691
A system is what it does
(thelemmy.club)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2026
691 points (97.4% liked)
Lefty Memes
7163 readers
1245 users here now
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of "ML" (read: Dengist) influence. 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, discussion and agitprop/stuff that's better fit for a poster than a meme 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. Please post agitprop here)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Try to use alt text or image descriptions to allow for greater accessibility
(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)
We encourage 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" (read: Dengists) (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.
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
- Sexual 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 3 years ago
MODERATORS
I'm such a nonconformist that I don't conform to your nonconformity. If you destroy the system a new system will take its place since people still need food, water, waste management and the like. Also people getting together, organizing to destroy the system is itself a system.
So... a conformist.
Its sarcasm ( ˘_˘)
As in, don't bother destroying the system for a better one, because people will get water either way?
No. Just that if one's intent is to escape systems all together it's not possible. Similarly if one wants to destroy a system just because it is a system that itself is a system and the ultimate outcome is another system. Maybe a third one that I didn't bring up is whether or not the new system is actually better than the old one won't be known until there is proof, until then it's just on faith that it will be better which is fine.
Makes sense. I didn't see anyone suggesting either A or B though.
It's a latent thing. The people who are good at revolutions typically aren't good at running a country. In a lot of circumstances they are purged because a new power doesn't need a whole bunch of trained and practiced revolutionaries around who aren't well suited for civic duties. Maybe put another way, the people thinking about revolution aren't typically thinking about waste management, roads, crops, and so on.
Yes? We are not anti-system lol.
But you are anti-authority?
Authority figures get into the way of organizing more efficiently
Actually, centralization of management creates a lot of benefits in communication flow, resource allocation and operating efficiency. Lack of centralization results in confusion and task duplication.
Haven't spent much time in the corporate world, have you?
This sounds a communication problem, not a system problem. Decentralized systems are good at adapting to changing environments and are typically harder to destroy. If the complex systems theory side of organisation interests you i would recommend you to check out the desktop regulatory state..
Huh? Communication is a system problem? Why would they be separate issues?
But slower and prone to error, because the same information has to be conveyed to all members of the system, and if the individual members are not coordinated they take individual action leading to duplication of effort and waste of resources, or worse take the wrong action because they only got part of the information or because they are not restricted to follow orders from other members of the system because no one has any authority over anyone else.
This decentralized system requires that every member is acting in good faith for the benefit of other members with no self-interest. That is not practical, it will never happen.
No? If a member starts acting maliciously then they can be easily just cut out by its peers. In contrast to hierarchical systems where you have to blindly trust those at the top.
Any cyberneticist would tell you that networks are superior to vertical hierarchies. Dont take my word for it, read up on complex systems theory and see for yourself.
Anti-unjustified hierarchy. Not anti-organized society.
OK. How is this society organized?
I mean, my political interest tends more towards “what’s the best tangible next step forward” rather than “what’s the ideal way to organize society in theory”. But generally speaking, I’d suggest it be organized from the bottom up through confederations of directly democratic bodies like workers’ councils and municipalities, making decisions via consensus and recallable delegates.
We don't oppose society, but capitalism.
All i'm saying is there's still going to be a system, value, value creation, value distribution and so on. How will we motivate people to do work that is needed that people simply do not want to do? How do we manage supply and demand? Capitalism or any other system still had to manage real world value, labor, and demand as well as human behavior.
Generally people are well mannered when they are taken care of aka have necessities like shelter, food, water, waste management, electricity, internet, healthcare, education, and so on. That said people generally care for themselves and their loved ones first and foremost. That is if anyone has an advantage they will use it for themselves and their loved ones essentially every single time. Also people will always be looking to create an advantage for themselves and their loved ones. This culminates in corruption of systems. Typically systems designed to mitigate this become corrupt themselves aka people get paid in some form or fashion to look the other way or for insider information as to dodge raids and arrest.
We can change systems all day long but we're not changing human behavior anytime soon. I guess short of mass forced genetic engineering which would be horrifically unethical.
I'm a supporter of socialism, that's how we should allocate labor and distribute resources and production.
Yeah but how do we encourage people to do work that's needed that they do not want to do? Also how do we actually mitigate corruption aka people perpetually gaming the system for their personal benefit and paying off anyone intended to stop corruption. Like socialism alone doesn't really directly solve either of those problems. It also doesn't directly solve supply and demand.
Like I'm all for creative solutions but socialism as it is isn't an ultimate philosophy about how to mitigate and manage humans irl. To be fair absolutely no one has solved these problems so far like ever. It's the P=NP of humanity.
You can pay people for labor in socialism, and by the time of communism productive forces will be incredibly advanced, with polytechnical education for all, resulting in easy ability to transfer workers from one industry to another as needed and desired by the workers themselves.
Corruption can be accounted for via mechanisms like recall elections, and working towards elimination of the profit motive. Socialist countries often feature both mechanisms, and involve approval-based voting and bottom-up policy propositions combined with top-down implementation.
I don't know what you mean by "solving" supply and demand. You can plan production and distribution in socialism based on economic inputs, Paul Cockshott's Towards a New Socialism shows an example of how a cybernetically planned economy could work (though he's a massive transphobe and a poor Marxist in many areas).
Socialism is just the first step towards communism, one that can and is implemented already today.
You never heard about egalitarianism have you? 😐
Wow very creative, never seen the "conflate multiple distinct usages of the same word" tactic before /s
You're whale cum?
we can do waste management by kicking you out.
That's not nice. I do find most prefer echo chambers where all statements and posts are in agreement with views they already hold.
you're confusing primitivism for self governance.
i follow Tom Lerher advice, ask a stupid question get a stupid answer.