this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2024
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Far-left definitely isn't that - "we're gonna make sure everyone's needs are met" is literally a general leftist thing. Assuming you're trying to portray tankies and fascists, a more accurate depiction would be "we're gonna make sure working class needs are met with an iron fist and extermination of anyone potentially rebellious".
That being said, holy shit there are so many bad takes in this thread
Respectfully, I don't think tankies are the farthest left, or even left at all. They seem far too concerned with statism and too unconcerned with uplifting the worker.
I also think that there is space for more than one type of far left.
EDIT: Witness below: a lengthy conversation about states, colonialism, whose team is worse, and other masturbatory topics. What average worker is going to engage with this ideology? Dorks.
Yeah I did want to originally include this in my original comment - there's ideologies like Anarchism that is also far-left, and same can be applied to the right, with their ancaps and libertarians though both of those are rarely ever referred to as far-right (wonder why's that).
Not just tankies but ml. We should all be working towards communism generally. No question. And ML governments have helped industrialize their regions as capitalism did. Again no question. But in that process the ML governments have been oppressive and violent as most capitalist. Combined with the fairytale of the administrative state magically withering on it's own. It's safe to say that the vanguard of Marxist Leninism the Soviet Union splintered and fell to fascism of the administrative state. With China repeating their mistakes. Making they're already unaccountable administrative State even more unaccountable. Appointing their president for life even as he moves into the Forbidden City and The Emperor's Palace. Now largely emperor in all but name.
Honestly I think the reason they get shown so much is because there's not a lot of other clear iconography relating to the left. There's the upgrades fist. But it has been adopted for a number of other groups and movements. Outside of that most of the truly recognizable ones were adopted by the leninists.
i think whats missing from most anti-ml takes here is colonialism and the overbearing influence of the west everywhere else.
china wouldnt be able to break away from the washington consensus like it does if they didnt have enough force to show and use whenever necessary to keep it at bay.
likewise with pretty much every long lasting, large scale socialist experiment so far. people forget what happens to the likes of allende when they try funny business and can't back it up with actual force.
i also have a problem with using 'tankie' for serious discussion because its a meaningless word at this point.
If things were perfect they would be perfect. However that's circular reasoning/tautology. Everyone struggles with factors internal and external. And ultimately it's not someone else's responsibility what they do. So bringing up the West in a critique of marxist leninism he's largely pointless and at best only a crutch. Because yes we can absolutely critique the west or similar things. The fact that they do them doesn't make Marxist leninism better by comparison.
And let's be clear. China and the Chinese government needed no help exploiting their proletariat for the benefit of the ascendant bourgeoisie. The West did not force that or cause it.
My critique of marxist leninism is not a defense of capitalism or the west. I see them as largely equal and opposed. Yes the West has been shitty to countries that have adopted Anti-Capitalist Stances. And I absolutely believe it is largely unwarranted and counterproductive.
Where it is warranted ironically one only has to look to Vladimir Lenin to understand why. The forceful annexation of much of Eastern Europe post World War ii. The division of Germany. No one from the West forced that. Remind me. Former Soviet block countries, what were their General feelings about the Soviet Union and Lenin / Stalin after it dissolved? I remember even until recently A lot of them tearing down statues of those men. Was it because they love them so much and wanted to have pieces of them in their house to worship? It wasn't because they failed to deliver on their promises, and were largely hated and despised by survivors and family of people marched off to Siberia to die was it?
quite the contrary.
force is needed because things arent perfect, hence why i say the analysis misses neocolonialism.
Why, after that force is used to successfully establish themselves, those countries never actually empower the lower classes?
China has been secure on the world stage for decades, yet their people still work as wage slaves for the benefit of the western bourgeoise interests.
take a look at how quality of life, health, education and most aspects of society improves vastly under socialism.
also take a look at the time scale at which such things happen.
we also have capitalism.
The Foxconn building had to put up nets around their building because so many employees were committing suicide due to their extremely poor working conditions.
You're suggesting that is simply a necessary evil on the long road to real socialism? Marx said there needs to be 100 years of capitalist industrialization before a communist revolution can succeed (which I disagree with, but let's roll with it). China was able to enact a successful revolution without waiting 100 years of wage slavery, only to then become a wage slave accepting nation? To what end is this benefitting the proletariat? China doesn't have free higher education, and they don't have fully free healthcare.
Meanwhile, Anarchists in Spain were able to liberate the working class and eliminate money mid-revolution. They lost the war due to lack of access to weapons/logistics, but nothing about enacting those social revolutions seemed to be terribly detrimental to their efforts.
China seems to have willfully become capitalist itself (pretty lame of them), so, at least from the average worker's standpoint, it seems relatively inconsequential whether they are a wage slave in mainland china, or in any other capitalist country.
some say dengism was a necessary evil, yes. i personally disagree, they should have been able to do better like others before. the results came for the next generation though, and it didn't need all those 100 years.
setbacks are part of history everywhere else too, and don't paint the entire picture.
I assume you mean the current generation in China? If so, the results seem to be less than ideal, to put it mildly. I would posit that the Nordic countries (and possibly most of the EU) offer better living and working conditions to the working class, even under their neoliberal welfare state. I certainly don't see where China is excelling in that regard.
The question is; now that China is a wealthy world power, what exactly is stopping them from enacting more radical social changes to make it actually look like a socialist country? How long do they have to wait before power is given freely to the proletariat and the state withers away? From my perspective, there does not appear to be any light at the end of the tunnel.
To the contrary of your contrary. The French revolution. One of the most influential formative revolutions that helped influence and shape Karl Marx's philosophy and much of marxist thought. Showed otherwise.
Sure sometimes Force can be needed to break free. But if you need Force to govern you are doing it wrong.
the french revolution didnt have a previous, but strong empire trying to stop it at all costs. you are subestimating neocolonialism. my country has a history of being interfered with by the empire at the hint of wanting free. and that won't narrow it down.
there is a reason one country in the planet spends almost as much as everyone else combined on their military
Are you fucking kidding me
I understand your definitions, but I I think many Americans don't use the same definitions. OP is pointing this out.
If we look at specific issues it's easy to see. If I say that we should have universal health care, or UBI, many people would say that I'm way far out on the left. What if I said that we shouldn't allow people to be multimillionaires? Would that make me way far out on the left? Again, to a lot of people yes.
So your definitions might be reasonable, but they aren't universal, and I think if you keep that in mind you can appreciate OP more.
I think the issue is not so much definitions, but who actually has a voice. Currently in US politics the far left does not wield any influence, but the far right does hold some sway over the Republican party.
I suppose some on the right toss out accusations of being far left, but that's just empty rhetoric.
Just to support your point (and for the benefit of others not from the US), even people who are sympathetic to your views will often use the adjective "radical" when describing them if you espouse such beliefs. Everyone who votes R will cal you a radical and a high percentage of democrats will too.
And that's before you even get to the stuff about overt wealth redistribution.
Bernie Sanders is the radical left to a great many in the US. (personally I consider him just the right amount of left 😁 )
Look at the neck of the chad. He has a commie symbol so its clearly that far out. Not just universal health care or UBI
Allllllll the fucking idiots of all political flavors descended on this thread, fucking hell
Dumbest takes I've seen in months, and they're all different takes.
I just catalogue tankies as another flavor of right-wing. Any kind of authoritarianism is far-right as far as I'm concerned, whether it's supposedly in service of communism or anything else.
Being left is about finding actual working solutions that help people and make society more free, just and safe for everyone and it's about being willing to abandon solutions that have been tried and don't work towards that goal (or require massive amounts of blood to achieve).
A tankie insisting that you need to just purge the political undesirables to make a utopia is just as irrational and right-wing as MAGA chud thinking theocracy or an ethnostate will work.
"Centrists" in the US think you're meant to cut the difference between those two, which is why they end up conservative themselves. They're stuck in a conception of the political landscape that limits them to thinking of things as a spectrum of extremes, rather than a binary between stuff that works to produce material good and stuff that doesnt.
To everyone upvoting this: you're agreeing with the take of a guy saying "fascism can be both described as left and right wing and it wants to ensure the needs of the working people"
Edit: confused the above commenter with another user. Ignore this comment.
No? I'm referring to the meme up above where the sides being portrayed are far-left and far-right, and I'm inferring the ideologies they represent based on the appearance and the text of the characters within the meme (with far-left being tankies and far-right being fascists).
By definition, fascism is always far-right.
That's not to say there aren't dictators within the left wing though. It's more of a common treat in Latin America and Asia.
Pretty sure most people who consider themselves leftists in western countries don't agree with the implications of this. Guaranteeing housing for everyone implies hard policy against landlords (including expropriation), construction of dense public housing... Guaranteeing equal rights in education means eliminating private education, and the same can be applied to medicine.
As for the human rights of people outside the western world, ensuring their human rights would imply stopping the abusive trade relations that they're forced into partaking. No more unequal exchange, so now chocolate is 5-10€ a piece. We also can't export our trash anymore to poorer countries. Good-bye to 3000€/month salaries in so-called "high added value" sectors of the economy when you submit to the reality that a western worker's hour shouldn't be paid at 5-times the rate of a non-western worker.
We need to degrow economically in order to preserve the climate, so the purchase power of people must be reduced when it comes to many consumer products which aren't basics. No more luxury vehicles (possibly restrictions on purchase of cars), no more buying clothes twice a month, and compulsory reduction of meat consumption.
Now, try to do all of those things within the logic of capitalism. Most self-described leftists don't see the logical and historical impossibilities of guaranteeing the needs of everyone within a capitalist system. So yeah, virtue-signalling and good intentions are good, but more than that is needed to actually achieve the goals in mind. The far-left is just aware of this.
Wait. Fascists are left-wing now? Fascists want to "ensure working class needs"????
If you go far enough on the left sector then yes, they may say they want to "ensure the working class needs" but are so full of shit that they strike down anything that differs slightly from their views. We need part of a personal incentive and an individual focused economy to actually meet the needs of the people. Communism might just ensure the bare minimum. Degrowth might be what would be good for our planet but in no world do I see the majority of people willing to give up part of their purchasing power so its easier to push for a more green economy without degrowth.
Thank you for agreeing with my point that self-described leftists don't want to experience the consequences of ensuring everyone's needs are met.
Communism isn't against that. The USSR workers had salaries tied to their productivity more often than in the west, I literally don't know any worker in my capitalist country whose salary is increased if they increase their productivity. If by "incentive" you mean "the looming threat of unemployment and homelessness", then speak openly. How funny that people aren't willing to give up purchase power according to you, but the threat of unemployment is an adequate incentive.
The needs of the people in developed capitalist societies are best met in socialized services such as public education, public healthcare, and public pensions. Typically, it's individual-based (i.e. private) sectors of the economy like housing (or healthcare and education in the US) that give the worst crises and stress to people, and the ones that ensure highest inequality between rich and poor.
It might seem abstract to you but if you are valuable to the company and another company offers you more money your pay is adjusted based on your economic productivity
Why should I speak openly if I support a social safety net that ensures a basic standard of living and housing during times of unemployment?
None of this needs a communist state
Meritocracy in capitalism is a myth. Low-wage workers often work harder than anyone else, and get no rises or other jobs for doing so.
Sure, the capitalist west is doing so well electing the far right to erode our already-eroded social rights even more.
Its not about how hard you work tho. Its based on how much your work is worth to others and how replaceable you a company. Actually Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark are some of the happiest countries on earth with the highest standards of living so I'd say they're doing pretty well. I know that there are a lot worse capitalist countries but I specifically focus on a social market economy and the potential. I am not defending the lack of social welfare in the US.
Nordic European countries have rather decent social welfare, agreed, but their economy is as sustained on unequal exchange as those of the rest of the developed world. In the case of Norway arguably more since they're oil exporters. My point being, not every country, not even most countries, can be like Scandinavian countries because they rely on exploitation of people outside their borders.
How's that not a bad thing to reward people based on? We saw during the pandemic that the actually important jobs in our society are the ones that pay jackshit and are easily replaceable. Shouldn't these people get a better life?
I get your point. It's sad that for example football stars get millions a year while the people required to run a country don't get a good pay. But large parts of a society for example highly value those stars which is why they're so well-paid.
In an ideal world we could do that, but only because you put a lot of effort into something doesn't mean it is of higher value to society. If its standard stuff someone else could do or you just aren't better than many others you don't get valued as much. If everyone worked the same job (Its a ridiculous example, I know but stick with it one second) and worked their ass off it would just be nearly worthless since all the other jobs would be empty. Thats how the economy allocates the work force.
This might be true, but even more industrialized countries like Germany or the Netherlands have a decent welfare state. They export a lot as well, yes, but I don't see it as much of an issue if the other countries were more industrialized and had higher pr capita productivity which would leave more things for everyone involved.
Again, ESSENTIAL jobs during the pandemic. They are the ones of highest value to society, to the point that it would crash without them.
I'm fully aware that's how it works now, I argue that it shouldn't be like this.
Again, that's not how it works. If you allow currently poor countries to develop, they'll stop providing cheap labor and raw materials to wealthy countries, and stop buying expensive manufactured products like cars and planes at a premium. That's what the western welfare state relies on: exploitation through unequal exchange of the poorer regions of the world
I don't agree with that assessment. I believe that the amount of manual labor and cheap outsourcing isn't needed for wealth. I believe we could all increase our standards of living
I believe that too, I just don't believe it can happen equitatively between countries in Capitalism. I'm not making up this "import raw materials, agricultural produce, cheap labor; export high added-value goods and services" approach to the economy, it's been there alive and kickin' since neocolonialism and the industrial revolution, and it's the boot that has been keeping the poor countries poor with the help of the CIA and the IMF. Countries that dare elect leaders who want to invest the surplus of the resources of their countries into modernizing them and into improving the lives of their citizens, are declared enemies of the west, like Venezuela (as bad as its policy may have been), like Libya under Gaddafi, like Iran under Mosaddegh, or like Patrice Lumumba in Congo. The list is truly endless. And simply by partaking in the system of international trade established by the western countries, who claim to want the best for everyone through free market but apply sanctions and economic warfare when their strategic economic sectors are threatened (see the current import taxes to Chinese EVs), the exploitation takes place and perpetuates itself. It's the reason why 1h of labour of Finnish or Swedish or Danish worker can be paid at 10 times the rate of that of a Congolese one.
The chinese government heavily subsidises EVs in a way unsuitable for the EU for example. I think 100% on top is too much but I guess that was Biden's gambit for not losing the public to Trump's protectionist agenda. Also, china has really done a bad job diplomatically to place itself as a rival of the US with their wolf warrior diplomacy.
How exactly else do you think other industrialised societies have developed high-tech manufacturing? South Korea, Japan, the former USSR... All of it was through protectionism, you can't outcompete a historically more developed industry (UK, Germany, USA) in the free market. The neoliberal dogma is that countries should focus on the sectors in which they're competitive even if they're low value-added, the reality is very different if we look at history.
Not happy with protectionism, though, the US and EU are now outright applying sanctions and bans to the Chinese economy, such as preventing them from importing high-tech lithography systems and technology. It's an economic war with China because the western hegemony is finally coming to an end and the west doesn't want that.
China placed itself as a rival of the US? The US is literally propping Taiwan, an island full of US military bases, and regularly sailing their warboats between the island and mainland China. Can you imagine if China had military bases in Cuba and they sailed warboats between the island and Miami? Or in Mexico and central America? Because the US has military bases all over southeast Asia. It's not "china placing itself as a rival of the US", it's simply the US imperialism resisting being overtaken.
Fascists want to ensure working class needs for the right working class people. Fascism is difficult to define, you can argue for it being either a left wing or a right wing ideology depending on the perspective of analysis.
God you're a fucking clown. Please tell me which fascist regime supports universal, free education for all children, universal social healthcare, or guaranteed housing. And tell me which fascist regime wants to ensure these rights for subsectors or the working class like racialized minorities or different ethnicities. Or women. Or queer people. "Fascism can be both described as left or right wing". Infuriatingly stupid take.
Unnecessarily angry reply. If youve taken a course on definitions of fascism youd understand what Im talking about. Quantifying the totality of what defines fascism is incredibly difficult considering the many forms it has taken throughout history. Hitler Naziism did have some social programs but not really enough to look at it from the perspective of left wing politics, therefor it is a majorly right right political movement. The current government of China and Maoism you can argue is both left wing and fascist due to the extremely strong social programs, rejection of western style capitalism, and the various slow genocides against non Han Chinese ethnic groups, such as the Uyghurs.
My response is angry because I'm Spanish, so I have good reference of what fascism is like, and you saying that it can be categorised as leftist when it's literally a reactionary movement that defends capitalist elites against rising leftist movements, is extremely apologetic of fascism.
Please tell me where's the militarisation of society. Please tell me where's the hierarchization of society. Please tell me where's the adoration of the distant idealized past. Please tell me where the anti-communist reactionaries are.
"Genocide is when reeducation camps for 3-4 years as a response to domestic terrorism". Sorry mate, 4 years ago people bought this rhetoric. Now that people see what actual genocide and apartheid looks like (Palestine), and now that it's patently obvious that a few anonymous testimonies aren't a reliable source of information for such serious accusations, people don't actually defend that there was genocide. There's no genocide in China against Uyghur.
The militarization of society is not a marker of every form of facism, facism comes in many different flavors. Neither is hierarchization of society, that has existed in all forms social organization including communism, socialism, feudalism, etc. China does have a meritocratic system, exactly like the rest of the world for the most part. Another example of this could be the caste system of India, although I am not as familiar with that as I am with Chinese history and politics, so it is hard for me to make the fascist determination; although it does have the markers. Now for the adoration of the distant past, that is also not a marker of fascism, more so a marker of conservatism, but I will humor you. Have you heard of something called Shen Yun? It is an organization that puts on plays around the western world that focuses on glorifying the past of China prior to communism. It is no longer really supported by the CCP because of political disagreements, but is still a glorification of the past. Come on, dont say that fascism requires anti communism, thats just close minded and anti nuance. You need to look at fascism separately from the economic organizations of society: communism, socialism, capitalism. As for your point on the Uyghurs, if you think that rounding up an ethnic group and putting them in re-education, forced reproduction, and prison camps is not genocide, I dont know what to tell you. There were also hundreds more ethnic groups in China that have been culturally and literally genocided in recent history. We agree that Israels government is organized into a fascist apartheid state, Palestine is under a true attempted genocide. That doesnt mean, though, you should ignore what is happening and has happened in societies that are not strictly capitalist.
You can just say "I'm using my own definition of fascism which doesn't agree with the general consensus of what fascism is, to refer to any regime I consider loosely authoritarian".
"You need to look at the socioeconomic system separately from the economic organizations of society". Fucking lol.
Agreed, that's very sus and not a policy I support, even in the context of prior terrorist attacks.
I assume you mean forced sterilization. Sorry, but there's no serious evidence for that. The best you can point to is an inform by Amnesty International that is based off anonymous interviews. There's nothing pointing towards mass forced sterilisation of Uyghur people, in fact they were mostly left out of the single-child policy that China adopted unlike Han people, which explains partly why Uyghur went from being a minority to the majority ethnicity in Xinjiang. What a weird genocide, where the supposedly oppressive ethnicity is displaced in numbers by the supposedly oppressed ethnicity.
I'd love to read on that, can you send me a source?
I'm not ignoring it, I'm looking at the available evidence and determining that there's no active genocide. It's these types of false claims that were used to justify military intervention in other countries. Remember Nayirah's testimony used to justify in the US military action against Iraq. Or the exaggerated calls of genocide in Yugoslavia that were used to allow NATO to bomb the shit out of it and break it up into a collection of weak states, separating families.
I believe you are misunderstanding a lot of what I am writing. And I don't think much of your reply to my comment has been constructive or an attempt to retort any of my opinion, just a "lol ur wrong" statement on all of it which in no way proves you right or me wrong. I am not using my own definition of fascism, if you read what I wrote, I am saying that what you are asking me to find in modern chinese society is not a marker of every form of fascism, and to quantify fascism by only those parameters is distracting from every other form of fascism that has been present in history. Its possible to be fascist and communist at the same time, its possible to be fascist and capitalist at the same time.
Yeah no, I'm not misunderstanding. And no, I'm not doing a constructive answer because you're keen on talking about a definition of fascism that most people would disagree with, especially those who've spent a minute researching the origins of fascism and why it's an intrinsically reactionary movement that pops as a response from capitalism to threatening leftist movements.
I use an academic definition not a reddit definition
Please show me where you found that academic description