Maybe if people with your ideology only make things that harm you it's an opportunity to reflect.
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!
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
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.
Nothing wrong with communists. I feel so radicalized by capitalism I'm almost there anyway.
It's the Russian/China apologists that are annoying.
Russia is bad, Chia.na is bad, and the U.S. is bad. All those things can be true. But all the insufferable posts about how great China and Russia are, and all the bad things you have heard about them m are just Western propaganda...
If they were serious about their ideology, then why do they care so much about someone thinks about China or Russia.
If they didn't brigade those issues so much, straight up ban people, just because they disagree, or hlrefuse to have any real discussion that doesn't center on just shutting other people down, then maybe people outside their group might take them more seriously.
here’s the neat part: anyone who unironically thinks china or russia are communist is a dumbass and can be ignored or is trolling.
China and russia being communist is an American right wing talking point.
No leftists consider the russian federation communist, and not even the cpc considers china communist. They claim to be attempting to realise communism by first developing socialism to the point that they can.
Whether you believe them or not aside, you're sort of showing your ignorance. Even the scary tankies on hexbear and ml or whatever don't think they're communist. That's why the term actually existing socialism (aes) is aes and not aec.
tl;dr of my response: China ain't Socialist, and shouldn't be emulated in our struggle for socialist revolution worldwide.
Many leftists don't consider China and the CPC to even be socialist, many socialists around the world see the CPC as a ruling class of another capitalist country, albeit with much higher rates of nationalised industries.
We think you can't really call yourself socialist when the workers don't have meaningful democratic control over society. And unless you're being dishonest or are just misinformed, the workers most certainly don't have control of society in China. Less so then here (Australia), even.
One only need to talk to people in China to realise this, most people I've spoken to in China, even though who support the government, describe a very hierarchical benevolent government.
One simply can't look a lefty in the eye and say China is socialist, unless those "Chinese Characteristics" suffixed to "Socialism" simply stand for "without democracy".
There is no meaningful method to agitate for political change (no, being in one of the other parties most certainly doesn't count), there are no workers unions (strikes are heavily repressed and the only union that exists is controlled by the CPC, though despite that some groups of workers still sometimes bravely strike 💪) no freedom of political association, no democracy in the workplace.
It's really hard to claim China is socialist, yet people outside of China still do, just because they're holding the banner of socialism...
I don't hate China, it's a pretty nice place, with lovely people, and certainly a nicer place than the shithole of the US. I've been to China multiple times, and you wouldn't catch me dead in the US.
But they just ain't Socialist, and shouldn't be emulated in our struggle for revolution worldwide.
I think that's a bit reductive. While I am a sceptic that they'll ever really succeed and think they've fucked themselves a bit with how much power Chinese tech companies have been allowed to amass, there are true believers among the party and the central committee. I mean they teach Marxism in school (sort of).
In general chinese people describe extremely high satisfaction with their government, and respond more positively to questions like "If I have an issue I can go to my local politician and resolve it"^[https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/] than Westminster derived systems (which I would also not dignify with the word democracy) and it is worth asking why this holds while most so called democracies have hostile and parasitic governments.
If the will of the people is enacted then this is a sort of democracy, while if you vote and then the people you elect serve elites and ignore you this isn't really democratic.
Structurally some things in China are working vastly better than elsewhere, and it's worth trying to understand /why/ their government seems to work for the people so much more than other systems.
But I was merely relaying what they claim about themselves to point out even people fully committed to toeing their party line would not call them communist.
Hexbear and .ml are really this weird, yeah. They don't even pretend to be socialist yet they just insist it's AES.
i made no indication i believed them or them to be communist. i was speaking of how trollish those who claim china/russia is communist are. they’re almost always “libertarians” or some form of boomer.
Anarcho communists welcome you. We hate all nation states equally. Unfortunately there aren't enough of us to brigade anything.
I can understand hating all nation states, but hating them equally? Couldn't be me.
For anyone who wishes to know more Now And After: The ABC of Communist Anarchism was written to explain anarcho-communism in plain, easily understood, language.
It begins by explaining the current capitalist system (now) and then goes on to explain anarchism (after).
It is available to read or download in multiple formats, for free, here: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alexander-berkman-what-is-communist-anarchism#toc2
This isn't terrible, but it's important to be aware that the class analysis and definition of capitalism in this is nonsense. The capitalist class is not just "rich people" and the working class is not just "poor people." Capitalism is not defined by...whatever this attempts to define it by. Capital is the power to prioritize the allocation of resources and labor.
Capitalism stands for the idea that the purpose of all value, surplus and base really, of production is to increase the capital of the holders of capital. That is it. It is the worship of allocative power solely for the sake of allocative power. And that's why it inevitably degenerates into fascism--the worship of power solely for the sake of power.
All class dynamics must oriented themselves within the structure of that allocative power analysis. The capitalist class is not "rich" people, or at least not definitionally, and the working class is not poor people. The capitalist class are those who derive increase to their allocative power primarily from the direction of capital under the capitalist system. On the flip side, working class is anyone who increases their own allocative power primarily through the application of their own labor. The vague vibes based class analysis in this would effectively place servers (like, at a restaurant) as bourgeoisie capitalist-class/adjacent just like doctors, lawyers, programmers, and the like. I think it's clear why that maybe feels like complete bullshit to most peeps.
Did you read a different book?...
He's very much aware of what capitalism is and clearly doesn't just believe it to be "rich people". What nonsense.
He literally says the bourgeoisie, namely doctors, lawyers, and the like, are, in their interests, aligned with the capitalist class if not altogether a part of it. And even the parts you quote are hard to parse as they are both focused on the outputs of production rather than the allocative power leading to production but also touch upon the problem of how our overly financialized economies obfuscate the allocative power issue. At the same time, when he says shit like "the business man is entirely at [the big bankers financiers] mercy" it makes me think we are not on the same page here, unless his definition of business man is not the investor class--absolutely capitalist class--business man I use.
It's almost as if anarcho communism isn't based upon Marxist definitions...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_communist_ideologies#Anarchist_communism
there are dozens of us!
I feel like things would get awkward after the revolution.
I'm fine with someone having a negative opinion of China so long as they don't use that as a purity test and demand everyone else denounce China, calling people "fascists" or "tankies" and refusing to work with them otherwise.
Obviously, the vast majority of people on here don't live in China, and we generally have bigger fish to fry domestically to worry about meddling in their affairs. I would turn the question around and ask why people are so invested in making sure everyone sufficiently condemns China instead of working together to address the more pressing matter of class conflict.
This is exactly how I feel about a lot of anti-China spaces. It's difficult to have a real discussion about almost any topic related to China because if you suggest that anything about them isn't the worst thing ever you get accused of being a fascist and dismissed, if not banned. If .ml goes too far in the other direction, then it is at least somewhat unique in doing so, and it's worthwhile to have a space where non-mainstream perspectives can be discussed.
Some of us are just tired of western people not wanting to get a little nuance about none western countries. And the instance you admit that ofcourse no place is perfect you get hit with. "See x is bad, communism can't work in reality." It is tiresome and eventually I end up defaulting to standard answers or blocking people if they are rude.
On top of that I do think it is amazing how for instance India, China and Vietnam has improved the lives of billions, but every single time it hit western news it is followed by "but at what price".
And finally I have realized that things are not always as they seem and the propaganda machine makes it hard to discern the reality of many things. This goes for everything. I have no clue if it actually is dangerous to go USA or it just seem that way.
The US is indeed very dangerous. If the police don't harass you out of boredom, the drugged up homeless man will chase you down the street screaming.
Literally happened to me a few days ago, fucking hate it here.
USian here. It's not dangerous as long as you're not even vaguely latino.
It kinda is though. You have to worry about scammers/pickpockets/hustlers/gangs in a couple or spots (although they mostly stick to murdering each other).
Plus basal violence is extremely high. Like even by intentional homicides it's in the top third https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
There's a lot of the world without a "bad part of town"
Pickpocketing is not a thing in America. Too subtle. We are a mugging people. However, I will say that your chances of encountering gang violence as a tourist/traveler are quite low. The main danger when visiting here is the government/police.
I want to say "how much of that is gang violence" but I don't want to take one in the neck.
It’s a lot of you count ICE as a gang.
Based on this thread I think I will stay my horses. No fun in that kind worry for what would have been a once in a life time experience.
Also I find it interesting I get 7 downvotes for answering OP in good faith. Lemmy is not Reddit and I am happy for it, but there are a lot of trenches here
Those people are called tankies
I haven't seen any posts about how great Russia is
Well then what's your opinion on Russia and the Soviet Union?
I once got at least 10 comments telling me how good russia and china are and how bad USA is and that i am a USA sucker, welp kinda my fault for making a comment in the wrong instance