As a tankie I'll be absolutely honest with you
Watching a nice bloke like Corbyn who likes to spend time on his allotment and collect manhole covers be turned into a Communist czech spy riding a maoist bicycle and a racist anti-Semite with the BBC having backdrops of him in blood red with a russian hat on with the background of the famous Moscow church...
If that didn't twig in your brain that perhaps....just perhaps.... that the Western media has not been 100 percent truthful on any of the actually existing Socialist states (particularly Russia who has always been an enemy of England) then frankly I'm pretty sure I could sell you your neighbours fence
I agree. Corbs dismantling in the UK, the absolute media carpet bombing he received. Fuck me. Makes my piss boil.
How can we counter the anti-semitic lie? It seems as though every outlet is pushing it, and what is truth online without sources to back you up?
I mean it doesnt matter anymore as Corbyns been purged and most of his supporters who are pro Palestine were purged
Ironically antisemitism is now more useful (politically) to be used against Sir Keir as head of labour
I know at the next election when Labour come knocking im going to tell them "i couldnt possibly vote for Keir Starmer asie heard hes an antisemite"
That was a horrific read
A lot of the "Communists" and "socialists" were more like revisionists just seeking a better life for their workers mostly through the trade union struggle.
So they all went to Police Stations willingly, thinking they had done nothing wrong
That book is radicalizing. The entire NATSEC state is just there to prop up capitalism. There's no doubt in my mind that NATSEC would turn against any kind of threat to capital in the same way in the US.
The national security state controlled by the ruling communist party is of course always fighing to protect the owrkers rights
The protests and how the fizzled out, CHOP, Bernie, and some personal stuff in my org turned me from an Anarchist into a Maoist, so kinda.
If CHAZ turned you away from anarchism, you never were an anarchist.
Edit: This isn't a jab at you, it's a jab at CHAZ
I canvassed for Bernie.
I only voted for the hell of it and so I could vote La Riva. And I've been saying "electoralism is a spook" to anyone with ears since July.
So I'm going to go with Im still a lib larper.
1000000000% it has destroyed any shred of hope i had in meaningful change ever coming from electoral politics. organised mass movement is the only way i feel, what form that should take and how to get there however, fuck knows.
no, i was more tankie before and it turned me more anarchist because even if ur state is cool and good, one simple trick and the bougies have hijacked ur cool and good state to do bad.
Just to clarify, which was that cool and good state you're referring to here?
i didn't have any particular state in mind, cause generally it holds that the more left wing the policy in a state is, the more money there is to be made by capitalists in breaking this down.
Soviet union must have been the greatest score the capitalists ever got. But they didnt invade them or nuke them so why did it fall?
I've been leaning toward Leninism since 2010~ when I saw what uncoordinated mass protests achieved with Occupy Wallstreet contrasted with what Leninist parties have been able to achieve. With Bernie and Corbyn I had hopes that they'd win and saw a potential for them to because the systems around them were failing, but both countries are so deeply reactionary that it wasn't surprising. All it did was strangle the reformist in me and put my moral grounding firmly in "We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror."
Why does china have landlords despite bieng a socialist state?
Wow extremely marxist for people to own land and use that institutional power to extort money from people
Wow extremely marxist for people to own land and use that institutional power to extort money from people
Yes? Depending on the conditions within a country, capitalism can play a progressive force. That is about as "Marxist" as it gets.
Progressive capitalism with socialist insurance and loan programs
fuck off a socialist state cannot ever have landlords
I imagine you are significantly more cucked by money than workers and peasants in China.
do peasants exist? why are you taling about peasants?
The peasantry is one of the largest classes in China right now lmao I guessed you did not know much about China, but this is something else.
Lol okay i guess china isnt a great industrial power or maybe it is but half the people make their money from working for landowners
You are absolutely deranged.
You just said you did not know China had a peasantry class.
Now you claiming that half of China is in an exploitative peasant relationship to production.
China is a fucking capitalist super power peasants do not exist there
It seem like even questioning the state and government makes you an utopian anarchist stop doing revisionism stalin just hammered the nail in the coffin or maybe it was lenin or mao or maybe the lack of trust all those great socialist philosephers have had towards the people
"tankie" is a slur for revisionists in general not Dengists or market socialists specifically
No tankie was a slur for the British Communists that agreed with "sending the tanks in" to stop the anti-semitic, fascist colour revolution in Hungary in 1956
Tankie was basically a slur meant to portray those Communists as brain washed knob heads who would follow "whatever the USSR said"
50 years later a load of British docs get released revealing:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/mi6-trained-rebels-to-fight-soviets-in-hungarian-revolt-1359599.html
Of all the words of paper and pen
How oft do we hear that the tankies were right again?
I mean, importantly though, most of the the 'tankies' of Western Europe admitted that they were wrong - that ultimately Khrushchev squashing the revolt was not going to solve any of the fundamental issues that were marring relations between the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. Even Sartre, the 'tankiest' of them all, admitted that he was wrong.
And I think the idea that 56 was an anti-Semitic color revolution is honestly just not a correct characterization. Of course the Yanks and the Brits were getting involved, but the overwhelming amount of scholarship and primary source research on the uprising has dispelled the myth that reactionary forces powered discontent or manipulated the rebellion. (Happy to refer you to the literature) Sometimes we like to throw around the word color revolution for anything that has a hint of foreign involvement but such distinctions are difficult in a world where big countries are interfering in small ones all the time - you will never get a social movement that is divorced from geopolitical interests. But that doesn't mean the discontent or the politics behind it all are always completely fabricated. Tiananmen undoubtedly had some foreign reactionary forces melded in, I'm sure, but that doesn't change that it was also the product of mass discontent caused by shifts in political economy.
But it is also besides the point - 'tankies' now is just a weird slur for anyone who believes that violence probably will be necessary in a revolution or just general MLism, but has also twisted to become an insult against people who defend the DPRK or the PRC, because words just don't have any meaning I suppose. I mean the Dengists fought and beat the Maoists, but modern ones are suddenly the vanguard of the ML revolution or some such.
yeah despite all the lynchings of jews and communists
https://imgur.com/a/1wda0
"The special correspondent of the Yugoslav paper, Politika, (Nov. 13, 1956) describing the events of those days, said that the homes of Communists were marked with a white cross and those of Jews with a black cross, to serve as signs for the extermination squads. "There is no longer any room for doubt," said the Yugoslav reporter, "it is an example of classic Hungarian fascism and of White Terror. The information," continued this writer, "coming from the provinces tells how in certain places Communists were having their eyes put out, their ears cut off, and that they were being killed in the most terrible ways."
"But the forces of reaction were rapidly consolidating their power and pushing forward on the top levels, while in the streets the blood of scores of massacred Communists, Jews, and progressives was flowing." "Some of the reports reaching Warsaw from Budapest today caused considerable concern. These reports told of massacres of Communists and Jews by what were described as 'Fascist elements' ...." (N.Y. Times, Nov. 1. 1956)
"The evidence is conclusive that the entry of Soviet troops into Budapest stopped the execution of scores, perhaps thousands of Jews, for by the end of October and early November, anti-semitic pogroms - hallmark of unbridled fascistic terror - were making their appearance, after an absence of some ten years, within Hungary."
“A correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Maariv (Tel Aviv) reported: During the uprising a number of former Nazis were released from prison and other former Nazis came to Hungary from Salzburg . . . I met them at the border . . . I saw anti-Semitic posters in Budapest . . . On the walls, street lights, streetcars, you saw inscriptions reading: "Down with Jew Gero!" "Down with Jew Rakosi!" or just simply "down with the Jews!"
Leading rabbinical circles in New York received a cable early in November from corresponding circles in Vienna that "Jewish blood is being shed by the rebels in Hungary." Very much later-in February, 1957-the World Jewish Congress reported that "anti-Semitic excesses occurred in more than twenty villages and smaller provincial towns during the October-November revolt." This occurred, according to this very conservative body, because "fascist and anti-Semitic groups had apparently seized the opportunity, presented by the absence of a central authority, to come to the surface." Many among the Jewish refugees from Hungary, the report continued, had fled from this anti-Semitic pogrom-like atmosphere (N.Y. Times, Feb. 15, 1957).
Yes, I'm not denying that there was obviously tremendous anti-Semitism or callous nationalism in the movement. Many Hungarian Jews left for Israel as a consequence of the violence (many left the Soviet Union too, but we'll ignore that for now - those dastardly 'rootless cosmopolitans', am I right? ). What I am saying though is it wasn't a major driving force, and enough archival research has been done to prove that point. Hobsbawm, who was in fact one of the original tankies, talks about it at length here: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v28/n22/eric-hobsbawm/could-it-have-been-different Haaretz discusses the divisions amongst the Jewish community without undercutting he violence: www.haaretz.com/amp/1.4924257
Again the point here is that even people very sympathetic to the Soviet intervention do realize that ultimately how it was played was wrong - that it set up the divisions that would cause the Soviets themselves to collapse. Obviously Hungary was a deeply reactionary place in many respects, I mean the whole region was, but this was hardly just a matter of "the Brits created a color revolution that wanted to murder all the communists" particularly as a lot of the people who went and lynched Jewish officials were supposed Hungarian communists themselves.
I mean I half agree but let's be honest Kruschev lit the fuse that started the Hungarian protests with his ridiculous "Secret Speech" (which was somehow leaked immediately to the West) and split the Communist movement in half worldwide
From that point on (and particularly with the revisionist Kruschevite policies ending in the restoration of the profit motive in the USSR with the 1965 Kosygin reforms) the USSR was toast without a new Marxist-Leninist revolution
So while you point to the handling of the Hungarian uprising by the Soviets I would point more to the counter-revolution of Kruschev (which sparked the protests)
I agree with you there but for different reasons - the Secret Speech itself was not wrong, but the fact that it got out into the West allowed it to become fodder against the Soviet Union. Interestingly Mao made the same critique - that largely what Khrushchev was saying was right in the sense that Mao also agreed that Stalin had made crucial errors and was also principally against what he saw as a personality cult, but that with Khrushchev having voiced these critiques, communist parties in the West that had tied their legitimacy to Stalin were suddenly done for. Mao was correct, the Secret Speech was a mistake in how it was done.
The 1965 reforms were obviously a terrible idea, but then they came from a decidedly anti Khrushchev faction that was wary of endemic economic issues. I think this represents a marked shift to technocracy in the Soviet Union which was ultimately terrible for everyone, but I am not sure that we can make a link between that and Khrushchev himself considering that he was ousted BECAUSE he was seen as not 'fit' to 'modernize' the economy.
But also I think in many ways even had the Secret Speech not been made, there were just certain fundamentals about the Soviet position in Europe that were just going to lead to dissent and splintering. It is a shame. Much of it could have been handled and I think defanged but ultimately being besieged by capitalist powers all the time and from every side just made all the 20th century socialist experiments wary, and I can't blame them.
but the fact that it got out into the West allowed it to become fodder against the Soviet Union.
This is an incorrect reading of history. It was leaked to the West in the same way it was sent to 0.1% of the Communist party. To pour poison through the Communist party because if they'd released the speech in its entirety the grass roots masses would've lynched the Kruschevites
So they sent it to all the top cadres of the Communist Party who were told under no circumstances to let normal members know about it. This demoralised and paralysed the entire party and ensured the pro-Stalin communists (ie. of real socialism) could never rise to remove the revisionists
Domenico Losurdo goes over this specific point in Chapter 1 of his book on Stalin, How to cast a God into Hell
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WS8cCjXDgdJaXFrkW9b1ldY3xlwiPPQ89AwZo53Amlk/edit
And Grover Furr wrote an entire book examining the Secret Speech and checking each statement of the 52 statements made by Kruschev and every single one of them was a lie, a fabrication or rumour and conjecture. In some of the cases Furr points out how they were actually the fault of Kruschev.
https://archive.org/details/pdfy-nmIGAXUrq0OJ87zK
William Bland came to the same conclusion as the 2 above and in his book RESTORATION OF CAPITALISM IN THE USSR he points out how step by step the Kruschevites privatised the economy and disparaged Central Planning they did so in Soviet economic textbooks with attack phrases like "Central planning is a Stalinist holdover we must move past" and "organising Soviet enterprises to the profit motive must be done to move past the Stalin era" etc.
With this you see casting a God into hell to then nullify his policies was the true aim rather than some introspection into the party about events like the Yezchovchina
http://www.oneparty.co.uk/html/book/ussrmenu.html
single major historian of Stalin and his leadership, including many who did a lot to overturn the lies of Conquest and his ilk, agree with Furr
And pray tell, where do these historians come from? Are they neutral historians devoid of ideology....or are they liberals and conservatives seeking to perpetuate their ideology?
The bourgeoisie turns everything into a commodity, hence also the writing of history. It is part of its being, of its condition for existence, to falsify all goods: it falsified the writing of history. And the best — paid historiography is that which is best falsified for the purposes of the bourgeoisie. Witness Macaulay, who, for that very reason, is the inept G. Smith’s unequalled paragon.
-Engels
Historians are bought and paid for and the intelligence services of the West use them to falsify history (such as Conquest who worked for a literal British Anti-Communist division whos' job was to sit around writing rumours about the Communist movement and Soviet Union in particular)
Anne Applebaum sits on the Atlantic council etc. Anthony Beevor was in the military, Robert Service was a British diplomat etc.
I could go through all of these supposed neutral historians who're tied to the British or American state by many thin tendrils
It is a product of American hegemony that most history in the West is written by bourgeois professors from the United States
I actually started as a Trotskyite. I wanted to read Grover Furr to see what the stupid Stalinists had to say. And after Furr made the point to never trust a single historian and read their footnotes I poured over the footnotes of all of his books (believing him to be a liar).
And after reading many a rebuke of Furr by supposed "mainsteam" historians I've come to the conclusion that the only reason they don't like him is because he uses Soviet archival evidence from private diaries and letters that weren't released until after the collapse of the Soviet Union but "nonetheless they were Communists so they must've been lying all the time".
Yeah. I don't doubt there were foreign actors, but it seems like a case of where everyone was mad and took it out.
Honestly, I wonder how much different everything would be if this info was more widespread?
Tankie is a slur for anarchists at this point as well, which is hilarious since those libs started this trend of labeling everything they don't like -including each other - "tankie"
I was barely hanging on to electoralism with the bernie thing, like I was taking the position “ok it’s not going to make a fundamental change but maybe it exposes the broader public” but now I am full on antielectoralism. Because it’s become clear that any change within electoralism are going to be made entirely on the establishments terms. Is it more acceptable to call yourself a socialist now? Maybe but it’s mainly because now people consider socialism to be like higher taxes. And in the end it made a lot of people think change could happen within the system, which is exactly what the system wants you to think.
I won’t waste my time on it again
No. The theoretical division between "tankies" and anarchists has very little to do with social democracy. Socdems are socdems, and I'm probably still going to vote for them in my country because it costs me very little and that's the best that voting can do.
At the moment the thing that makes me the least tankie are a) my local scene, and b) that I believe that it's impossible to hold any kind of major power in the US without being relying on imperial exploits.
Being active in my local Labour Party and seeing all the shit not just Corbyn but also brilliant local left wing activists had to go through definitely played a part.
