Cowbee [he/they]

Russia is not imperialist, as it utterly lacks the finance capital required to be as such. It’s predominantly an industrial economy without any colonies nor neocolonies, similar to Iran. Marxist-Leninists do not support the capitalist economy of Russia, but the idea that it even could replace the US Empire as world hegemon is frankly a result of a lack of understanding how and why the US Empire is what it is. Finance capital is the key, and Russia has a tiny amount of it relative to the rest of the world.

As for “authoritarianism,” Marxist-Leninists support workers having control of state authority. All states are authoritarian, the distinction lies primarily in which class wields it. The form may change, and the extent it is applied also changes based on conditions, but at the end of the day the state is an instrument of the ruling class in any given society, be it capitalists or workers. As such, no Marxist-Leninists support the dictatorship of capital in Russia.

Good luck!

Compare debt and savings. High debt should be paid off, otherwise pack your savings more. Boring but this was unexpected money anyways.

The biggest problem is that this heavily relies on calling a socialist market economy like China a “regulated market economy,” it’s deceptive and implies capitalist countries have been pulling people out of poverty. In reality, China has pulled massively ahead with its socialist system, while capitalist countries have stagnated.

I checked the thread you were talking about, that’s not what happened. The supporting evidence came from a huge number of different sources, including many western sources. You also equated Chinese diaspora with the Chinese government itself, which reeks of chauvanism.

As for the bit on Tian’anmen Square, it’s correct, even Wikipedia says so:

Deaths in and around Tian’anmen Square itself

Government officials have long asserted that no one died in the square in the early morning hours of 4 June, during the “hold-out” of students’ last batch in the south part of the square. Initially, foreign media reports of a “massacre” on the square were prevalent, though subsequently, journalists have acknowledged that most of the deaths occurred outside of the square in western Beijing. Several people who were situated around the square that night, including former Beijing bureau chief of The Washington Post Jay Mathews[i] and CBS correspondent Richard Roth[j] reported that while they had heard sporadic gunfire, they could not find enough evidence to suggest that a massacre took place on the square.

Student leader Chai Ling claimed in a speech broadcast on Hong Kong television that she witnessed tanks arrive at the square and crush students who were sleeping in their tents, and added that between 200 and 400 students died at the square.[268] Ling was joined by fellow student leader Wu’er Kaixi who said he had witnessed 200 students being cut down by gunfire; however, according to Mathews, it was later proven that he had already left the square several hours before the events he claimed to have happened.[211] Taiwan-born Hou Dejian was present in the square to show solidarity with the students and said that he did not see any massacre occurring in the square. He was quoted by Xiaoping Li, a former China dissident to have stated: “Some people said 200 died in the square, and others claimed that as many as 2,000 died. There were also stories of tanks running over students who were trying to leave. I have to say I did not see any of that. I was in the square until 6:30 in the morning.”[269]

In 2009, human rights activist Robin Munro, stated that he was present during the clearance of Tiananmen Square and that, according to his account, there were ten Western reporters near the Monument to the People’s Heroes at the time. He also reported a Spanish television crew that recorded footage of the event. Munro disputed Wu’er Kaixi’s claims of mass killings inside the square, stating that he did not witness fighting there and instead observed students peacefully complying with the soldiers’ demands to leave the square in an orderly manner. He further noted that the Spanish TV crew reported not seeing killings within the square during the final clearance.[270][271]

In 2011, three secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing from the time of the events were leaked and published by WikiLeaks, all of which stated that there was no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square itself.[194] Instead, they said Chinese soldiers opened fire on protesters in Beijing outside the square, around Muxidi station, as they fought their way from the west towards the centre.[194] A Chilean diplomat who had been positioned next to a Red Cross station inside the square told his US counterparts that he did not observe any mass firing of weapons into the crowds in the square itself, although sporadic gunfire was heard. He said that most of the troops who entered the square were armed only with anti-riot gear.[194][216]

The square was evacuated bloodlessly, all of the deaths that day occurred in areas scattered around Beijing during riot suppression. A few hundred people died, which is a tragedy, but not 10,000 people being executed on the square like the west initially reported. Substantial evidence to the contrary since then has come out, and Wikipedia has accordingly responded and added this context.

I don’t think Wikipedia is a CPC front group.

To be fair, the quadrant system is also bullshit. Authority isn’t a sliding scale, it depends on which class controls the authority of the state and is therefore either the beneficiary of or victim of authority.

I’ll try to define anything one might struggle with then, I guess.

1. Authoritarian - to hold a monopoly on authority, ie the political legitimacy to the use of force

2. Ruling class - that class which owns the commanding heights of the economy and controls the state

3. The state - the special administrative body for managing the affairs of the ruling class

4. Owning class - that class which gains their means of subsistence through ownership

5. Working class - that class which gains their means of subsistence through labor.

6. Tankies - those who defend socialist states

7. Bourgeoisie - those who own capital and employ it to profit off of the labor of others

8. Hegemony - the dominance of a given subject

9. Neoimperialism - the current, highly financialized system propogated worldwide whereby the more developed capitalist countries profit dramatically off of exploiting lesser developed countries

10. Finance capital - the monopolist merging of bank and industrial capital

What part was difficult? I’ll do my best.

All states are authoritarian. All states are monopolies on violence, in the interests of the ruling class of society. The major difference with socialist states is that the ruling class is the working class, while owning classes are subjugated by the authority of the state. Further, so-called tankies aren’t really concerned with excuses, but with dispelling bourgeois mythos. Information warfare is incredibly complex, and directed against anything that serves as an alternative to the dominance of western hegemony and neoimperialism, led by the dominance of finance capital and multinational corporations on a global scale.

I don’t see how you can say this group culture exists in a way that doesn’t exist on every other major instance, and therefore that it’s a behavioral issue and not an ideological difference, but if you don’t want to discuss or investigate that further that’s up to you to decide, we don’t have to continue.

My point is that there is no group culture fostering that behavior on Lemmygrad.ml. There’s no evidence of any of this outside the norm for any other instance.

Marxism-Leninism is an ideology centered around establishing collectivized economy and eradicating class society. The only support MLs have of Russia is with respect to their opposition to the western imperialist hegemony, not for Russia in general. This is the meaning of “critical support.”

If I actually got paid for every time I’ve been accused of being part of or paid by the CPC, I’d have no purpose in organizing IRL beyond my own moral obligation to do what’s right, lmao.

Anarchists that support existing socialist states get called tankie all the time. “Tankie” isn’t an ideology or a species of human, it’s a pejorative for a loose grouping of those that like, say, China and Cuba.

“Tankie” is essentially a pejorative for those that support AES states. Tankies are everywhere on the fediverse, the reality is that so-called tankies aren’t the evil people that want to eat babies or anything like those loudly complaining about us believe.

Welcome!

As the person effected, it seems pretty suspicious when my entire comment history going back a few weeks at a time steadily get a stream of 5-10 downvotes within a short timeframe, despite lacking any movement, or when a comment of mine gets downvoted suspiciously by a ton of people despite a similar comment being more upvoted than not right next to it in the comment tree.

Also, I don’t think I’m Dessalines’ favorite poster, whatever that means.

Nobody believes the USSR is still here. This is a made-up strawman point, and talking to literally any communist will tell you this.

China is a socialist country, public ownership is the principal aspect of the economy and the working classes control the state. Russia is a capitalist country, nobody says it’s leftist in any way. The only support Russia gets is with respect to the fact that it opposes the current hegemonic force of western imperialism, no further than that.

I haven’t seen Lemmygrad brigading, trolling, or arguing in bad-faith. Active users going into active threads organically isn’t the same as brigading, which is typically associated with coordinated targeting. This can seem like “dogpiling” in practice, but again, this same behavior is exhibited by non-communists, same with what can be perceived as trolling or bad-faith arguments (and anecdotally I see far more of that on instances that aren’t predominantly leftist).

In the end, it’s ideology, not specific traits, as ideological differences cause not just communists but non-communists to behave in similar confrontational manners. Lemmygrad.ml aren’t especially bad-faith, trolling, etc, just like Lemmy.world isn’t. Both have distinct ideological identities and this difference caused friction.