this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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I have only seen it used in reference to people who support dictatorial regimes with socialist aesthetics, mostly MLs. I have yet to see an anarchist be called a tankie. Also you can hear it IRL, not commonly though since most MLs are on twitter and the like and not IRL.
Based on your answer, I've discovered what tankie means: Tankie = Marxist.
Successful Marxist movement results in a dictatorship of the proletariat. Dictator = tankie.
Hence tankie is a term used to describe any Marxist.
Thanks for contributing to this scientific breakthrough!
Nah, first premise is false in more than one way. You are conflating the ideology Stalin made with Marxism.
The second error is that there has never been a dictatorship of the proletariat, every time it has been a political party that seizes power for themselves and not the workers. In doing so they become the ruling class with differing class interests than the workers.
Marx must be rotating in his grave with the speed to power the whole globe at this point.
You didn't do the reading :(. Dictatorship of the proletariat is a concept Marx and Engles adopted. Stalin didn't create it.
I don't know what you think the proletariat taking control of the state is suppose to look like, but there will always be a communist party involved. The mechanisms of power exist to be ruled by a party.
Communist parties should be judged by what they do for their poorest citizens. With that in mind, AES countries are doing a decent job. Things get better when they are in power, and get way worse if they are overthrown
You're wrong, what Marx talked about was the whole class of workers being in power. Stalin perverted that idea to a vanguard party. Stalin's system has always resulted in a ruling class composed of a class that was no longer the proletariat (if they even were to begin with). That system is not socialist, it is in fact no better than a capitalist system, as the hierarchies at work are equally unjust.
State capitalism with an authoritarian regime, if you will.