There’s a difference between someone-needs-to-coordinate-and-manage-complex-undertakings “authoritarian” and line-the-dissidents-up-against-the-wall “authoritarian”. Tankies are the latter.
Comment on Stay Mad
ssj2marx@lemmy.ml 3 days agoTankies are hypocrites who didn’t understand their self-proclaimed ideologies.
Tankies are very frequently the only people in the room who’ve done the reading. If you believe that so called “authoritarianism” is antithetical to leftism, then I recommend you read the following pamphlet by Engels.
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
ssj2marx@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
We have class war waged against us by the bourgeoisie, and thousands of people are casualties of that war every single day. Expecting to turn the tide against them without getting our hands dirty in turn is useless idealism.
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Uh huh, and historically violent authoritarian transitional regimes are always so willing to step aside after the transition.
Belastend@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Getting our hands dirty means shooting comrades who carried the revolutionary wars for being a bit yucky.
TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Tankies have read Marx and Engels, yes, but there are many other forms of leftism besides ML. Also, it’s possible to do the reading and disagree with the methods of implementation.
ssj2marx@lemmy.ml 3 days ago
Humor me for a moment, which of the following do you consider authoritarian?
TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
I hop off the train at the part where the top-down dictatorship comes into play. Probably a bit before the level of authoritarianism where the Joseph Stalin type starts killing people for having a dissenting opinion, and what not.
Using the state to enforce good wages and end the terribleness of the stock market/landlord culture does not need to involve a top down dictatorship and a lack of democracy.
I know about the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and all that, and in my opinion, it should involve all of the workers, not one person or a small group of people. A top down dictatorship just makes it all that easier for the party to be infiltrated and controlled by bourgeois interests. If said dictatorship is a true democracy, with each worker having an equal say, it makes it pretty hard to control the proles.
ssj2marx@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
So you wouldn’t accept any system that’s not a direct democracy? Where every single person is involved in every single vote? It’s a coherent position I suppose, but IMO totally impractical and idealistic.
Belastend@lemmy.world 2 days ago
You completely disregard, that the soviet union did number 3 and crushed all unions not falling in line. Or that they ignore the will of the proletariat during the 1917 and 1918 elections numerous times.
The authoritarian way isnt being critized for coming down on Capitalists. Its critized for how it treated every deviation from the party line. And especially, how it turned into a political chess game at the top, which prioritized amassing personal power and wealth over the actual well being of the state.
ssj2marx@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
If by “not falling in line” you mean “actively sabotaging the working class for selfish reasons” then I suppose you have a point, but I would argue that in class war those organizations which do not support the working class are fair targets.
By the time the Bolsheviks were disregarding the results of elections, the People’s Soviets were the state power in the former Russian Empire, and they were a hundred times more democratic than the Duma ever was.
I’m sorry comrade but the Soviets simply never did this. The benefits enjoyed by even top Party officials paled in comparison to the lavish lifestyles of the former Russian Empire’s aristocracy or those of the ruling class of any of their contemporary capitalist rivals - even fucking Stalin lived in a shared apartment!
Objectively speaking the Soviet Union was one of the most democratic and equal societies on this Earth during the time of its existence, and you can very clearly see in the data how their system equalized wealth (not “perfectly”, just “better than everyone else has ever done it”), and how the destruction of their system undid all of their progress.
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