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.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/11258523
American Democrats try not to support a fascist agenda challenge (impossible)
I wish I had a cookie for every time a Democrat told me the concentration camps are good ackshually
Fuck your border and your president
I rather imagine socdems consider themselves socialists, probably not liberals though. But we weren't having that discussion, so I guess you were just bringing attention to your community rules? Fair enough I guess.
I've just noticed things getting way too tribal lately and the communist/socialist left seems hell bent on fighting with the liberals instead of the conservatives. Personally, I think it's counterproductive to dunk on the liberals when there's so many actual fascists around, and it's getting a bit tiring. Have they as a party moved too far to the right? Definitely. Would it be a step in the right direction if people like Bernie Sanders got a chance to make a difference? Definitely. Would it be far enough? Almost certainly not, but you know, this is the US we're talking about, they're never going to go fully socialist. You've got to have some level of pragmatism if you want to get any movement back to the left.
If someone is socially progressive and anti-authoritarian, then I don't need to know much else about their politics, I'll make the assumption they are probably a decent person. I really don't care if someone labels themselves a socialist, a liberal or an anarchist, or any of the dozens of atomistic political groupings on the left, or if they don't give a shit about politics. If they are trying to improve the current state of society in whatever way they are able, then they really don't deserve to get dunked on. It's mean spirited and counterproductive and there's too much hate going around.
I mean, what's your end goal with this strategy of hating on the not-quite-left-enough? I genuinely don't understand it.
hmm ok where to start
first of all, I'm sorry if my
seemed like a passive aggressive reminder of the com's rules, since it was not meant as such but rather an honest expression of opinion, that liberals and so called social democrats could not be further away from socialism than conservatives.
Consider this: socialism (by it's non-revisionist defenition) is the public ownership or democratic control over the economy by working ppl (instead of ppl who own for a living as it is now). Liberals and "socdems" have accepted the neoliberal economic base and have long given up on actually overcoming it. Unlike their openly reactionary or conservative counterparts (or rather brethren in defense of financial capital), however, they do a ton of virtue signaling and fluffy talking about how they're going to fix things.
The Republicans act as the stick of capital, while the Democrats as it's carrot.
From them you'll get nothing but token concessions at best (like some of their domestic policies) and reactionary politics with a nice paint job at worst (like their foreign policies. They still have us imperialism at heart, even if they might put on a silk glove on the iron fist that the Republicans use, it hurts just as much in the global south).
To quote X:
All their supposed progress and opposition to capital only reinforces and propels capitalism, alleviating the need for fascism just for a little longer (which arises for the ruling classes when the majority of the population grows disillusioned with their lies, be they conservative or "progressive"). In the end only legitimizing the underlying framework, without ever threatening it.
Now don't get me wrong, in the USA the dictatorship of capital reigns supreme and manifests in essentially two wings of the same party ("The United States is a one-party state, but with typical us opulence, they have two of them."), swapping the mask of opposition every once in a while (good cop, bad cop). Under such conditions I also would vote for the Democratic party. However the apologetic attitude of "Vote for the Dems, it'll gradually solve our problems and save our democracy from the reps", which translates in all the agitprop efforts being put into electing one rich corrupt old man over another, takes energy away from the real socialist struggle: not fighting the symptoms, but taking the problem that is capitalism by the root and ripping it out. You can vote all you like, you will still live under dictatorship of capital...
As Berthold Brecht said:
In other words: fascism is a degenerated, protective form which capitalism relies on, when it can no longer fool the people and keep them docile with liberalism
(just to clarify on my use of quotes: I do not think of the people I quote as some form of authority to appeal to in mediation. It's just when I remember what someone else has already put into words (much better than I ever could) smth relevant to the discussion, I like to use it directly and give credit (when I can remember who said it) instead of rephrasing it.)
tl;dr: the distinction between dems and reps is not one of "left/right" but rather one of "right/further right". And the distinction between socialist on the one and liberals (and their socdem variety), revisionists, and outright reactionaries in a red coating on the other side, is not a case of leftist infighting but the distinction between the collaborators of capital and it's enemy's.
You can still vote for the Dems, just don't waste your (and the peoples) energy on creating the illusion that they'll be anything other but a temporary breathing stop in late stage capitalism's road to fascism.
FYI I'm not American so I won't be voting for either. But I think you are contradicting your own argument when you say:
What I was arguing was that the Democrats (aka liberals) are further left than the Republicans (at least in some key social areas). So, while you have defined the difference here as right/further right, that is still an acknowledgment that they are to the left of the Republicans, even if they are "not-quite-left-enough" to qualify as leftist from your ideological perspective. So, it still makes no sense to treat them as equally bad options - there are still degrees of 'bad' we should be concerned about to minimise harms.
It seems to me that many people on the left are currently earnestly trying to destabilise the US by pushing it even further towards right wing fascism, in the hope that it'll eventually provoke some sort of domestic revolution or an international backlash to US influence. This seems to me like a high-stakes strategy that could horribly backfire in so many ways, and I just can't get on board with it.
I fail to see the contradiction tbh. It is precisely bc I am aware that the Dems are more progressive than the Republicans, that I said "I'd vote for the dems" (despite both of them serving capital).
And ofc the Dems are not leftists if we define the status quo as capitalism and leftism as the progressive opposition to the status quo (and those are the definitions I uphold).
Also I (unfortunately) am not posting from a socialist agitprop centre. I am under no illusion that my (shit)posts will destabilize anyone or anything. They are meant for other socialists and are a way of venting frustrations among other things.
tl;dr: one can recognize the Dems as the "lesser" of two evils, while still heavily criticizing the fact that the only choice is between two (or more under multi-part bourgeois "democracy") evils in the first place...
"If voting changed things systematically, it would be illegal"