On most instances, I would assume this to be sarcastic; on grad and hex I would assume it to be serious but on .ml I’m unsure
Tankies don’t usually believe that Stalin or Mao “did nothing wrong,” although many do use that phrase for effect (this is the internet, remember). We believe that Stalin and Mao were committed socialists who, despite their mistakes, did much more for humanity than most of the bourgeois politicians who are typically put forward as role models (Washington? Jefferson? JFK? Jimmy Carter?), and that they haven’t been judged according to the same standard as those bourgeois politicians. People call this “whataboutism,” but the claim “Stalin was a monster” is implicitly a comparative claim meaning “Stalin was qualitatively different from and worse than e.g. Churchill,” and I think the opposite is the case. If people are going to make veiled comparisons, us tankies have the right to answer with open ones.
-Nia Frome, “Tankies”
I recommend reading the whole article. I think the meme is actually pretty poor agitprop about Stalin. The idea that Stalin genuinely did nothing wrong at all isn’t found on Hex, .ml, or Grad. The idea that Stalin did more good than bad is the prevailing opinion among Marxists, however.
Demystifying Stalin
I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy.
- J. V. Stalin
- Nia Frome’s “Tankies”
[8 min]
- W. E. B Dubois’ On Stalin
[6 min]
- Domenico Losurdo’s Primitive Thinking and Stalin as Scapegoat
[30 min]
- Domenico Losurdo’s Stalin and Stalinism in History
[16 min]
[42 min]
[38 min]
[9 min]
- Domenico Losurdo’s Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend
[5 hr 51 min]
- Ludo Martens’ Another View of Stalin
[5 hr 25 min]
- Anna Louise Strong’s This Soviet World
Stalin's Major Theoretical Contributions to Marxism
I have come to communism because of daddy Stalin and nobody must come and tell me that I mustn’t read Stalin. I read him when it was very bad to read him. That was another time. And because I’m not very bright, and a hard-headed person, I keep on reading him. Especially in this new period, now that it is worse to read him. Then, as well as now, I still find a Seri of things that are very good.
- Che Guevara
Thanks, I was more commenting on the difference between instances and painted a flattened picture of tankies. I’m aware that tankies are willing to criticize Stalin and shouldn’t have made such a stupid joke.
That said, you might guess from my instance that I disagree with the notion your quoting. When tankies say how bourgeois states are bad I agree because states in general are bad to varying degrees and in different ways but all states are authoritarian. For me, socialist state is an oxymoron and neither Lenin nor Stalin substantially worked towards a free, stateless society. That’s what Bakunin predicted in his exchange with Marx, Kropotkin warned Lenin about, Goldman criticized after Kronstadt, …
Kropotkin started a school of thought that describes stateless, egalitarian societies. Recent authors like Graeber, Gelderloos and J. C. Scott follow this tradition. The reason that it is difficult to find recent examples is that both bourgeois and bolshevik states work together to smash anti-state movements like the Makhnovshchina or the anarchosyndicalists in Spain, or more recently Rojava and the Zapatistas.
You’re assuming the Marxist theory of the state is the same as the anarchist, which is wrong. Marxists care more about class, anarchists care more about hierarchy. A stateless society for Marxists is a fully collectivized and planned, classless economy, while for anarchists it usually looks something more like full horizontalism and petite bourgeois cooperatives at scale. Bakunin was wrong, in the end.
Class is hierarchy…
Not exactly. A manager is not a distinct class from a worker, class is related to ownership of the means of production. Administration in communist society isn’t a class distinct from the rest of the working class, but is merely a position within the broader production in society.
Over time, as technology advances and the division of labor fades, this will likely also become shared responsibility, but such a time would be late-stage communism.
So a CEO is working class because they get salary while a stakeholder who owns like a fraction of 1% and has nothing to say is a capitalist? The binary class system of Marx’ time has nothing to do with modern times.
Also: I always hear Marxists refer to “socialist states” as if non of them ever reached statelessness. I wonder why.
Obviously a CEO’s primary source of income is going to be investments, and not their labor. If there was theoretically a CEO with no investments that got paid a moderate wage, then they would be working class, yes, but in practice in capitalism CEOs are paid massive salaries and the bulk of their income is from investing said salaries, not to mention stock options.
A stakeholder that owns 1% of, say, Apple, and can live off of the dividends from that money is more capitalist than anything else. A worker that has a tiny portion of mcdonalds stock in their 401k, but must still sell their labor to survive, is working class.
Marxism does not have a “binary class system,” and modern times are not distinct from Marx’s time when it comes to class dynamics. Classes are not individuals, but social groups, outliers and edge cases of course exist but the characteristics of the social group as a whole, based on averages and medians, makes up the class. This rigid segmentation is alien to Marxism, which instead uses and relies on dialectical and historical materialism. Part of which is analyzing not just aliquot parts but their entire contexts and relations, including over time.
As for socialist states not withering away, why would they be able to without the eradication of class globally? As long as there are organized capitalists, there cannot be a true stateless society outside of tiny pockets of communalist tribes.
I think it would be very useful for you to read more Marxist theory, if not to agree with it, to better understand Marxists and debate them, cooperate with them on shared goals, etc. I recommend my intro ML reading list, of course, but you don’t have to read far.
6·14 天前Also: I always hear Marxists refer to “socialist states” as if non of them ever reached statelessness. I wonder why.
It’s good to be curious! Marxism posits that classlessness and (therefore) statlessness can only be reached once all is Socialist.
And trying to make a stateless country while half the world is capitalist and you are under constant threat of invasion and CIA sabotage, while the (former) capitalists are working to reintroduce capitalism, is at best foolish, and at worst sabotage, betrayal of the people.
I’m aware that tankies are willing to criticize Stalin and shouldn’t have made such a stupid joke.
If they were, they wouldn’t be tankies… Communists can critic Stalin, tankies cannot.
“Tankie” is just a pejorative for communist, like “commie” or “pinko.” There isn’t a subsection of communist thought called “tankie,” the fictional “tankie” is a strawman ready-made to be flung at communists to turn valid and reasoned arguments into caricature.
