this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
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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.
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If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
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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.
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as well as condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
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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).
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The only dangerous minority is the rich.
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We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
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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.
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I'm not the person you asked and they surely have a better answer, but I thought I'd throw some things out there:
A lot of what are understandably called "one party states" are not technically one party. The DPRK has like three other parties and I'm pretty sure there are countless parties all over the PRC. It's still reasonable to refer to these countries as one party states because they have some kind of constitutional provision preventing any other party from taking power at the highest levels, but they still use multiple parties as a means of representing diverse interests.
Our comrade VI evidently knows way more about Cuba than I, but something I happen to know is that, when you run for office in Cuba, you are not the candidate of any party, you are effectively independent. I think that they conceptualize what a party is in a very different way. In America, the political parties are literally private entities, with all the legal ramifications that entails, and are effectively companies pushing brands in order to get money from donors via held seats (that's a crude generalization, but I think it works well enough). In the "one party states" I know of, the "one party" is considered to be part of the governing apparatus itself, rather than something that exists outside it seeking to influence it. It's all a conjoined project that way.
I personally think that, assuming there is actual democracy in terms of the government needing to enact the popular will, a one party state is probably a more coherent way of having society united in its various projects, even if the proverbial ship needs to change course now and then for whatever reason. That's just my feeling though, and it's mainly informed by the overwhelming sense one gets if they follow American elections that they are engineered at every level to be anti-democratic.