NNNOOOO!!! HOW DARE YOU UN-WHITEWASH LENIN!!!! NOOOO!!! Tankies tried SO HARD to make Makhno disappear like Trotsky! You LIBERAL AMERICANS!!! REEEEEE!!!
Here is Makhno in 1920 after agreeing to a temporary ceasefire:
“Military hostilities between the Makhnovist revolutionary insurgents and the Red Army have ceased. Misunderstandings, vagueness and inaccuracies have grown up around this truce: it is said that Makhno has repented of his anti-Bolshevik acts, that he has recognized the soviet authorities, etc. How are we to understand, what construction are we to place upon this peace agreement?
What is very clear already is that no intercourse of ideas, and no collaboration with the soviet authorities and no formal recognition of these has been or can be possible. We have always been irreconcilable enemies, at the level of ideas, of the party of the Bolshevik-communists.
We have never acknowledged any authorities and in the present instance we cannot acknowledge the soviet authorities. So again we remind and yet again we emphasize that, whether deliberately or through misapprehension, there must be no confusion of military intercourse in the wake of the danger threatening the revolution with any crossing-over, ‘fusion’ or recognition of the soviet authorities, which cannot have been and cannot ever be the case.”
— quoted in Nestor Makhno: Anarchy’s Cossack, a pro-Makhno book
I’m not familiar with the incident with Khrushchev, but the others didn’t just kill the anarchists for no reason. Each leader was faced with an incredibly unstable country and economy. Anarchists hate government. So naturally, they’ll join with the other leftists to take down the government. But, once the revolution is over, it’s time to reorganize and reestablish a government. As I said though, anarchists hate government. So, they continue to destabilize and fight against the government, even though the new government is trying to reorganize and develop a stable economy.
Each groups was told to stand down and join in rebuilding the their respective countries or risk causing more widespread famine and throw the country into… Well anarchy. The problem isn’t that these leaders are necessarily evil men for what they did to the anarchists. The problem is the dangers that the anarchists created for the people of China and the Soviet Union. This is why Anarchism has never succeeded on a large scale. It’s only good at disruption and destruction. Read about Spain in the late 19th century for examples. No country can survive under constant revolution.
It’s easy to make a list of all communists countries that turned fascists and massacred people. You don’t do that with capitalists because there are simply too many, everywhere, in about all of history.
Liberal countries are the only ones capable of providing a safe and prosperous society for all. It doesn’t mean all liberal societies are like that, but liberalism is the only one that can create and maintain one.
Do you want me to ask those two questions again holding your hand and explaining the words I use as they come, or will you admit that the only countries with decent human rights situations are liberal?
Look, bud, I understand you’re upset that I didn’t engage in your amateurish rhetorical trap, but it’s not my fault you don’t understand that the question was answered.
All but those who are excluded from it. Who are the slaves in your countries? How many societies had to be destroyed for your country to become what it is now?
Speaking for my country, uh idk, don’t think anyone here’s a slave. Occasionally you hear of some sketchy work practices, usually involving underpaid immigrant workers at restaurants but those issues are quickly dealt with.
How many societies had to be destroyed for your country to become what it is now?
None as far as I’m aware. We were first exploited by the swedish empire and later by the rus*ian empire. After which we were destroyed twice by soviets and barely scraped against the nazis. So I’d say we were on the colonized side of history rather than the exploiting colonial one, the swedish speaking population here still owns way more than the rest of the country - relatively speaking - as often is the case in exploited countries as old money never really dies out even if the underlying society progresses past it. Of course I’m glossing over a ton of historical events here and straightening out corners, but I’m happy with the answer.
Well, I’m living in a country that’s turning fascist. It prides itself for being the country of the human rights yet it’s being condemned by EU human rights tribunal regularly.
In 50 years it was on a turbo run for liberalism. What this gave us is more poverty, more riches inequalities, less public services, mental health problems, and fascism might be our next government. Congratulation capitalism! Go on!
I’m not advocating for fascism btw. But it is a fact that the winners or capitalism are turning their countries into fascist ones.
I think you fail to realize liberalism has multiple contextual definitions, depending largely on location, and that neoliberalism is largely criticized by progressives.
The only thing funnier than stupid people who don’t realize they’re stupid is stupid people who are convinced they’re intelligent and can’t shut up about it.
Czechoslovakia was leaning capitalist and prosperous before the Nazis and then Soviets invaded, both leaning much more leftist, and surpressing the people.
That may have something to do with the fact that there is no such thing as “true capitalism.” Capitalism is as “true” as it can possibly get.
Economies are always mixed.
There can be no “mixture” between socialism and capitalism. If the means of production isn’t controlled by workers it means there is no socialism to “mix” in the first place.
The mix is that the control is mixed, for example through regulation but private ownership. As well as some production is fully state run. Socialism is generally understood to not be exclusively worker control, but include other forms of collective control- such as state control.
Socialism is generally understood to not be exclusively worker control, but include other forms of collective control- such as state control.
Generally understood by whom? If your understanding of socialism means state control it probably means your ideas of it doesn’t have much coherence at all.
My understanding of socialism is that it describes collective control of the means of production, collective control can take many forms, including state control
Control by a bunch of party bureaucrats and apparatchiks who, like their counter-parts in corporate capitalist countries, are only interested in maintaining and expanding their own power and privilege in no way constitutes anything that can be called “collective” with a straight face - period.
The term “socialism” has a very hard and uncompromising meaning - it becomes utterly meaningless when it becomes whatever “Dear Brother Comrade Leader” says it is.
If “true communist country” is taken to mean “libertarian socialist country”, which then it seems fair to say that a “true capitalist country” has never existed in the sense of a “libertarian capitalist country”. Taxation, commercial regulation, and public ownership (public land, utilities, schools, parks, roads, transportation, etc.) are all contrary to the capitalist ideology.
Lol! No, they aren’t - capitalists have always understood that they need the protection of a state… it’s only a realtively small fringe of not-so-rich ideologues that loudly pretends otherwise.
“Capitalist ideology” isn’t coherent - it doesn’t have to be, because the only purpose it has to serve is to provide pretexts and justifications for whatever the power and privilege of the wealthy requires. That’s why capitalists are perfectly happy to fund fascists into power when liberal regimes prove incapable of dealing with working-class revolt.
Lol! No, they aren’t - capitalists have always understood that they need the protection of a state… it’s only a realtively small fringe of not-so-rich ideologues that loudly pretends otherwise.
You can’t use what you believe to be “true capitalism” in practice to prove that the practice is true capitalism. Yes, Lockean-adjacent ideologies require a government tasked with the protection of property, but you may have noticed that none of the examples I gave serve that purpose.
That’s why capitalists are perfectly happy to fund fascists into power
You are confusing capitalists with those who have benefitted from capitalism. People in power seldom support a system that allows them to easily lose power should a better alternative arise, despite those mechanisms being a foundational component of the efficient-market hypothesis.
Respectfully, I don’t see the benefit of making this argument. To claim that socialized aspects of a generally capitalist society are not actually socialist is to claim that what are often the best aspects of the society do not support your beliefs. The fact that the “winners” of capitalism are incentivized not to be capitalists is a glaring problem; why not focus on that?
You can’t use what you believe to be “true capitalism” in practice to prove that the practice is true capitalism.
No, but it might help to explain that there is no such thing as “true capitalism” because capitalists have never needed “true capitalism” - that is, unless you want to argue with the people who obsessively calculate Jeff Bezos’s net worth.
but you may have noticed that none of the examples I gave serve that purpose.
Are you not aware that your taxes fund the police? You know… the violent institution that was specifically invented by the capitalist class to protect the property of capitalists from the very people capitalists parasitize off?
There is no point in trying to sound smart when it’s blatantly obvious that you can’t see what’s going on right in front of your nose, Clyde.
You are confusing capitalists with those who have benefitted from capitalism.
No… I don’t think I am.
People in power seldom support a system that allows them to easily lose power should a better alternative arise
So this “efficient-market hypothesis” isn’t worth the paper it’s written on?
No surprises there.
To claim that socialized aspects of a generally capitalist society are not actually socialist
The term socialism has a very hard and uncompromising meaning which it has retained no matter the efforts spent trying to warp it. Unlike concepts such as fascism and capitalism, socialism actually requires logical consistency in order to be useful to the people it has always been intended to be useful for.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence… and if you claim that anything has been “socialized” in a capitalist society (apart from all the real costs that the working-class has to bear in such a society) you need to provide evidence for that.
If only we could imagine what a truly capitalist country would look like in the future! Like, I don’t know, we call this genra something like cyberpunk?
I can’t think of any fictional utopias that are entirely utopian. I didn’t know Star Trek was utopian. I can think of a lot of medias that condemn different forms of central planning. I can’t think of any forms of media that condemn Georgism, or anarcho-socialism- does that mean those ideologies are good?
So capitalism has existed since “about all of history”? About as dumb a take as folks insisting that the Israel/Palestine conflict has been going on for thousands of years.
As DarthBueller@lemmy.world less succinctly put it. Capitalism is barely a few hundred years old. It’s barely existed a fraction of human history. It’s barely older than many of the original socialist ideals. Let alone all of history. Markets and currency predate capitalism and socialism by millennia. And neither has claim to them. Despite both making use of them.
That said fuck leninists. Actual communists are pretty chill though. But leninists and capitalists are a threat to everyone. Including themselves.
Socialists are not fans of, and often are opposed to the state. That’s the reason that a socialist state hasn’t and will never realistically exist. It’s an oxymoron. It’s got nothing to do with mixed economies. That’s just the reason exploitative authoritarians like capitalist indoctrinate people with to further their own goals.
It’s definitely does. But only because westerners especially are not properly educated on such things. It goes against the goals of the wealthy. I say that as a Westerner myself who only educated myself on it years later.
Basically I reside somewhere between social democrat and true libertarian. Left libertarian. Right libertarians reject a large chunk of libertarianism and are therefore not actually libertarians. They’re just selfish and ignorant. Basically though an end to the bourgeoisie, worker ownership of the means of production not state, and much more simplified highly flattened governing structures. That would be the base and core of socialism. As traditionally defined.
That’s not entirely true. The Hudsons Bay Company, for instance, was on the stock market in the 1600s. The London Royal Exchange was built in the 1500s.
The Hudson’s Bay company was a joint stock company that was listed on the stock market. I don’t know what else to tell you, it was one of the first corporations in the world.
I don’t know if you know this. But the Hudson Bay Company predates capitalism. Other systems had stocks (joint ventures), markets and money that doesn’t make them Capitalist. Specifically the Hudson Bay Company arose in a system known as Mercantilism (you should read the link).
It’s not just Society created then everything is Capitalist until Communism. Humans have tried many ways to organize both society and economy.
I know what mercantilism is. My point was that Hudson’s Bay company was a corporation, with a board of directors, investors who purchase stock, and the stock was listed on the stock market that allowed outside investors to invest in the company and to be paid in dividends from the company’s profits.
In fact, the whole setup was designed to (drum roll) raise capital from outside investors to fund the expansion of the company.
It really shouldn’t be that complex. Adam Smith, considered the Father of Capitalism, published The Wealth of Nations in 1776. So even if you argue that someone in power got a copy an implemented immediately; blaming Capitalism for things that happened before them is as backwards as blaming failures in Collectivism that happened before 1867 (Publishing of Das Kapital by Marx).
I agree with you though, we definitely need better economic education in the US and likely the rest of the West too.
Definitely in the US. I find interactions with people outside the United States tend to go a little better and they have a better understanding. But sometimes still lack in many areas. In the US, however, we tend to be pretty consistently misinformed.
While that could technically be a possibility under democracy. Don’t you find it? Extremely ironic that no democracy in the world could currently be described that way? That they’ve all been turned on their head with the minority ruling over the majority?
And basically when it comes down to it they are incompatible or different. Because under authoritarianism you don’t have any say, regardless of whether you’re in the minority or the majority.
In the US: I’d prefer stronger protections against externalities (so pollution and so on). Removal of IP protections, deregulation of drug production but also drug companies losing protections so they can more easily be sued. Easier medical licensing. Ending federal student lending, so universities have to lower prices. Open borders. And I’m sure many other things. So, I’d say making it more capitalist, but I guess it somewhat depends how you define capitalism.
I think we put our faith in different forces. Aside from the suing, I feel like this would unleash capital to roam the world, sucking up all value before zipping off, to the next fallowed region.
Haha, yeah my beliefs are not based on utilitarian good. Instead they are based on a basic belief in individual freedoms. I do hope they will have a utilitarian benefit, but I would support them even if they didn’t.
Well there we have it then. I would be an anarchist if I had more faith in people and the society we’ve built, but I don’t think people will self regulate without some big systemic or philosophical advances.
I’d be curious to see your system on a small, opt-in scale. Our decisions will impact others whether we like it or not. Even your deregulated economy would have a massive, massive impact on the daily lives of everyone it touches. Hypothetically, it would also strengthen the coercive power of capital to get others to do your bidding (if you’ve got the capital).
But that’s the thing, my system doesn’t block others from opting into more restriction. I think in a lot of ways, more government programs would help people, but it should be voluntary. I shouldn’t be told to do what you want from the end of a gun.
Just that most captialist counties are democracies and all communist countries are authoritarian because communism and it’s limiting of rights doesn’t go without a dictatorship and the murder of millions of innocent people 😇
The reason for this isn’t because they have to be dictatorships. It’s because the capitalist status-quo undermined any leftist nations. The only governments strong enough to last the CIA overthrow of them are strong central governments with cultural hegymony. This isnt to say these are good things (they aren’t), they are just stable. The entire red scare period was about destroying any nation that was even slightly left.
The Guatemala coup for example was a dictatorship that was overthrown and a democracy was established. They elected a leftist president who implemented a minimum wage and returned land to the peasants, but the United Fruit Company didn’t like this. They had the CIA overthrow this new democracy and replace it with a dictatorship more aligned with US interests. This dictatorship proceeded to commit a genocide of the native inhabitants, all unopposed by the US.
This is just one example from many similar events.
Yeah quite a large portion of lemmings are politically insane. It’s either ‘burn the rich, overthrow the government’ or ‘Maybe the windmill party has a valid point’
God that would be a depressing thought. Thankfully, a tankie’s idea of communism is in fact not the only solution, we need only look at democratic socialist countries like Denmark.
I think it’s fine for people to be rich. I don’t think it’s fine for that to be at the expense of the poor to such a ridiculous magnitude that the wealth has long become moot for that individual’s quality of life:
Just wanted to point out that Denmark is a Social Democracy, not Democratic Socialist. The vast majority of the economy is fully Capitalist, paying for Social Programs isn’t Socialism, Worker Ownership of the Means of Production is.
If you want to argue for Social Democracy, go for it, but don’t pretend it’s actually Socialism.
Only communists in the US are calling for nationalization of oil. About 75% of Denmark’s oil is nationalized and lets them fund social programs. Liberals in the US would never accept that.
Thanks for the sauce! The Nordic argument gets used far too often by center-leftists in the core imperial countries because they already assume a level of available wealth which can only be sustained by the exploitation of the colonized rest of the world.
The greed of the rich will never be sated. They may retreat or bide their time but they will come back for more, until they have sucked every drop of your blood.
I think the hurtling toward climate crises has a lot of people desperate for governments to actually do something to help assuage it, not make it worse.
Well put! I love this place and have had some good discussions but I’ve also seen a lot of teenage political craziness and had that “oh, I’m talking to a lunatic or a child” sensation more often than I’d have liked to.
Right on brother. All those tankies supporting genocidal terrorists who put a mandate for genocide in their founding charter and then killed over a thousand peaceful civilians in a neighboring country in one day. It’s unbelievable that people would support a group that’s been verified by multiple international forensics teams to have beheaded children as young as three months old in front of their families. You’re talking about those people right? Right?
“Even if all the true stuff you said about genocidal terrorists that’s been verified by multiple unbiased sources online that I could easily find is true, is it really genocide my man?”
Are you people for real? Or are you just Putin cocksuckers posting online trying to make far-right fascists look more appealing than they really are?
Oh, then you should have fucking said that instead of trying to be coy and pretend that Hamas didn’t do any of that.
Of course genocide is wrong. I’m not any edgy piece of shit who lives in their mother’s basement and tries to revise the history of genocidal maniacs. And of course, what Israel is doing isn’t genocide. Crimes against humanity? Yeah, some of it is. Overreacting? I’m not so sure given the past century of context (i.e. peace deals being turned down or used as a means to actually try and genocide Israel).
Going back to your original question though, do you think anything Israel has done justifies the genocidal actions of Hamas? Or did they “have it coming”?
Crazy how tankies can’t have any consistent logic or morality.
How is turning Gaza into a concentration camp and bombing everyone indiscriminately, including refugee outposts and hospitals, until none are left, not a genocide?
Oh, that would be genocide. But that’s not what’s happening. Do you get all of your “news” from TikTok influencers and Hamas? Personally, I am immediately skeptical of anything from sources like Jerusalem Post and check for multiple corroborating sources before I run around telling people something has happened. Maybe you should do the same?
I just like to think of it as this way fuck isreal and fuck Palestinian I feel bad for civvies the everyday people whom are being put under immense stress and immense pain
There are still plenty of members of the Leninist tankie cult left - look at the positions of most Communist Parties in Europe. To make things worse, I think most of them don’t even realize that the Soviet Union is gone and that China became a cyberpunkish corporatocracy that puts the worst western country to shame.
I’m a fan of the term Kleptocracy. It seems to describe well a lot of newish regimes in south east Asia and south America, and it applies well to China and the United States of America as well.
Don't know that they're necessarily a tankie. People can have illusions of left unity, or just have bad experiences with specific memes, without being tankies.
They’re completely irrelevant for people like you and me, though. I don’t worry about who’s trolling me (tbh, haven’t been trolled on lemmy yet), and I don’t let them live rent free in my mind. They’re not politically important, they’re small, they’re isolated.
Politically, I belong in the group in the meme with our backs against the wall. This weird fixation on hexbear feels like a sort of online red scare. I know full well I’ll be called a communist and grouped in with the tankies by 99% of people who don’t post on places like lemmy. Most people don’t distinguish between trade unionists and anarchists, and stalinists/maoists.
Idk, I see comments from a group calling for nuking a hemisphere of the planet almost daily there to eradicate groups based on skin color and political beliefs.
‘Red scare’ is a bullshit term when the comments are still there for anyone to see. It’s the difference between a storm watch and a storm warning.
I have 0 patience for violent authoritarians, be they liberal, conservative, communist, white or brown or black. You shouldn’t either, be better.
They aren’t the only internet echo chamber. I feel no need to wring my hands over the fact they exist. They have no influence over me, my instance is defederated from them, just like lemmy.world. And, it’s not like they’re out there banning books and participating in local elections, like other groups are. I see no likely future where they can do anything but shitpost.
If you feel like you’re improving the world by heading over there and reading distressing stuff, I’m not going to stop you, buddy. I’ll start worrying when they start having any influence at all. There are bigger fish to fry out there.
If Trump gets elected again, I don’t think he’s gonna differentiate between tankies, anarchists, socialists, Marxists, liberals, etc. if you are left of him, it’s the wall. But these “leftists” keep shadow-boxing an imaginary enemy. Kinda Sus.
They’re never going to be able to argue Stalin didn’t send firing squads to murder the Spanish revolutionaries. After seeing this meme they’d be crazy to try.
The Spanish Civil War is a bit weird in nomenclature, though. The ‘revolutionaries’ were the fascist branches of the military and monarchists, who were mad at the leftist elected governement.
Usually revolutionaries aren’t conservatives, but in the Spanish Civil War they were. Both Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin jumped at the chance to test out their offensive capabilities and sent their armies there. And it was a bloody affair where both parties slaughtered civil parties.
But Russia, for once, supported the democratically elected party in this war.
I’m not affiliated with the tankies and hate the fables they spin, but as an historian this one point really needed some context.
So many words to say you were lying but want it to count as truth. Putting the Soviet Union in the same line as the fascist forces that sent ~30 times the number of people. If you’re an historian then you know you’re being a slimy little shit lying about that, and if you’re not an historian (and it doesn’t seem like you are frankly) you’re a slimy little shit for lying about that. Scare quotes around ‘aid’. Absolutely deranged.
Not that you’ve stopped lying, equivocating ‘military personnel’ as troops when even wikipedia won’t call them that.
Guess we’ll never witness your mental alchemy that turns sending ‘aid’ to the republicans into putting them in front of a firing squad as the meme implies.
Anticommunists never actually have to have a coherent though though lol
But Russia, for once, supported the democratically elected party in this war.
Man, that's not even close to how it went down. The Soviet-supported PCE was all about infighting and sabotaging other members of the Republicans for not bootlicking Stalin enough.
The ‘revolutionaries’ were the fascist branches of the military and monarchists
I mean, can it really be called any kind of “revolt,” then? It’s essentially just a coup that went south and spun into a civil war thanks to the CNT-FAI’s intelligence networks.
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