this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
889 points (90.4% liked)
Lefty Memes
4407 readers
175 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)
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.
- 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 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Remains to be seen if anarchism can ever win though.
Statist forces have always triumphed.
Monarchy always triumphed over democracy until it didn't. Slavery always triumphed over abolition until it didn't.
But none of those triumphs were inevitable.
It's nice to think they were: I'd rather live in a world without slavery and with democracy but there was no guarantee of success except the fact that in hindsight it was successful.
Not all forms of government have won out. Nor will all possible forms of government succeed.
Yes, but looking forward from their end, with your perspective, none of them were possible. My point is that it's fallacious to claim that just because it hasn't succeed yet, it can't succeed.
Nowhere does this preclude future victory: this is an accurate representation of the current state of affairs. Anarchy has 0 victories and it remains to be seen if there will be any.
Until 1783 Democracy had no modern victories either, and it very much remained to be seen if it would.
Make a point. Don't make me assume what your point is and then just restate random facts still without making a point.
My point is and always has been the same: we don't and can't know if Anarchism will win out against statist forces or not. All we know is that it never has.
If you're expecting a more polemic argument about Anarchism Bad or something you won't find it. I wasn't here to debate anarchism: just to add a caveat.
I mean your argument boils down to "we can't see the futurere" to which I can only answer "well duh". There's nothing there.
Now we're just waiting to see if anarchism will have that moment where they'll triumph.
Every empire's days are numbered, it's not like anything is destined to be forever. I wonder how many days are left for the Zapatistas?
Past performance is no indicator of future performance. It's entirely possible that the Zapatistas cause the collapse of the Mexican government just as it's possible that they fade away into oblivion.
The luddites were annihilated and their philosophy has never been as prevalent or popular as it was in their uprising. While there's still a chance of a popular resurgence they still missed their best opportunity and were crushed by the state.
History has hundreds of suppressed revolts to every success.
That's not to say it's hopeless: just that it isn't inevitable. We'd like to believe that with enough tries you can succeed but that is a fallacy.
Does anyone else feel like we are in a prisoner’s dilemma with this?