SpaceNoodleWell, only kinda. They don’t actually know what the word “fascist” means.
They also don’t understand what liberal means, which means individual freedom, freedom of speech, private ownership and trial by jury, and basically the opposite of marxism or communism
The Marxist/Communist View: Speech is a tool of power. In a revolutionary state, speech that criticizes the party or promotes “capitalist values” is seen as a direct threat to the safety and progress of the working class. Therefore, the state must control media and education to ensure ideological unity.
The Conflict: You cannot have a state-directed “common good” if individuals are free to publicly argue against it.
The Marxist/Communist View: Justice is substantive or “Class Justice.” In many communist applications, the legal system exists to protect the revolution. If an individual is deemed a “class enemy” or “counter-revolutionary,” a trial by jury is seen as a dangerous hurdle.
The Conflict: A jury puts the power of judgment in the hands of random citizens rather than the Party. In Marxism, the Party is the vanguard of the people; allowing a jury to disagree with the Party’s accusation is a loss of control.
The Marxist/Communist View: The needs of the collective (the “Common Good”) outweigh the desires of the individual. Because the goal is to eliminate class struggle and ensure equal distribution, the state often must direct labor and resources where they are needed most.
The Conflict: If you are free to choose a path that doesn’t serve the collective plan, the plan fails. True individual freedom creates “anarchy of production,” which Marxism specifically aims to replace with central planning.
Marxism: Believes rights are socially constructed. Since the state creates the conditions for life, the state can grant or revoke “rights” based on what serves the progress of history.
That’s a whole lot of bullshit to tell me you’ve never read Marx.
wonderingwandererIt’s not marxist, but it describes leninism to a T. And most tankies tend to be ML, not marxist.
That is correct but he didn’t mention Lenin at all, and tried to conflate Lenin with both Marx and Communism as a whole. Personally I blame Lenin for the failure of the executive branch to properly set up the soviets as democratically elected councils, rather than a supreme dictator. I also blame Lenin for Stalin.
tried to conflate Lenin with both Marx and Communism
Leninists do that already by calling themselves “Marxist-leninists.” And Lenin himself conflated his personal ideology with communism as a whole when he killed all the communists who weren’t on board with him.
Marx shouldn’t even be a taboo subject, but he is, purely because of how Lenin commandeered and corrupted the entire evolution of the ideas Marx first laid out. Plenty of countries had communist parties before the bolshevik revolution; afterwards, the entire west looked and said “those people are fucking crazy, I don’t want them doing that here.”
I’d love to be able to sit down and have an intellectual discussion on the virtues of Marx’s theories, but if I bring it up anywhere I’ll get one of two reactions: either I’ll be labeled as a communist, get put on a watch list, and get chased out of town, or I’ll wind up listening to a tankie rant for hours about how I’m not radical enough and that if I don’t support the bolsheviks that I must be a fascist.
There’s no fucking middle-ground, no room for nuance, and Marxism itself is barely more than a historical artifact. An interest piece on an ideal that never came to be, and now is far more widely known for being something else which didn’t come until decades later.
Far better to just talk about Merleau-Ponty. At least then anyone who’s heard of him is at least somewhat educated…