/tank/

Is it just me, or is this board getting tankier every day? I mean i feel just from hanging out here that im becoming more of an ML. Plus theres all the threads praising unruhe and third worldism. Plus people now dislike marcsoc, succdems, and all of the the meme ideologies, etc. Majority of the active posters here seem to be ML's and i dont just think its because of BO's imperialism ban

you definitiely don't need to be a ML for this

People are increasingly aware that instituting a planned economy is a fundamental project of socialism, which keeps them away from most light-left ideologies that want to manage capital. Since the only movements that made some progress in overcoming commodity exchange are state socialist, it's worth to see what went wrong in and go from there.

Additionally, the idea that the masses will overthrow capitalism without a Vanguardist leadership basically means postponing the revolution forever. Most people are apolitical even if they're starving.

I honestly go from Anarchist to Tanky and back every time I close my eyes

I AM DETECTING INKLINGS OF

SECTARIANISM

t. tankie promoting his ideology

Because the guys who know their all got tired and left to greener pastures.

Go away you filthy khrushchevites

wut is this sentence? you drunk? explain?
guys who 'know their all'???

I'm guessing he meant to say something like

what separates in your opinion a non tankie marxist from a tankie, other than being leftcom (even tho bordigists are kinda tankie anyway)

I'm not that user, but the current usage of the term tankie just denotes anyone who gives uncritical and dogmatic support to the former USSR, Stalin, or any other "Actually Existing Socialism". Anywho who truly and unironically believes that Stalin dindu nuffin. Anyone who thinks the DPRK is a paradise. Anyone who thinks the goal of Socialism is authoritarian State Capitalism. i.e. Marxists who've never read Marx but fetishize collapsed regimes and waste all their time defending nations that haven't even existed for anywhere between 30-50 years.

Bordiga's not a "tankie", and if you think that then you really don't know what you're talking about.

No but I get where he's coming from. I've heard many leftcoms say they literally don't care about authoritarianism and human rights abuses in the USSR, their only problem with it was commodity production and not completely abolishing every last trace of capitalism. Also the whole "fuck democracy" attitude gives off tankie vibes. Calling leftcoms tankies is incorrect, but it doesn't surprise me that someone would say that.

He's far more authoritarian than a tanky

But the problem is this board is filled with ancoms who describe anyone who doesn't buy the anti-communist propaganda as a 'tankie'. This is what michael parenti would refer to as a left wing anti communist (like chomsky).
This charicature of a tankie never existed outside of one super conservative soviet politician in 1959, even most ML's don't say Stalin did nothing wrong, hell, even Mao himself said Stalin got it 40% wrong so by intellectually honest standards, Mao wasn't 'tankie'. Face it the way tankie is used here, it just refers to anyone who doesn't go into histrionics the moment the USSR is represented in even a slightly positive light.
Collectivizing agriculture and seizing the kulaks shit actually wasn't wrong, or would a leftcom or anarchist "allow" private landlords to continue with their private property? No. As badmouse said even the anarchists would have gulaged the kulaks
Those people exist, but thats still miles ahead of anarcho liberals who never read any theory, hate the ussr, and think anarchy is buying green and reading chomsky or some shit.
He did support leninism and the one party model i.e. his shit he writes in proletarian dictatorship and class party. This:

Although it actually makes me like him better

Yeah IDK what OP is on either. It's very clearly a bunch of shades of libsocs and various non-ML Marxists for like 8/10ths, then the last 2/10ths have not just the tankies but also NazBols, Bookchinites, etc. and others that the majority absolutely disagrees with.

That's about accurate. Bordiga was a Leninist and for him whether or not authority es exercised is irrelevant; what is relevant is whether or not this actually leads to meaningful changes. Clearly, imprisong Poles and homos while centralizing capital under a red bureaucracy separate from the working class despite unleashing a carnage did nothing at all but put Russia on the fast-track towards regular capitalist development, and so it's just a bunch of lost lives for nothing. And it has nothing to do with the fact that it was Stalin. Again, the most important question is not who but how. Bordiga and the rest of the communist left actually trusted that Stalin could be reasoned with like any other individual, which is why they remained in contact with the Comintern even until Stalin's death, trying to reason and engage in dialogue.

Anyone who believes this doesn't understand bordiga's critique of democracy.

Yeah, but in a very different manner from stalinists.

Yes, which is why I avoid using the term myself, but it is a useful term when describing a certain strain of twitter lunatics and fringe weirdos like Phil Greaves and Red Kahina. In fact, I believe contemporary usage can be traced back to Ross Wolf dusting off the term in order to sling it at Kahina in a few blog posts.

Agreed. The Great Purges on the other hand, not as defensible. Especially when one considers that most of Stalin's victims weren't counterrevolutionaries, but instead some of Russia's most committed Marxists and Bolsheviks.

Tankies and smashies are two sides of the same retarded, illiterate coin.

That's not what makes you a tankie. Dogmatism and an inability to think critically or scientifically do. I'm not a Leftcom. I like Bordiga because I think he was a good Leninist. I don't think Stalin was a monster. But the USSR was far from ideal, it something Marxists should spend day and night ruthlessly critiqueing, just as Marxists in previous centuries ruthlessly critiqued the Revolutions of 1848 and the Paris Commune. Mindlessly revering literal failed states is pointless. Whether the USSR was or wasn't a failure shouldn't be up for debate. It no longer exists, this means it failed. Any Marxist who thinks otherwise is employing magical thinking of the highest order. What we need to do now is pick up the pieces and figure out what comes next. The fact that some Marxists can honestly just sit there and think that DaiMat means just plugging the Soviet Model into historical and material conditions that don't correlate to it is frankly disturbing to me, and it makes me think that these Marxists became Marxists for the wrong reasons, namely so they could obsess over dead leaders like the father figures they never had themselves.

A critique of Bourgeois democracy does not automatically make you a Stalinist, maybe you should actually read Bordiga, or better yet Lenin. or better yet Marx

Fair enough, and I have seen Leftcoms do this, I've even seen Ancoms do it, and it makes the Left look autistic, that said, a well reasoned and nuanced critique of Bourgeois democracy and Liberal parliamentarianism is kind of a cornerstone of Socialism, whether Marxist or Anarchist. Although both sects have the unfortunate tendency to constantly accuse the other side of being totalitarian.

I seriously can't believe people are unironic leninists in the year of 2017. At least socdems have a solid track record

There seems to be a couple more tankies, but they're very small in number. The decline of marksucc and memechinites is because the meme died down, while in addition to the socdem gang guy we've had the arrival of one or two annoying socdems who have always been hated here. Anarchists remain the biggest bloc, with non-ML Marxists coming in second. If the groups look smaller, it's because anarchists have stopped replying to anarkiddies xD bait and marxists are busy.

What? There have always been butthurt LeftComs and Anarkiddies that loved to bitch about Market Socialism

wrong bitch

I've noticed this too, and I think it's from more ex-Holla Forumsacks coming over here and wanting to be socialists, but still too dumb to read Marx.

What did he mean by this?

JUST

I am personally getting tankier every day so…The only thing that stops me is the historical record of ML. Not that I am liberal about gulags or whatever, more that it inevitably ended up sliding back into liberalism, unless you are Cuba, and that was only because of immortal Castro being immortal

what about the norks

It's because everyone else is too busy reading theory and having a life.

S-Stop bullying!

...

i also enjoy failed welfare states turning into neoliberal hell

ONE OF US!
ONE OF US!
ONE OF US!

bottom is a literal Nork quote. So..

The more you read the more tankie you get tbqh.

to read too many books is harmful
t. mao

mao was
tankie
bottom text

And Mao was a faggot.

Leninism is less of of a political ideology and more of a method of organization you fucking idiot. Read a book.

Ancoms prove once again that they don't read. Although I agree that Mao sucks.

...

You mean "socialism is the dictatorship of the bureaucracy" board? People there have unironically made that argument and it's been screenshotted. Hopefully somebody will post it.

Literally everybody who makes generalized statements like "Mao sucks" have never seriously engaged with him or Maoism in general. Also, fucking rich coming from a NazBol, since the entire Eurasian Ideology of Dugin is based on some esoteric revisionism of Maoism with some Heidegger thrown in.

Superstructure and Base are reciprocal, my dude.

Have you tried not being such a fucking tankie all the time?

Yes but the base is dominant, the superstructure will never be dislodged as long as the base is there to support it, especially when the ideology you are trying to install has no base of its own. France, England, Russia, Germany, China etc all had their revolutions when their bases were either in a state of collapse (Russia and Germany after WW1, China after its civil war), or when the base had advanced and outpaced the superstructure (France and England, where a feudal superstructure existed over a capitalist base). A revolution will happen regardless of the presence of a vanguard party, and furthermore relying on one to organize the working class from without defeats the purpose of the revolution, that is to have the proles govern and organize themselves.

Well, it did kill Arshinov. Anything that destroys platformists is ok by me.

That is disappointing.

Nothing to do with this board, but since the UK GE I've definitely become more radicalised. Thanks Corbyn.

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The opposite is true

Best post ITT tbh

citation needed

Hating Bookchin does not make you a tankie. Also the roo is a meme.

Tankies are conservatives who root for the red team of Eastern bloc instead of the blue team of NATO. If a country is socialist matters not, as long as they oppose the USA.
Is there a difference between Stalinists and tankies? Are there Stalinists who actively oppose the suppression of Hungary 1956 and Prague 1968 - support of which makes tankies tankies?

Yes, eventually it will happen 'organically', leftcoms and communisation narchies are right about that - but it can and should happen much earlier.

Proletarian fetishism. It matters not if it is the vanguard or 'the proletariat as the revolutionary subject' with 'new organic forms of organisation invented during a revolutionary period' who governs. What matters is the decisions made and more importantly the results.

I would root for the red team and I'm not even a tankie.
Why would you think nato is even socialist? It still deals in the market.

You managed to misunderstand me heavily. I'm not saying NATO is socialist good heavens, just that states should be evaluated based on their real geopolitical and governmental actions, not their anti-americanism or ostensible 'socialism'. Tankies root for the red team for no other reason that the red team is 'their side', even though red vs blue tends to be a 'they are both worse' situation.