this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
446 points (98.7% liked)
Lefty Memes
4514 readers
40 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 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'd say how humans have lived for tens of thousands of years before the last ~2 centuries, minus obviously kings and priests. I think it's historically proved that it works, literally for millenia on after the other
One of the things you learn in anthro is how many different societal structures have existed "successfully" in human history. Successfully is obviously relative as I don't think anyone today could even imagine life before... the 1900s probably. "People in the past aren't just us in different clothes" after all.
I introduced kings and priests, my bad. i didn't want it to have a political turn.
I meant: the "economics" have been almost the same for millennia one after the other, so we could use that "model". minus K&P means we should try to limit as much as possible human leeches, be it because they're born in a particular family or they have a special relation with a super powerful dude - that never shows up, though.
then, about all of the "intricacies" of cultures, what's successful or not, etc. : I do obviously agree. but we're in such a moment where we can sum up a lot of human experience, because we have available the most complete library of all times. we also made huge progress in psychology, freeing ourselves from magical thinking. I think it's reasonable thinking about overthrowing kings musk, bezos, potus, president of China, you name it. in the most peaceful way possible. we should destroy AI before it's too late though: there are already AI contents that cannot be distinguished from reality. imagine a government producing AI videos to show how barbaric and violent is the enemy of that very same government.
many things are simplified, but I think, having on open mind whom is reading this, that I've explained my point. mobile it's destructive when it comes to write a lot.
thank you
Kings and priests go back at least 6000 years. There is no point in Western history without dramatic power and wealth disparity. The same goes for most Eastern history. Any cultures without those structures were crushed by cultures with those structures.
got it: we definitely should never ever make use of our experience. like, never.
While they live incredibly hard lives, there are cultural structures which have somehow survived longer than "civilization." I wouldn't want to live in those societies, but their longevity through isolation does break the paradigm of capitalist realism. Those societies don't necessarily have concepts of wealth either.