this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
500 points (88.1% liked)
Lefty Memes
4252 readers
2991 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,
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:
- 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
(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Usually the idea that borders shouldn't exist is connected to the idea that armies shouldn't exist.
How do you propose to stop armed groups from forming?
Typically community defense, which means there are already armed groups, they just autonomous groups of people ready to defend their own communities. Similar to the concept of minute men if you want to think broad strokes.
So you want a local conscript or volunteer militia? How about those local groups making alliances, sharing training, building up shared resources and infrastructure, a unified command, standardized equipment for better and more efficient defense?
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.
Well, yeah. Anarchism loses wars to bureaucracy. That was settled in 50 BC with the Gallic Wars.
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.
That gives even greater advantage to centralized bureaucracy. 2000 years ago armies could be independent weeks before anyone back in Rome knew what happened.
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?
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.
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.
That's not a reasonable argument. We already have large armed groups, and these are armies. And they already commit war crimes. If you don't find armed groups forming acceptable, and you do not find the harm they cause acceptable, then you do not find what we have now acceptable.
Tell them to fucking stop it or we'll shun them.
Anarcho-NATO.
I'm pretty sure Vaush was memeing when he said that but it honestly makes a lot of sense
Ideally by eliminating any reason they might form.
More realistically... I'm not sure. Small local militias?
Until one guy with an army realizes no one else has an army, then they march their army into whatever they now claim as theirs. Humans are too greedy, selfish, and divided to completely abolish borders and armies any time soon.
Militias are a thing. We mean standing armies. No one is saying we just let the imperialists walk in and conquer us. It means people should be able to live and work wherever they want, unhindered by borders. An invasion is something else, and would be defended against by community defense and militias
So without a standing army, how does a militia made of local community fight a force gathered from across an entire country? 500 semi trained militants won't last long against a trained army of 2000 with military equipment and logistics
Through coordination with the communities of others. Militias have and are very effective at fighting conventional standing armies. Look at the viet kongs, the anarchist militias in the Spanish Civil War, and the Ukrainian Black Army. Or the slave rebellion of Haiti. Even modern day, the Zapatistas hold their own against both the Cartels and the Mexican government.