this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
847 points (90.1% liked)

Lefty Memes

3815 readers
37 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, upvoting good contributions and downvoting 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.

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.)

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 91 points 2 months ago (7 children)

Was the credit cut? Bc Existential Comics really be a classic

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago

Don't know is EC has that signed in the image tbh. I just crossposted in this case.

[–] Zaros 28 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If I recall correctly, a lot of the comics (at least early ones, I haven't gotten very far) don't have credit on them.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
[–] mojo_raisin 65 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Anti-anarchist pretty much think

  • Anarchy = chaos

This is heavily promoted by mainstream media and language

  • Anarchists are pacifist

Many people seem unable to comprehend how a community might defend itself without a standing military and so assume we must be unwilling to defend ourselves.

  • Nothing can be accomplished without coercion

Because most of us have grown up within strict hierarchies coerced to do things we don't want, we have trouble imagining any other way.

  • Everyone is inherently a selfish asshole

This is probably projection in most cases

[–] Maggoty 32 points 2 months ago (2 children)

How do you keep an Anarchic Utopia then? What stops Dickie McDickerson and his thugs from establishing a state on top of you?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (4 children)

The same that stops them from taking over a democracy. Sometimes.

If a society became anarchist enough to abolish state structures, there obviously had to exist a reason - there had to exist popular support.

Thus, someone attempting to recreate a state would face questions and opposition. People would try to persuade them of their error. If they declared a state, anarchists would not recognize it. If it claimed sovereignity above a territory, anarchists might not recognize that either.

The new state might encounter problems - unwilling residents would leave and be accepted in anarchy, annoyed anarchists would organize trade boycotts and sanctions, ultimately it could go badly and armed confrontation could follow. In some scenarios, the state might remain and attract people who want to live there. In some scenarios, war would follow - and if the majority really was anarchist, the state would lose and disappear.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] TankovayaDiviziya 63 points 2 months ago (6 children)

As much as I abhor the state and wish we live like the state of Cheran (ironic of me to say state in this case, I know), anarchy will only work in a very small group, where everyone knows each other, are like-minded enough to not abuse each other's goodwill, and respect each other's personal boundaries.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 months ago (15 children)

So have a lot of small groups

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

Free trade and mutual cooperation between collectives, I thought this was considered the standard anarchic model?

load more comments (14 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 54 points 2 months ago (36 children)

It kind of illustrates why anarchy is as doomed to fail as libertarianism; note the use of force and the fact that the anarchists friends are not there defending him.

Anarchy cannot defend itself from organized outside threats because it is, by its nature, not organized, particularly in its use of force to confront fascism.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Anarchy is not by nature disorganized. Lack of hierarchy doesn't mean lack of organization. Probably a well-functioning anarchist organization is better organized than most hierarchical ones.

If friends are not there to defend the group of three, mutual aid is missing. That's why it failed.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (12 children)

So you're saying an Anarchy should have a group based authority to enforce the mutual aid and cooperation? How do you propose we disincentivise selling each other out for personal gain? And at large scale who makes decisions about defence organization, like where and when to attack? Does an anarchist non-heierarchal defence have to poll every hard decision and if so doesn't that inform any opposition of plans ahead of time while completely gutting the ability to react in a timely manner to threats?

And don't give that lame "just go read the theories bro you clearly haven't read the theores" bullshit response I see all the time.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Actually, there seems to be a bit of a mix-up. Let me clarify.

In an anarchist group, enforcing anything goes against its fundamental principles.

If personal gain is the motive, one isn't truly aligned with the group's social contract and isn't considered part of it.

Decisions are made collectively, without hierarchy. Voting or delegating organisational tasks to sub-groups is the norm.

I won't go into words like "attacking," "defense," or "threats" as they are military terms, far from the anarchist ethos.

And I won't call you "bro" or make you read theory. I feel you won't.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (11 replies)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

Yes, and that mutual aid relies on people all voluntarily helping when there is a problem, rather than having people who are tasked with ensuring people are protected, which is the same reason libertarianism fails; it's an ideology that doesn't acknowledge human self-interest and selfishness, instead it assumes everyone will just agree to abide by a communal philosophy. Many people do not, for all kinds of reasons.

If you are going to create laws and codes of conduct and a means to enforce those laws that's just a normal state with extra steps.

You can maybe do anarchy at a small scale and in specific contexts but not at the scale needed to make a society function and do things like protect minorities the larger community doesn't give a shit about.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Who said anarchists and their friends will not defend from outside threats? The Spanish anarchists organized and fought for 3 years against overwhelming odds when they had to.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah , but ...

In Paris we fought and were massacred.
In Korea/Manchuria we fought and were massacred.
In Ukraine we fought and were massacred.
And as you say in Spain we fought, but then we were massacred.

There's more of course, but you get the idea.

Something probably should be done differently in the future.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

So? How many slave revolutions did we have before it was "technically" abolished (it's still ongoing, but at least illegal in principle)? We had legal slavery for like ~6K years until it was abolished. Capitalism only exists for ~400 years and there were hundreds of failed democratic revolutions. Anarchism as a movement is barely over 150yo and no anarchist revolution happened before 100 years. Just because things don't happen overnight, or even in our lifetime, doesn't mean they're impossible.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Remains to be seen if anarchism can ever win though.

Statist forces have always triumphed.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (7 children)

Monarchy always triumphed over democracy until it didn't. Slavery always triumphed over abolition until it didn't.

load more comments (7 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (34 replies)
[–] sturlabragason 25 points 2 months ago
[–] Ultragigagigantic 21 points 2 months ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago

AAAB.

All Anarchists Are Based.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago

Anarchism wouldn't get that far in the first place lmao

[–] Reddfugee42 13 points 2 months ago (7 children)

If Putin's and Bezos didn't arise in every society, you wouldn't need a government.

But they always do.

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

Ah yes the comic that deprogrammed me on anarchism

load more comments
view more: next ›