I dont get how tankies can support a “communist” nation like China that has an investor class and whose system requires the mistreatment of the proletariat.
The “Party” sits above the “Money” in their power structure, unlike most of the Capitalist countries nowadays were (after 4 decades of Neoliberalism) Money is a power above that of the State (and remember, the State is what the voters supposedly control in Democracy, so that means that Money is a higher power than Democracy, which is why many have pointed out that countries like the US are Oligarchies not Democracies).
And, for reference, in Fascism too (or, in fact, all other Autocratic systems) the State sits above Money, so I’m hardly saying that by itself that is enough to make that system good
The real hypocrisy of tankies, IMHO, is that the “Communist” nations they support in a tribalist way still have elites, they’re just not chosen via Money but instead via ability of climbing up the Party ranks (so Cronyism and Sociopathy) whilst genuine Leftwing thinking is about Equality, the very opposite of there being people who get privileged treatment for any reason other than need (that reason being money as in Capitalist system or something else is quite irrelevant in Leftwing thinking)
If you just see them as tribalists wedded to an ideology shaped by a specific kind of elites who use a specific kind of slogans around Equality to support the continuation of the structure that maintains their elite privileges, (which is parallel to what’s done in Capitalism which similarly has the whole bullshit about how wealth is the product of merit to justify discrimination based on wealth) you can understand why tankies would think what they do about China.
They’re still mindless simpleton tribalists, but it’s interesting to understand how using as foundation for ones own judgement an ideology controlled by somebody else without doing at the very least some analysing of it just as easily yields a tankie, a Fascist or a (Neo)liberal depending on which ideological bundle of slogans they’ve unquestioningly adopted.
“Because they’ll eventually take away their wealth or kill them” is an argument I’ve actually seen on .ml. I’m not against the sentiment of getting rid of the capitalists but cmon, when someone says China isn’t socialist and points at a clearly capitalist behavior you can’t be “it’s still socialist because the capitalist thing will be fixed in the future”. Then every country might as well be socialist, we’ll just fix capitalism at some later date.
At least China goes through the motions of being Communist. They also somehow support 21st century Russia which is just openly an authoritarian oligarchy.
The leftists allied with the religious nutjobs in the revolution, then got murdered immediately afterwards because the religious nutjobs didn’t want a leftist government that tolerated religion, they wanted an authoritarian theocracy. Some people somehow think that any leftist-backed revolution always goes brilliantly and ends up with utopian socialism or communism and no one ever exploits the post-revolutionary power vacuum for their own ends. That isn’t compatible with what happened, so instead, they must believe that the leftists survived being murdered and now run Iran.
Communists also literally do not care about democracy and seem to strongly believe that if anyone in the country wants something pretty socialist then than justifies overruling the reat of the country with all the military power it can muster if neecessary.
As a side note Islamic theocracy is immune to fascism given the fact that the ideal state in Islam is a theocracy. Theocracies and fascism are incompatible due to the supremacy of the faith in one vs the other.
Iran is just another theocratic totalitarian state. They are not fascists.
That’s overly simplistic. Fascists and theocrats work together to gain power for all the time. See the current marriage of Trump and Christian Nationalists in the United States, for example.
That has nothing to do with my claim which is specific to Islam. As Islam posits a caliphate as the ideal state it is incompatible with fascism which requires faith to be subservient to the state. Iran cannot be as Muslim fascist theocracy
There is often a very large gap between what is seen as ideal and what pans out in reality. Fascism is absolutely a possible result of an attempt to establish a caliphate, just as an authoritarian dictatorship or oligarchy - sooner or later - is a possible result of an attempt to establish communism.
If you end up fascist you cannot be a Muslim theocratic state which is what Islam posits as the ideal this you cannot have a state that is both fascist and an Islamic theocracy. This combination is entirely possible for other faiths that do not posit an ideal state.
You’re making a pure semantics argument, saying that an “Islamic theocracy” means something so specific that even if a fascist regime could be considered both Islamic and a theocracy, you can’t call it that because only caliphates qualify for that label. It’s a bit silly.
Don’t worry, someone will be along shortly to recommend 2000 pages of communist literature that wouldn’t even prove their point even if you read it all.
I dont get how tankies can support a “communist” nation like China that has an investor class and whose system requires the mistreatment of the proletariat.
The “Party” sits above the “Money” in their power structure, unlike most of the Capitalist countries nowadays were (after 4 decades of Neoliberalism) Money is a power above that of the State (and remember, the State is what the voters supposedly control in Democracy, so that means that Money is a higher power than Democracy, which is why many have pointed out that countries like the US are Oligarchies not Democracies).
And, for reference, in Fascism too (or, in fact, all other Autocratic systems) the State sits above Money, so I’m hardly saying that by itself that is enough to make that system good
The real hypocrisy of tankies, IMHO, is that the “Communist” nations they support in a tribalist way still have elites, they’re just not chosen via Money but instead via ability of climbing up the Party ranks (so Cronyism and Sociopathy) whilst genuine Leftwing thinking is about Equality, the very opposite of there being people who get privileged treatment for any reason other than need (that reason being money as in Capitalist system or something else is quite irrelevant in Leftwing thinking)
If you just see them as tribalists wedded to an ideology shaped by a specific kind of elites who use a specific kind of slogans around Equality to support the continuation of the structure that maintains their elite privileges, (which is parallel to what’s done in Capitalism which similarly has the whole bullshit about how wealth is the product of merit to justify discrimination based on wealth) you can understand why tankies would think what they do about China.
They’re still mindless simpleton tribalists, but it’s interesting to understand how using as foundation for ones own judgement an ideology controlled by somebody else without doing at the very least some analysing of it just as easily yields a tankie, a Fascist or a (Neo)liberal depending on which ideological bundle of slogans they’ve unquestioningly adopted.
“Because they’ll eventually take away their wealth or kill them” is an argument I’ve actually seen on .ml. I’m not against the sentiment of getting rid of the capitalists but cmon, when someone says China isn’t socialist and points at a clearly capitalist behavior you can’t be “it’s still socialist because the capitalist thing will be fixed in the future”. Then every country might as well be socialist, we’ll just fix capitalism at some later date.
At least China goes through the motions of being Communist. They also somehow support 21st century Russia which is just openly an authoritarian oligarchy.
My ‘favorite’ is when they defend clerical fascism in Iran as some kind of fantastic anti-capitalist development,
The leftists allied with the religious nutjobs in the revolution, then got murdered immediately afterwards because the religious nutjobs didn’t want a leftist government that tolerated religion, they wanted an authoritarian theocracy. Some people somehow think that any leftist-backed revolution always goes brilliantly and ends up with utopian socialism or communism and no one ever exploits the post-revolutionary power vacuum for their own ends. That isn’t compatible with what happened, so instead, they must believe that the leftists survived being murdered and now run Iran.
Communists also literally do not care about democracy and seem to strongly believe that if anyone in the country wants something pretty socialist then than justifies overruling the reat of the country with all the military power it can muster if neecessary.
Islamic theocracy is fundamentally incompatible with fascism as the ideal state posed by Islam is a caliphate aka a theocratic monarchal state.
As a side note Islamic theocracy is immune to fascism given the fact that the ideal state in Islam is a theocracy. Theocracies and fascism are incompatible due to the supremacy of the faith in one vs the other.
Iran is just another theocratic totalitarian state. They are not fascists.
That’s overly simplistic. Fascists and theocrats work together to gain power for all the time. See the current marriage of Trump and Christian Nationalists in the United States, for example.
That has nothing to do with my claim which is specific to Islam. As Islam posits a caliphate as the ideal state it is incompatible with fascism which requires faith to be subservient to the state. Iran cannot be as Muslim fascist theocracy
There is often a very large gap between what is seen as ideal and what pans out in reality. Fascism is absolutely a possible result of an attempt to establish a caliphate, just as an authoritarian dictatorship or oligarchy - sooner or later - is a possible result of an attempt to establish communism.
If you end up fascist you cannot be a Muslim theocratic state which is what Islam posits as the ideal this you cannot have a state that is both fascist and an Islamic theocracy. This combination is entirely possible for other faiths that do not posit an ideal state.
You cannot be both.
You’re making a pure semantics argument, saying that an “Islamic theocracy” means something so specific that even if a fascist regime could be considered both Islamic and a theocracy, you can’t call it that because only caliphates qualify for that label. It’s a bit silly.
Don’t worry, someone will be along shortly to recommend 2000 pages of communist literature that wouldn’t even prove their point even if you read it all.
Because they don’t support communism. They just like one version of ogliarchy better than the other.
They’re authoritarians not communists ie. the ole schtick.