I wouldn’t trust quizzes when it comes to political ideology. Quizzes try to take your latent beliefs and force them into categories, but these beliefs may be contradictory. Ideologies (in theory) attempt to proceed from a given baseline, and find correct answers given that baseline. For example, Marxism and its various tendencies all proceed from the acceptance of dialectical materialism, the scientific approach to socialism, and Marxist economics as the basis. A quiz may think someone is a Marxist, even if they don’t actually agree with any of those, assuming they have similar policy preferences.

It’s very hard to argue that Iran still would have been attacked had they been armed with nukes.

No clue lol, China gets safe passage through Hormuz anyways due to being an ally of Iran.

Not sure how this answers the question, or why you’re announcing blocking people. You can just do that quietly, it sounds like you’re just trying to provoke people.

I do think labels are helpful for coming to a coherent understanding. Rejection of labels and focusing only on details can lead us to not notice how these details intersect and interconnect, leading to counterposed beliefs simultaneously held. Some people will reject the convo outright based on label, but these people likely aren’t going to be swayed anyways, and are looking for an excuse to end the convo. That’s why I just openly state that I’m a Marxist-Leninist, it helps explain my views in a more concrete way than needing each bit to be teased out over the course of a convo.

IRL though I tend to not bring up that I’m an ML unless I am at a protest or event or otherwise trust the person deeply.

Thanks for the kind words, comrade! Glad you’re here! 🫡

I’m a Marxist-Leninist! Not really based on “preference,” though, but on the overall coherence and practicality of Marxism-Leninism. I agree with the dialectical materialist method, Marxist economics, the Leninist analysis of imperialism and organization, and socialism as a scientific field. I support AES states (Actually Existing Socialism, where public ownwrship is the principal aspect of the economy and the working classes control the state), including the PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, DPRK, Laos, and Venezuela (which is more almost AES IMO but on the right track).

One thing I would suggest is viewing the state not as something outside class struggle, but deeply involved within it. The state under capitalism has a bourgeois class character, it exists to reinforce capitalism and keep the working classes suppressed. Under socialism, however, the state exists to keep the working classes on top, and this is necessary as we gradually collectivize production and distribution to establish communism. This is the Marxist conception of the state, and how we can achieve statelessness realistically by eroding the basis of the state, class struggle.

If you want a place to start with Marxism-Leninism, I made a basic Marxist-Leninist study guide. Feel free to check it out!

Hey comrade, just want to mention that I made a new, cleaned up guide and that the one you linked is going to go through a major revision sometime in the future. And thanks for the kind words!

Why do we say ACAB? It’s because police exist to protect the ruling class of society, and in every western country that class is the capitalist class. In the PRC, it’s the working classes. Your thought process is metaphysical, rather than dialectical. By erasing context and insisting on dogmatically applying the conditions of one state to the conditions of an entirely different state, you run into all host of errors.

For example, if I say in the US Empire it is in the people’s best interests to overthrow their government and establish socialism, and you were to say the same for the PRC, you would be advocating for the dissolution of the socialist system in the PRC and the likely restoration of capitalism, as it is already socialist. Another example is freedom of speech. I don’t support freedom of speech for fascists and capitalists, but I do for the working classes.

When you contextualize and look at phenomena as existing within their necessary interrelations, you move from metaphysics to dialectics, from agnosticism to concrete reality.

I’m not asking for pre-action, the riots were happening and the violent clashes were happening, so the riots that often errupted into violent clashes were met with arrests.

If this were America, and we were communists protesting capitalist rule, and the police were mistreating us and we rose up in violence, would you condemn that?

That’s an entirely different situation. In Hong Kong, the rioters were anti-communists fighting against communists for passing a law allowing authorities to arrest a murderer that fled from the mainland to Hong Kong to dodge arrest. These rioters recieved western support, and the riots ended when the HK gov cracked down on foreign funding.

I don’t support protest for the sake of protest. I support progressive action and condemn reactionary action. Protesting is not holy, nor is it some abstract ideal, it exists within a definite context.

To clarify your point, are you saying you would have rather the government treat the symptoms after they appeared, and never address the root cause? It sounds like you’re arguing China just let the violence happen and just step in at an individual level. The riots were put down with extraordinary restraint for their scale, which is why they went on for so long, until the HK gov banned foreign funding of political parties.

Sure, here’s protestors setting a man on fire.

Counter-protestors. There was violent conflict between the rioters and the pro-government counter-protestors, which meant putting an end to the riots to begin with was the correct move to limit the damages and injuries.

You can condemn every government if you want. You’re not actually getting anything accomplished by doing so, though, in condemning everything you’re left alone. By your response, you would have let the riots persist, I imagine? Even if people were hurt by the rioters?

When I said “tankie is a pejorative for communist,” I meant communist in the way most people think of the term. If you want to call anarchists communists, even if I think that is more confusing than clarifying due to the dramatic differences in communalization vs. Collectivization, then I’ll restate it for you: “tankie is a pejorative for Marxist,” then. While I have seen anarchists get called “tankie” before, it’s overwhelmingly used against Marxists, and when the average person hears communist they think of Marxism, not anarchism.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by “brutalizing the protestors?” Is there any country on Earth where riots are left alone?

Anarchists aren’t communists in the sense that they aren’t advocating for Marxist communism. When one hears “communist,” they think “soviet union,” not Kropotkin. Anarchism and communism are entirely different things with different goals and methods.

Anarchism is primarily about communalization of production and distribution, while Marxism is primarily about collectivization of production and distribution.

When I say “communalization,” I mean anarchists propose horizontalist, decentralized cells, similar to early humanity’s cooperative production but with more interconnection and modern tech. When I say collectivization, I mean the unification of all of humanity into one system, where production and distribution is planned collectively to satisfy the needs of everyone as best as possible.

For anarchists, collectivized society still seems to retain the state, as some anarchists conflate administration with the state as it represents a hierarchy. For Marxists, this focus on communalism creates inter-cell class distinctions, as each cell only truly owns their own means of production, giving rise to class distinctions and thus states in the future.

For Marxists, socialism must have a state, a state can only wither with respect to how far along it has come in collectivizing production and therefore eliminating class. All states are authoritarian, but we cannot get rid of the state without erasing the foundations of the state: class society, and to do so we must collectivize production and distribution globally. Socialist states, where the working class wields its authority against capitalists and fascists, are the means by which this collectivization can actually happen, and are fully in-line with Marx’s beliefs. Communism as a stateless, classless, moneyless society is only possible post-socialism.

Abolishing the state overnight would not create the kind of society Marxists advocate for advancing towards, and if anything, would result in the resumption of competition and the resurgance of capitalism if Marx and Engels predictions are correct.

None of this was specific to Marxism-Leninism, but Marxism in general.

Can you give some examples of “non-tankie” communists?

My defense of China is that the vast majority of people did not support independence, and that the government was far more leniant towards the protestors than a western government would have been. How would you have suggested China respond to the protests?

“Tankie” is just a pejorative for communists, used against those with views common to communists. No socialist state is perfect, of course, but many preconceived notions about socialist states are flat out wrong, so communists get called “tankies” for giving a more accurate picture.