this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
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Lefty Memes
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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.
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).
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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.
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You are free to steal. And the rest of the community is free to beat the shit out of you.
If that's how it works, then a stable anarchist society is impossible. The first asshole that comes along with a bigger gun than everyone else will have it right back to a dictatorship.
The community will band against the dictator as much as the thief
They most likely follow the dictator, at the very least to sate their blood thirst.
Their "blood thirst" of not wanting thieves and murderers in their society? You realize that our current society is orders more "blood thirsty" than what we describe but only that you hide the violence through the police and the brutal wars and genocides against other nations?
You’re making their point for them
And you'd rather have mobs kill criminals themselves? Enact the death penalty for petty thieves while they celebrate billionaires like they do today?
No?
Curious, because that's the most likely scenario.
wtf are you on about?
You’re at the magical thinking “And then of course we will all…” crutch that a lot of philosophies lean on
Capitalism: We’ll deregulate and open the market to everyone, and then there will be “perfect competition” in a “free market”
Communism: We have state socialism until society is prepared, and then transition to communism
Anarchism: We won't have a central authority to prevent aggression, obviously we will work together as mutual interest aligns. And 100% no roving bands of raiders or warlords will ever ruin our society!
Yes, by definition that's how anarchism works. If if wasn't like this, it wouldn't be anarchism. Not sure why this is a difficult concept to handle.
Nobody said that external dangers are not a potential issue, but the plan is to oppose them. Not a difficult concept to grasp either.
I have fringe anarcho-syndicalist politics, I understand the theory. I also understand that nothing exists in a vacuum, and while our happy anarchy-commune/whatever of 3,000 aligned people may build mutual aid tranquillity in our area, others may not. And those others may choose banditry, and your stuff instead of working for food.
So our commune/syndicate/etc form a defensive structure/organization to stop/prevent them - you just created a military/police class of “most equals”. Who will need a command structure for doing the ‘gun/bat meet aggressor’ functions, and some kind of special remit from the community. Or we say no dedicated force and the classes it brings, and use the irregulars/militia model instead. Which has so many issues on so many different aspects that’s it’s not worth me typing out.
Ffs go read Hobbes’ Leviathan
That's true for all types of society. But it also means that a completely anarchist society is more stable than the rest because the means of self defence are equally distributed and that everyone would rise against such authoritarian attack.
That has never been, and will never be true. You could magically eliminate all weapons on the planet simultaneously and it still won't be true, since some people are bigger and stronger than others.
And in case you haven't been paying attention to history; authoritarians very rarely just show up out of nowhere and take over. They are usually installed as leader after some form of revolution, then the title just gets transferred once the authoritarian system is in place. It's usually far more insidious than just some guy the village has to band together to fight off.
It doesn't mean that every person has equal ability to physically defend themselves, but that society has the mechanisms to defend everyone that is being attacked. A grandma doesn't need to be able to self defend against a thug in the street if the people nearby do it for her.
The second paragraph is not relevant as there are no historical examples of a dictator getting into power from within an anarchist society.
Are there any historical examples of a large-scale anarchist society in the first place?
Thats why were actually in a “anarchy always has been” meme.
We are free to ignore the law and to object any direct order.
We are free to join a police force and protect the state, to join a police force and kill a civilian, free to take a firearm and kill a police officer, free to be killed by a police officer
We are free to organize institutions and support those.
You are free to join a line of thinking which brings you to a state of servitude.
You are free to comply, others are free to hurt you based on but also regardless of what you do.
Anarchy always has been, always will be.
Sooner we realize how inevitable it is the quicker we can overcome the hurdle and to accept that: Only by also helping others can we truly better ourselves.
This, but much more importantly - when everyone's needs are met, and there is no hierarchy to try and get to the top of at the expense of others, people will have no reason to do shit like steal in the first place.
And what about the long road it takes to get to everyone’s needs being met? How will you ever get to that point? It doesn’t just happen overnight.
That may be no reason to do shit like that once everyone’s needs are being met, but there will be until you get to that point, and because of that, there’s no reason to think you would.
You do realise ambition and greed are two sides of the same coin. Yes, resource scarcity effects this, but there will ALWAYS be people who want more