this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2024
578 points (91.6% liked)
Lefty Memes
4514 readers
130 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
Removing a foreign occupier through violent revolution actually has a pretty good track record, yes (markedly different from destroying an unjust domestic system through violent revolution.)
Which one are you advocating for within the meme? Or something else? "Must be destroyed" can mean a few different things, all the way from FDR or Bernie Sanders which I'd be in favor of all the way to Russian Revolution which I'm not. I'm sort of just taking a guess at what it might be and responding based on the guess, but yeah I'm open to hear more explanation.
You realize that Britain was not a "foreign occupier" at that point, yes? Likewise, most liberal democracies you have now are results of revolutions against the monarchies. Exactly how do you think the world changed from monarchic feudalism to capitalist democracy? Magic? The Kings abdicated because they were all just nice people?
You're in an anarchist server talking to an anarchist. Take a wild guess :D
Britain was not a foreign occupier in 1700s colonial America? Must be news to the Algonquian, Iroquois, and Wampanoag.
Fair point but you know what I meant
Fun fact: There were hundreds of triracial isolates in revolution-era America, i.e. communities of mixed white/black/native people all living together in a little anarchist-style arrangement that said more or less "fuck this" to the whole concept that we have to join up with some larger entity that gives us official permission to exist as a society. They all died out as one particular one of the large entities won the conflict and waxed in power and gradually took over the place, but for quite a while they were apparently pretty good places to live.
My point is that the system of having people physically on one side of the ocean making decisions for the people on the other side, with no pretense of it being fair or justified or representation for people from the New World, makes violent overthrow a lot more unavoidable. I think it's more sensible to apply lessons from the American Revolution to the Mexican War of Independence than to what will happen if you walk into Washington DC armed, with a million of your friends, and announce that the system is going to be different now.
There are different responses appropriate to different levels of oppression. Violent overthrow of a monarchy is often the only way. Violent overthrow of a foreign occupation is often the only way. My point is that looking at the current system in the US, there are a lot of ways to "destroy" the system that will do a lot of damage to its positive aspects and not change much at all about its horrible aspects except for making them worse.
Of course, it's easy and surface-persuasive to say "destroy the system and things will be better" and keep the rest of it vague. Once you start getting into details is where you run into the oh shit it's actually not that simple factor.
Who knows; for all I know, once I hear your details I will be on board for them. But it's hard to say if it's all vague and feely-good-based.
Well I'm glad that you're so adept at moving the goalposts to fit the things you consider good, but that's just what it is. All of these were revolutions. If they worked, an anarchist one can work just as well.
If you're honestly willing to learn about anarchism, I can link you to things, but there's no point if you're here just to argue.
All the revolutions I listed made things way worse. If they were catastrophes, an anarchist one can be as well.
Not technically wrong, but also not that useful as a way to analyze. It's not moving the goalposts to clarify statements or to draw different lessons from different events.
Sure, what should I read?
If you interpret "Which one are you advocating for" and "for all I know, once I hear your details I will be on board for them" and "yeah I'm open to hear more explanation" as me just being here to argue, I think you are mentally unprepared for the kind of collaboration that'll be needed or the kind of resistance you might get to actually making an effort to destroy the system (by any definition of that phrase.)
Which, I mean, is fine; not everyone talking on the internet needs to be down to personally go out and seize the means of production. But I think if you're going to make that kind of bold statement about what "must" happen, it's fair to ask you to clarify and defend it at least a little bit.
The absolute best place to start imho is an anarchist faq. It goes into length into what anarchism is, what we believe and how we act on it
This section elaborates more on voting specifically: https://www.anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionJ.html#secj23
This section elaborates about revolution: https://www.anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionJ.html#secj71
Okay, I read a little.
Nor that it's the point, but Kelman was born in 1946, when it was about 65 percent that didn't vote, and it's been going down since then throughout his lifetime. In the modern day (i.e. long after this was written), about 60% of people vote.
They are dismantling it in many places in the US, I think specifically because there's starting to be a possibility again that it can effect a real change in the system.
You don't have to get into any kind of back-and-forth with me about this if you don't want to, but I am curious -- do you honestly believe that countries that don't use voting are not markedly less successful at giving the freedoms to their citizens that the writers here clearly believe are important?
That's one of my key points about the overthrow of "the system" in general -- a lot of times, the structures of power that replace voting if voting gets done away with are much, much worse. The type of injustice that exists in the modern American system is significant but what are you wanting to replace it with that you're asserting would have more justice? I mean, maybe. I would want to hear the details. But I think asserting that there's no reason why people would not want to be in a place that operates without voting is weird.
This part, I agree with. Just voting for the candidates presented and nothing else is guaranteed to perpetuate systems of inequality. Fully agree there for exactly the reasons that Ehrlich states. I think where we differ is:
That is my take on it. IDK, I skipped around to read up on more but my reaction was much the same to any selected sections I found. I think the problems they're describing are very real and difficult bordering on intractable. I think the solutions they're prescribing for them are likely to make the exact same problems very much badly worse.
I agree, re-instate native governments.
Iroquois Confederacy FTW