat history like this, you open up a lot of convenient shortcuts for yourself. You can claim that the October revolution was a much needed intervention, but then drop it immediately after the honeymoon period is over with some hamstrung claim that Stalin was too stupid or too selfish to understand what Lenin was trying to accomplish, or maybe Lenin himself was too stupid to understand Marx and the whole project was doomed. Or that we would be living in fully automated luxury communism right now if Trotsky had taken power.
None of this discourse delves into the actual social or economic conditions involved, nor the theory and practices which emerged from the crucible of revolution. Most importantly, it never makes any attempt to LEARN from this history, so previous mistakes can be avoided, and so proven effective strategies can be developed further and incorporated into contemporary struggles. It is navel gazing bullshit which conveniently discards the whole thing. The only lesson you learn from this treatment of history is that revolution leads to dystopia and that we shouldn’t even bother. The takeaway we end up with is that the people who disintegrated the Third Reich and put the first humans into space were better off when they were a backwards feudal monarchy.
And today, among the English-speaking online left, any time somebody comes along and argues “You know what, maybe we shouldn’t stick the entire history of the USSR or the PRC into a furnace. There are some valuable lessons in here.” they get derided as a Tankie by some vote blue no matter who wacko.
best reply in the thread
Why say “discuss your position” and then not actually engage in any discussion with people that take you up on that?
I’m going to take this point in good faith, even though I disagree with it. The people that scream “tankie” often use the word in exactly the same meaningless way that the people who scream “woke” do, then they claim it has a specific meaning but clearly apply it very very broadly to basically anyone who is a marxist and waves a red flag.
But, since you suggest you’re willing to get into nuance. I’m going to throw reel off a few groups, people and countries. Would you mind telling me which ones you consider tankie and evil, vs which ones you consider good?
The Black Panthers
Fred Hampton
Huey Newton
Albert Einstein
Nelson Mandela
Che Guevara
Fidel Castro
Thomas Sankara
Chavez
Cuba
Venezuela
Bolivia
Vietnam
Laos
Nepal
Nicaragua
Angola
Kerala district of India (governed by the Communist Party of India)
It’s ok to not know one way or another too btw, I’m just interested in a “tankie” “not tankie” “never heard of them” response on each of them.
People aren’t shouting “tankie” at you. You people are self identifying as tankies.
The shouting came before the self identifying.
Saying tankie is tongue-in-cheek, or simply to upset the people that scream it constantly. I’m a marxist-leninist, formerly an anarchist. I would still be an anarchist if climate change weren’t putting a time limit on the need to get something done too. I decided that I could not sit by knowing hundreds of millions of people were going to die in 30 years (closer now tbh but it was a few years ago that I moved to a leninist toolkit now) while also knowing that anarchism was not equipped to generate the needed revolutions required to save any of those lives. Marxism-leninism and dem-cent parties on the other hand have a proven track record of creating revolution within that kind of timeframe.
I will probably return to anarchism when such timelimits are not in effect. It’s just not morally justifiable for me to sit around using a toolkit that’s not equipped for the time limit when we know what we know.
Just a thought, maybe it came with the fawning over of Putin and the CCP?
God this is so boring mate. It didn’t. Nobody likes Russia. Russia is a capitalist shit hole. The only takes that the left has which is used to claim we support Russia is that the war was caused by nato and that pouring weapons into does nothing to save any lives, on the contrary it just enriches the billionaires to the military industrial complex and vastly increases the number of deaths on both sides.
China on the other hand we have some nuanced takes on but because you all know absolutely nothing about it and behave like they’re animals incapable of independent thought and self-governance discussing anything with you ends up a case of bashing our heads against a wall because you don’t have real conversations about it. You don’t listen and don’t learn anything. You don’t even say the name of the party correctly (it’s cpc not ccp). If I told you 95% of Chinese citizens are happy with and support their government you’d claim I’m wrong and when I provide evidence for that you’d claim it’s only because of propaganda/information control and when I provide evidence that it’s not because of that you’d find some new deflection or topic to divert to. So what’s the point?
On the offchance you actually want that nuanced discussion we can have it but you need to start behaving more academic and stop talking like a terminally online reddit teenager. Come on.