this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2024
609 points (91.9% liked)
Lefty Memes
4359 readers
71 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
That means 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.
- 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
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 purpose of a system is what it does.
If a system crushes orphans, its purpose is to crash orphans. The designers and participants may say otherwise, but they are ignoring the crushed orphans.
If I make a system to move people around, but this also sometimes leads to the death of people, that does not mean that the purpose is to kill people. It is still moving people around. And instead of ignoring this issue, we make the system better at avoiding accidents and increase safety aspects.
Tge system moves people around at the cost of some dying. That may not be your intention, but it's what the system does.
Not shutting down the system as soon as you realize it operates on blood means you're ok with the amount of blood it's consuming.
Sometimes it's better than the alternative. Magical perfect systems don't exist. You get the best one you can and then improve on it.
No, not at the cost of some dying. That just randomly happens. The same way anything happens while doing anything. Babies are born in airplanes. That does not mean that they are delivery rooms.
Maybe you'll understand it clearer like this: There are no side effects, their are only effects.
Whatever something does is whatever it does, we have intentions with things but our intentions don't determine reality. If a system has effects we do not like our only recourse is to change the system, we cannot convince it to be other than what it is.
So then everythings purpose is to do everything. No matter how seldom sometime happens in connection with something, that is it's purpose. What a useful definition.
you understand that there's a difference between causality and coincidence right?
Chairs cause weakening of core muscles which can lead to injury, chairs are frequently found in buildings that catch fire however they are unrelated to the fires.
Not according to your definition. My childhood house burned down because of an electrical fire. So according to your logic, the purpose of electricity is to burn down homes. It's absurd.
Yes, the system of electrifying houses is to enable widespread use of electrical devices at the cost of a few electrocutions and fires.
So why do we have the National Electric Code?
I don't know who we is here, by the blithe arrogance I'll assume usa.
Presumably because people decided there were too many electrocutions and fires and so modified electrification of houses to reduce that? What do you think you're point is? It's not that people are gleefully throwing children into fires for their TVs, it's just that stuff does what it does.
Sweet. So the point of electrification is to power homes, with a side effect of burning some down. But we can try to improve electrification, so fewer homes burn down. And over time, as we've improved the system, fewer homes have burned down.
The purpose of the system is not to burn homes down. The purpose of the system is to power homes. Some homes burn down, but that doesn't mean that by using electricity we're okay with that. And it doesn't mean we should abandon the idea of electricity. It means we should take the system and try to improve it.
Now we can bring that back to our current democratic capitalist social system. Democracy and capitalism are systems that sometimes produces death and misery. Death and misery is not the intent of the systems. We can still use the system without accepting that death and misery are a natural part. Instead, we try to improve the system. Not tear it down, improve it. And it has been improving. Not steadily, it jumps forward and then falls back at times, but over time there's been a general upward trend in happiness and quality of life. People in the 2020s have a better quality of life than people in the 1920s, who had a better quality of life than those in the 1820s. We're making things better. We don't need to tear it down.
You're being stupid and trying to wiggle out from something so obvious as to be tautological https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does
That's a cool thought experiment, and can be useful in cases where people are lying about the intent of a system (ie poll tax - - > voter suppression), but it's just a thought experiment, not a tautology. It's a way to look at a system from a different viewpoint to gain insights. It's not descriptive of reality.
Again, the point of electrification is not to burn down houses. If you agree with this statement, then your premise is wrong.
The whole point of the previous examples was to verify this is the logic. Why are your examples now specially not affected? Why is the purpose of the chair not to weak for muscles?
The chair is to enable comfort at the cost of weakness, but not house fires.
you have appalling reading comprehension.