Are you confusing communists shitposting online with communists organizing? Do you think the communists on Lemmy.ml only engage online and not in-person?
Tankies are those who embrace and laud events that are widely, but clearly not universally, perceived to be mistakes or lapses in judgement, especially when the mistake was one where their authority was used in excess to the significant detriment of at least some of their people.
These people don't really exist, though, and that's my point about "tankie" being a strawman. The vast majority of people labled as "tankies" do not laud events understood by communists to have been mistakes.
I can't say I've had the same experience as you, but looking at your removed comments in the modlog I think I can tell why.
Do you have anything to back this up? The fact that socialists recognize western imperialism as the primary obstacle to world socialism and eventually communism doesn't mean that our efforts are over once it falls. Once imperialism has ended, you have to begin constructing socialism, which itself is an enormously difficult task. I find the idea that communists don't care about being politically effective extraordinarily off-base.
I already explained how the soviets needed to export grain to gain industrial equipment, this industrial equipment was used to help boost agricultural output. It was a balancing act forced by low levels of development. The genocide point has no evidence, just suspicions. Peasants were attempting to flee because famine still existed, but had there been mass flight of the peasantry agriculture would have collapsed and famine would have spread. That's why the famine was ended as quickly as it was.
You can absolutely find arguments against collectivization in the Bolsheviks. It remains true that collectivization was necessary, and the fact that it was completed when it was enabled the communists to beat the Nazis. What remains are the 2 real problems:
Collectivization was necessary, and did achieve its end goals, but at far greater a cost than necessary due to a combination of adverse weather and mismanagement. What it was not was genocide, as there was no desire to inflict famine nor a reason to.
Bukharin wasn't purged for warning against collectivization (and even if he succeeded, the soviets likely would have been wiped out in World War II due to a delay in industrialization), he was purged for being part of a plot to overthrow the CPSU. I'm not a "die-hard Stalin defender," I am trying to accurately convey what happened. Stalin made many mistakes, we can even see that here in how collectivization was handled. What we cannot see is genocidal intent from Stalin nor the rest of the Central Committee.
If you want an actual critique of Stalin by a communist using near exclusively western sources, Domenico Losurdo's Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend. Stalin made numerous mistakes, and committed great crimes, such as re-criminalizing homosexuality and supporting the Nakba. At the same time, he was not a genocidal monster as the west portrays him as, and was in fact much better than contemporaries like Churchill.
I'm trying to bridge that gap, because the rest of your comment is, frankly, wrong.
By saying “authoritarian”, we explicitly mean the ones who do not wish to use the authority properly.
Socialist states in real life do use authority properly. Mistakes and excess can and do occur, but on the whole socialism has been incredibly liberating for the working classes.
Cool, but none of us are the current ruling class, so… We’re not speaking from that perspective when we call certain types of communists authoritarian.
It's extremely easy to fall into "false consciousness." Simply put, capitalists control the western press and media, and use it to demonize socialism. When the western press speaks of "Cuban tyranny," they speak of it in the abstract, in general, when in reality it is tyranny against former slavers, forcibly appropriating their property and distributing it to the people. In this framing, it's easy to fear the general fear capitalists do, as they control cultural hegemony.
Nobody’s removed about communists having authority. We’re talking specifically about a type of communist who are perceived as very likely to abuse that authority if they’re given it. If it was wrong for the current ruling class to abuse that power against us, it’s going to be wrong for us to abuse it against them when we have it. That doesn’t mean the former ruling class can’t be punished. It doesn’t mean we allow the old ruling class to reform. It just means don’t be an abusive asshole. Which is what people tend to refer to as a tankie.
But this is all based on, frankly, capitalist distortions of what actually happens in socialist countries. Socialism isn't simply punishing capitalists, it uses authority to expropriate capital and redistribute it. It uses authority to establish healthcare and improve the lives of the people. The conception of the "authoritarianism" practiced in socialist countries is the authority against the capitalists and slavers presented as universal, while ignoring the liberation of the working classes, because capitalists control the press.
The question isn't if Russia is justified in invading Ukraine, but if Donetsk and Luhansk are entitled to self-determination and the ability to request aid from Russia and secede from Kiev. Given that the west overthrew their president, it makes sense that Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk would secede.
I already gave you evidence of Kiev killing civilians in the Donbass region:
The Kiev regime killing civilians in the Donbass region is well-documented even by western orgs. Further, Kiev has been found guilty of war crimes.
Regarding the prevalence of fascism in Ukraine:
Regarding the request for aid and the short timeline between then and Russia entering the civil war, as I said, Russia was already heavily involved post-2014, after the west coup'd Yanukovych using Banderite factions. I never denied their involvement, I centered the DPR and LPR.
Regarding the Crimea poll, a little something called Euromaidan happened in between then and the annexation. Things change quickly when the far-right sieze your country.
It's important to understand the difference between intrinsic characteristics and beliefs because some beliefs are frankly wrong and go against the foundations of the rest. For example, if I said "climate scientists support the fact of climate change" and you said "some deny it," would you then ask me to rephrase the former statement as saying "specific climate scientists support the fact of climate change?" Of course not!
Perhaps there’s some difference on how we’re using the word “authoritarian”. I and most people I have seen use the word use it to mean that the government heavily uses its power in an abusive way to coerce its population to give up reasonable freedoms.
As I have been pointing out this entire time, this is the liberal conception of authority, devoid of class analysis. The missing factor is which class is using its power, and against which class? The state is not outside of class struggle, but within it.
To my knowledge, communism does not require authoritarianism in the way most people understand the word, so I think it is very fair to make a distinction between communists and tankies.
For housekeeping, communism is a post-socialist mode of production and distribution without a state or class, and as such has no class using its authority over others. Socialism still has classes, as the basis of class cannot be abolished overnight, so it necessarily has a state, and therefore the working classes must have control of it for it to be a socialist state. Socialism is therefore necessarily "authoritarian" from the perspective of the former ruling classes, while being liberating for the working classes.
Authority is not a general spectrum of less to more, but instead a privledge for whichever class is in power and a tool for enforcing the will of that class. Therefore, the division between communists and "tankies" does not exist in any real manner beyond fringe western organizations that disagree with the core of Marxism in practice, the establishment of the socialist state as the necessary tool for bringing about communism by eradicating class.
The point regarding the Budapest Memorandum is that the US made it clear that it was not legally binding, and already violated it in 2013 in Belarus. In 2014, the west intervened directly in Ukraine, aiding the Banderite faction in overthrowing the democratically elected moderate, Yanukovych.
Regarding Russia and the referendum for the DPR and LPR to join the Russian Federation, the war started in 2014, with the Banderite coup. Russia did not start the Ukrainain Civil War, it entered the Civil War 8 years after it started. Kiev has been shelling the Donbass region and killing thousands of civilians there for over a decade at this point, which is why they voted to join.
As for Nazis in Ukraine, the key point distinguishing them is that they are extremely common, open, and close to the levers of power:
This has been true since 2014, when the Banderites took charge. As for the DPR and LPR requesting assistance, they requested on the 23rd, with letters dated the 22nd. We also know that Russia was heavily involved with talks between the Donbass and Kiev prior to 2022, and that the seperatists voted to join in September 2022. They would have been at war for 8 full years with Kiev.
The Kiev regime killing civilians in the Donbass region is well-documented even by western orgs. Further, Kiev has been found guilty of war crimes.
As for the map, it's the electoral map for support of Yanukovych, so no, I can't provide an electoral map since then as the civil war has been going on since 2014.
They do not.
Kinda. Production and distribution will continue to advance, grow, and improve in socialism, but what will cease mathematically under capitalism eventually is competition, which itself kills the foundations of capitalism as you can't really profit that way.
Being asian is an intrinsic characteristic. Supposed "anti-authoritarian" communists are "communists" that reject the core communist analysis of authority, chiefly that all authority is of a class character and the proletarian use of authority is critical in establishing and maintaining socialism. Your comparison is faulty.
"Authoritarian" communists represent the overwhelming majority of communists, as the communist critique of authority is about which class holds it, the proletariat or the capitalists, and sides with the proletariat (the dictatorship of the proletariat). So-called "non-authoritarian" communists are as such a global extreme minority.
I'm not arguing in bad-faith at all. The "specific type of communist" just so happens to apply to the overwhelming majority of communists. The definition is of course a liberal perspective on the concept of authority, but absolutely backs me up. If a pejorative is applicable to the overwhelming majority of a group, it isn't a pejorative for a specific type, but a general pejorative with exceptions for specific types.
“Although the Memorandum is not legally binding, we take these political commitments seriously and do not believe any U.S. sanctions, whether imposed because of human rights or non-proliferation concerns, are inconsistent with our commitments to Belarus under the Memorandum or undermine them. Rather, sanctions are aimed at securing the human rights of Belarusians and combating the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and other illicit activities, not at gaining any advantage for the United States”.
Steven Pifer, US ambassador to Ukraine:
“American officials decided the assurances would have to be packaged in a document that was not legally-binding. Neither the Bush nor Clinton administrations wanted a legal treaty that would have to be submitted to the Senate for advice and consent to ratification. State Department lawyers thus took careful interest in the actual language, in order to keep the commitments of a political nature. U.S. officials also continually used the term “assurances” instead of “guarantees,” as the latter implied a deeper, even legally-binding commitment of the kind that the United States extended to its NATO allies”.
The fact that Crimeans overwhelmingly voted to secede from the Banderites in Kiev is not suspicious unless you don't think it's rational to be fearful of fascists. You don't actually have evidence undermining it, so you just say you're skeptical to the point of believing it.
What is interesting is that you're now denying the Russian ethnicity of much of the Donbass region, implying that they are all Ukrainian. The ethnic Russians in the Donbass region are why Russia intervened at the request of the LPR and DPR, as Russia is governed by nationalists. The Banderites had been killing the seperatists in the Donbass region for nearly a decade before Russia stepped in.
This is the map pointing to the modern division in Ukraine, between the seperatists in the Donbass that side with Russia and the Banderites that side with Kiev, which faction has influence where.
Money is unnecessary in fully collectivized economies, hence why communism is described as moneyless.
Your google search backs me up. I'm not redefining anything, it's a pejorative for communists.
Socialist countries do exist, and are alleged by liberals to be "authoritarian," but this is meaningless without acknowledging the class character of state authority. All states are "authoritarian," what differentiates them is which class is in control. In socialist states, that class is the proletariat, in capitalist states it's the capitalists. Communism is not utopian, it's scientific, and Marx railed against the utopian socialists like Robert Owen.
I think Marx would be more upset with those who refuse to support socialist states for being "too heavy-handed" with capitalists, landlords, fascists, etc, as he spoke this of the proletarian revolution:
We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
Hence why all discussion of authority needs to be grounded primarily in class analysis to be Marxist.
"Voluntary" is certainly a way to phrase the control and comorador regimes they had in place, but it's far more than eliminating defense contracts, it also has to deal heavily with export controls, sovereignty, and more. Again, neocolonialism is a fact of modern geopolitics.
The overwhelming evidence points to the west systematically undermining Ukrainian autonomy, empowering Neo-Nazi elements as a deterrent against Russians (who the Nazis still hate for their communist past), and the populations in Donetsk, Luhansk, etc siding with the President they elected (as I showed you earlier). Either way, evidence behind the western-backed coup: