this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2025
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Asklemmy
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If I wanted to make a high engagement post I would post something like this. Are there any other controversial, not clearly defined words to ask about?
Socialism and communism seem to be very misunderstood outside of places like Grad, Hexbear, Lemmy.ml, etc. Some thing social programs are socialism, others think the Marxist conception of communism is incompatible with administration, some think any form of market or private property has to be eradicated for socialism to exist, some think it's about worker/employer relationships, etc. I think it would be a decent idea to form a better understanding.
For clarity, socialism is best described as a transitional status between capitalism and communism, by which public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy (controls the large firms and key industries at a minimum) and the working class is in control of the state. This fits cleanly with socialism in practice and with Marxist conceptions of socialism.
I honestly saw someone use the word, wondered what they actually meant by it, and came here to ask. TBF, I didn't know much about what "here" was, at the time.
Lemmy is developed by communists, and Reddit banned a bunch of leftist subreddits like r/chapotraphouse, r/GenZedong, and r/TheDeprogram. As a consequence, a bunch of communists are on Lemmy by ratio compared to Reddit, though Lemmy.world is defederated and blocks 2/3rds of the major communist instances, so you can't actually see them. They usually are on Lemmygrad.ml or Hexbear.net if you want to see the communist side of Lemmy.
Lemmy.ml is the dev's testing instance, so that's why a lot of communists are here but also why it's not defederated by Lemmy.world.
Someone mentioned that, but I have yet to see why dot world blocked the commie instances. Care to share?
Here's Lemmy.world explaining why. Essentially, for having stances common to communists (opposing western hegemony is a big one they took issue with). Lemmy.world is run by your standard DNC-style liberals, they generally oppose Marxism and communism, and uphold the DNC as good. Some are also zionists.
Now, that's my perspective as a communist. I'm a Marxist-Leninist, my perspective is as someone who reads theory, does light org work, etc. I'm not a fan of the DNC, I support socialist states, etc. Others may give a different perspective, but it's also worth noting that there are entire drama communities dedicated to taking comments out of context, witch-hunting communists, etc and this is made even worse by defederation because it creates this "boogeyman" that .world can't actually see.
Hope that helps, honestly you can just scroll grad and hexbear yourself for a bit without making an account to see what's up.
Thank you for the reasonable reply that didn't attack my character for asking. Apparently, that's too much to ask of some people.
From what I've seen, it appears a very vocal minority of .world users cannot tolerate any criticism or viewpoints opposing capitalism/liberialism or NATO.