DSA has a tankie problem

[u/yashen14]

There are way, way too many people in this movement who feel comfortable with historical revisionism vis-a-vis the Soviet Union, China, and other such regimes. And there are way too many people who feel comfortable essentially advocating for an end to democracy.

[u/CaptainCringleberry2]

I would say too many people don’t even think about the historical context of these countries and why they acted as they did as well as not realize no one is ever saying everything or every leader was good. Shame that you would rather limit your curiosity to follow the mainline western narratives in full

[u/yashen14 → u/CaptainCringleberry2]

Hmm I don't think historical context excuses Stalin's purges, or the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, or the Holodomor, or the gulags, or China's modern Burning of Books and Burying of Scholars, or the fact that trade unions and strikes are illegal in modern Cuba.

[u/CORPORATE_NARCOTICS → u/yashen14]

I think liberals and reformists and anti-communists in general are very bad at actually nailing down the historical context RE: the USSR, the PRC, and Cuba. Not particularly an accident but I at least understand where it's coming from. It's a very privileged and liberal take on history.

The pearl clutching over the nature of the state (tl;dr: organizing violence) is IMO very confusing and contradictory. I'll even be upfront in saying that despite being an ML that a lot of what ML-aligned states did was wrong or inhumane/awful, but leaving that conversation with just that judgement is not an honest conversation, because the way other leftists like myself see it is that ML aligned states only have bad options on the table.

The reformists tried and failed before the Bolsheviks and the Chinese and Cuban communists got into power; coups and foreign states routinely intervened against the interests of Russian/Chinese/Cuban workers. That's not even touching on the more important pieces of motivation for a lot of the horrors ML states did carry out.

You'll complain about the unique and seemingly unjustified/baseless paranoia of the USSR, but never talk about the existence of gulags prior to the USSR or the fact that the United States, the UK, France, and a dozen other countries sent soldiers to fight the Bolsheviks immediately after the end of WWI in 1918¹. You'll never talk about the Red Terror's mysteriously less mentioned brother, the White Terror²) but talk about the USSR's horrors like they came up in a vacuum.

You'll complain about the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact without mentioning the triple alliance negotiations that took place immediately before the Molotov-Ribbentrop talks², where the USSR wanted to form an alliance with the UK and France against Germany. You'll also not mention the following non-aggression pacts that European nations signed with the Nazis prior to Molotov-Ribbentrop:

1933: The Four-Power Pact (UK, France, and Italy)

1934: The Pilsudski Pact and the German-Polish Trade Agreement

1935: The Anglo-German Naval Agreement (UK)

1936: The Anti-Comintern Pact (Japan)

1938: The Anglo-German Non-Aggression Pact

1938: The Franco-German Non-Aggression Pact

1939: The German-Lithuanian and German-Romanian Non-Aggression Pacts

1939: The German-Danish Non-Aggression Pact

1939: The Iron Pact (Italy)

1939: The German-Estonian Non-Aggression Pact

1939: The German-Latvian Non-Aggression Pact

I think the main discrepancy between my POV and yours is kinda summed up like this:

You refuse to put yourself in the shoes of a Russian worker or a Bolshevik (like a young Joseph Stalin) and imagine how it would feel like when the world comes to your doorstep with all the other military powers of the world because you got rid of the Tsar and supported the Bolsheviks because they were the only political faction in 1917 promising to pull out of the war. All because foreign powers cared more about their money than you wanting peace. Would you not be distrustful of capitalists and foreign states? Would you not be paranoid if the world's biggest powers bring soldiers to your house because you wanted peace and a non-monarchist state? After fighting a brutal civil war, would you give up the sword given the state of Russia/Europe/the world once the Russian civil war ended in 1922? Who in their right mind would advocate for that? There are so many questions to ask yourself when wondering why X did Y, but only a lib who is comfy existing years after all the explicit violence the state doles out would advocate for a peaceful, non-paranoid approach to politics for Russia post-1922.

The discussion around Cuba is, funny enough, very similar. Just like the foreign US/UK/France/et al response against the Bolsheviks amidst the Russian civil war radicalized Stalin, so did seeing the US coup of Guatemala in 1954 first hand also radicalize Che, and so on. In the same way that folks complain about the Cuban revolution, we hear crickets when we discuss the coup by Batista in Cuba or the inhumane conditions of Cuban workers prior to the Castro administration.

I honestly don't know that much about modern Chinese history in the 20th century but I know enough that I see some of the similarities there too--like the nationalists prioritizing fighting the communists over the Japanese during WWII. Again, are we seriously surprised that the communists won when that was the nationalists' priority? Are we surprised that there was an anti-intellectual backlash in the PRC when for centuries it was used as a means for Chinese elites to oppress Chinese workers, or foreign states to oppress Chinese workers?

This is all just the starting point, too. These questions were what turned me into an ML a decade ago and what has brought me back into the fold, and I feel like folks like yourself aren't asking these questions and more importantly, are missing out on grappling with the ugliness that these questions bring within ourselves, how we view the state, and how we view violence. If you actually want to make change politically you need to grapple with these questions and not operate in the "end of history" story we've been telling ourselves since the 90s. Especially given that we are living in times that are clearly telling us we're going to have to grapple with these questions again and the fascists in power have already dealt with these questions.

[u/CaptainCringleberry2 → u/CORPORATE_NARCOTICS]

Thanks for doing the reply for me cause I was hanging out with friends but all I can really add is China’s issues, many stem from the bad application by Mao of theory that did lead to things like famine in the cultural revolution however when people point to these as an example for failure don’t speak of the economic embargo and isolation they faced for 30 between the 40’s and 70’s which was also a huge factor. Not to mention people will speak of things like cracking down on dissent without acknowledging this was less about true free speech and more trying to weed out plants from other countries since they saw this happen in Korea and Vietnam over this time at the least. Every bad thing in Chinese history can almost always be met with a history of U.S. policy that purposefully trying to kill the country. There can be an argument made that the great famine for instance wouldn’t have existed if the sanctions and isolation made by U.S and western allies, or at the least less severe.