I don’t consider tankies lefter than me.
Seriously. Tankies are authoritarians who consider themselves leftists.
Authoritarian / libertarian is on a completely different axis from left / right, no?
Only on the political compass, which uses a definition of left vs right that a lot of leftists disagree with. Really, the entire history of “left wing” politics has been about questioning and dismantling authority. The terms “left wing” and “right wing” come from the French revolution, when the people in favour of simply reforming the monarchy sat on the right side of the room, while the people who wanted to fully dismantling the monarchy sat on the left. A lot of more modern leftist thought is about questioning the power that capitalist businesses have.
Well said. Still; can you not have authoritarian left and libertarian left viewpoints? I just don’t see how questioning the power capitalist businesses have is limited to the libertarian left.
What’s wrong with the definition of left & right on the political compass? I’m not super tuned into political science but this is the first I’ve heard that many leftists have take issue with it. I have seen the authoritarian left referred to as “red fascists”, but do they not also take issue with the power capitalist businesses have?
I suppose I’d consider myself a left libertarian. The power of the state should be limited and what power is granted to the state should be used to improve the life of the people.
can you not have auth left and lib left viewpoints?
Yes, but actually no. The distinction is fundamentally unstable. If the left is constantly questioning power structures, it will inevitably turn to whatever structure the auth left comes up with.
what’s wrong with the definition of left and right on the political compass?
It’s specially economic left/right, which is almost always defined by taxation, government spending, and social welfare. While leftists usually say social welfare is a good thing, it’s not changing the fundamentals of how capitalism works, which is the current dominant power structure that leftists are against.
do auth left not also take issue with the power capitalist businesses have?
Yes, but they usually put something just as bad in its place. You might have heard people saying that the USSR was “state capitalist rather than communist”. This means that the workers and customers had just as little say in how things are run than they would under capitalists, only is was directly with the state rather than individual business owners.
Thanks, I appreciate your replies.
Very well said, thank you.
Worthwile to note here that the left of the French revolution, the Jacobins, did develop authoritarianism.
Which should have been a warning sign for all leftists to come, but alas…
They’re so left they’ve wrapped around and became fascists
They’re on the Leftest off-ramp that heads back the other way.
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support systems that have brought about immense increases in life expectancy, worker’s rights, women’s rights, free healthcare, free education, and literally defeated fascism
Cool, you can make literally that exact same argument about capitalist neo libs.
You actually can’t make the argument that neoliberal capitalism has defeated fascism at all, you’d have to be completely historically & politically illiterate to even consider it. Life expectancy increase came as a result of medical research conducted around the world, all others were conceded by capitalist governments begrudgingly and only after years of hard work by organizations that were overwhelmingly made up of anti-capitalists, and every single one is currently being rolled back in every capitalist nation on earth.
and every single one is currently being rolled back in every capitalist nation on earth.
Just completely factually incorrect.
You actually can’t make the argument that neoliberal capitalism has defeated fascism at a
Sure you can, I wouldn’t agree with it, just like I wouldn’t agree that socialism did, but you can make that argument
Life expectancy increase came as a result of medical research conducted around the world
Yeah that’s kind of my point. The things you mention as successes of “”“socialist”“” countries is just scientific advancement and industrialisation.
Factually entirely correct lol, sorry if reality is inconvenient for your bullshit
Replaced Nazism in Europe*
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Worthwile to note that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were longstanding allies before Operation Barbarossa and a critical amount of steel and oil that supplied the Nazi war machine after the allied embargo was supplied by the Soviet union.
Which says nothing of the monumental sacrifice given by Soviet civilians, but let’s separate that from Stalin’s policy, perhaps?
Anything’s possible when you make shit up
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We don’t need to read propaganda and lies thanks.
It’s well known history that Russia and Germany split up Poland and had a peace deal. End of story.
Anti imperialism? How did they become the largest country on earth?
Respect of minorities? Tell that to the tens of thousands of people executed in forests. Or starved to death. Because of their identity.
Industrial development? Yes, current Russia having an economy the size of Italy is a testament to that.
Plenty of countries have free education and Healthcare.
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Yes, muscovites just made friends, that’s not imperialism. Sakha just wanted to give it’s oil and minerals to Moscow. Yakutia just wanted desperately to learn Russian. It’s not imperialism if there are no boats involved!
Estonia? Now their GDP per capita is not 20% higher, it’s 200% higher than Russia. Yes, triple as high. Obviously Russia was robbing them blind, and holding them back. Same as most other republics and Warsaw pact nations. GDP explosions after ditching the red parasite.
Ukraine had borders just fine when Soviets invaded them. If not for the war they lost against Poland in 1920 they would have kept invading and repressing nations. Belorussian language is almost extinct nowadays after all the russification. Same for Ukrainian in Eastern Ukraine.
French killed 1 million Algerians? Rookie numbers, they should have learned from the holodomor.
Shit, there’s plenty of Non Tankies to my left. Tankies want to use force to control people’s thoughts and actions.
Tankies are drunk on hierarchy and violence.
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Hey I found the Tankie who thinks they’re on the left!
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Bruh just out here punching the air in an empty comment section of a shit posting sub
Go back to your echo chamber tankie. Nobody likes you. Nobody wants you. But I’m sure your fans enjoy your circle jerk.
Which actually existing current or historical leftist movements do you support?
Are you a fucking cop? Get the fuck out of here you loser. I’m sorry everyone hates you. But thats a you issue.
I’m not sorry everyone hates them
Anarchist Catalonia, modern Rojava, more than a few pre-Columbian North American societies, the Paris Commune of 1793… Maybe read some theory instead of making arguments from ignorance.
And you can care about results without having historical results. Anti-monarchism in general had basically zero results post-Industrial Revolution until the liberals won in North America in the late 18th century, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t care about results, just that they hadn’t achieved much yet. The American Revolution was pretty quickly followed by the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, several more French revolutions, Brazilian independence, and eventually the October Revolution, the most recent Chinese civil war, the Cuban Revolution, and so on.
Between 1775 and 1925, the general concept of people voting on matters of statewide policy went from a relic of the Classical Era that had ended more than 1800 years earlier to the norm in North America and Europe. 1800 years of obscurity, then 150 years to ubiquity in the world’s wealthiest states and another 50 to expand to most of the rest.
Sure, anarchism has had a longer period out of the spotlight, not having been the norm since roughly the invention of agriculture ~8000 years ago, but you never know when it might return. Having a concrete, achievable plan to get results is good, but you also want to make sure that the results you’re striving for are just, otherwise you end up with liberalism again. And we all know how that ends up.
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Lol way to prove their point dumbass
Being better at violence doesn’t make you more left, it makes you better at violence. That can be useful, but it isn’t the same thing. Your argument boils down to “might makes right” and could be expanded to classify social democracy as “more left” (after all, it’s left of the global status quo and its citizens are the happiest on average). In fact, you might even be able to use the argument for liberalism; it’s left of monarchy and fascism. Sure, it frequently decays into fascism, but so did the USSR.
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tankies aren’t “further left than me” they’re “more authoritarian than me”
“further left than me” are idealist utopian communists and “more libertarian than me” are idealist utopian anarchists
Yep. Authoritarianism does not lie leftward, it is not a leftist principle.
nobody can agree what “left” means
That is nonsense.
The left was coined by its opposition to the monarchy while the right supported it.
So left has been currently and historically speaking in opposition of hierarchies and in favor of equality.
The right consequently has been in favor of hierarchies.
Okay, but just grounding it in historical context doesn’t make it the definition. If Mamdani established Mamdanistan and abused courts to execute people polluting ground water with data centers, that would be hierarchical, but very clearly not “right wing” in the common understanding.
Opposing hierarchies is generally fitting, but the minutia of politics make such simple definitions harder to agree on by everyone, which touches on their point.
Weird example but ok.
And no, it is not only historical. I stated that in my original comment and I invite you to look at left wing politics but some “left wing” politician’s position on some random issue, but a widely supported position by the left wing community. You will see that they are all in opposition of hierarchy.
But let’s take your weirdly racist example, where is the hierarchy?
Sorry my bad, I thought jokes about Mamdanistan were more common internet parlance, the point is a radical leftwing state in the minds of fox news viewers. I was doing the limiting case to prove the point, but the base point is prosecution of criminal environmental acts through courts requires hierarchy.
I guess I have to ask what you mean by hierarchy if you don’t believe that courts executing people counts.
I think it’s weird that you think it’s “weirdly racist”. Weirdo
it means a very scary mountain
libertarians are not anarchists
Anarchists are a genre of libertarians though. It’s just that who dominates the landscape of “libertarian” is ancaps, who are just fascists with a weirder set of steps to implement a fascist nightmare.
Anarchists and Libertarian used to be synonymous, since Libertarian was a way to talk about Anarchism without being persecuted. Later in the US Proprietarians coopted the term Libertarian, and later even Anarchism by claiming to be ‘Anarcho-Capitalists’.
@ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net always out here saying what i’m trying to say, but better
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the farthest extremes on either side are unrealistic and deluded. just because you like one side doesn’t mean they dont get crazy when you go far enough. it’s VERY important not to lose site of that.
yes a communist utopia is unachievable. yes there are people who are actively pursuing that impossible goal. that does not make them unleft.
Yeah, exactly. This graphic is really bad. I guess it’s supposed to be incorrect, but it sends a bad message.
Also, the only people calling anyone “shitlibs” are literal tankies. Sane leftists don’t call anyone “shitlib.”
Any leftist to the right of my on the spectrum is probably considered center-left. I prefer democratic socialism and/or social democracy, using incremental progress to achieve leftist reform.
People are allowed to have different opinions than me. That’s what democracy is. But no one can be allowed to be authoritarian in a democracy, because authoritarianism is incompatible with democracy and a danger to it.
Authoritarians don’t respect diversity of opinion, they don’t tolerate differences. So I’m so tired of authoritarian-minded people whining and calling me intolerant just because I shut them down when they’re trying to dominate others.
Imagining yourselves as everyone’s parents… Literal unironic paternalism.
Having a .ml as one’s actual parent sounds like a nightmare though. Absolutely a sure fire way to create an anarcho-capitalist or some shit in the natural backlash.
Just because I recognize that you are the intellectual equivalent of a toddler doesn’t mean I accept the responsibility of raising you
So you think you and those that agree with you should have power over people but have no responsibility to them?
I legitimately don’t care if you think I’m stupid I know what you think is smart.
I think that you specifically are too stupid for your own health and safety and that someone competent and trustworthy absolutely should have power over you until that changes, ideally multiple someones with a robust system of public oversight. I said I do not accept responsibility for you, just because I recognize the need for competent leadership doesn’t mean I’m willing or able to lead.
>democracy
look inside
>attachment to particular institutions, policies and practices
Tankies aren’t leftists in reality.
Maybe left of Nazis, but they aren’t leftists.
The political left and authoritarianism are inherently contradictory.
Its the political right that embraces authoritarianism. Hence why we call them “Red Fascists”
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For safety, or for power.
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Uh, your graph is missing power levels for Lenin and Stalin.
over 9000
Based
Whatt your graph shows is only a reduction in percentage. The top 10% still amount to around 25% of the wealth - which is wild considering that companies that were privatly owned didn’t exist. So what equity positions are we talking about?
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The political compass isn’t an objective model
Found the tankie.
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The nazis’ economy was a shell game of debt, and they were overextended militarily. Their regime would have fallen even if they had won the war. Secondly, the USSR at first joined forces with the nazis until they were betrayed by them, and after the soviets joined the allies, they received massive aid under the lend-lease act. And even with the aid, they still had to rely on human-wave tactics.
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Now that is quite a fun game of gymnastics, but just to pick one out and ohrase it differently.
The Soviets invaded Poland to weaks late according to the treaty with Germany, because they were held back in Belarus, the Baltics and Ukraine, but gladly took the promised lands.
Yeah right. However you spin this the USSR was by no means an innocent country, nor were they anti-imperialist. They might have seen themselves that way. But that’s like me saying I am dilligent and disciplined, lying to oneself is what we do best.
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saved Europe from fascism
a fascist state fought a war against a competing fascist state. simply being on the side opposing Nazi Germany doesn’t magically make your state a perfect divine utopia
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none of that precludes fascism
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just saying it doesn’t make it true
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Tankies are left?
No.
yes
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If you believe in the horseshoe theory they aren’t. I believe in the horseshoe theory
E: uppon more research i don’t believe in the horseshoe theory per se. But in speaking to many tankies, they exhibit many traits that the far right has.
I certainly reassessed.
Hey, horseshoes aren’t a theory, they’re custom cut and nailed in place…
Yes, but horseshoes invented the theory
Sir Alex horseshoe Who was, in fact a horseshoe
Crabs truly are talented.
Based
The biggest similarity is that we are both willing to use violence to oppress our enemies. The difference is that the enemy of communists are our oppressors and the enemy of fascist is whoever they decide to not like at the moment. The ultimate attack on capital (communism) is materially different than the ultimate defense of capital (fascism).
Fun fact though, liberalism also supports violence (or at least passively accepts it) as long as it is mostly external. We don’t get to choose non-violence. You can attack the people doing violence, join the people doing violence, or accept the people doing violence.
I appreciate your point of view, but from my interactions here, that’s not my experience.
To be clear I am not trying to argue with you here I’m just curious what you think.
What part of what I said have you found to be untrue? What sort of interactions led you to this conclusion?
I think, it needs to be clarified, that not everything you said I would say is “untrue”, and I want to thank you for approaching this conversation constructively. I think we agree on many points, e.g. housing is a human right, as is access to food, Healthcare, water, etc.
The biggest similarity is that we are both willing to use violence to oppress our enemies.
I can’t speak to that point, so I will defer to you.
The difference is that the enemy of communists are our oppressors and the enemy of fascist is whoever they decide to not like at the moment.
I do know that fascism needs an enemy in order to function, but, from my interactions with various people who claim to be communist, they are just as happy to view anyone who dissent with their views as a sheep, or, an enemy to their cause. For example, we both agree that Israel is committing genocide, we both agree that, at the very least, Israel is certainly on its way to doing the same in Lebanon. We both agree that what the US did in Iran, and Vensuela is inexcusable (keeping it recent). Now when another country, russia, does something similar to ukraine, and, it’s called out, well now im a shit lib who is pro Imperialism and the enemy of what is “communism”
The ultimate attack on capital (communism) is materially different than the ultimate defense of capital (fascism).
If you mean communism, and not whatever russia and China are, then yes, no argument here.
Fun fact though, liberalism also supports violence (or at least passively accepts it) as long as it is mostly external.
I think liberals, generally are ok with it, as you said, externally, there was a lot of liberal support for the Iraq bullshit.
We don’t get to choose non-violence. You can attack the people doing violence, join the people doing violence, or accept the people doing violence.
Yes, boiled down, that is very unfortunately the case, and from an idealistic point of view, we need to collectively move past that stupidity.
Not ignoring you, but I want to give you a proper reply, not on my phone, so I need to get on a computer, ill write you back :)
No worries, take your time
With the slight clarification that communists will redifine oppressors at their will, making them effectively the same in practice.
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You are a worker that doesn’t support the movement? Class traitor, gulag.
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You made a joke about dear leader? Traitor, gulag.
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You would like free elections? Foreign agent, gulag.
Anything’s possible when you make shit up
Yes, holodomor is western propaganda.
…no
Yes actually, and like all the best propaganda it’s partially true. Famine happened, people died, both verifiable facts. The extent is drastically exaggerated by western sources, allegations that it was an intentional act of genocide are baseless and hilariously hypocritical coming from the US & friends.
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Accurate
Forgive my ignorance, what is a tankie?
Someone you dont like, with a vaguely leftist connotation.
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oh god, it’s like reading parenti
make it stop
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when does kropotkin infantalize and dismiss marxists?
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“Mussolini enjoyer”
this is some bad faith bullshit
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A person who believes that an authoritarian state is righteous and justified as long as it calls itself communist (even if it’s not), examples being the USSR, North Korea, China, and oddly the current capitalist Russian federation. You can find a more in-depth answer here.
Bruh tankies aren’t further left than me
You are a liberal
That doesn’t make what he said wrong.
It does tho, liberals are center-right at best
I’m not saying they aren’t. It’s still correct, though.
Nope
Oh, I know better than to participate in this discussion.
Yeah, lots of pointless arguing further down in here. Like arguing about whether authoritarianism is left or right like that even matters. There are no set of single labels that can describe everyone’s motivations, goals, and what they are willing to do to get them, so arguing about the labels is pointless.
are you pro or anti sea piracy?
Probably anti overall, though context could change that. It’s just sea banditry and most bandits aren’t Robin Hood.
The digital version shouldn’t even be compared by using the same name, but if it was honest, then it wouldn’t work as propaganda (not that it seems to be working anyways).
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Oh fuck, the MAGA crowd has started posting. Get ready for made up stupid shit to distract / confuse you as they are.
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Ok good lol
It’s hardly a secret that screaming The Eptein Files works like a dragon shout.
A one dimensional political spectrum! Proper shit post, sir!
I would strongly contest the idea that tankies are durther left than anarchists. This only make since if you’re a shitlib.
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Still waiting for the tankies to defeat capitalism. Last I see China has fully embraced it and the Soviets collapsed.
Some progress is better than none, you should spend less time parroting state department talking points and more time learning from what previous and current socialist projects have gotten right
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Feline anarchy is the only valid. Human whole purpose is to server cats. Fuck everyone else.
Fuck capitalism, fuck communism, fuck fascism, fuck everyone. FELINE ANARCHY!!!
I heard about arachno communism but this is new to me
server cats
I tried to do that, but they wouldn’t let the cats in the colo.
Isn’t that just ancient Egypt? At any rate, based AF.
And this is how those in power stay in power.
And this is how those in power stay in power.
what do you mean?
Divide and conquer.
The green bar is far too wide
I felt similarly until I discovered anarchism
