Socialism
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 and constructive discussion from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
A certain knowledge of socialism is expected, if you are new to/interested in socialism, please visit c/Socialism101 before participating here. Socialism101 will gladly help you by answering questions, providing resources etc.
Memes go in c/Lefty Memes
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, upvoting good contributions and downvoting those of low-quality!
Rules
1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith discussion 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" flavour.
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 "Xenial Xerus" 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.
7. 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
(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
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Just say you don't have the foggiest clue what political ideology is all about - there's no reason to dress it up like this.
Hey, all the evils are done by humans, right? So why are you so fast to say human nature doesn't matter at all? Literally every failure of ANY political system is a human failing. A human failing to lead properly, a human failing to hold leaders accountable, a human failing to etc....
People like you want to act like the 1% are some other species and the rest of us are just "normal people being taken advantage of". That's complete bullshit. Our inability to organize and stand up for each other is just as much a part of human nature as it is to be greedy and accumulate resources.
Ok, liberal... lead by example.
How much responsibility do you, personally, carry for all the rape, torture and murder that has been perpetrated in the name of "western civilisation" since the 16th-century?
And what are you, personally, going to do to make up for all of that?
Right, right... do tell, lib - how have you "held" your (so-called) "leaders" accountable today?
So because I disagree with you, you decide to be a dick. Thanks for proving my point about human nature. It's way more animalistic than we're willing to admit, but your actions speak for themselves.
I'm sure my text cut really deep, everlasting scars into your psyche - be sure to go see a therapist and tell them that some internet discourse did more emotional damage to you than existence during late-stage capitalism did.
When told you're a dick, you become a bigger dick. Huh.... Human nature really at work today.
You think I give a fuck? I'm taking a shit laughing at you right now.
Go on, keep crying about how unfair the world is while you act like a twat and wonder why no one wants to help you out 😂
While you're with the therapist, remember to tell them your theories about (what you call) "human nature." That way, they won't have to waste too much time figuring out what is wrong with you.
Sure, dude. I hereby declare that I'm a rather normal and generic person, have no political degree, and am generally uneducated on the finer nuances and only know the broad strokes of various ideologies. Regardless, no one needs higher education to recognize the reality that humans are not creating any form of utopia. That simply isn't going to happen. A brief glance at history is more than enough to show the rise and fall of nations and that nothing lasts, and humans have never been able to make it last even under good environmental conditions because they, themselves, are an utter mess.
So you don't know anything... except you know everything.
Maybe next time try to go for two glances - then you might stop yourself next time from exposing yourself as somebody who doesn't know anything while also (somehow) entitling yourself to expertise on the thing you don't know anything about.
I never called myself an expertise on anything, but it looks like you're trying to. You don't need higher education to see the obvious.
So this is just...
...you hiding behind false modesty?
Just a few short minutes ago you were entitling yourself to expertise on the beliefs of communists... where did all that knowledge all of a sudden go, eh?
We're done, you clearly have nothing to go on.
Is that your "expertise" talking again?