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!
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)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Use alt text or image descriptions to allow greater accessibility
(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)
We require alternative text (from now referred to as "alt text") to be added to all posts/comments containing media, such as images, animated GIFs, videos, audio files, and custom emojis.
EDIT: For files you share in the comments, a simple summary should be enough if they’re too complex.
We are committed to social equity and to reducing barriers of entry, including (digital) communication and culture. It takes each of us only a few moments to make a whole world of content (more) accessible to a bunch of folks.
When alt text is absent, a reminder will be issued. If you don't add the missing alt text within 48 hours, the post will be removed. No hard feelings.
0.5.1 Style tip about abbreviations and short forms
When writing stuff like "lol" and "iirc", it's a good idea to try and replace those with their all caps counterpart
Why? Because otherwise (AFAIK), screen readers will try to read them out as actually words instead of spelling them
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 irrationally 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.
Explanation: "We should bring back the guillotine" or similar is a common internet quip in response to billionaires doing billionaire things, when in reality the guillotine was invented to provide equal and humane deaths to people of all classes, and from there it was always a tool of the state rather than the people. Not the best euphemism for "we should depose the bourgeoisie." In fact plenty of Revolutionary justice folks were themselves offed by the guillotine during the Terror.
That's kinda fair, but really the royals thing was more kicking a guy while he's down and didn't have much to do with the bourgeoisie, so I still think the connection is weak.
AFAIK the "bourgeoisie" was mostly a phenomenon of the XIX and XX centuries, I don't think it would be much relevant to the French Revolution, like it isn't today.
(Although there were parallels then like there are today)
The French revolution was precisely the revolution of the bourgeoisie (more precisely the third estate driven by them; peasants were also a part of the third estate) against the first (clergy) and second estate (nobility).
Or rather the revolution of capital, to free its hands from the restrictions of the ancien régime (and feudalism in general).
Yeah that's the popular characterization, but it doesn't really track. The spark of the French Revolution was the French treasury going bankrupt, then the aristocracy "revolted" against Louis XVI in the form of throwing the book at him and telling him to call the Estates General, which he did when he went from bankrupt to really bankrupt. Then we reach the "revolution" of capital, which starts with the calling of the Estates General and ends with the founding of the National Assembly less than two months later. That's it, now feudalism is out, bourgeoisie democracy is in; from that point on France was governed by an all-powerful unicameral legislature (with the method of election to the benefit of capital) all the way until the inauguration of the Directory.
I wrote my comment through a rudimentary lens of historical materialism: looking at the material basis and class dynamics from a macro perspective; it describes general trends instead of specifics.
I mean, if we're talking historical materialism then the transfer of political power from the aristocracy and clergy to the bourgeoisie definitely happened; my point is that this transfer ended so fast and faced so little resistance that it can hardly be used to characterize the French Revolution as a whole. Most of the French Revolution was what happened in the aftermath of this transfer, is what I'm trying to say.
Ah, good point! My tired brain took a while getting it...
Could the French revolution be characterised as the final "finish" of said transfer, then?
Also I'm not that deep into the matter TBH, my current approach to (modern (that's where my interest really begins)) history is more of a "I know the most relevant things from the POV of my rudimentary understanding of historical materialism (and from a more "generic" one) from broad chunks of approximate timeperiods".
I don't really have the mental capacity or rather head space for proper study unfortunately :/
Not quite. While some transfer of power had taken place through venal office and purchase of noble titles, it was still aristocrats running things both in form and function by the time of the Revolution. The thing about the Ancien Regime was that everyone could agree it was broken but nobody could agree on what to do about it, so there wasn't a strong enough force of reaction to prevent the calling of the Estates General, which marks the start of the Revolution. After the Estates General was called the bourgeois and liberal noble elements ended up with most of the power because that's what you get with representative democracy. Imagine if a modern bourgeois state createed hyperlocal workers' councils to make some decision that the state can't make on its own, and if these workers' councils then seized state power. That's the French Revolution.
Nope. There were plenty of bourgeoisie in late 18th century France. I mean hell, you even had proto-socialists then (that's the Enrages). The "industrial" part of industrial capitalism wasn't a thing yet, but bankers, speculators and filthy rich merchants were very much a thing.
Ohh, so you are high as balls. That tracks.