Kinda? If it’s an article or something I do it on my phone, if it’s a book I port the epub. I’m no longer a student (haven’t been for many years) but I still take notes on what I read.

I use my smartphone for notes, and an eReader for text.

No problem! The PRC is guided by Marxism-Leninism, so if you want a primer, you can check out the first few sections of my intro ML reading list.

Sure!

🪞

In the context of OP talking about a specific group of people that don’t measure up to what that commenter stated? No, they don’t exist, and they did make it up. The subject of the OP is not something that their comment applies to.

Nice one, dawg. You lost. GG.

I processed the situation fully, you’re getting lost in the sauce a bit here. I’ll spell it out for you paragraph by paragraph though:

Because even if the statement was hyperbole when referring to the majority of the tankie population, it still rings true for some of them- an inconvenient truth that you outright denied initially and were forced to backpedal on/reframe.

This is the point I made about outliers existing, I didn’t outright deny that they did in my original comment. The ones it rings true for, the “outliers,” are an extreme minority. I wasn’t forced to backpedal on it, when you interpreted my comment as denying their existence I clarified for you.

Most rational people are going to see this, see someone obviously using hyperbole, see someone obfuscating reality to serve their purposes, and dismiss you outright.

See, the problem with this statement is that I didn’t do that.

Beyond that, while it IS hyperbole to say tankies as a monolith believe in executing political dissidents, it is NOT hyperbole to say tankies as a monolith continue to support several states which DO believe in executing political dissidents.

That’s not what the original comment said, though. “Executing political dissidents” like using state violence against fascists and sabateurs is supported by the overwhelming majority of Marxists, but that was not the statement made:

Just line everyone who doesn’t accept my exact interpretation of communism up against the wall” is rational praxis

This is what you’re now interpreting as any “executing of political dissidents.” It’s true that Marxists are revolutionary, and support using the state to protect that, but it isn’t true that there’s a significant number of us that want to line everyone up against the wall for thought crime.

I wouldn’t color myself an anarchist necessarily, but I do find myself increasingly believing that anarchists are, for the most part, some of the only internally consistent ideologues. Fuck all states seems to be the only reasonable position when all existing states fucking suck.

I really don’t care what you think about this considering your lack of understanding the current argument being made to begin with. Marxism is internally consistent, whether someone misinterpreting an argument believes so or not.

I never denied that outliers existed, my point is that outliers that actually fit the label are small in number yet the label is applied to non-outliers as a way to equate them. I’m consistent with my critique, and you haven’t engaged with my point, just dodged it and claimed to be doing everyone a service.

Uh, I don’t think you understood their point. Tankies aren’t communists, they’re authoritarians with a red paint job. We’re not talking about nuanced Marxist thinkers, we’re taking about people who think “Just line everyone who doesn’t accept my exact interpretation of communism up against the wall” is rational praxis.

This is the original comment I replied to, which is a strawman. The people that think “Just line everyone who doesn’t accept my exact interpretation of communism up against the wall” is rational praxis don’t exist in any significant numbers, yet the word “tankie” is thrown around willy nilly these days.

There are plenty of ways to rationally arrive at Communism, but really the only way to get to Tankie is, as the top comment says, rejecting Western propaganda in favor of the propaganda of so-called “communists”.

This argument is that existing socialist states aren’t to be trusted and are equally bad, but becoming a communist isn’t just about agreeing with a nice picture of it in our heads, but to also see what communists have done in real life.

The original comment was itself a strawman, and you didn’t offer any compelling argument beyond “extremists exist,” which is true but not relevant. We aren’t talking about outliers, but a common phenomenon, that being communists on the fediverse that uphold existing socialist states and are called “tankies” for it.

I’m not seeing any valid arguments here. I’m good-faith, and I’m reading the arguments, I just disagree with them. Calling me bad-faith for disagreeing with you isn’t a point, nor does it mean I am actually bad-faith.

I do think mutual aid in the context of filling in the gaps of capitalism works well, and both anarchist groups and Marxist parties tend to do that well. About the vanguard, though, all it is is the most politically advanced of the revolutionary class, it exists whether formalized into a party or left disorganized and informal. The Marxist argument isn’t about whether to have one or not, but to formalize and democratize it. It also isn’t really top-down so much as it is driven from the bottom-up, steered by the top. There are also several socialist countries where we can see this in action, and the tremendous results it has achieved for the working classes.

To well-sourced and thought out comments? No, you just refuse to look at it for fear of agreeing with me.

Incredible response, lmao.

I suppose I understand, but I don’t see why refusing to formalize and democratize whatever vanguard arises naturally is a better strategy, nor do I see any benefits of communalization over collectivization of production and distribution, especially because large scale industry already prepared the groundwork for this at great scale.

Good luck on your doctorate!

So then I guess just fuck those 16.6 million other people, huh? And no, $328.74 a year is extreme poverty, in pretty much every country. Something tells me it is not enough for a person to survive, even in China.

No? The living conditions in China are rapidly improving, and the number of impoverished is rapidly decreasing. This is intentional. It isn’t “fuck these people,” there are still underdeveloped rural areas that are still being uplifted, though the worst among them were fixed (see The Metamorphosis of Yuangudui).

Yeah but didn’t the Communists take over in like 1949 or something? So it took them 31 years to actually start caring about poor people, is what you’re saying? Also are you sure that this wasn’t due to the increase of wealth due to American corporations outsourcing all thier manufacturing to China? I mean it seems like a bit of a conicidence that poverty in China drastically decreases when the country becomes far less communist and far more corportized.

Again, no, China was extremely poor in 1949. It was coming out of World War II and a bloody civil war, and it also was a mostly agrarian country. And no, Reform and Opening Up was not soley responsible for that wealth, industrialization and social programs like free healthcare and education already existed under Mao.

As capitalism monopolizes, it is compelled to expand outward in order to fight falling rates of profit by raising absolute profits. The merging of bank and industrial capital into finance capital leads to export of capital, ie outsourcing. This process allows super-exploitation for super-profits, and is known as imperialism.

In the People’s Republic of China, under Mao and later the Gang of Four, growth was overall positive but was unstable. The centrally planned economy had brought great benefits in many areas, but because the productive forces themselves were underdeveloped, economic growth wasn’t steady. There began to be discussion and division in the party, until Deng Xiapoing’s faction pushing for Reform and Opening Up won out, and growth was stabilized:

Deng’s plan was to introduce market reforms, localized around Special Economic Zones, while maintaining full control over the principle aspects of the economy. Limited private capital would be introduced, especially by luring in foreign investors, such as the US, pivoting from more isolationist positions into one fully immersed in the global marketplace. As the small and medium firms grow into large firms, the state exerts more control and subsumes them more into the public sector. This was a gamble, but unlike what happened to the USSR, this was done in a controlled manner that ended up not undermining the socialist system overall.

China’s rapidly improving productive forces and cheap labor ended up being an irresistable match for US financial capital, even though the CPC maintained full sovereignty. This is in stark contrast to how the global north traditionally acts imperialistically, because it relies on financial and millitant dominance of the global south. This is why there is a “love/hate” relationship between the US Empire and PRC, the US wants more freedom for capital movement while the CPC is maintaining dominance.

Fast-forward to today, and the benefits of the CPC’s gamble are paying off. The US Empire is de-industrializing, while China is a productive super-power. The CPC has managed to maintain full control, and while there are neoliberals in China pushing for more liberalization now, the path to exerting more socialization is also open, and the economy is still socialist. It is the job of the CPC to continue building up the productive forces, while gradually winning back more of the benefits the working class enjoyed under the previous era, developing to higher and higher stages of socialism.

I just find that when you have to bend what those facts and statistics actuallly say in order to whitewash the reputation of a totalitarian government that doesn’t give two shits about poor people to be completely disengenuous, and it makes me think tankies are a bunch of pampered self-rightous know-it-alls who’ve never actually been in the real world and would be the first persons to freak out if they actually were living under the totalitarian governments they suck off.

I’m not bending any facts or statistics, the fact is that you have no idea what you’re talking about and it’s abundantly clear to anyone that has actually researched the topic. The casual homophobia at the end really seals the deal.

I mean, China sucks. The soviet union sucked. I don’t know why people defend those governments.

People defend them because they don’t and didn’t suck, simple as that.

Yep, that’s correct, it’s just that it pretty much requires revolution.

What observational truth? The people in the OP aren’t as the user described. The number of people that meet the definition given is close to nil on the Fediverse, yet people get called a tankie all the time.

“Tankie” is just a pejorative for those who uphold existing socialist states as legitimate, which covers the large majority of Marxists and a decent number of anarchists. The people in the OP are “tankies” by the definition I gave, it’s consistent and clear. They uphold existing socialist states as legitimate, and this is the norm among Marxists.

Call out whatever you like, it’s going to backfire, because what I’m saying is more in line with reality. Unless your point is that Marxism itself is extremist and therefore “tankie,” calling the norm position among Marxists extremist isn’t particularly useful.

Marxists and anarchists support using violence against fascists, capitalists, landlords, slavers, etc. The major difference is that Marxists acknowledge the utility of the state for doing so, while anarchists go for more horizontalist structures (even if they also end up forming states and semi-states, like the Spanish anarchists did). The idea that either of us want to wholesale slaughter everyone that disagrees with us is just fantasy, though.

One thing I want to point out is that Marxism itself aconowledges the state as a transition between capitalism and communism, that’s not something Marxist-Leninists invented. Further, Marxism also acknowledges the importance of gender, queer liberation, racism, and more. I think you may just have taken a peak into Marxism without going much beyond that, which isn’t really your fault but instead is an opportunity. I made an intro ML reading list you can check out if you want!

I think it’s bad that the west installed a Banderite regime in 2014, and that said Banderite regime killed 13,000 civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk for seceding from the new far-right government. The whole war was avoidable, and the best way for it to end is for Kiev to cede the 4 oblasts that already voted to join the Russian Federation, that way Ukrainians don’t have to die for wealthy US capitalists and Ukrainian compradors and the people of the Donbass can exist in peace in the country they voted to join.