this post was submitted on 28 Oct 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).

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.

7. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:

(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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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

So long as the local group autonomy is still respected that can work fine in theory. Once you start stripping groups of autonomy to make a beauracratic monster, you've lost the anarchism plot. A lot harder in practice to have a massive armed org that values that autonomy. Most of the time local groups will be linked to other groups. Just by group consensus, not by necessity because of course that too would not be anarchism.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Well, yeah. Anarchism loses wars to bureaucracy. That was settled in 50 BC with the Gallic Wars.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Im no historian but I think we've made some headway in technology that allows for quicker longer distance organization in the past 2000 years.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

That gives even greater advantage to centralized bureaucracy. 2000 years ago armies could be independent weeks before anyone back in Rome knew what happened.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Sounds like a theoretical Libertarian trying to raise an army. Do you hand a copy of the NAP to just the volunteers or also to those you fight?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If you cant tell anarchism from libertarianism, theres no intelectual basis to continue this conversation on. Which would explain why you set up a strawman with your second sentence.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

You got me, it seems I have not educated myself thoroughly enough.

Really though, if only the enlightened can see the light then it seems like it's just an academic exercise or trolling people to advocate for ineffectual fringe theory.

You may be right, but also powerless.