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What's a Tankie? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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I keep hearing the term in political discourse, and rather than googling it, I'm asking the people who know better than Google.

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[+] -8 points 1 year ago (9 children)

It’s a spectrum and a person who supports the government having more control of their citizens is considering authoritarian. A person who wants to limit government control over their citizens is more libertarian.

It’s a very valid belief that someone might want leftist policies with limited government control over individual citizens so calling them all tankies is inaccurate and confusing

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    When you utterly erase class analysis, and just group everyone under "citizens," you run into utter contradictions. Socialist states have been far more liberating for their populace overall, even if they've been oppressive towards fascists, capitalists, etc, meaning they would technically belong in the "libertarian" quadrant if we define it the way you claim we should. The entire idea of a "libertarian-authoritarian" spectrum, or even a left-right spectrum and not just various right and left ideologies that cannot be abstracted into a graph-based system, is actively harmful to our understanding of political ideology.

    Anarchists want communalism, whereas Marxists want collectivization. Neither is more or less "authoritarian" or "libertarian," in that even horizontalist systems actually erase the democratic reach of communities to within their communities and immediate surroundings, while collectivization spreads power more evenly globally. This isn't something that can be represented on the graph in any way, yet results in fundamentally different approaches and outcomes.

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  • [+] -8 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    This is an intentional strawman right? Like there is no way you are truly misunderstanding this much?

    Auth governement dictates what individual citizens can/ can not do

    Lib government limits what power the government has over individual citizens

    You can’t say we are actually lib because we only are targeting the “bad people”

    Show your conviction and don’t dance around your point if you want a government that has more power over its citizens that’s fine, that’s your belief and you are fully entitled to it but if you can’t acknowledge your own beliefs that’s its own problem

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago* (6 children)

    Again, you need to look at things from a class analysis. There is no such thing as "libertarian capitalism," capitalism requires the state, and freedoms for citizens are restricted because they don't have as much access to necessities and democracy doesn't extend to the economy.

    Socialist countries that provide better access to necessities have more freedom for the average person than capitalist countries. They don't have the same privledged class of capitalists with unlimited political power, but the people have more power.

    This is a false-binary. It isn't a strawman, the political compass is entirely bogus and cannot accurately depict ideology or structure as they exist in the real world. It does more harm than helps.

    I'm not dancing, I've said it firm: I want the working class to use the state in their own interests, against capitalists and fascists, to meet the needs of the people and liberate society.

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  • [–] -4 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    You are the one making it binary when it isn’t and when I say it isn’t you bring it back to being binary. You can have libertarian beliefs without wanting a complete dissolution of the government the same way you can have authoritarian beliefs while still wanting people to have individual freedoms. So yes you can have libertarian capitalism which is simply a less regulated form vs authoritarian capitalism. We can see this in the UK vs EU where the UK is requiring people to submit official IDs to see porn (auth) vs the EU passing data privacy laws (lib)

    You are inventing all these other arguments that I am not making. I have never said socialist countries have less freedoms and don’t even remotely believe that so if you are not making a strawman then try rereading what I am saying because you are arguing against an argument I am not making which is the literal definition of a strawman

    That’s called being authoritarian, there is nothing wrong with that and as long as the state is using that power fairly that can create a great society but you must realize that on a 1-10 scale of government authority with a 1 being full on anarchy and 10 being the state has full control to make all decisions that you are closer to a 10 then a 1

    As soon as you give the state power to go after people with different beliefs (even if those beliefs are deplorable) you are being authoritarian

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I'm telling you that you're running into extreme absurdities. I have more personal freedom in a socialist society, where my needs are more assured, than I do in capitalist society, even if said capitalist society was more of a nightwatchman state. By making "authority" purely about how the state treats anyone, and removing all economics from the equation, you create absurd contradictions. That's why class analysis is important.

    The political compass makes no sense. It's sole purpose is to affirm liberalism by pretending there's a spectrum of libertarian to authoritarian, when such terms are utterly meaningless when looked at without understanding class. What matters is who is the state serving, how, and why, not if the state is mean or if the state is nice.

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Dude are you a bot? For the 500th time I NEVER SAID YOU HAVE LESS FREEDOM IN A SOCIALIST SOCIETY

    That is a straw man you have made up and keep arguing against

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    You've said "authoritarianism" is about "restricting individual freedoms," and categorized me and existing socialist states as "authoritarian." These are contradictions, though, they both cannot be true.

    I understand that you are generally categorizing socialist society as something on the left, and saying you can have a bigger or smaller state, etc. I am telling you that this isn't how society works in real life. The state and the mode of production are interconnected, and reinforce each other. They aren't sliders you select in a lab, you can't just have a bigger or smaller state like that.

    I'm not a bot, no. You haven't responded to me saying class analysis is critical, you've brushed it aside entirely and continued to re-affirm the original statement.

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I literally never did and I am done reading your page long responses that involve you not reading anything I wrote, making up an argument and then responding to that I have had more productive conversations with a homeless man on the bus

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    It’s a spectrum and a person who supports the government having more control of their citizens is considering authoritarian. A person who wants to limit government control over their citizens is more libertarian.

    These are your words. I do read what you write, as much as you insist that I'm not. I agree that this conversation isn't very productive, but I think it's more due to your refusal to actually engage with what I've been saying and instead just re-affirm the useless political compass as though it actually means anything.

    Really don't like the way you casually look down on the homeless, too.

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