Remember kids, Tankies wants to undermine democracy - same as facists.
this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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The "tankie" thing is such a Reddit holdover, both the word and the people it describes. Nobody outside of those hyper-online teenage ideology spaces like Twitter or Reddit cares about those made-up political categories that are only based on aesthetics.
Always remember that both the pro-Hamas pro-Assad "socialist" shitposter and the pro-Israeli pagan plural trans anarchist are some American high schoolers who are too anxious to go out to a store, let alone participate in a mass movement or join an organization. Nobody in the real world cares about those basement dwellers.
If the people you want to criticize have terrible political standings, and they just LARP as socialists while supporting inane reactionary actors like Russia, the Hamas, China or the DPRK, then make an actual argument against them and fight them on their standpoints in the actual class warfare out there, instead of making a dumb-ass childish meme. Go join a party, go agitate, go organize your workplace, go read something. Analyze the class politics they espouse, criticize them on that point, not on some moral failing.
Both "tankies" and "anti-tankies" only exist on Reddit. Nobody cares in real life.
Edit: To clarify, I mean "tankie" as it is used now on the internet for anyone who's not an anarchist or social democrat, not its original meaning dating back half a century.
I mean, I tend to interpret 'tankie' to be people who support Lenin's dictatorship of the proletariat or similar ideas. Basically, the idea that in order to institute communism you should aim to take power and force everyone to comply with your new state through violence against dissenting parts of the populace.
Personally, my reading of Marx and Engels is a descriptive one rather than a proscriptive one. If the forces of workers haven't spontaneously risen to throw off their chains and seize the means of production, I don't think you can force it. The victory of communism is one of human autonomy that comes as a natural result of capitalism's unsustainability. That's not the same thing as systematic reform, but it's not the same thing as attempting to impose the change on the populace either.
I don't think it can happen until the workers are sufficiently pushed into a corner and decide to do it themselves.
That's just Marxism. That idea started with Marx, not Lenin. He even talks about it in the Communist Manifesto, saying:
Not even mentioning his Critique of the Gotha Programme where he talks about the dictatorship of the proletariat and the transition from capitalism to communism extensively. It's okay to not be a Marxist, but it's just factually incorrect to claim that the dictatorship of the proletariat isn't integral to Marx's understanding of the transition to communism.
Marx and Engels made the fundamental mistake of conflating violence with authority. They were correct to say that revolution must be violent, and from their mistake assumed it must also establish authority. In the last 150 years, we have seen many examples of anarchic violence across the world. Marx's assumption is no longer relevant except as an item of historical interest. It is not core to those parts of Marxian theory which are worth bringing into the analyses of the 21st century.