On lemmy.world I posted a comment on how liberals use ‘tankie’ as an invective to shut down dialogue and received tons of hateful replies. I tried to respond in a rational way to each. Someone’s said ‘get educated’ I responded ‘Im reading Norman Finkelstein’s I’ll burn that bridge when I get there’ and tried to keep it civil.
They deleted every comment I made and banned me. Proving my point, they just want to shut down dialogue. Freedom of speech doesn’t existing in those ‘totalitarian’ countries right? But in our ‘enlightened’ western countries we just delete you.
omg i just had the misfortune of wandering into this thread, https://lemmygrad.ml/post/806853 i am so glad we have our own space where we can safely laugh at these fools. omg.
Holy shit what an insufferable group.
“Define Tankie”
Who defines a buzzword with a buzzword ffs.
Also! (Paraphrasing)
'scuze me what the fuck? Who here says genocides are cool and good actually? We are like the first fuckers to point them out and scream about them???
And even more!
Now that’s dose of Anarcho-Debilizm let me tell you. “Just press the communism button Xi and we’ll succeed no problem! They will just let us exist and everyone will love each other :3”
And it just still keeps going!
Motherfuckers I read too much compared to your sorry asses.
That whole thread:
hmm, I wonder who controls the socialist state
No one should control the state because there shouldn’t be a state. If there is a state then there’s oppression.
Oppression of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat, absolutely; the point is to eventually eliminate the bourgeois class. When class distinctions no longer exist, the state will, by definition (a tool for oppression of one class by another), cease to exist. How would you go about abolishing the state while classes still exist, or abolishing classes within a bourgeois dictatorship?
The issue is that where there is a state, definitively there will be still social classes - those with power within the state, and those without. If your position is “we can’t abolish the state until there are no class divisions” then you’ve got an infinite loop.
Obviously with the way the world is there is no way to go straight from the current situation to communism, but the goal is still the abolition of the state, and so many leftists seem to get angry with the concept that we should (and have to) abolish the state. That’s all I am saying - reading any deeper into my comment than that isn’t recommended!
I’m not sure if anyone is getting angry that you’re saying the state must be abolished. MLs fundamentally agree with that. It’s what revolutionaries are aiming for.
The criticism is that you seem to be saying that revolutionaries cannot use the state because it’s an incoherent notion:
By this do you mean to say that the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat is logically contradictory? That it won’t work? You seemed to agree, above, that you don’t think that’s the case (i.e. you think the state can be used as a tool), but here you appear to be saying just that?
It may be helpful here to reiterate the dialectical element of Marxism-Leninism. It’s not a step-by-step sequence of events. First one, then the other. It’s a dialectical development.
The plan isn’t to seize the state, then to use the state to abolish classes. That won’t work. It’s anti-dialectical.
The idea is that by seizing the state and wresting control over the means of production from the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie will become redundant and whither away. This will take a long time. The state is needed to keep the reactionaries in line in the meantime.
It’s taken China over half a decade to start the process and most of the rest of the world hasn’t even begun the task yet. The DotP and the abolition of classes and the state are one process. They’re interrelated.
Have you read State and Revolution or ‘Better Fewer But Better’ by Lenin?
Agreed, now let’s abolish the state through developing the material conditions necessary for it to happen instead of just saying “STATES BAD!!” online :^)
Just because a state brands itself socialist doesn’t say anything about the level of democracy or workers’ control of it.
sure, but if we were talking about non-socialist states that call themselves socialist, we wouldn’t call them socialist states
Well IMHO both USSR and China shows how gaining workers control and keeping it, or moreso making significant headway towards communism, is just much more complicated. Representative worker ownership of the means of production through the state doesn’t have a compelling track record. I think it’s dishonest, reactionary and anti intellectual to laugh off arguments like that of comrade spood from the screenshot above.
Edit: checked out my claim on calorie intake and discovered it was dubious. Removed, but letting the main argument stay.
The USSR was eventually compromised, so it technically failed in that sense, but how is China an example of failing to retain worker control? If you’re claiming that capitalists control China’s government, I’d challenge you to provide some evidence
Lack of press freedom, organization freedom, social credit system, great firewall of China, over 2000 work hours pr year (France has 1500), severely low scores in democracy rankings. This doesn’t smell much like worker control, more like authoritarianism. But then again, I’m very much from the West. Happy to be educated on my shortcomings in understanding 👍
Compared to what country? What exactly are workers not allowed to say or write in China that is allowed in the West?
Compared to what country? There are hundreds of protests every day across China
You mean the “system” that’s been debunked many times by various Western capitalist media outlets?
Maintaining Internet sovereignty from the imperial core and having workers in control of the government are not mutually exclusive
Citation needed
Whose rankings, and why do you consider them relevant?