this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
885 points (90.3% liked)
Lefty Memes
4290 readers
2496 users here now
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
Serious posts, news, and discussion go in c/Socialism.
If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, updooting good contributions and downdooting those of low-quality!
Rules
0. Only post socialist memes
That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme)
1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here
Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism.
2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such,
as well as condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.
That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" seen on lemmygrad and more specifically GenZedong (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).
4. No Bigotry.
The only dangerous minority is the rich.
5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Mantic Minotaur" when answering question 2)
6. Don't idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
7. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Rape or assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The community is in charge. It’s democracy without a class of rulers. Its people working together because it brings them mutual benefit instead of a system built on exploiting others for personal gain.
You can have a “central planning authority”, it would just be voluntarily made up of those small town level groups.
I know that's the goal, but what are the specifics on how it's implemented? How does it handle the smooth talker who wants to warp the system into something else for his personal gain? By the time you build in mechanics to handle these edge cases (without just handwaving it away with "the community will enforce it"), you converge back towards something similar to one of the various political systems we have today.
Maybe I'm just too pessimistic to get behind the anarchist thing. My day job is industrial automation and people not doing what was expected or what is best is what causes 90% of my headaches. Relying on people to behave rationally and do what's best just isn't in my nature anymore.
In other words, you're here shitting all over a centuries old ideology you have barely a vague understanding of, wasting the time of people who clearly know significantly more about it than you do, because you have no intention of actually learning, only arguing to be "right" (you're not).
Here's a tip: try actually investing some effort in to understanding a topic before barging in all confidently incorrect as you are, you might actually learn something (again, not that I believe you want to).
Don't be making assumptions now. I've tried looking into it in the past, but I keep just getting sources like those; long on concept and short on specifics. Of course, anarchism being what it is, the answers you do sometimes get on the specifics varies wildly, depending on which brand of anarchist you are talking to.
Isn't that what we have right now
No? At best we have 'representatives', who barely represent a quarter of what any one voter wants.
Right, but it's voluntarily elected by smaller groups. The fact that the representatives don't align with most voter's interests in every topic is a fundamental problem of agreement, not a problem specific to the method of organization.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but you could have central planning, but they wouldn't have any authority...
They would have the authority of the groups they represent.
Think of the UN, they don’t have power to enforce things yet they get shit done all over the world.
Is it perfect? No
Is anything perfect? No
Is it better than authoritarianism? Yes.
I'd be careful with this example. One of the key issues people take with the UN that they indeed can't enforce things, like in Gaza. Security council approved a ceasefire, but the fighting goes on. Russia doing genocide in Ukraine, UN tells RU that they need to stop being bad.
For the record they of course do stuff, but if you'd like to advocate for anarchism I'd use a more effective example. If even the UN can't stand up to fascism, what shot does an anarchy have, ya know?
The only group enforcing things in Gaza is Israel. UN or no UN, nothing changes there so any idiot complaining about the UN for not fixing it is misguided.
The UN is not an example of anarchism, it's a collection of authoritarian states with a lot of hierarchy. It's an example of voluntary mutual framework where force does not have to be used to create progress.
That's what I mean. That's a very weird example for you to use in this case, pick a different organization if you wanna talk about how great anarchism is. The UN ain't it.