this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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I don't really consider myself a liberal or a communist. Maybe some mixture of both? I have my own ideals that probably align mostly with eastern philosophy, and maybe some more "esoteric" practices. Id like to think im well read, for being a mostly uneducated person, and I'm very accepting of just about everyone outside of violence or blind hatred, but I have never heard the term "tankie" until reddit. Is it a reference to Tiannemen Sq or something? Just curious as I like to know as much as I can. Thanks.
Also, as someone who's coming from reddit as of yesterday, it's kinda cool seeing more than one political ideal, as I really don't think there is a "perfect" system. Humans are flawed in their very nature, and tbh, we're a little late to "get it right".
Tankie is a meaningless term now, the deprogram just did an episode on it:
It’s also on other platforms like spotify etc.
I really loved Hakim's take on it being a very privileged position within the imperial core to scold those who see the state as crucial to sustained revolution.
yes! Same thing for how I came to understand the hatred for American soldiers. A lot of the cheering for the bad shit that happens to them comes from people who actually suffer from their actions, and made me examine how I viewed the military
That discussion was halfway identical to my own commentary on the term four years ago. It’s a vague buzzword about 90% of the time and I’m ashamed to say that I said it unjokingly in my Fedbook days. After I understood why the people’s republics were appealing to so many (rather than dismissing the defenders as mindlessly desperate), I let go of my grudge and quit using the term for anything other than comedic purposes.
Hearing that podcast made me wish that I could have a live conversation with Hakim. Although at this point I’d be interested in having a live conversation with any communist. In that format they’d be likelier to offer active feedback on the history that I share.
It's funny, I remember reading a takedown of this same article from criticalresist, https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/400717
Guess great minds think alike lol.
I agree, talking to other communists is awesome!
There's the etymology of tankie and there's the actual ways it's used. The etymology is rolling tanks into Hungary in 1956, which caused a solit (among many) among UK communists (who came up with the term). The usage varies wildly because liberals don't understand politics very well and slap it on anything to the left of Obama.
Communista understand politics through a series of criticisms of capitalism and a framework by which to understand those within it, namely economic classes whose interests align/do not align depending on the material context. You might find that some of this appeals to you, as a material grounding is more common in Eastern traditions than Western. Also we are super duper correct, so we've got that going for us.
Re: flawed humans, there are of course a variety of people out there and we all make mistakes. However, it's also important to recognize tgatva lot that is attributed to "human nature" is actually fairly recent and is either a consequence of living under the capitalist system (which came into being over a period of about 1000 years) or is just a myth spread to justify the violences done by that system to the common person.
And re: perfection, you might like us there, too. We view the political economic system as an evolving thing that changes relative to material conditions. There is no perfext system, but there are valid struggles to replace the current one with systems that prioritize people over profit. For example, no communist would say that socialism is the solution to hunter-gatherers in Crete because hunter-gathering Crete isn't capitalist - the idea would have no meaning. We also know and expect that the fight doesn't stop even after a revolution, that there will still be struggles for a long time - but at least we could fight them together and with greater agency.
Hey thanks for writing that.. OK so you've confirmed my general understanding of the idealogy.
After I wrote that I knew you were gona come back with something about capitalist perspective and long term goal. So that was a good refresher for me I appreciate it.
I feel like there is too many people still tbh lol.
Capitalism doesn't work. I've been through it and it's underbelly enough to know that. I do think the wealthy west has distorted our view of ourselves. I'm aware of that. I try to come at things as objectively as possible, though sometimes I fail.
I sort of agree with the main tenants of communism absolutely. I do consider myself somewhat of a socialist, tho I'm more a broad strokes type person, hence I sort of default to self betterment and mindfulness, while trying to bring a base understanding of our nature through my interactions to others as a way to better the world. My perfect system would be living close to the land, hunter gather style. Im kind of a hermit tbh (: there too many people for me lol.
I bookmarked your comment. I'm gonna revisit it later. Appreciate the talk.
Edit: fwiw, I do believe at a fundamental level, people are good, and we are in agreement about things more than we disagree. We just have a track record of complicating the simple ime. Im guilty as well.
Thanks for being open-minded!
I might say that capitalism does work, but only for the ruling class (business owners) and those they can rope into doing their anti-worker dirty work. The system isn't broken and need fixing, it's working exactly how they want it to and it must be destroyed.
Being vaguely socialist is 100% cool btw. No need to get too deep into labels. The most helpful thing is to be class conscious and be active in your community in a way that's cognizant of that. Helping people get better wages, win unions, support politicians antithetical to capital (they're very rare and nobody in the squad would count), support strikes, support social housing, oppose war that your country supports, and so on. Never supporting cops in capitalist countries. Diving deep into left theory is handy for doing those things better and having clear eyes about what is coming next, but it's less important than doing some of these clearly good anti-capitalist things. It can also help you choose a group to organize with, as some groups are do-nothing orgs.
Also nothing wrong with wanting to live in a smaller community or even a reclusive life. Alienated city life is an imposition that violates the connection and community most people want to have. Folks can't plant roots long enough to know their neighbors, let alone create a community. That's a consequence of real estate, rent, and unemployment, a whole other can of worms.
There's a recent book you might enjoy called The Dawn of Everything. It's co-written by David Graeber, who had anarchist leanings but respected Marxist thought. It has many examples of societies defining and redefining themselves relative to material conditions snd relative to one another.
Sounds like a good book, i definitely have anarchist leanings, though i do acknowledge that prob wouldnt work atm lol. ive bookmarked your comments. It's hard not to be class conscious when your a victim of class warfare, tho some have definitely had it worse than me. It's becoming less about racial lines, and more about rich poor.
I'd like to think I do my part day to day in what little way I can, even if it's just making one person a little bit more conscious of their own situation yknow.
Enjoyed the discussion so far thanks.
There's plenty of value in reading anarchists, of course. Reading widely is the best bet, as one can become limited and engage in bad practice if they become too embedded in factionalism. Not that it's always wrong to have fights, just that it tends to end up being pointless and based on the people picking fights having their ignorance exploited by ruling class propaganda.
The ruling class under capitalism had and rediscovers many weapons for combatting class consciousness, unfortunately. Living as a worker under capitalism tends to breed a nascent class consciousness through (Marxist term) exploitation, but it needs shaping through education. Unfortunately the ruling class can redirect that nascent class consciousness into a false consciousness of division, condescension, and hate. As an example, whiteness and blackness, and particularly anti-black racism, were literally invented as a form of social control to divide European bonded laborers from African slave bonded laborers and then later exploited to phase out bonded labor of Europeans entirely while still maintaining control over black slaves. An often-ignored fact is that Bacon's Rebellion was an integrated, class solidarity action of a variety of people in bonded labor, European and African and more, and that the ruling class's response to this was to invent racial economic rules and guarantee societal race privileges as a substitute for economic ones.
We can see the same thing play out today, where bosses and management point the finger at "illegal" immigrant labor (a proxy for the predominantly brown labor underclass) for (usually white) workers' ills, when it's of course the bosses picking all workers' pockets.
Same game plan had worked for about 400 years and it requires resistance and organization, the bedrock of communists' work. It's also not restricted to race - the ruling class applies this tactic and tries to split based on:
Basically... we've got work to do in order to avoid increasingly fascistic outcomes, as fascism is just a particular form of false consciousness imposed by the ruling class to deal with crises of capitalism, and it is increasing in visibility with every crisis.
PS not trying to get you to go do commie things, just wanted to add some context on how class consciousness is not inevitable from our working conditions. We are all in our own states of mind and at different points of how we can and want to do extra work.
I've also enjoyed the discussion.
It warms your heart when you see Liberals actually coming here with an open mind and actually wanting to learn more. Wish we could have more of that. Too tired of all the bickering.
No, it's a reference to Khrushchev sending tanks into Hungary during the 1956 revolt. Leftist supporters of this policy within Western nations were referred to as "Tankies" since then the term came to generally just refer to Marxist-Leninists. That is until more recently when Tankie has come to mean just any leftist a person disagrees with.
If you're interested in leftist theory then go to Marxists.org, it has plenty of free literature. I suggest starting with the communist manifesto just to get a general idea of the principles of communism before delving deeper into Marx and Engel's work. (And maybe sprinkle in some Lenin too cause he's sassy and a great read.)