this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2024
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What is a tankie? Like, where do you draw the line between Marxists, Anarchists, Marxist-Leninists, Maoists, and Tankies? Are only Maoists tankies? Are some Marxist-Leninists tankies, and some not? What turns someone from wanting a worker state run by the proletariat into a tankie, who presumably by your definition is actually Capitalist?
Genuinely asking here, I have been called a tankie for saying people should read Marx, it seems everyone has their own definition of what is permissable and what isn't.
Tankies are authoritarians. They advocate for and defend centralized and/or entrenched power. At the same time they also advocate for economic nationalization. They believe the latter - “economically benevolent authoritarianism” - makes them leftist. It does not.
In reality, they are merely advocates of bog-standard extreme rightism… feudalism, monarchy, oligarchy, and the like. If your economy and industry is mostly or wholly owned by the state, but the state is run by an entrenched ruling class, then the economy and industry belong to the ruling class, NOT to the people.
One cannot be leftist and also advocate for consolidation or entrenchment of wealth or power… those are literally the defining traits of rightism.
So Marx was a tankie, got it.