2, without hesitation. Can’t be so bad.

Good, tesla looks like a shit.

I suppose that you prefer russian, north korean or iranian presidential debate more.

For example, explain China increasing in manufacturing output as a percent of their economy as they enter and push into the middle income bracket?

Exploiting cheap workers in inhumane conditions, resembling 19th century capitalism. Exactly what communism was supposed to end. China is getting robotized somewhat, since its society ages dramatically, but they want to keep polluting the world with cheap throwaways.

Also, how the hell is the DPRK imperialist?

DPRK constantly threaten South Korea and Japan. Apart the famous missile launches, it performs abductions, drug smuggling, marine poaching, and spying. And we have cyber attacks as well. The country is too shitty to invade another country full scale, but it does what it can do to be a bully, officially uses imperialist rhetorics and throw threats.

If you can’t explain how the soviet councils were layered and how elections were carried out then don’t pretend like you can argue about this in an informed way.

The elections were carried out in such a way, that an average worker had no chance to vote for a social demoratic party, anarchist party, or liberal democratic party. They even killed their communist opposition, Mensheviks. There is no democracy with a single party system, don’t be ridiculous.

China uses a similar system

And is a similar authoritarian regime.

This is holocaust trivialization. The gulags were not meant to kill people, and the mortality rate in them reflects this.

Setting aside manufactured famine in Ukraine and genocides like Katyn, very cautious estimates says that around 30 millions of people were victims of gulag, with lethal 2,7 million victims. This is probably massive underestimation, since many of gulag documents were destroyed in 2014. But hey, the mortality rate was smaller than in Nazi death camps, great job USSR! /s

Good.

I think that’s a fair take and perhaps indicates you’d lean anarchist-left.

I perceive myself as a social democrat, maybe with elements of anarchism, such as decentralization and down-to-up elements of organization.

I have mixed feelings myself, that kind of natural transformation won’t just be left alone to evolve, it’ll be actively resisted by powerful political and global forces, the United States and its allies would not allow it, for example.

This problem is actually a hard one – otherwise no one wouldn’t need to argue about it, and there is no simple choice. If someone thinks that there is an obvious simple solution, then he/her may be just very ignorant. Maybe I will sound controversial here, but in contrast to Marxist-Leninist, I do not blame United States for damping revolution. Revolution will not come simply because we are not in 19th century capitalism anymore. Capitalists adapted, provided more humane conditions to workers to not be swept by workers’ revolution, and Antonio Gramsci saw it something like 100 years ago, but Marxist-Leninists still live in 19th century and do not see that low-income class would rather choose far-right options like Trump or AfD. The United States indeed massively interfered with damping of “socialists” republics in South America, but I think we do not need another “red” imperialism country like USSR or Russia’s vassal. Humanity needs real communism, not “red” authoritarianism.

I think this pretty clearly demonstrated that the USSR wasn’t interested in anything but Empire.

I think so, and with time this was becoming more and more obvious. Western leftists were surprisingly long (like 1956) under the charm of USSR, maybe with an exception of people like Emma Goldman.

This sounds like western chauvinism. Hoe can you be sure?

And how can you be sure? Given nontransparent smokescreen of all red imperialist countries like USSR, China and North Korea?

The other was democratically elected

Oh yes, USSR, the famous standard of democracy /s

end the holocaust

*replace it with the gulag system

The term is wide and sometimes misinterpreted, but actually not meaningless, since tankies are mainly associated with marxism-leninism (maybe sometimes maoism) and whitewashing of regimes as China, USSR, or North Korea. Same as the term “woke”, which is even wider and horribly overused. Thus, I wouldn’t call a western postmarxist leftist a tankie, and a lib or neocon probably would call this person a woke one :)

Yes, Marxists have been on Lemmy.ml and this is a good thing. But there is difference between Marxists and supporters of authoritarian regimes like China, Russia or North Korea, who are denialists of genocides like Bucha, Katyn, Tiananmen, etc. and who are cheap wumao/govnoyed propagandists.

The “tankie bubble” is Lemmy.

Not so. The tankiest instances are lemmygrad and hexbear, while I think sh.itjust.works is neocon or lib at best, not to mention nazi “exploding heads” so we have a whole spectrum. I think Lemmy.ml had tolerable tankiness, but since lemmygrad and hexbear were rightly defederated from most instances, the tankies and wumaos are poisoning Lemmy.ml and much of fediverse with genocide denialism, authoritarian propaganda, etc.

Thank you for a quite objective response.

I also see how a state which transforms into socialism or communism must be “authoritarian” in that it has to take away factories and land from those that keep it as capital, so that it can be shared.

I think this will never work, or with a very small probability. Power simply corrupts and attracts a nasty kind of people. Personally, I believe that upwards, organic, evolutionary changes are more probable to bring us closer to the ideas of communism, as industrial evolution moved most of the world from feudalism into capitalism in a natural way.

Yeah, I’ve heard about the white terror. This does not justify people who supposedly wanted a better world. I am quite sure that now amount of torture in western countries is negligible when compared with China and North Korea, and mostly by intrinsic flaws of e.g. police than political causes. And yes, I’ve heard about exceptions as Guantanamo or Pinoshit. Actually Pinoshit and Franco should not be counted as nominal western mindset, since they are authoritarian fascist piece of shits. I despise all authoritarian despots equally, no matter fascist Franco or “communist” Stalin.

Well, maybe someone outside your tankie bubble may have an other interpretation.

You mean the idea of communism or actually existing “communist” countries, like China, USRR or North Korea?

Yes, it also helped to liberate woman and gave them more opportunities, decreased illiteracy and MASSIVE russian retardancy, but overall it sucked at many levels and from the very start:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror – look at the passage on tortures. This alone made me to despise USSR.

it creates biased impression that democracy is generally like this. it’s like showing that ussr sucked, so any leftist ideology must sucks too

Well, it might be so. But I am just suspicious about tankies showing flaws of democracy since they use it to “show” the supposed supremacy of “communist”, authoritarian states as China.

the most powerful and influential countries

these countries tend to dominate over other countries as they dominate over their own citizens. this should never be a goal. countries should be democratic between themselves as their citizens should be.

Oh yes, Russia, the renowned standard of democracy /s

lemmy.ml and anti-democratic meme? surprised not