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Marxists aren’t, or shouldn’t be, dogmatic. It’s the method that they uphold. Plus, Marx didn’t live to see the USSR, China, Cuba, etc, so it’s not possible to know whether he would maintain that position (taking your claim at face value).
You’re a fount of knowledge, new (to the grad) comrade. Keep it coming.
Essentially, it means fascism is the method by which liberalism defends itself in the face of progress and revolution.
By your definition, every community is a tankie because every communist rejects idealism. If these are the only two options, the only option left is to choose a team. But that can’t be right because you imply that some communists aren’t tankies.
Further, does it count as a definition if other people use the term in different ways?
If so, how do you know who is a communist and who is a tankie without asking them how they decided to show (critical) support for XYZ?
By your definition, you must first know whether someone has strong reasons to support XYZ before being able to decide that they really decided because XYZ was on the right team. That would be exhausting and fraught with the problem that nobody is going to say they didn’t do the reading; if they give an argument, how do you determine whether it’s valid or a cover for ‘choosing by reference to team’?
I’m unsure if it’s possible to define ‘tankie’ by reference to ‘communist’ without also defining the latter and showing how they’re different.
Reducing all the nuance of Marxism, socialism, and communism to
“from each according to his ability to each according to his need”
is problematic.
It’s not going to lead to much explanation and it ignores the hundreds of thousands of other words that Marxists have written.
This is in addition to the problem that “from each according to his ability to each according to his need” is the goal of communism and you’re arguing with someone who (rightly) says communism hasn’t been reached.
socialism with Chinese characteristics
is the answer…
Damn, I don’t know what you’ve started here but the number of presumably white people coming up with all sorts of reasons to argue why black people shouldn’t have reparations is… is it a white settler moment? Then to follow this up with ‘you need to include white people or they’re not going to like it’ is… maybe Malcolm X was onto something about white liberals.