this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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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.
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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)
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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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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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Wouldn’t removing or abolishing borders result in more invasions and wars, not fewer? Weak or unprepared nations would no longer have allied agreements for protection and would surely be under attack.
I think the point is there just wouldn't be Nation-states anymore, just a single united world. Partially because communism is definitionally stateless and classless (by Marx at least).
How would removing borders unite people? There’d still be religious, cultural, and racial differences to fight over, as well as interest in your neighbor’s desirable resources.
People can fight over other differences, even if all those factors were equal.
Like united as in sharing the same governmental structure (or lack thereof sometimes), freedom to move and travel anywhere, and probably more or less similar ideals for such a thing for actually work.
There still obviously would be things to fight over and probably some amount of small-scale civil conflict. There would also still probably be areas with with similar cultures, but with softer and more grey edges and mixing.
This is also more or less just the Marxist ideal of things, I have slightly different ideals personally. Mostly that there does need to be a fairly defined state and governmental system to maintain socialism/communism, help organize large-scale resource allocation and transport on a global scale, and provide structure for civilization-scale projects like progressing human knowledge and science, space travel and exploration, etc.
What if the region you wanted to visit did not culturally accept your race/religion/sexuality? Without laws tailored to specific regions, wouldn’t we just be trading arrests for lynch mobs and hate crimes based on regional social mores?
I think you might over-estimate how common that would be if such hate and opinions were not supported by the state or at least not ignored by the state, but it is an understandable concern, but I see a few possible arguments against it.
the lack of such freedom of mobility and movement of culture would let cultures mix and have more interaction, which has been shown to increase acceptance of different cultures, and reduce hate.
there will almost always be cultural differences, and dislike between groups, but especially without class struggles it will be less common for them to elevate to the levels of lynchings, and outright conflict. Hell, even just looking at the US, it has a decent amount of separate cultural regions but not much conflict based on that. It is mostly interpersonal conflict, class-based, or from reactionaries to minorities.
potentially, it's really dependent on any given geographical region and the military capability in that area i guess.
I don't actually know what would stop this, on a global level, aside from a global military force, so arguably you could refer to it as a "single nation earth" i guess.
Yes, the states must be prepared and it can't be done all at once. See how not every country is automaticly added to the EU and Schengen, often it takes time.
Yes, this is the entire reason behind the contemporary idea of the geographic border defining the political state. If we just hit "reset" after the war and all agree that states should embrace political sovereignty which isn't tied to ethnic divisions, then slowly it will kind of all blur into one big quasi-federal good time.
This has actually worked decently well in most places, with some notable exceptions.
It would absolutely guy capitalism's strangle hold
I don't think it would have that effect at all... abolishing all nations and states would mean the massively wealthy corporations that are wealthier than most nations and states would become the de facto super powers of the world. Governments are the only thing keeping the likes of Meta, Google, Apple, nVidia, etc. From having private militaries and literally taking over the world. If you want to abolish all nations and states, you need to gut capitalism first and make sure these corporations can't just become the new and far worse government.
You're probably right... Really I was just trying to point out that these borders and that separate us are a lot more for governments than they are for any of the people.
Really I don't think capitalism is the worst system in the world inherently nor is a completely communist system the problem is that when allowed to run unchecked and you get incompetent grifters who take advantage on both sides of the equation that's unfortunate.
How does removing borders ridicule capitalism? Maybe I’m misunderstanding your use of guy as a verb.
I meant gut, and without the artificial rules we abide by enabling capitalism it would falter...then like 8 guys would figure out how to ruin it all again.
Gotcha