Even if you disagree with them, Trotskyists are not tankies, simple Marxists aren’t tankies, leftists curious and exploring different theories aren’t tankies, and ffs anarchists like myself are not tankies.
I feel like “tankie” indicated a very specific worldview at one time, but it’s been used lately a lot to mean things like “doesn’t agree with nations supporting oppression and inequity up to and including genocide” – which is drastically at odds with how I’ve seen the term used in the past, no?
On that note, as an anarchist I don’t have the answers to some of the potential pitfalls of abolishing states, and I think it’s a mistake to demand instant answers to these questions. An important lesson I’ve learned is it’s ok and good to admit we don’t have answers to everything, while still being able to recognize the harm and inequity inherent to market capitalism.
There are Trotskyists in this community, and perhaps someday they’ll make a post, but I’m not going to demand it from them since this is sorta supposed to be a respite from such things.
I always say that capitalism is treated as a default, and its failings as “facts of life”. Judging socialism or anarchism by their few short, sabotaged instances without giving people a few hundred years to refine i the systems isn’t a fair comparison.
Very well said!
Fair