this post was submitted on 31 Mar 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,
as well as 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.
7. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
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- Ableism
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- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
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there are ethical systems that can exist even if we don't. kantian ethics require only that you decide what should be universal law and act accordingly. that doesn't require that you know anything outside of yourself. by contrast, utilitarianism is fraught with epistemic problems.
Every set of axioms is independent of reality by definition. Deontology isn't special in that way; consequentialist systems are also axiom sets. Furthermore, every ethical system has the same problem when putting it into practice; if you don't know anything about the world, your ethics system might as well be empty.
i suppose so, but if your axioms depend on the future, which by definition is unknowable, then it is empty.
Consequentialist axioms impose an ordering on world-states, almost all of which will never exist. I don't understand how you can think the axioms themselves depend on future events; by definition they wouldn't be axioms.
if you must do what will cause the most pleasure (or least displeasure), then your axiom depends on knowing the future.
No, acting upon the axiom requires "knowing the future" as you put it.
even knowing how to act requires knowledge of the future in such a paradigm.
Every ethical system requires knowledge of the world.
Knowledge of the world includes knowledge of the probability of future world states.
Future world states are subject to doubt.
Present world states are also subject to doubt.
There is no fundamental difference between the degrees of uncertainty about present and future events.
We can know with a high degree of certainty that without intervention, the sun will be destroyed. I can know with a high degree of certainty that your arguments come from a mind that is not part of a mind that I am part of. I can know with a high degree of certainty that the place I am currently located will not be subject to an event that will destroy me.
Privileging the certainty of nearer-term events is fallacious. It is true that any particular chosen event becomes more probable as its proximity to us increases, because there are fewer ways to avert it, but that does not mean all further-future events are less probable than all nearer-future events.
probability is never 100%, but the categorical imperative is always 100% certain.
Are you claiming that in a particular physically real situation, the categorical imperative can can tell you the correct course of action with 100% certainty? If so, please explain how that's possible when your personal certainty of the situation is (necessarily) less than 100%.
if you've decided that a certain course of action should be universal law, then complying with that law is moral. The categorical imperative is incredibly simple to apply
Look, I'm not even getting into the fundamental problems with the insane, subjective, and ad-hoc way the moral imperative is supposed to work; I'm pointing out that you're performing apologetics. I don't need to get into the weeds of how it works, because your argument is fallacious.
If you decide that it's wrong to allow an infant to starve, but that poisoning a child is wrong, how can you be 100% certain that what you are about to feed it isn't poison? You can't know that it's moral to feed the child what you are about to feed it. The absolute certainty you claim is either a useless technicality or an outright fiction.
it doesn't matter. if i don't believe it's poison, then feeding it to the child is the right thing to do. done-and-dusted.
this is handwaving. i believe the kids today call it "cope"