In 1700s Europe the people in power were the nobility (the descendants of feudal aristocrats) and the clergy (the church). Their claim to power (legitimacy) was that God willed it, and also they had the biggest army (“ultima ratio regum”).
Liberalism arose from “enlightenment thought” and basically said that all humans are equal, therefore state legitimacy comes from the consent of the people, and therefore there should be a set of laws that guarantees everyone’s rights and gives everyone a say in how society should be run. Some subjects (such as religion) belong to a “private sphere” that the state has no say in and is therefore beyond politics. State power should be minimal and tightly regulated through mechanisms such as the bill of rights or the separation of powers. This ideology was the foundation of the US independence and the French revolution. The political thinkers most emblematic of it are John Locke and Montesquieu.
The people who gained most from erasing the special place in society of the nobility and the clergy (“abolishing the privileges”) were people who were rich but not part of these organisations, that is to say merchants and industrialists. Leftism was born out of the “social question” : everyone having the same rights is cool but the richer in society clearly benefit more while the poorer are unable to make use of these “rights” (for instance having the right to a trial does you no good if you can’t afford a lawyer ; or being allowed vacation days is pointless if you can’t afford to stop working). It is somewhat at odds with liberalism, because solving the social question might require to break some rules of liberalism (most notably state non-intervention, private property, and separation of powers). The most emblematic political thinker here is Karl Marx.
Some leftists theorized the state should be violently overthrown in order to install themselves as dictators and therefore solve the social question by directly redistributing wealth to the poorest. The most important of these is Lenin, who took over the government of Russia in 1917, turning it into the Soviet Union. However he soon died and passed power to Stalin, who cemented his dictatorship and took over a number of countries through military force. When some of these countries (most notably Hungary in 1956) tried to rebel, the Soviet government sent in their army. Thus “tankie” is an insult ― it means one who excuses the brutality of the Soviet government, or more generally the usage of force by a leftist power. It mostly means the same as “stalinist”.
Meanwhile, in the US people were divided on how much state power was acceptable to use. The democratic party used state power to fix the economy during the great depression (Roosevelt), then fight racism during the civil rights era (Johnson) ; today a part of society aligned with the democratic party wishes to use state power to fight sexism and other social issues, therefore being closer to the leftist view. The word “liberal” in US parlance came to mean those people, who today call themselves progressives, and the “liberals” I referred to earlier are sometimes referred to as “classical liberals” in order to avoid confusion.
Liberalism arose from “enlightenment thought” and basically said that all humans are equal, therefore state legitimacy comes from the consent of the people, and therefore there should be a set of laws that guarantees everyone’s rights and gives everyone a say in how society should be run
*This was only applicable to western European nations. Liberalism was the moral justification for the enslavement of the world under colonial and neocolonial schemes. Since Europe was said to be the cradle of morality and values, the rest of the world were barbarians who were deemed needing stewarding and European intervention.
Some leftists theorized the state should be violently overthrown in order to install themselves as dictators and therefore solve the social question by directly redistributing wealth to the poorest. The most important of these is Lenin
This is very much not true. Leninism is a theoretical development of Marxism applied to preindustrial nations. Marx theorized that the socialist revolution would stem naturally from developed industrial nations, but Bolsheviks saw the revolutionary potential not only of the industrial workers but also of the peasants. Lenin led a democratic vanguard party until his death, but understood that a socialist project in construction will have interference from capitalists both locally and abroad, and needs state repression of said interference in order to be able to carry out the goal of redistribution of power to the people because capitalists won’t just give it away.
Stalin, who cemented his dictatorship and took over a number of countries through military force
I think you misspelled “eliminated fascism from Europe and saved tens of millions of lives from Nazi extermination”. It wasn’t done personally by Stalin, but by the socialist project of the USSR as a whole.
You did a great job disregarding the colonial history of the west and the implications it had for billions of people in the global south.
Ok so there’s three parts in your message. First you “correct” me by pointing out I didn’t mention liberalism as a justification for colonization. Indeed, but I tried to keep concise given the context. I also didn’t mention other important aspects of liberalism such as economics. Also, liberalism was hardly the only justification for colonization, it was used against it, and colonization predates it in any case. You also point out I didn’t mention Lenin sought to apply Marxism to under-industrialized nations. That is accurate but besides the point, and he wasn’t the only one. But he also theorized the vanguard party as you mention, and that is crucial to the rest of my paragraph. The parent comment asked what was the difference between a liberal and a leftist, and what was a tankie, and I replied as concisely as I could.
Now adding to what I mentioned is fine but you also imply that I in fact did it on purpose :
You did a great job disregarding the colonial history of the west and the implications it had for billions of people in the global south.
You’re basically saying that I’m racist. Why would you say that ?
Lenin led a democratic vanguard party until his death, but understood that a socialist project in construction will have interference from capitalists both locally and abroad, and needs state repression of said interference in order to be able to carry out the goal of redistribution of power to the people because capitalists won’t just give it away.
I think you misspelled “eliminated fascism from Europe and saved tens of millions of lives from Nazi extermination”. It wasn’t done personally by Stalin, but by the socialist project of the USSR as a whole.
And there is the reason. I criticized Lenin and Stalin as being undemocratic and you disagree. The problem is the only source that will call Stalin “democratic” are stalinists themselves ― most leftists in fact criticize stalinism, and more largely the way the bolshevik party was set up. Trotsky himself predicted it would come to a dictatorship in Our Political Tasks (1903).
So you just reply with stalinist apologia : the Soviet Union was in fact democratic (it wasn’t, and only stalinists will assert thus), they fought the nazis (true, but that’s besides the point of using military force against the people), capitalists would interfere (true, although far less than implied before the cold war, but again that is besides the point of establishing a dictatorship and using military force against the people)
I just want people to recognize this pattern. This is what “tankie” is : you make side comments to my main points, you paint me as a monster and an enemy by calling me a racist, and you spew apologia about dictatorship actually being democratic but still being justified by the circumstances and military force being necessary under the context and also the nazis.
The fact you can, in a single message, paint me as an enemy before explaining that using lethal force against enemies is acceptable is chilling and I hope you’ll never get near any position of power.
I’d be more charitative to your comment if it couldn’t be summarized as “liberalism is when human rights and enlightenment, Leninism is when le evil dictator with iron fist”.
Your analysis of what constitutes a dictatorship or a democracy is simply anti materialist.
The country that guaranteed universal healthcare, free education to the highest level, guaranteed housing, the abolition of unemployment, guaranteed retirement pensions, and maintained the historically lowest inequality levels in the region is a dictatorship to you. This is only possible if your understanding is that, for 70 years, the USSR had a succession of benevolent dictators unlike anything else the world has seen for some reason. No dictator elsewhere at any time has achieved remotely anything like that, but somehow FIVE in a row in the USSR maintained the highest welfare state in history.
To you, democracy is strictly defined as “the existence of a multi party system with periodic representative elections”. This is a faulty understanding of who makes decisions in class societies. There cannot be democracy in class society. Tell me an example of an existing democratic country to you.
“Democratic” is an overloaded word that I could have wielded with more caution.
I believe the utmost importance is to preserve human freedom and dignity (meaning to treat people as an end and not a mean). Western liberal democracies enable a ruling class to use violence to preserve their power and the exploitative system they benefit from. Their political system, as presented in the media, is largely a farce. But they do, so far, preserve more individual freedoms than leninist states do : freedom of speech, of movement, of organisation, from arbitrary police repression, etc. Many freedoms are lacking in the West though, such as the freedom from exploitation or the freedom not to participate in society (ie not to consent to be governed).
It’s good the Soviet Union after Stalin tried to improve the standard of living. But that is besides the point of individual freedoms and governing only through the consent of the citizenry.
In fact I’m unsure whether you’re counting Gorbachev in your list of benevolent dictators, but he was of your opinion and tried to actually acquire the consent of the governed. It didn’t go very well, for various reasons. Lenin himself disregarded the result of a popular vote, the constituant assembly election in 1917.
There’s also the question of the nomenklatura and the army. It cannot be denied they enjoyed privileges beyond what was necessary and therefore the Soviet state was at least in part extractive in that it took wealth from the workers to hand it to a minority who controlled the system.
I wish I would have had someone like you as a history teacher in school. Back then we got a very brief and basic “here are the definitions of socialism/communism. These may sound good, but that’s just because you’re young, they’re actually bad. We’re not discussing why, or going into specifics.” I’m not sure the discussion even goes that far today in US schools, as most teachers like having a job.
Of course my gut reaction to this as a teen was to launch into my own “semi-tankie” anti-west, anti-imperialist phase. After a few swings back into liberalism, I eventually found a comfortable (if idealistic) ideological home somewhere between socialist democracy and social anarchism, but it was a long, bumpy, and confusing road there.
It seems quite a few on this site never made it past that angsty adolescent phase. They’ll tell you “tankies” is an insult, or a slur even, but I’m not exactly worried about hurting someone’s feelings with that when they openly call for authoritarianism and even support ethnic cleansing and genocides, as long as they’re done by countries or groups that have their approval.
There are teens here (I’m one) so maybe we’re at least some of the people that “never made it last that angsty adolescent phase”. Although I’d bet that there are quite a few adults falling in to that category here too
That’s nice thanks. I’m nowhere near an authority on these subjects so I am quite afraid of talking out my behind.
All stalinists and maoists I met (very few) were contrarians like you describe, and enjoyed being provocative regarding sensitive questions like dekulakization or the Uyghurs. However I think there must be some kind of current trend in their favor, as maoism seems to be on a slight ascend. Perhaps this is due to a rise in Chinese soft power, as Xi Jinping presents himself as a kind of neo-maoist and reformers have been de-emphasized in Chinese media. Or maybe I just spend too much time on Lemmy lol
Now might be a good time for anarchism. It seems to me we live in a time where people refuse to believe in grand visions of a future society, where people are quite individualistic, and where leninist-inspired leftism has been discredited. But anarchism can offer local-scale and immediate improvement, respects the individual, and doesn’t have much of a record of human rights violations. All is needed is to avoid the term “anarchism” in favor of the phrase “what if there was no leader and we just took decisions collectively?” haha
I don’t think we can win at the word re-definition game. They’ll twist it into something bad no matter what we do. What we want is fairly called anarchism.
Sincerely,
an actual libertarian
P.S. fuck capitalism
I agree with the sentiment but some practicality is needed. I think most unpoliticized audiences would hear a pitch about “workers’ self-management” but balk at “anarchism”. However the word is very good when some bite is needed.
I do think Proudhon messed up when he chose “anarchism” though, it already meant “chaos” long before that. And in the US “libertarian” was heinously stolen. In general words seem to have a very hard life in the US.
In 1700s Europe the people in power were the nobility (the descendants of feudal aristocrats) and the clergy (the church). Their claim to power (legitimacy) was that God willed it, and also they had the biggest army (“ultima ratio regum”).
Liberalism arose from “enlightenment thought” and basically said that all humans are equal, therefore state legitimacy comes from the consent of the people, and therefore there should be a set of laws that guarantees everyone’s rights and gives everyone a say in how society should be run. Some subjects (such as religion) belong to a “private sphere” that the state has no say in and is therefore beyond politics. State power should be minimal and tightly regulated through mechanisms such as the bill of rights or the separation of powers. This ideology was the foundation of the US independence and the French revolution. The political thinkers most emblematic of it are John Locke and Montesquieu.
The people who gained most from erasing the special place in society of the nobility and the clergy (“abolishing the privileges”) were people who were rich but not part of these organisations, that is to say merchants and industrialists. Leftism was born out of the “social question” : everyone having the same rights is cool but the richer in society clearly benefit more while the poorer are unable to make use of these “rights” (for instance having the right to a trial does you no good if you can’t afford a lawyer ; or being allowed vacation days is pointless if you can’t afford to stop working). It is somewhat at odds with liberalism, because solving the social question might require to break some rules of liberalism (most notably state non-intervention, private property, and separation of powers). The most emblematic political thinker here is Karl Marx.
Some leftists theorized the state should be violently overthrown in order to install themselves as dictators and therefore solve the social question by directly redistributing wealth to the poorest. The most important of these is Lenin, who took over the government of Russia in 1917, turning it into the Soviet Union. However he soon died and passed power to Stalin, who cemented his dictatorship and took over a number of countries through military force. When some of these countries (most notably Hungary in 1956) tried to rebel, the Soviet government sent in their army. Thus “tankie” is an insult ― it means one who excuses the brutality of the Soviet government, or more generally the usage of force by a leftist power. It mostly means the same as “stalinist”.
Meanwhile, in the US people were divided on how much state power was acceptable to use. The democratic party used state power to fix the economy during the great depression (Roosevelt), then fight racism during the civil rights era (Johnson) ; today a part of society aligned with the democratic party wishes to use state power to fight sexism and other social issues, therefore being closer to the leftist view. The word “liberal” in US parlance came to mean those people, who today call themselves progressives, and the “liberals” I referred to earlier are sometimes referred to as “classical liberals” in order to avoid confusion.
I hope this clears things up
*This was only applicable to western European nations. Liberalism was the moral justification for the enslavement of the world under colonial and neocolonial schemes. Since Europe was said to be the cradle of morality and values, the rest of the world were barbarians who were deemed needing stewarding and European intervention.
This is very much not true. Leninism is a theoretical development of Marxism applied to preindustrial nations. Marx theorized that the socialist revolution would stem naturally from developed industrial nations, but Bolsheviks saw the revolutionary potential not only of the industrial workers but also of the peasants. Lenin led a democratic vanguard party until his death, but understood that a socialist project in construction will have interference from capitalists both locally and abroad, and needs state repression of said interference in order to be able to carry out the goal of redistribution of power to the people because capitalists won’t just give it away.
I think you misspelled “eliminated fascism from Europe and saved tens of millions of lives from Nazi extermination”. It wasn’t done personally by Stalin, but by the socialist project of the USSR as a whole.
You did a great job disregarding the colonial history of the west and the implications it had for billions of people in the global south.
Ok so there’s three parts in your message. First you “correct” me by pointing out I didn’t mention liberalism as a justification for colonization. Indeed, but I tried to keep concise given the context. I also didn’t mention other important aspects of liberalism such as economics. Also, liberalism was hardly the only justification for colonization, it was used against it, and colonization predates it in any case. You also point out I didn’t mention Lenin sought to apply Marxism to under-industrialized nations. That is accurate but besides the point, and he wasn’t the only one. But he also theorized the vanguard party as you mention, and that is crucial to the rest of my paragraph. The parent comment asked what was the difference between a liberal and a leftist, and what was a tankie, and I replied as concisely as I could.
Now adding to what I mentioned is fine but you also imply that I in fact did it on purpose :
You’re basically saying that I’m racist. Why would you say that ?
And there is the reason. I criticized Lenin and Stalin as being undemocratic and you disagree. The problem is the only source that will call Stalin “democratic” are stalinists themselves ― most leftists in fact criticize stalinism, and more largely the way the bolshevik party was set up. Trotsky himself predicted it would come to a dictatorship in Our Political Tasks (1903).
So you just reply with stalinist apologia : the Soviet Union was in fact democratic (it wasn’t, and only stalinists will assert thus), they fought the nazis (true, but that’s besides the point of using military force against the people), capitalists would interfere (true, although far less than implied before the cold war, but again that is besides the point of establishing a dictatorship and using military force against the people)
I just want people to recognize this pattern. This is what “tankie” is : you make side comments to my main points, you paint me as a monster and an enemy by calling me a racist, and you spew apologia about dictatorship actually being democratic but still being justified by the circumstances and military force being necessary under the context and also the nazis.
The fact you can, in a single message, paint me as an enemy before explaining that using lethal force against enemies is acceptable is chilling and I hope you’ll never get near any position of power.
I’d be more charitative to your comment if it couldn’t be summarized as “liberalism is when human rights and enlightenment, Leninism is when le evil dictator with iron fist”.
Your analysis of what constitutes a dictatorship or a democracy is simply anti materialist.
The country that guaranteed universal healthcare, free education to the highest level, guaranteed housing, the abolition of unemployment, guaranteed retirement pensions, and maintained the historically lowest inequality levels in the region is a dictatorship to you. This is only possible if your understanding is that, for 70 years, the USSR had a succession of benevolent dictators unlike anything else the world has seen for some reason. No dictator elsewhere at any time has achieved remotely anything like that, but somehow FIVE in a row in the USSR maintained the highest welfare state in history.
To you, democracy is strictly defined as “the existence of a multi party system with periodic representative elections”. This is a faulty understanding of who makes decisions in class societies. There cannot be democracy in class society. Tell me an example of an existing democratic country to you.
“Democratic” is an overloaded word that I could have wielded with more caution.
I believe the utmost importance is to preserve human freedom and dignity (meaning to treat people as an end and not a mean). Western liberal democracies enable a ruling class to use violence to preserve their power and the exploitative system they benefit from. Their political system, as presented in the media, is largely a farce. But they do, so far, preserve more individual freedoms than leninist states do : freedom of speech, of movement, of organisation, from arbitrary police repression, etc. Many freedoms are lacking in the West though, such as the freedom from exploitation or the freedom not to participate in society (ie not to consent to be governed).
It’s good the Soviet Union after Stalin tried to improve the standard of living. But that is besides the point of individual freedoms and governing only through the consent of the citizenry.
In fact I’m unsure whether you’re counting Gorbachev in your list of benevolent dictators, but he was of your opinion and tried to actually acquire the consent of the governed. It didn’t go very well, for various reasons. Lenin himself disregarded the result of a popular vote, the constituant assembly election in 1917.
There’s also the question of the nomenklatura and the army. It cannot be denied they enjoyed privileges beyond what was necessary and therefore the Soviet state was at least in part extractive in that it took wealth from the workers to hand it to a minority who controlled the system.
I wish I would have had someone like you as a history teacher in school. Back then we got a very brief and basic “here are the definitions of socialism/communism. These may sound good, but that’s just because you’re young, they’re actually bad. We’re not discussing why, or going into specifics.” I’m not sure the discussion even goes that far today in US schools, as most teachers like having a job.
Of course my gut reaction to this as a teen was to launch into my own “semi-tankie” anti-west, anti-imperialist phase. After a few swings back into liberalism, I eventually found a comfortable (if idealistic) ideological home somewhere between socialist democracy and social anarchism, but it was a long, bumpy, and confusing road there.
It seems quite a few on this site never made it past that angsty adolescent phase. They’ll tell you “tankies” is an insult, or a slur even, but I’m not exactly worried about hurting someone’s feelings with that when they openly call for authoritarianism and even support ethnic cleansing and genocides, as long as they’re done by countries or groups that have their approval.
I was in a texas highschool until few years ago. The coach was also teaching the finance class due to teacher shortage.
At least biweekly he would freeze the class to talk about North Korea and say things like “Communists are more dangereous than Nazis.”
So it still goes on, but more aggressive now.
There are teens here (I’m one) so maybe we’re at least some of the people that “never made it last that angsty adolescent phase”. Although I’d bet that there are quite a few adults falling in to that category here too
I’m part plankton, so at least some of me isn’t angsty adolescent anymore at some hundreds of millions of years old.
I think your instinct there is correct, sadly
That’s nice thanks. I’m nowhere near an authority on these subjects so I am quite afraid of talking out my behind.
All stalinists and maoists I met (very few) were contrarians like you describe, and enjoyed being provocative regarding sensitive questions like dekulakization or the Uyghurs. However I think there must be some kind of current trend in their favor, as maoism seems to be on a slight ascend. Perhaps this is due to a rise in Chinese soft power, as Xi Jinping presents himself as a kind of neo-maoist and reformers have been de-emphasized in Chinese media. Or maybe I just spend too much time on Lemmy lol
Now might be a good time for anarchism. It seems to me we live in a time where people refuse to believe in grand visions of a future society, where people are quite individualistic, and where leninist-inspired leftism has been discredited. But anarchism can offer local-scale and immediate improvement, respects the individual, and doesn’t have much of a record of human rights violations. All is needed is to avoid the term “anarchism” in favor of the phrase “what if there was no leader and we just took decisions collectively?” haha
I don’t think we can win at the word re-definition game. They’ll twist it into something bad no matter what we do. What we want is fairly called anarchism.
Sincerely,
an actual libertarian
P.S. fuck capitalism
I agree with the sentiment but some practicality is needed. I think most unpoliticized audiences would hear a pitch about “workers’ self-management” but balk at “anarchism”. However the word is very good when some bite is needed.
I do think Proudhon messed up when he chose “anarchism” though, it already meant “chaos” long before that. And in the US “libertarian” was heinously stolen. In general words seem to have a very hard life in the US.
I think “direct democracy” might be a more palatable alternative.