this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
897 points (96.0% liked)
Lefty Memes
4354 readers
460 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 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is what I've always said to people when it comes to things like respect
Respect isn't earned it's the baseline. You give everyone a base level of respect as the default and their reaction is what determines your continued level of respect.
It goes way, way deeper.
It's the tit-for-tat strategy that is applicable in a very wide range of situations. And animals follow it too. It is deeply ingrained in our biology.
first time you interact with a new person, you assume they are following the same strategy, so you cooperate.
if they don't, then next time, you don't either. But if they do, then you both continue cooperating until someone breaks the chain of trust.
Once broken, the guilty party must make amends to restart.
If broken, but neither party acknowledges guilt, a restart can be tried, but it will always be difficult due to distrust. So it works better if one party takes the blame, makes amends and restarts. (this is called 'being the bigger person').
Upvote for mentioning tit-for-tat. There has been a lot of research on the iterated prisoner's dilemma, and as I recall the winning strategy determined by many experiments showed that over time, the 'nice tit-for-tat' strategy gets the highest score. It may lose out in an individual interaction, but over time, sticking to it is the best long-term strategy.
However this does mean if one is a grifter and fully expects never to interact with the other (victim) party again... there's less incentive to use such a strategy.
Indeed.
Which is why most people have an innate distrust and disgust of grifters.
I would even argue that our very deep disgust against grifters is the legitimate base emotion on which xenophobia is built and therefore xenophobia will always be with us and must always be actively unlearned.
(Racism, in contrast, is learned and can be eradicated by stopping it's spread)
Word “respect” means two different things. One of them can only be earned, another can only be given.
What’s more, the part that can only be given is best described by trust. As in, the only way you can truly know if you can trust someone is to trust and find out.
In this context, the respect that is given - a regard for the others - is a baseline trust in a reciprocal valuation. The respect that is earned is the collection of outcomes that feed into others’ trust risk assessment.
I'd argue that dignity is the baseline but that respect is subjective.