this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
1065 points (89.1% liked)
Lefty Memes
4124 readers
651 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, upvoting good contributions and downvoting 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,
as well as 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.
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.)
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
Vote splitting is not a myth. It's just math. Let me explain with an example:
1000 people at a conference are deciding where to order catering and hold a vote:
The restaurants on the ballot are:
If the people who want Asian recognize the strength of their combined numbers, then they can tip the scales by all voting for the favorite between Vietnamese and Thai. In this situation, we get 490 votes Mexican, 510 votes Vietnamese, and 0 votes Thai. This time Vietnamese wins and the majority of people, the 510 who prefer Asian, are either happy or satisfied with the result while only 490 are disappointed.
If everyone votes for their favorite, then we get 490 votes Mexican, 480 votes Vietnamese, and 30 votes Thai. In this case, Mexican wins and the majority of people, the 510 who prefer Asian, are left disappointed while only 490 people are happy with the result. The vote has been split and the result is that the entire conference is worse off for it.
By the way, the ratio of 480 Vietnamese to 30 Thai is irrelevant as long as neither value is 0. That ratio can be fixed to any positive value and a situation can be described in which vote splitting occurs with that specific ratio of Vietnamese supporters to Thai supporters. That's why vote splitting isn't too uncommon - any number of people voting Thai has the potential to split the vote. The one caveat is if literally every Vietnamese supporter decides to vote Thai as well; in that scenario, no vote splitting can occur. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen in practice because it's easier to convert the Thai supporters who are smaller in number than it is to convert the Vietnamese supporters who have greater numbers.
If you want examples from history, there are plenty. Our electoral college amplifies the effect since it breaks one federal election down into a large number of state elections, any of which can exhibit vote splitting. Other people have linked to them in this discussion and you can find more elsewhere online.