Tell me which actually existing, relevant, long-lasting leftist projects you support and how they’re further to the left than Cuba.
Comment on Personalized Political Spectrum
Drusas@fedia.io 2 months agoSeriously. Tankies are authoritarians who consider themselves leftists.
Riverside@reddthat.com 2 months ago
pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
They’re so left they’ve wrapped around and became fascists
Riverside@reddthat.com 2 months ago
Tankies support systems that have brought about immense increases in life expectancy, worker’s rights, women’s rights, free healthcare, free education, and literally defeated fascism. It’s still baffling to me that in 2026, witnessing the descent to fascism of the west (Trump, Meloni LePen, AfD, Vox…) you’re still so threatened by Chinese socialists who literally don’t have a fascist party or by the Soviet socialists who literally saved Europe from Nazism.
Tja@programming.dev 2 months ago
Replaced Nazism in Europe*
Riverside@reddthat.com 2 months ago
Yes, as I said, replacing it by a system with full free healthcare, worker’s rights, respect of minorities and their languages and cultures, free education to the highest level, anti-imperialism and self-reliance. The dismantling of the Eastern Block is the biggest demographic catastrophe in Europe since WW2.
j_overgrens@feddit.nl 2 months ago
Worthwile to note that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were longstanding allies before Operation Barbarossa and a critical amount of steel and oil that supplied the Nazi war machine after the allied embargo was supplied by the Soviet union.
Which says nothing of the monumental sacrifice given by Soviet civilians, but let’s separate that from Stalin’s policy, perhaps?
Tja@programming.dev 2 months ago
Anti imperialism? How did they become the largest country on earth?
Respect of minorities? Tell that to the tens of thousands of people executed in forests. Or starved to death. Because of their identity.
Industrial development? Yes, current Russia having an economy the size of Italy is a testament to that.
Plenty of countries have free education and Healthcare.
gmtom@lemmy.world 2 months ago
support systems that have brought about immense increases in life expectancy, worker’s rights, women’s rights, free healthcare, free education, and literally defeated fascism
Cool, you can make literally that exact same argument about capitalist neo libs.
Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
You actually can’t make the argument that neoliberal capitalism has defeated fascism at all, you’d have to be completely historically & politically illiterate to even consider it. Life expectancy increase came as a result of medical research conducted around the world, all others were conceded by capitalist governments begrudgingly and only after years of hard work by organizations that were overwhelmingly made up of anti-capitalists, and every single one is currently being rolled back in every capitalist nation on earth.
gmtom@lemmy.world 2 months ago
and every single one is currently being rolled back in every capitalist nation on earth.
Just completely factually incorrect.
You actually can’t make the argument that neoliberal capitalism has defeated fascism at a
Sure you can, I wouldn’t agree with it, just like I wouldn’t agree that socialism did, but you can make that argument
Life expectancy increase came as a result of medical research conducted around the world
Yeah that’s kind of my point. The things you mention as successes of “”“socialist”“” countries is just scientific advancement and industrialisation.
DScratch@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
They’re on the Leftest off-ramp that heads back the other way.
deranger@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Authoritarian / libertarian is on a completely different axis from left / right, no?
Mr_Fish@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Only on the political compass, which uses a definition of left vs right that a lot of leftists disagree with. Really, the entire history of “left wing” politics has been about questioning and dismantling authority. The terms “left wing” and “right wing” come from the French revolution, when the people in favour of simply reforming the monarchy sat on the right side of the room, while the people who wanted to fully dismantling the monarchy sat on the left. A lot of more modern leftist thought is about questioning the power that capitalist businesses have.
deranger@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Well said. Still; can you not have authoritarian left and libertarian left viewpoints? I just don’t see how questioning the power capitalist businesses have is limited to the libertarian left.
What’s wrong with the definition of left & right on the political compass? I’m not super tuned into political science but this is the first I’ve heard that many leftists have take issue with it. I have seen the authoritarian left referred to as “red fascists”, but do they not also take issue with the power capitalist businesses have?
I suppose I’d consider myself a left libertarian. The power of the state should be limited and what power is granted to the state should be used to improve the life of the people.
Mr_Fish@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Yes, but actually no. The distinction is fundamentally unstable. If the left is constantly questioning power structures, it will inevitably turn to whatever structure the auth left comes up with.
It’s specially economic left/right, which is almost always defined by taxation, government spending, and social welfare. While leftists usually say social welfare is a good thing, it’s not changing the fundamentals of how capitalism works, which is the current dominant power structure that leftists are against.
Yes, but they usually put something just as bad in its place. You might have heard people saying that the USSR was “state capitalist rather than communist”. This means that the workers and customers had just as little say in how things are run than they would under capitalists, only is was directly with the state rather than individual business owners.
Drusas@fedia.io 2 months ago
Very well said, thank you.
j_overgrens@feddit.nl 2 months ago
Worthwile to note here that the left of the French revolution, the Jacobins, did develop authoritarianism.
Which should have been a warning sign for all leftists to come, but alas…