I don't really consider myself a liberal or a communist. Maybe some mixture of both? I have my own ideals that probably align mostly with eastern philosophy, and maybe some more "esoteric" practices. Id like to think im well read, for being a mostly uneducated person, and I'm very accepting of just about everyone outside of violence or blind hatred, but I have never heard the term "tankie" until reddit. Is it a reference to Tiannemen Sq or something? Just curious as I like to know as much as I can. Thanks.

Also, as someone who's coming from reddit as of yesterday, it's kinda cool seeing more than one political ideal, as I really don't think there is a "perfect" system. Humans are flawed in their very nature, and tbh, we're a little late to "get it right".

There's the etymology of tankie and there's the actual ways it's used. The etymology is rolling tanks into Hungary in 1956, which caused a solit (among many) among UK communists (who came up with the term). The usage varies wildly because liberals don't understand politics very well and slap it on anything to the left of Obama.

Communista understand politics through a series of criticisms of capitalism and a framework by which to understand those within it, namely economic classes whose interests align/do not align depending on the material context. You might find that some of this appeals to you, as a material grounding is more common in Eastern traditions than Western. Also we are super duper correct, so we've got that going for us.

Re: flawed humans, there are of course a variety of people out there and we all make mistakes. However, it's also important to recognize tgatva lot that is attributed to "human nature" is actually fairly recent and is either a consequence of living under the capitalist system (which came into being over a period of about 1000 years) or is just a myth spread to justify the violences done by that system to the common person.

And re: perfection, you might like us there, too. We view the political economic system as an evolving thing that changes relative to material conditions. There is no perfext system, but there are valid struggles to replace the current one with systems that prioritize people over profit. For example, no communist would say that socialism is the solution to hunter-gatherers in Crete because hunter-gathering Crete isn't capitalist - the idea would have no meaning. We also know and expect that the fight doesn't stop even after a revolution, that there will still be struggles for a long time - but at least we could fight them together and with greater agency.

Hey thanks for writing that.. OK so you've confirmed my general understanding of the idealogy.

After I wrote that I knew you were gona come back with something about capitalist perspective and long term goal. So that was a good refresher for me I appreciate it.

I feel like there is too many people still tbh lol.

Capitalism doesn't work. I've been through it and it's underbelly enough to know that. I do think the wealthy west has distorted our view of ourselves. I'm aware of that. I try to come at things as objectively as possible, though sometimes I fail.

I sort of agree with the main tenants of communism absolutely. I do consider myself somewhat of a socialist, tho I'm more a broad strokes type person, hence I sort of default to self betterment and mindfulness, while trying to bring a base understanding of our nature through my interactions to others as a way to better the world. My perfect system would be living close to the land, hunter gather style. Im kind of a hermit tbh (: there too many people for me lol.

I bookmarked your comment. I'm gonna revisit it later. Appreciate the talk.

Edit: fwiw, I do believe at a fundamental level, people are good, and we are in agreement about things more than we disagree. We just have a track record of complicating the simple ime. Im guilty as well.

Just to add some things not mentioned by the other poster about tankies, 1. They deny any sort of atrocities committed by communist regimes, 2. They believe in "socialism for one country", which means for example the subservience of the countries in the warsaw pact to the Soviet union (like previously mentioned the name tankie comes from tanks rolling into hungry) 3. Support of previous Soviet countries such as Russia, under the guise of a united front against fascist/capitalist US supported nations

To me, from a random common person, I can not abide by anyone trafficking in human suffering. There has always been a ruling class, in every form of govt. Communism is no different.

Atrocities just take different forms, forms of human nature.

It's a constant battle with our own biology.

I'm the opposite of an authoritarian. Quite frankly I hate anything that takes itself remotely seriously. To imagine kicking up violence in the name of personal gain, is to imagine being stupid. I don't want to be stupid.

The answers are seemingly beyond our grasp at every turn. I believe this is due to our innate qualities as humans. And this is just what it means to be alive.

We are climbing the ladder of evolution. Whether we make it past this bottleneck is yet to be decided, but I believe discussion like this is what pushes the boundaries of our own imagination and awareness, of our place in the world and the battle to make life better.

That is all.

Yeah, I just wanted to clarify things that the other poster didn't really acknowledging, that is that the communists in this community is kind of a fringe subset of communism. Obviously discussion is very good and I'm not opposed to the posts here, but if you are not particularly interested in authoritarianism, any derivate of Leninists you might not be comfortable with

Yea I'm a bit ignorant on all that so thanks for clarification.

You actually have touched on something that I was wondering about.

Why are these authoritarian regimes not considered a ruling class? I mean they are basically royalty.

I just don't see a justification for some of these things from a communist poverty, besides control, "for our own good". But it's obvious these are not good people and are just a different flavor of the scum bags that run DC. All profit, power, gain. The workers take over, a new ruling class takes over. Rinse repeat.

I don't see that cycle breaking unless there are far far far less humans populating the earth.

I don't know.

It's kind of an extension of the communist party being 'the vanguard' of the worker movement and that the societies which communist revolutions took place wasn't really capitalist (Russia was more agrarian) so an intermediate step was required to move onto a 'real' communist society. Enter the 'dictatorship of the proletariet', purpose of is to move the country along and set up the requirements for communism. This dictatorship would then naturally go away as the country moved to communism. After Stalin took power the dictatorship took on other facets that basically made it a permanent feature.

So to answer your question it's because it's deemed necessary to have a 'ruling class' and to have hardship to eventually move onto communism.

Hmm. I was afraid so. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Sort of feels like pretext to me.

Perfect communism could probably only work with a small group of people so it's pretty much a constant state until a mass extinction event happens. ..all the while you do in fact have a shitty ruling class.

Luckily there are other left ideologies that are more palateble than leninism and marxist-leninist, like Democratic socialism, anarchism and such. Lots of reading can be done 😃

Democratic socialism is the platform that seems most doable for our current situation. It's not that I am un read. I only finished high school, but i try to self educate. Lots of work to be done for sure during this blip of a life.