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!
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.
It's just the paradox of tolerance again. Too much freedom causes a power vacuum, which almost inevitably causes some small but determined authoritarian group to gobble up that power until they get so big they can overthrow the whole system. And then you're back to square one, except now the system is probably fascist.
How do you you "gobble up power" in a group dedicated to preventing anyone having power over others?
That group won't exist in a vacuum. It needs to be resilient to outside interference. Even inside that group there are going to be people that only identify with it out of convenience rather than true belief. It is still possible for individuals to accrue social capital, form "inner circles" and individually stockpile resources - and stopping them would logically infringe on their freedoms to associate, freedom to dig holes, etc.
So you're saying that in whatever system is created for libertarianism there will be a potential for people to use their freedom to subvert libertarianism, right? That makes sense to a point, but it's the same issue that exists in every other system. Socialist need to have checks and balances to ensure the government doesn't subvert the needs of the people, capitalists need to bust monopolies to ensure someone doesn't takeover the market, etc. I know I'm mixing economics and politics, but I hope you see my point.
Stockpiling resources isn't possibly without exploitation. Why would anyone let you stockpile resources they create? These assumptions don't make sense
Why would anyone let you stockpile resources they create?
the same reason people let it happen now: people aren't actually a hivemind where every individual steadfastly holds to your chosen ideology and ceaselessly watches each other and keeps precise track of what everyone is doing. Surveillance states can't root out crime and black markets, so I very much doubt a loose association of stateless communes can do it either.
By promoting a culture of disarming using children safety as an excuse and allowing the government or police to have a violence monopoly to do whatever they want without consequence of retaliation by the people they oppress.
You...realize that in the system I'm talking about there's no state or police?
That kind of hypothetical system does not and will never exist.
Afghanistan was once an anarchist dream where remote mountain villages grew crops to sustain their local communities and were protected by tribal families who elected a local warlord, it was a shit life compared to the West
Now is currently getting wrangled under control by an oppressive Islamo-fascist theocracy who occupied the power vacuum that the Soviet invasion back in the 1980s created by destroying the Afghan monarchy and government.
That's not what an "anarchistic dream" looks like, lol
I agree with you, but that is what true anarchy looks like in modern times. Some parts of remote Afghanistan currently have villages that all run like that.
That's not what Anarchism means. You can't just redefine eastabilished political movements willy-nilly
Right "libertarians" are more susceptible to power vacuums, provably so, with so many experiments going down the same way. Reason for that is that they aren't really against authority, just not their kind of authority.
If you aren't entrenching the need for active resistance to power and hierarchy, you are expected to fall the same way, that kind of attitude is very much present in actual anarchists, left anarchists.
almost inevitably
as if you're basing this off of some historical examples instead of just regurgitating the same bullshit argument you've heard repeated a million times...
the paradox of tolerance is about tolerating intolerant groups... not about maintaining some good powerful group to prevent some other bad group from taking power.
It requires us to ignore the government and begin setting up the systems and communities we want and need.
What's that
Libertarian Socialism specifies a wide range of systems of political stances that include most if not all forms of Anarchism (excluding AnCaps, if they weren't already), some varieties of democratic socialism, classical libertarianism, etc. It does not include liberalism, laissez-faireism (what some refer to as "libertarianism"), Social democracy, MLism, or any ML-adjacent ideologies.
what, "oxymoron"?