I’m trying to understand which communists don’t fall into whatever your definition of tankie is, and that’s pretty hard without understanding what you actually mean by that. If I were to assume that you mean something like “people that defend authoritarians” or something:
Trots: Defend and venerate lenin. Hate marxist-leninists. Support Trotsky killing off all the anarchists though. And support the USSR pre-Stalin. Trotsky’s own book basically says he would have done most of what Stalin did too?
Marxist-leninists: Defend and support Lenin, Stalin, Mao, among others.
Maoists: Defend and support Lenin, Stalin, Mao. Mostly oppose Deng reforms.
So uhh… Which communists would you not include in your definition of “tankies” ? These are like the three main largest groups of communists.
I’d like to mention that most IRL trots don’t “hate” MLs - it’s recognised that there are in general far more points of agreement than disagreement nowadays. This of course can greatly vary by specific Trotskyist and ML tendencies, but the major exceptions are very fringe.
Yeah that’s fair. I work with some trots myself over union efforts, kinda impossible not to in the UK. I am perhaps overselling the position by overemphasising the historic conflict between the two. With that said I’m still baffled by the “I only mean tankies not communists” point. I can only imagine it comes from a place of not really understanding communists, or being deliberately misleading in that what they actually mean by “communist” is “anarchist” and that’s why there has been no further response.
You seem to misunderstand.
I’m cool with communists. I’m not cool with tankies.
boo
Ok can you define tankie for me?
I’m trying to understand which communists don’t fall into whatever your definition of tankie is, and that’s pretty hard without understanding what you actually mean by that. If I were to assume that you mean something like “people that defend authoritarians” or something:
Trots: Defend and venerate lenin. Hate marxist-leninists. Support Trotsky killing off all the anarchists though. And support the USSR pre-Stalin. Trotsky’s own book basically says he would have done most of what Stalin did too?
Marxist-leninists: Defend and support Lenin, Stalin, Mao, among others.
Maoists: Defend and support Lenin, Stalin, Mao. Mostly oppose Deng reforms.
So uhh… Which communists would you not include in your definition of “tankies” ? These are like the three main largest groups of communists.
I’d like to mention that most IRL trots don’t “hate” MLs - it’s recognised that there are in general far more points of agreement than disagreement nowadays. This of course can greatly vary by specific Trotskyist and ML tendencies, but the major exceptions are very fringe.
Yeah that’s fair. I work with some trots myself over union efforts, kinda impossible not to in the UK. I am perhaps overselling the position by overemphasising the historic conflict between the two. With that said I’m still baffled by the “I only mean tankies not communists” point. I can only imagine it comes from a place of not really understanding communists, or being deliberately misleading in that what they actually mean by “communist” is “anarchist” and that’s why there has been no further response.
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