I agree with conservatives that strict boarders are necessary for nation states.
They call it a necessity evil, I use it as an argument to abolish all states.
this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
525 points (88.3% liked)
Lefty Memes
4398 readers
264 users here now
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).
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 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.
- Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Rape or assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Border have to exist to some degree, simply from a management perspective. Even if we threw all state and country borders away, it'd be literally impossible for a single government to effectively govern the world. You'd need to divide it all up into smaller regions to be managed. Otherwise, we'd might as well just fall back into the pre-industrial age as infrastructure erodes due to poor governmental oversight and management.
I agree, but those aren't the kinds of borders OP is talking about, I think. And it's a naïve simplification, in any case.
I interpret OPs point is about free travel and employment, without restriction or passports. The kind of "no borders" that exists in the EU: any citizen of a country in the EU can travel to, live in, and work in any other EU member country, without restriction, without limitations, and without passport.
It doesn't require, but is greatly facilitated by, a common currency; and as the EU has demonstrated, there's a lot of moving parts for this to function well. Having a common set of standards for human rights, having some basic economic model alignment, having mutual non-aggression agreements for a members... they're all essential components. Heck, I'd suggest that it'd be super-helpful if there was adopted a neutral, universal second language that all member countries require children to take a couple of years of in the public education system - a conlang like Esperanto (by virtue of sheer numbers of speakers), but certainly one where no single country has a advantage by having it be the natural native language, which excludes English.
Anyway, that's the kind of "no borders" I think OP is talking about, not the governance kind.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Why do you assume we need an entire government to do work?
Because we had to live with shit in the streets for thousands of years before the invention of a strong government.
Look at what corporations (made up of people) do with the slightest deregulation.
People are, in general, awful.
There's shit in the streets right now in many large cities due to the failures of the state. The gilded age and industrial revolution spawned numerous public health crises under the watch of governments. The planet is being burned alive due to failures of the state. The solution is more state? Are you sure about that?
How do you propose you regulate corporations or any sort of industry? You want to make sure you food is handled sanitarily, no? You want to ensure your drinking water is being cleaned correctly, right? You want to know if new medications have downsides or are at least effective at what they're purported to do. You want to make sure bridges and tunnels are engineered correctly. Etc. etc.
Yes, government is not perfect. Yes, there are things that get past regulation all the time, but just imagine how much worse it would be with zero regulations. That's the kind of society you're arguing for. You literally cannot have more than a dozen people living together without some sort of social governance. Even tribal communities have some type of government in its most basic form.
load more comments
(6 replies)
load more comments
(7 replies)
load more comments
(8 replies)
load more comments
(10 replies)
This has so completely disappeared from discourse over the past four years. I remember when it used to be that "building the wall" was stupid at best and bigoted at worst. But now, it's all, "Of course we agree that we need a strong border, but we're the ones who will actually do it, Trump's all talk."
It's always the Republicans that get to set which values and goals the country persues, while the Democrats just run on pragmatism and efficiency. It's like they're allergic to making moral claims.
It's because it's a one-party system masquerading as a two-party system.
load more comments
(6 replies)
load more comments
(14 replies)
I've never met a liberal irl who gives a fuck about borders or immigration. It's always conservatives that rage about that shit to me.
liberals have a lot of "very serious people" who talk about the sanctity of the nation state.
load more comments
(6 replies)
No free trade without free movement!
"Yeah, but proceeds to present an argument that completely ignores the underlying premise that everyone should be cool with all being one planet helping each other instead of returning to squabbling tribal mentality of 'us vs them' and 'if I give them some then I'll have less' and people need to stop letting conflicts of our parents and great-great-great-x147-grandparents started decide how we view our neighbors"
Haha checkmate, logical thinkers.
I'm pretty sure neoliberals also actually advocate for open borders and reduced immigration in general, and often accuse the left of being anti-immigration because of concerns regarding wages by unions.
neoliberals advocate for open borders only for capital. Capitalism itself would collapse overnight if there was free movement of labour
Just not true
About 1.7 million people commute to work across a European border each day, and in some regions these people constitute up to a third of the workforce. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area?wprov=sfla1
Schengen zone, and to a lesser extent USA, show that capitalism can continue to function with a free movement of labor within relatively large and varied economic zones. This would continue to be the case worldwide, I believe. There remains significant barriers to movement even without borders: time, money, separation from family and cultural support systems, and more. There are people in the US and EU who want to "escape" their current state/country due to local laws but cannot do so despite it being perfectly legal to do so.
load more comments
(12 replies)
I have never once heard and have not been able to imagine an explanation of how not having borders could possibly work.
Notice how there is no border between your town and the next one? Same, but on a larger scale.
load more comments
(4 replies)
You can just keep going where the border would be.
Simple. In the past there is no "border". You are someone from Frankfurt who came to Paris to set up business and there was no question asked.
load more comments
(1 replies)
A example that’s not borderlessness, but still interesting, was the Behind the Bastards episode on Harlan Crow which talked about how there was seasonal migration of people from Mexico into the US during peak agricultural seasons. They would return to Mexico in the winter, but the introduction of a hard border incentivized people to remain in the US.
It seems the hardening the border lead to the exact thing Harlan Crow and the other racist trash were trying to fight, increased immigration.
All immigration is a net positive to the economy in a number of different ways, and most of "problems" are caused by material conditions created by having classes of citizens versus non citizens. The US basically had open borders for much of its history and that's a big reason why it became such an industrial powerhouse.
The original idea behind physical border control has more to do with espionage and sabotage than restricting immigration.
load more comments
(9 replies)
view more: next ›