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I remember back when Hexbear had “no sectarianism” in their rules, but were actively tearing themselves apart internally over whether or not non-Vegans were “real leftists”.
You don’t ever have to worry about Tankies actually organizing. People like that don’t know how anything works well enough for that.
Thats why leftist unity consistently fails, still better then “libertarian” unity
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They’re not always that patient; sometimes they try to seize power before victory is assured. See: the Spanish Civil War.
I dare you to post this in .ml :P
Zero chance Pig isn’t banned from all of .ml
I don’t think I am, actually. Mostly because I haven’t posted there. I have no desire to. Let the tankies have their echo chamber, just so long as they stay out of decent communities.
Dang I figured you’d get an honorary ban haha
Replace tankies with religious fundamentalists (muslims/christian) it would be the same thing
This is kind of tangential, but I wish people would make distinction between Marxism and Leninism. Marx didn’t say shit about the vanguard party. Imo, we can reject Leninism without having to reject Marxism.
Also don’t waste your time arguing with me, because I am woefully uneducated and stupid, but I can only work with what I have, ya know?
I accidentally wandered into a lemmy.ml bit recently and said ML can be rejected just on the basis of consistently devolving into cults. The reply came back of “why do you not like Marxism?” as of that’s what I said.
Oh, and they removed that comment and banned me, but that’s just as well.
But he did write quite extensively on Lumpenproletariat.
vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged convicts, runaway galley slaves, swindlers, charlatans, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, procurers, brothel keepers, porters, intellectuals, organ grinders, rag-pickers, knife-grinders, tinkers, beggars; in short, the entirely undefined, disintegrating mass, thrown hither and yon, which the French call la bohème.
That is quite a few groups he considered subhuman, where half the ‘cleansing’ operations under communism have derived their theoretical excuses from.
The point of the Lumpenproletariat isn’t that they’re subhuman, it’s that they lack cohesiveness as a class or revolutionary potential.
Well - here’s the thing with “lacking revolutionary potential” and a dear-leader mindset… anyone dear leader deems lacking is labeled lumpen and thrown to the furthest gulag or has their rights removed and confined.
Eg in Stalinist Russia certain groups like the Roma, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Koreans or homosexuals were labeled as such wholesale.
In modern times the Uighurs need reeducation etc.
I’d argue none of those were people’s revolution, and in none of those cases did the people seize the means of production. All of those cases were vanguard parties claiming to act on behalf of the people, which I view as a wildly different thing than the people themselves.
I don’t see those as communist because they immediately reject the Marxist notions of rule of the people. Vanguard parties are inherently not of the people, as I see it.
And again, I am stupid and uneducated, so you’re probably gonna have to talk slow and avoid jargon for me to get it.
I mean while i agree with the premise of that argument this sounds a lot like ‘no true Scotsman’… which instances do you see as being in the true spirit then?
I’ll jump in. European Democracies that are taking care of their people are the furthest along.
Because that’s how you get to true communism.
The pitfalls on the path are the same that any democracy faces. Mostly authoritarians seizing power.
Vanguard parties are also a threat on the path to communism. Lenin participated in one election, and lost. So he seized power and created a new feudalist state, and then called it communism.
None? I dunno. Maybe it is a bit of the Scotsman fallacy or maybe I’m just too idealistic, but I don’t have an on-hand example of a true people’s revolution led only by the people yet. But I assume a lot of that is due to overwhelming power of capitalism and their incentive to immediately quell anything that resembles it, whether through violence, or compromise, or allures of wealth, more than the impractically of the thing happening.
I don’t have all the answers here, and I think it seems there needs to be some kind of catalyst to unify the working class in such a massive way, and while I’m uncertain what that catalyst is I don’t vibe with the “ends justify the means” approach of a vanguard that seems to me so antithetical to communal nature of my limited understanding of Marxism. I keep trying to understand it but it always comes back to me to a “they don’t know what’s best for them” mentality and then what’s the fucking point, we’re just trading one subjugator for another.
Thing is, Marx didn’t have a Dear Leader mindset. Far from it. He is, in fact, focused on broad, sweeping, materialist strokes, something that has not survived quite as well as the more general ideas he advocated. When Marx talks about lacking revolutionary potential, he simply means that they aren’t going to be the instrumental class pushing the revolution forward. Peasants also lack revolutionary potential by Marx’s analysis, but few Marxists, if any, would advocate murdering them en masse.
By contrast, Marxism-Leninism thinks peasants DO have revolutionary potential, but tends to kill them en masse.
First I think what he wrote goes beyond them lacking the revolutionary potential and specifically being an active obstacle - I think the words were “significant counterrevolutionary force” and “more likely to sell out to reactionary intrigues”.
But either way, to be honest I don’t see a functional difference between Marx’s beliefs and every implementation of the communist manifesto known to date.
That is, it doesn’t matter what he wrote or believed in his heart of hearts if it can be interpreted in such broad strokes as to allow the implementation of the dear leader mindset with his writings as a touchstone without fail.
And it doesn’t matter what he thought should be done with the lumpen elements if he thought of them as less than, disgusting, parasitical, and even objecting to the cause, (his writings certainly show disgust in my opinion) - true believers to the cause will see them (as they have) as obstacles and will do whatever needs to be done to remove them - as they have.
The difference between what he wrote and every communist regime that has existed, is the ones that existed all had Dear Leaders. He didn’t call for that. So they straight up failed at the jump.
They attempt to approach communism as a flash, a sudden struggle for control and then all will be well. There needs to be groundwork laid, there needs to be a community will to push things in that direction. You cannot arrive at a true communist state through violent revolution. It will inevitably devolve into an authoritarian dictatorship. I feel like you have to progress through some levels of democracy and socialism to arrive at such a goal, and it must be done with the consent and agreement of most people.
You cannot arrive at a true communist state through violent revolution.
It’s possible that what you say is true but Marx himself in poverty of philosophy thought you couldn’t arrive without it.
I guess my overall point is that Marx was a man of his time with similar failings and sensibilities of men of his time - amongst other things he was homophobic, he was considering people in groups wholesale in a way that’s rather distasteful, and in a way that allowed later supposed followers to use these writings to fuck over whole populations.
I’m not sure why people are rising up to whitewash these things - they don’t negate the other insights anymore than Newton’s insane occult obsession negates calculus or the theory of gravity.
First I think what he wrote goes beyond them lacking the revolutionary potential and specifically being an active obstacle - I think the words were “significant counterrevolutionary force” and “more likely to sell out to reactionary intrigues”.
And if I quote him saying the same things about the peasant class, will you concede the point or would I be wasting my time?
But either way, to be honest I don’t see a functional difference between Marx’s beliefs and every implementation of the communist manifesto known to date.
what
what
I’m not sure what you had trouble grasping - I explained the thought in detail in the paragraph following.
And if I quote him saying the same things about the peasant class
I don’t see how making the same horrible comments about another whole class of people counteracts the horrible comment about others.
“Your honour, and if I show that my client stole from other shops, not just the one he is being prosecuted for, wouldn’t you concede that that negates the theft from this shop?”
It’s the mechanical gaps in Marxist philosophy which arguably led to Leninist revisionism in that first era.
The annoying part is that there is now like 100 year of post-Lenin philosophy which MLs love to ignore because the thing they actually care about is relitigating 100 year old geopolitics.
I don’t think many people on lemmy conflate marxism with leninism outside of .ml, and even there folks seems to see leninism as something on top of marxism and not inherently mixed.
And then we also have people who feel stalinist style “communo facism” would work well because everyone you like will be fed and everyone you don’t like will be dead. I don’t think anyone ever liked those people, including themselves.
TBF even Leninism is a stark departure from what MLs believe.
If you look at the original plans for the Soviet Union, Lenin was basically planning a Syndicalist Representative-Democracy. Problem was that Lenin got too bogged down in crushing any chance that said democracy would vote against itself, and then Stalin just decided to go full corporate town with it.
You’re absolutely not wrong. MLs are a… stark departure from Marx.
100%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makhnovshchina#Defeat_(November_1920_–_August_1921)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronstadt_rebellion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Days
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_Cuba#Post-revolutionary_period
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_China#Anarchism_in_the_People’s_Republic
Now, we wait for cries of “NATOpedia!” and “CIApedia!”
I don’t think you need to provide sources or preemptively defend wikipedia.
In my experience the kind of communists who want to shoot all the anarchists have a detailed knowledge of the history of shooting anarchists and talk openly about the fact that they’ll shoot all the anarchists.
Also anarchists tend to be pretty aware of what happens when you oppose state power.
In my experience the kind of communists who want to shoot all the anarchists have a detailed knowledge of the history of shooting anarchists and talk openly about the fact that they’ll shoot all the anarchists.
Wish I had the same experience on Lemmy. Honesty is not in great supply for the tankies here, who prefer to pretend that ‘United Front’ means something to “AES” states (emphasis on the quotes) other than “Oh boy, I can’t wait to backstab everyone to my left”
Your problem is engaging with these people.
I’ve had a mostly positive experience on here, but I don’t try to go hang out in tankieville.
I mean, I don’t go to hang out in tankieville. I have lemmy.ml domain blocked. I don’t go looking for them. I only pick fights with them to emphasize that their fascist shite is unacceptable and blatantly false. It’s insane the level of lies they’re willing to resort to.
They’re a lot more rare in the places I frequent anymore. A year ago they still infested the place - including this very community.
Ah yeah, I don’t think anyone is having a serious political discussion on the internet, it’s all just dunking and trolling. IRL I’ve heard many people be completely upfront about it when talking to other leftists.
In my experience the kind of communists who want to shoot all the anarchists have a detailed knowledge of the history of shooting anarchists and talk openly about the fact that they’ll shoot all the anarchists.
Yes, and the one time my mom caught me sneaking out at 1am when I was 16 was totally the only time I ever snuck out.
She still believes that one, too.
In my experience the kind of communists who want to shoot all the anarchists …
You’re confusing Communists with communists. They’re very different. Anarchists tend to be communist. Therefore if communists were shooting anarchists they’d be shooting themselves. Anarchists want a classless stateless society based on Mutual Aid. Which is exactly what actual communist want. Communists on the other hand are a heavily class based society. With an overarching crushing state that commands everything. Destroying and slaughtering any dissent against the Vanguard party and it’s oppression of the proletariat.
Communists are in no way communist. They are a completely different ideology. Often referred to as ml or Marxist leninist. And Lemmy is rife with them. They would get away imprison or Slaughter any communist or anarchist who spoke out against them or their perceived Revolution
🫡
o7
( I haven’t got the skin yet )
You cannot use a nation state to fix problems with the nation state. Marxism in general has real “the free market will regulate itself” vibes.
It’s just hopelessly modernist and fails in all the same ways every modernist philosophy of that era does. That’s why it’s annoying why MLs try to lecture you like they know political science - because they clearly have some pretty massive polisci 101 blind spots.
Marxism doesn’t call on the state to do that. That’s leninism. Marxism is highly unobjectionable. The problem is how we get there. Marx himself spoke of an evolution over a long period of time in Society to arrive there. However humans desire immediate gratification. And thus that was unsatisfactory for most people. Which is where Engles, Lenin and others enter the picture. Who thought they could jump start communism/marxism using the very thing that kept communism/Marxism from being possible. The state.
I’m generally sympathetic to Marxism in general, but that’s not the main thrust of the meme so I’ll just say “Marxists aren’t inherently tankies” and leave it at that.
I suppose the question is how do you go from state to no state in one fell swoop?
A functional stateless society would be a generational undertaking not an overnight revolution, anarchists who believe otherwise are in the above picture.
I mean that sounds just like, Marxism-Leninism withering of the state kinda line really so that’s what I get confused on unless you’re saying that MLs are fundamentally anarchists in that they strive for a stateless society (eventually)
Typically, the idea of Marxists is to use the state apparatus to dismantle the state apparatus in the end.
Typically, the idea of anarchists is to build parallel structures outside of the state apparatus until the state apparatus is no longer able to resist the alternate power base deciding to dissolve the state.
That’s the first question, the second question is where do you bury all the damn bodies?
The third question is: “Oh shit, did we just kill all the farmers? Anybody know how to grow food?”
This is the point you really hope you’re not ukrainian. Or, just, any Asians really.
Inb4 “wrecker”
