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.
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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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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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mutual aid, equality or freedom are not doomed to fail: as long as human beings live in societies they will seek cooperation and justice.
Perhaps like... organised cooperation, even perhaps putting things on paper to make sure what has been agreed upon gets followed through. Maybe even assign some people to do that for the larger society, so everyone doest have to worry about it. I mean, everyone should help each other, so if someone just doesn't anyone on purpose and even takes other's things, they should face some sort of negative consequence, but then we'd need to assign people who verify that someone has broken the rules and some to enforce that the negative consequences actually happen.
And wow, the anarcho-syndicalist commune now has government, taxes, justice and law enforcement.
People are by nature cooperative unless fucked over, but I find it weird that the prescriptive meaning of "anarchy" is completely glossed over.
The type of society I want to live in definitely won't happen without any sort of rules or regulations about at least some things. Otherwise we won't have industry, and I like my toys. We can't manage a good (and advanced) society without good regulation which requires good government.
Your toys are being manufactured by some underpaid slave worker in china or india. Have fun playing with these in the few hours of life you got left from the industry.
So you're saying you think it's preferable and even possible to go back to a society without any of the amenities which require industry on the scale that regulation is necessary?
Because that's the actual argument, not whether a person in a capitalistic system participates in said system out of necessity.
I say "toys", but I'm talking about electronics I actually need. I prefer buying the most ethical ones, but sometimes those option's don't exist. And the electronics I've now set my eyes on are not manufactured by underpaid slave workers in India or China, but The United States of America.
Just fyi though, clothing is the number one slave industry, and me purchasing a product or two of fancy electronics a year is nothing compared to youngsters constantly buying disposable clothing made in sweatshops. My backpack is older than the average age on Lemmy (from the early 90's), my jacket is from the 70's, and aside from a dozen domestic made underwear and t-shirts or so, all my other clothing I've either gotten as a gift or bought second-hand. Wool, leather, hemp, cotton and other natural fabrics > polyester.
The main point still remains that the se idyllic cooperatives won't happen without big time organised... organisations. Like one specifically for matters regarding governing of, say, industries and labour protection.
I wonder what one could call such "governing organisations"?
You defeated your own position. Humans aren't, nor can be perfecly just nor perfectly cooperative.
You defeat your own position, no one said perfection was necessary to achieve any kind of society, no need to let perfection be the enemy of good enough and functional.
My brother in christ, focus on the whole discussion instead of taking it one argument at a time. An imperfect society will, by necessity, fail to the issues raised previously.
If there's some other part of the argument that supports that, I don't see it.
I'm not a Christian, but I don't think it's at all possible for a society to be perfect, ever. By that metric nothing will address the issues. But issues can be addressed even partially and can be the difference between death and survival.
Neither am I. It's a figure of speech.
Then you shouldn't campaign for the one form of government which does pretty much require a perfect society.
I don't agree with that either. If we never knew capitalism we would say the same thing, as a matter of fact we would say it's inherently imperfect and needs regulations at every turn. On paper I'd say anarchy beats capitalism any day and I'm not even a huge fan of anarchy.
?????
We do say the same thing. It's why we want to crush this shitty system. Because we know it is shit and doesn't work.
A privilege which Anarchy doesn't get.