Many people on lemmy.ml deeply respect and admire authoritarian governments and organizations.
Iran, China, North Korea, Soviet Union…
The West has many flaws. But our flaws are nothing compared to these guys.
Iran hangs homosexuals. Iran shot 30,000 people in less than than 2 weeks. The Soviet Union had to build a fucking Iron wall to prevent people from escaping. The Soviets lied about the Chernobyl nuclear explosion. China censors the internet. China wants to eliminate Islam. North Korea is a totalitarian hellscape. Watching anime is a crime.
Why is lemmy.ml so fascinated with authoritarians?
I’m not arguing in bad-faith at all. The “specific type of communist” just so happens to apply to the overwhelming majority of communists. The definition is of course a liberal perspective on the concept of authority, but absolutely backs me up. If a pejorative is applicable to the overwhelming majority of a group, it isn’t a pejorative for a specific type, but a general pejorative with exceptions for specific types.
By the same logic, a pejorative for Asians is a pejorative for people in general since 60% of the world lives in Asia, almost 4x as much as on the next most populated continent, but if someone in this thread said something like that, I bet you’d consider them a racist instead of a misanthrope.
Being asian is an intrinsic characteristic. Supposed “anti-authoritarian” communists are “communists” that reject the core communist analysis of authority, chiefly that all authority is of a class character and the proletarian use of authority is critical in establishing and maintaining socialism. Your comparison is faulty.
So, what, if we’re talking beliefs, the distinction doesn’t matter, but if we’re talking intrinsic characteristics, it suddenly does? No, this is just moving the goal posts.
Perhaps there’s some difference on how we’re using the word “authoritarian”. I and most people I have seen use the word use it to mean that the government heavily uses its power in an abusive way to coerce its population to give up reasonable freedoms. For example, most would consider it a proper use of authority to forbid you to yell “FIRE!” in a crowded theater when there is no fire or other danger present, but most would consider it authoritarian to forbid speaking negatively of the government. Maybe I could phrase the definition better, but I hope this helps illustrate the point. To my knowledge, communism does not require authoritarianism in the way most people understand the word, so I think it is very fair to make a distinction between communists and tankies.
It’s important to understand the difference between intrinsic characteristics and beliefs because some beliefs are frankly wrong and go against the foundations of the rest. For example, if I said “climate scientists support the fact of climate change” and you said “some deny it,” would you then ask me to rephrase the former statement as saying “specific climate scientists support the fact of climate change?” Of course not!
As I have been pointing out this entire time, this is the liberal conception of authority, devoid of class analysis. The missing factor is which class is using its power, and against which class? The state is not outside of class struggle, but within it.
For housekeeping, communism is a post-socialist mode of production and distribution without a state or class, and as such has no class using its authority over others. Socialism still has classes, as the basis of class cannot be abolished overnight, so it necessarily has a state, and therefore the working classes must have control of it for it to be a socialist state. Socialism is therefore necessarily “authoritarian” from the perspective of the former ruling classes, while being liberating for the working classes.
Authority is not a general spectrum of less to more, but instead a privledge for whichever class is in power and a tool for enforcing the will of that class. Therefore, the division between communists and “tankies” does not exist in any real manner beyond fringe western organizations that disagree with the core of Marxism in practice, the establishment of the socialist state as the necessary tool for bringing about communism by eradicating class.
Okay, but when you’re talking to an environment that isn’t explicitly communist, maybe try to bridge that gap instead of treating us like idiots for not sharing your view in a world that explicitly attempts to discourage understanding it. You’re using words in a specialized way with people who do not share your specialization.
And this still doesn’t invalidate the point being made. By saying “authoritarian”, we explicitly mean the ones who do not wish to use the authority properly. Trying to claim we don’t understand what we’re talking about isn’t addressing the point, it’s just shutting down the discussion without a reasonable rebuttal. To say that all communists are authoritarian in the “liberal conception of authority” would be to say that a communist will still treat some people like absolute shit, but it’s okay because those people deserve it. Judge a society not by how it treats the best of itself, but by how it treats the least. If all people are valid and worthy of basic necessities and freedoms, then all people are valid and worthy of basic necessities and freedoms. They should be prevented from running roughshod over anyone else, of course, so they shouldn’t be allowed to reform a ruling class, and the ones who have committed abuses already should of course see reasonable punishment for those abuses, but they shouldn’t be abused themselves for our own sadistic satisfaction. Some class-based restrictions are reasonable, but those who use the word tankie are speaking of those they perceive as taking things way too far, often to the point of cruelty.
Cool, but none of us are the current ruling class, so… We’re not speaking from that perspective when we call certain types of communists authoritarian.
Nobody’s bitching about communists having authority. We’re talking specifically about a type of communist who are perceived as very likely to abuse that authority if they’re given it. If it was wrong for the current ruling class to abuse that power against us, it’s going to be wrong for us to abuse it against them when we have it. That doesn’t mean the former ruling class can’t be punished. It doesn’t mean we allow the old ruling class to reform. It just means don’t be an abusive asshole. Which is what people tend to refer to as a tankie.
I’m trying to bridge that gap, because the rest of your comment is, frankly, wrong.
Socialist states in real life do use authority properly. Mistakes and excess can and do occur, but on the whole socialism has been incredibly liberating for the working classes.
It’s extremely easy to fall into “false consciousness.” Simply put, capitalists control the western press and media, and use it to demonize socialism. When the western press speaks of “Cuban tyranny,” they speak of it in the abstract, in general, when in reality it is tyranny against former slavers, forcibly appropriating their property and distributing it to the people. In this framing, it’s easy to fear the general fear capitalists do, as they control cultural hegemony.
But this is all based on, frankly, capitalist distortions of what actually happens in socialist countries. Socialism isn’t simply punishing capitalists, it uses authority to expropriate capital and redistribute it. It uses authority to establish healthcare and improve the lives of the people. The conception of the “authoritarianism” practiced in socialist countries is the authority against the capitalists and slavers presented as universal, while ignoring the liberation of the working classes, because capitalists control the press.
Okay, with this having been said, maybe I can reframe this in a way more agreeable to you. We can both agree, I think, that communist states in history have made some mistakes, have had some… lapses in judgement. That’s not a comment on the intentions of the people who did those things, no accusation of malice at all, just a statement that mistakes and lapses in judgment occurred. We may not agree on which events should be considered as such, so I won’t pick examples so we don’t get derailed, but we can probably at least agree that some events occurred that should be so considered.
Tankies are those who embrace and laud events that are widely, but clearly not universally, perceived to be mistakes or lapses in judgement, especially when the mistake was one where their authority was used in excess to the significant detriment of at least some of their people. Even some communists consider tankies to be a particular kind of communist. Maybe you would argue they’ve fallen into the “false consciousness” that you speak of, but honestly, the one take I almost never hear is that tankies don’t deserved to be considered a separate kind of communist. I think I’ve heard it once or twice, buuuuuut before, it’s always from someone who is very clearly a tankie and just doesn’t like to be called one.
These people don’t really exist, though, and that’s my point about “tankie” being a strawman. The vast majority of people labled as “tankies” do not laud events understood by communists to have been mistakes.