this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
457 points (94.2% liked)
Lefty Memes
5986 readers
221 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)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Use alt text or image descriptions to allow greater accessibility
(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)
We require alternative text (from now referred to as "alt text") to be added to all posts/comments containing media, such as images, animated GIFs, videos, audio files, and custom emojis.
EDIT: For files you share in the comments, a simple summary should be enough if they’re too complex.
We are committed to social equity and to reducing barriers of entry, including (digital) communication and culture. It takes each of us only a few moments to make a whole world of content (more) accessible to a bunch of folks.
When alt text is absent, a reminder will be issued. If you don't add the missing alt text within 48 hours, the post will be removed. No hard feelings.
0.5.1 Style tip about abbreviations and short forms
When writing stuff like "lol" and "iirc", it's a good idea to try and replace those with their all caps counterpart
- ofc => OFC
- af = AF
- ok => OK
- lol => LOL
- bc => BC
- bs => BS
- iirc => IIRC
- cia => CIA
- nato => Nato (you don't spell it when talking, right?)
- usa => USA
- prc => PRC
- etc.
Why? Because otherwise (AFAIK), screen readers will try to read them out as actually words instead of spelling them
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 irrationally 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
You act like authoritarianism is cohesive. Thats absurd. It is by nature turned against itself.
Not everyone needs to be in lock step on everything. People can disagree and shit can still get done.
Lol sure. Totally natural.
Who of course have fully developed brains and exist in a vacuum.
Hot
Lie, sure. Cheat, probably. Nothing stops this. Tyranny only puts it on steroids. Stealing... Gets harder with different concepts of ownership. For a little while i had this weird ascetic thing going, almost compulsively shared everything i had. Could leave my stuff out in a homeless camp, and as long as people knew it was mine, it was not taken.
This is cultural. The idea that readiness and resilience are fractipus, individual.
Thats some strongly counterfactual kool-aid. Literally the opposite is true. Actual tests of policies show reducing violence or generalky sucking less is how you make people suck less. Look some up! Evidence based policies exist! But the absolute myth that coercive violence stops anything bad is nonsense.
Yeah, it totally stops interpersonal horrors war exploitation and a few delusional shit heads literally ending the world for their imaginary line. So glad weve got coercive violence to stop cops from murdering children in the streets and keep people from kidnapping my neighbors and keep people from using chemical weapons on my friends to keep them from taking my neighbors.
Im so glad coercive violence has kept forever chemicals out of the rain. To keep endangered species from being hunted. To keep gangs of armed men using our tax dollars to smuggle in drugs of abuse then smash up safe injection sites. I'm so glad we have coercive violence to keep us fucking safe. Im glad it doesnt incentivize cutthroat individualist desperation that takes a the worst of what you pretend it stops up to 11.
i would have appreciated if you had just quoted what i said, instead of building strawmen of my points to unfairly delegitamize, and to ultimately refuse to resolve my concerns. it seems more and more apparent that you have no intention of attempting to convince me and more interested in signaling to your peers. i remain unconvinced, as the ultimate answer to my concerns from you amounts to they don’t exist and were wholly invented with the creation and scourge of capitalism. That’s not convincing, and until there’s a frank discussion about how an anarchist system handles complex, large-scale interdependence, there’s no headway to be made here
Youre not looking to be convinced. You tell me me how coercipn actually helps. Like, cite some sources.
Coordination is hard work, and coordination doesn't help.
Ask anyone who's had to eork with both deep linux and deep windows.
You ask how, but the actual explanations are long, im sure I've referenced some, and youre still just repeating 'but muh violence', a thing that does not meankngfully cohere. I can't argue with that in short form in good faith.
And wgag explanation i can do here, you just skip over til you find someyhing to argue with. You're not looking to be convinced. You're looking to justify what you already believe and lying to both our faces.
you say that you can not argue in good faith, i am already convinced that capitalism as i experience it does not work for very long. yet i have concerns that specifically anarchy is not scalable. and so my current belief is that democracy needs to be reset continuously.
i believe that i have been more then fair, this was your explanation to fail. i have many more issues that i have not gone over with anarchy, but i feel that if there are no mechanisms to handle the negatives of human nature, then i realy can’t even start to explore them. so far anarchy seems to be a holding pattern until the next force moves in that solves these deficiencies. And looking across history, again and again, i see this exact senario play out each time.
coordination can be done, but you have no answer to scaleability, discord, and to bad actors, nor to disenfranchisement of the minority.
but i guess your admitting that you are incapable of honestly answering, then i guess we are done! there is no where else to go.
You can't grasp fundamental ideas. Ive cited sources i think. I'm not going to explain this; you can read a book. A paradise made in hell, the dawn of everything: a new history of humanity, debt: the first 5000 years, and anything on the CNT or zapatistas. Until youve read about all those, im not interested in talking to spevifically you.
Until cleared if your fundamental delusion, i cannot argue with you, and you can only loop on your one thing. That's not something I'm interested in validating or find it amusing to fuck with. It's boring and stupid.
Bonus points: prove your coercion actually creates coordination; im convinced extant coordination happens mostly in spite of your coercive violence. I've asked this several times but you haven't even nodded to it. You're just restatinh your point and not responding yo anything ive said. I'm not even sure you're really reading this. If you are, you're reading only with an eye to confirm what you already believe, rather than try to figure out what others are thinking, and talking at that is pointless.