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- Original comment that was deleted with reason of "Tankie apologia".
- When another user comments has suspicions of mods actions, Mod replies with this.
- Poster replies in exasperation explaining perspective, rationale, and offline experiences. Comment gets deleted and purged.
Explanation
The original comment I made was stating that alienation of someone by frustrating their political beliefs is not a way to convince them of anything.
That being their genuine friend goes a long way in helping someone rather then attacking them.
That together they both can work together for a better future.
That you can be annoyed, but that should be swallowed because that is what it means to be part of a community.
You will always be annoyed one way or another in a community, that is the beauty of a community, that there are different people that may annoy you slightly, but working together to still be a community.
The moderator disagrees with this, viewing it as "tankie apologia".
When I replied, explaining why I made my post and my background, My post was removed and I was banned from the community.
Thank you @[email protected] for reminding me on this missing context: https://lemmy.ml/comment/17251624
In my reply post, I wrote that "advocating for war on any country is not political flavoring".
That cannot be swallowed, and one should not befriend such a person without sufficient care for ones own wellbeing.
I had wrote explicitly thinking of people who suport Russia against Ukraine, Israel over Palestine, and Assadists etc.
My purged comment also states that "people seeking to punish / attack LGBTQIA+ people is not political flavoring".
I whole heartingly believe trans rights are human rights.
Free HRT and gender affirming care for all!
To remove an otherwise popular comment advocating for support what I feel are healthy behaviors, then name call someone as a "authoritarian" and a "tankie apologist" is disingenuous and corrupt to me.
Remedy
Personally I would like my comments restored so at least others see a different way of looking at things. I have no qualms with remaining banned.
Perhaps I should have not commented in reply to the mod, but they had already removed my post and I had little to lose.
Otherwise, I am very tired of this on the internet, I am tired of tribalism and the lack of empathy in this world.
What do you all think, should I have even made my original comment if I already knew it would be fruitless?
Two questions:
Were Marx and Engles communists?
Have you read "On Authority" by Engles?
On authority : notoriously the worst Marxist essay ever written.
What you think of it is irrelevant. What's relevant is that it plainly demonstrates the author's perspective on this issue. Meaning that anyone who claims "You can't call yourself a communist if you're an authoritarian" has to either make the absurd claim that Engles wasn't a communist or pretend the essay doesn't exist.
Of course, On Authority is just the shortest and most to the point work demonstrating the view in a way that is completely impossible to deny. If you (God forbid) read Lenin (particularly The State and Revolution), he cites Marx extensively to defend his position and refute the idea that Marx didn't support the use of "authoritarian" state power.
What's funny to me is that for all the time Lenin spent refuting these ideas in his time, the people saying them today don't actually read any of the people whose intellectual tradition they're inheriting. The modern day Kautskist won't read Lenin, but they certainly won't read Kautsky. There's no theory to even be critiqued really, it's just memes, streamers, and recycled propaganda lines.
Or, hear me out here, that Engels was just fractally wrong .
Lol
So you're saying he wasn't really a communist then.
I'm saying he was stupid wrong about what "authority" is.
As I said, your opinion is irrelevant, the only thing that matters is that the work shows his position, and that he was, indisputably, a communist.
That doesn't matter at all
If you agree that Engles was an an authoritarian and a communist, then you agree that someone can be both an authoritarian and a communist, and the claim that authoritarians can't be communists must be false
Whether Engels considered himself a communist is irrelevant (he was of course an authoritarian as a factory owner hypocrite) to whether "on authority" is a good essay.
Your arguments make no sense. "did Lenin consider himself communist? Aha but he was authoritarian too. Checkmate liberal!" just inane bullshit.
In any case, what MLs call "communism" and what anarchists do is something completely different, which is why "left unity" is bullshit as well.
I didn't ask if Engles considered himself a communist. I asked if he was a communist. Again, it's a very simple and straightforward line of logic.
Logical maturation won't get you out of this pickle. The op's point was that it doesn't matter what you call yourself, in practice those two terms, as anarchists define them, are incompatible.
There's no "logical manipulation" nor am I in any sort of "pickle" to start with. OP's point was not that "it doesn't matter what you call yourself," maybe that's your point, but the point that's actually being discussed is whether someone can reasonably call themselves a communist if they're also an "authoritarian."
You seem to have completely misunderstood me - when I said, "Of course, On Authority is just the shortest and most to the point work demonstrating the view in a way that is completely impossible to deny," and you responded, "lol," you seem to have interpreted that as me saying that Engles' arguments were so compelling that everyone would have to agree with them. That's not what I was saying. What I meant was that it's impossible to deny that Engles holds the position in question, of being an "authoritarian," or at least, not shying away from the label.
If the guys whose names are on the damn Communist Manifesto were authoritarian, then I would politely suggest that y'all stop trying to gatekeep the word "communist" from us and just go off and find some other word for whatever it is you're doing.
nah. We'll keep challenging your old white men heroes and their shitty takes all we want.
I never said you couldn't? Call my takes shitty all you want (it seems to be the height of your criticism so its not particularly challenging lol), just stop trying to appropriate the word communist. Get your own word.
Lol that's your ultimate complaint? If so, no. The word existed before Marx. But we do tend to call it anarcho-communism to not be confused what most people associate with tankies and it seems to work mostly well enough.
No, it's my original complaint. If you actually followed the train of the conversation, the other person claimed that "You cannot claim to be a communist if you're an authoritarian," to which I asked if Engles was a communist, and if she had read "On Authority." Clearly the thing that we were talking about was whether "authoritarians" can be communists.
You jumped in to challenge my point except apparently you just wanted to go off on some unrelated tangent about anarchism vs Marxism in general. Now you're complaining that I'm talking about the thing that we were talking about instead of whatever tf you're trying to talk about.
So what you're arguing is that Karl Marx was not a communist? Have I got that right?
yes, by the OPs definition of communism, or by the general definition of "stateless classless society", communism is incompatible from authoritarianism. Whether Engels called himself Communist, or was communist in theory (because he certainly wasn't in praxis), is irrelevant. It's as irrelevant as Rothbard calling himself Anarcho-Capitalist. Those terms are just as incompatible with each other. This is not a hard point to understand. You're just stuck trying to endlessly massage this appeal to authority to make it work. it's still inane.
And yes, I took your referral to "on authority" as an authoritative text and wanted to point out and laugh. You didn't have to do that, you could just say "yes Engels was an authoritarian", but you did, so I laughed.
Again, you completely misunderstood me. It's very funny that you read that as me presenting it as "an authoritative text," as if I were just trying to drop theory and act like nobody could ever disagree with it, which I already explained to you wasn't my intent. The only thing it's "authoritative" on is what Engles' position was - which is the reason that all your bellyaching about "Oh it's a bad text" or "oh I personally disagree with the author's arguments" are completely irrelevant. I did not present it as something that "proves" "authoritarianism" to be correct, only as something that proves that Engles was an "authoritarian." There is no "appeal to authority" lmao.
If you want to make the argument that Karl Marx and Fredrich Engles weren't communist, then you're clearly the one using the word in a way that's completely contrary to common use. If you went up to any random person on the street and asked them if Karl Marx was a communist they'd say yes. And you'd get the same response in academic context or virtually any other context. When I use the word communist, it's because the meaning that has been collectively assigned to it matches what I want to say. If you want to appropriate it and redefine it to mean something completely different, then you do you I guess but don't then gatekeep the word from people who are following the original, commonly understood, and academically accepted meaning.
"This is not an appeal to authority" /proceeds to repeat their appeal to authority
Is citing an author to show what the author's beliefs were an appeal to authority now? I don't think you know what that term means.
Let me try an analogy:
If someone tried to say, "You can't be a Nazi If you hate Jews," and I respond, "Here's a quote from Adolf Hitler that says, 'I hate Jews.' Therefore, we can conclude that Adolf Hitler hated Jews. And since Adolf Hitler was obviously a Nazi, therefore, you can in fact be a Nazi while hating Jews." That's not an "appeal to authority" it's a perfectly valid line of reasoning. An appeal to authority would be if I said, "Here's a quote from Adolf Hitler saying 'I hate Jews,' therefore, hating Jews must be correct."
Likewise, if someone says, "You can't be a communist if you're an authoritarian," and I reply, "Here's a quote from Fredrich Engles saying, 'I love authority,' and Engles was obviously a communist, therefore you can be an authoritarian and a communist." That isn't an appeal to authority. An appeal to authority would be if I said, "Here's a quote from Fredrich Engles saying, 'I love authority,' therefore, loving authority is correct."
Hitler was the creator of the Nazi theory. Engels is not the arbiter of what is communism, fucking hell. The appeal to authority is you insisting that because Engels was calling himself communist, then we have to accept his definition of communism. No we don't. We can call him authcom to dsitinguish him from libcom if you want though. But the point is that going by the anarchist definition of communism, these two concepts are incompatible.
I never said anything remotely like that. What I said is that because Engles is obviously a communist (as established by how the word is used both commonly and in academic circles and so on), and also an "authoritarian," it proves that communists can be authoritarian. I could've used any other figure so long as they're widely accepted as a communist and were "authoritarian," Che Guevara if you like, it doesn't really matter. The only reason I don't choose somebody nobody's heard of is because I wouldn't be able to establish that they are widely regarded as a communist. It has nothing to do with them being any sort of "authority." Engles is just one of the most ridiculous figures for you to dispute being a communist, so he made a good example.
You yourself are conceding the point that one can be both "authoritarian" and communist when you suggest the term "authcom!" But you can't actually, you know, say you're conceding any point under any circumstances even if it's trivial and even if you agree with it. You have to keep contesting it just because you want to fight with me, so you randomly challenge every single thing I say as a knee-jerk reaction.
This is a completely different discussion that's not particularly relevant to the point being discussed. The point is that one can be both a communist and an "authoritarian."
If you want to have an argument about whether the goals of various different types of people identifying as communist are compatible or not, then I guess we can start an entirely new discussion about that. Maybe in another thread sometime, since it's a different topic?
I made this point clear ages ago. You chose to ignore it and continue this ridiculous argument. It takes deliberate obtusity to claim the the op's point is that there's only one definition of communism or any word. This discussion is such a waste of time I can't believe how many words you've written on it.
But then you kept contesting it, because like I said, you just wanna fight me. Every word you said about how I was supposedly making an "appeal to authority" was arguing against my case that a person can be "authoritarian" and communist, there was no reason for you to say any of that if you were willing to concede the overall point. You were just arguing for the sake of it.
"You can’t support hierarchical dictatorships that take away the rights of workers and call yourself a communist"
Yes, clearly one would have to be "deliberately obtuse" to read that as her saying you can't call yourself a communist if you're an "authoritarian." I don't know how I possibly interpreted "you can't call yourself a communist" as... "you can't call yourself a communist."
Takes two to tango, buddy. You were the one who chose to keep fighting me on a point you didn't actually disagree on. Every single thing you've said in this whole conversation has been wrong and/or irrelevant.
disengage
It's so funny to me that people will downvote logic as straightforward as "All men are moral, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is a mortal" as if simply disliking logic makes it not true.
Why do you cling to the words of old dead men
Because the things that we discuss today have been tried - and implemented! - in the past. It's only though the utmost arrogance that people like you reject all historical examples and treat every historical figure as simply dumb or morally impure in some way. Us "tankies" are considerably more humble in that we are willing to accept the fact that historical projects - even those that were flawed and ended in failure, like the USSR - belong to our intellectual tradition, which thereby allows us to analyze their successes and failures and to learn from them.
Of course, no matter how hard you try to distance yourself from us or from things like the USSR, you will still be tied to them. They called Obama a communist, you think they won't do the same to you? This is literally how we got into this mess in the first place, all the major labor unions in the US purged communists and radicals to prove that they were "one of the good ones" and then, wouldn't you know it, the capitalists didn't fucking care, they were still unions and still opposed to their interests (and they'd just defanged themselves too!) so they just called them communists anyway. Eventually it got to the point where even the word "liberal," which literally means someone who supports capitalism, became a dirty word. You can't be afraid of getting called names, it just gives the other side power.
Of course, even if you reject all of that, there have been countless examples of libertarian socialist/left-wing movements in the developing world. They're just not around anymore because they were violently suppressed. Whether it was Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, or any number of other places. Ultimately, arguing that libertarianism is the way to go is either denying/ignoring all of those examples (as your lot generally does, reveling in ignorance), or denouncing them as impure for not delivering utopia overnight. Anyone who refuses to learn the lessons of history is, as I said, either an aspiring martyr who doesn't care that they'll be killed and replaced by a fascist, or an armchair intellectual who has no pretense of ever even attempting to get close enough to the levers of power to actually accomplish anything, and can safely criticize from the sidelines.
You sure put in a lot of effort to call yourself a humble authoritarian. I don't believe there is some magic switch that can be pulled to achieve socialism over night, but a nation that commits all the same wrongs as a capitalist nation doesn't seem like an upgrade of any kind. I'm not going to believe someone suppressing my rights is going to be able to deliver on any promise to implement socialism. I should note I'm mostly talking about states like the USSR and the CCP, and other so called communist states.
Anyways, you can't do anything without unions. Communism won't happen under dictatorship, nor through some "democracy" swamped by capitalism or whatever other horror people can conjure. Change can only be achieved by all of us working together, not under some tyrannical oligarchy or leader.
Of course the quality of life in the USSR was not an upgrade compared to already developed nations built on centuries of slavery and colonialism. It was, however, a major upgrade compared to Tsarist Russia. Likewise, this is even more pronounced in China, where the life expectancy under the Nationalists was in the 30's, unchanged since ancient times with no signs of improvement - now it's higher than that of the US. Since the 1980's, China lifted 800 million people out of extreme poverty, which accounts for 3/4 of all poverty reduction in the world in that time. But China is still a middle-income country, so instead of looking at relative improvements, or at what realistic alternatives could've accomplished, it's simply denounced as reactionary because it's not "an upgrade," as compared to what you're used to.
Likewise, smaller states like Cuba and Vietnam have successfully overthrown colonial regimes and improved quality of life across many metrics, Cuba went from being mostly illiterate to having one of the highest numbers of doctors per capita in the world. Of course, these states have faced tremendous economic pressure from outside.
You're evaluating all of these states not in their historical context of what they were like before and what alternative paths they could've taken, but against this ideal of achieving communism. Of course, in addition to states that use the label of socialism, there are also those who don't use that label at all and have no pretenses of having communism as their aim. For example, Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran, who I mentioned previously, was in no way a socialist and had no alignment with the USSR or any other socialist state, he just wanted the profits of Iran's oil to go to the Iranian people, to improve their quality of life. Perhaps, had he been an evil authoritarian socialist, he would've taken measures to protect himself from being ousted from the CIA and succeeded in improving people's lives. Instead, he did it your way and got replaced by a fascist who hunted down and exterminated leftists of all stripes for decades.
I'm well aware of what industrialization can achieve
Then you should also be aware of how bad it was that neither the Tsar, nor the KMT, nor Batista, nor the French colonizers, were willing to make the domestic investments in those respective countries necessary to achieve industrialization. And of how much of a difference it made that communists who were willing to do so came to power.
Do you believe I support capitalism?
Edit: I don't.
In theory, of course not. You support a perfect, imagined ideal that never has to get to be tainted by contact with reality. In practice, yes, you oppose any realistic attempt to establish an alternative to the current capitalist hegemony, which is functionally the same as supporting capitalism
Also, does supporting the US get someone banned from 196?
Our rules specifically call out supporting or denying any genocide, etc etc. We aren't without nuance. We disallow someone denying the atrocities the CCP commits. This applies to the US as well. We would ban anyone for denying the genocide in Palestine, or for denying that the US dropped bombs on protesting workers etc. The point is that we are banning people for tankie rhetoric, not for having positive opinions on non-western countries.
I don't know why I bother with someone so married to death and oppression.