Flippant Anarchism. A lighter take on social criticism with the aim of agitation.
Post humorous takes on capitalism and the states which prop it up. Memes, shitposting, screenshots of humorous good takes, discussions making fun of some reactionary online, it all works.
This community is anarchist-flavored. Reactionary takes won't be tolerated.
Don't take yourselves too seriously. Serious posts go to [email protected]
Rules
If you post images with text, endeavour to provide the alt-text
If the image is a crosspost from an OP, Provide the source.
Absolutely no right-wing jokes. This includes "Anarcho"-Capitalist concepts.
Absolutely no redfash jokes. This includes anything that props up the capitalist ruling classes pretending to be communists.
No bigotry whatsoever. See instance rules.
This is an anarchist comm. You don't have to be an anarchist to post, but you should at least understand what anarchism actually is. We're not here to educate you.
No shaming people for being anti-electoralism. This should be obvious from the above point but apparently we need to make it obvious to the turbolibs who can't control themselves. You have the rest of lemmy to moralize.
Join the matrix room for some real-time discussion.
You all act like lemmy ML and lemmygrad are the worst, and clowns of fedi, but you tend to ignore fact, that without them, there would be empty hole in our hearts, we would be unable to fill alone.
remember to love your local ML user, they are folks too
In the delths of their souls, they are little beautifull redaf butterflies ready to show their true shape and colors, they only need a bit of warm
Well, that was quite entertaining.
Man hexbear is pissed and just can't help but defend their lust for authoritarians. Then ask for left unity when we won't want to be with people who uncritically support China and North Korea.
Maybe someday hexbear will learn better but today isn't that day.
A good communist is suspicious of all leaders. Because nobody fucks the working class like leaders
Distrusting the vanguard is counterrevolutionary
Well said!
They got so upset some of them resorted to ableism. Just astounding stuff.
I've seen them using ableist slurs, i try to report them when they do.
Such radical leftists they just use disabilities as insults.
And that guy who pretends that hexbear doesn't tolerate ableism while you can hear crickets from them when Yog-something is, to paraphrase him, "calling into question the functioning of someone’s brain [which] is pretty neuronormative" in every other dot ml's c/worldnews' post... Pure gold 🤣
Edit: I can't see replies from hexbear on piefed, but I'm still lurking the thread on db0.
So, Sphere laddie:
Yogthos isn’t a Hexbear, and .ml’s worldnews comm is not a Hexbear comm. Good try, though!
Since when did that prevent you folks from jumping at someone's throat? You called out that pedo mod I don't remember the name, then Nutransphobic. What prevents you from calling out Yogthos if not a lax stance on ableism?
"We take ableism very seriously, we just don't ban people who are on our instance for it." - Hexbear
I understand that this is an anarchist comm, so you're free to post whatever you want, but I don't think it's productive to take a stance that fundamentally rests on misrepresenting what you're critiquing. Since you invoked my username in one of your comments here, I'd figure I'd give the Marxist stance its fair representation.
First, there is no such thing as "true communism." The obsession over purity in politics is a result of dogmatism and book workship.
Secondly, for Marxists, the stance isn't that you "do a state" and then "stop doing the state." For Marxists, not just Marxist-Leninists, the state is purely a body that resolves class contradictions through class oppression. It isn't hierarchy, and it isn't organization. Communism in the marxist conception, as a stateless society, is stateless in that once all property is collectively owned and planned, there is no class distinction. Administration remains, and is not to whither, as that's a necessary product of mass, industrialized production.
Taking that into account, the state can only disappear if all class disappears, and class cannot be abolished until all global production is collectivized. There has never been that point, you cannot have communism in one country. You can be socialist, in that public property can be the principle aspect of the economy and the state can be proletarian in character, but the state can never whither until all states are socialist, interconnected, and borders fading away into one democratic system.
Socialist countries like the PRC do rely on commodity production to engage with the global economy, as they must for the time being. They can't achieve a global system as one single country. As long as the state holds control of the large firms and key industries, and resolves class contradictions in the favor of the proletariat and against the bourgeoisie, then as the economy develops and grows it will continue to take on an increasingly socialized character. You cannot "declare socialized production" with the stroke of a pen, it's something that must arise from development. That doesn't mean the character of an economy that is dominated by public ownership is capitalist, either, just that it is on the "socialist road," ie it is socialist, and working its way to higher levels of socialization until communism is achieved.
This is all starkly different from the anarchist position, that we can develop from the outset a decentralized, horizontalist society. I'm not going to debatelord here, this is an anarchist comm, but if you're going to misrepresent the views of Marxists, then I feel you're doing a disservice by making anarchists less prepared to engage in productive conversation with Marxists.
That doesn't mean the character of an economy that is dominated by public ownership is capitalist, either, just that it is on the "socialist road," ie it is socialist, and working its way to higher levels of socialization until communism is achieved.
This is the crux of the disagreement between anarchists and MLs. I would argue that state ownership - if the state does not adequately represent the will of the people - is not public ownership. A hierarchical state with a flawed and bureaucratic democracy that is prone to corruption inevitably creates and maintains a class of bureaucrats with social, political, and economic privilege. The state - in order to preserve itself - maintains a monopoly on collective ownership, preventing workers from organizing on their own terms.
This is what anarchists mean when they call something "state capitalist." They are arguing that the state itself is a private entity pretending to represent the will of the people.
I'd say the real crux of the argument is in full centralization and collectivization, or full horizontalism and decentralization. The endpoints are different, so the means are different.
Either way, I don't agree that administrators represent a class. Public property is not bourgeois property, it doesn't exist in the M-C-M' circuit of production, it's collective and planned. Even if there's administration, it's a physical, real thing. There will be flaws, there will be issues, but to let perfect be the enemy of progress is an issue. It's less about some metaphysical "will of the workers" and more about material relationships to the means of production and the sublimation of property.
Secondly, the state doesn't "preserve itself," at least the Marxist conception of the state. The state isn't a class, it's a representative of a class, and when all property has been sublimated, there is no class, and no state. There still exists administration, but not special bodies of armed men to oppress other classes, as there are no classes to oppress.
It feels a bit disingenuous to hear the following:
to engage in productive conversation with Marxists.
I mean I got your point the other day, that I shouldn't necessarrily argue about Communistic dogma without reading all the literature, but I had to fight tooth and nail to get to that point and not just be waved away as a bad faith actor. So I was already working hard just to be told to go and read up.
OP is using the same intensity hammer you guys got going on over there. Is it fair?
I don't remember having this convo with you, so I don't have any reference for that convo. OP is misrepresenting the Marxist stance. It's one thing to critique the genuine positions Marxists have, it's another entirely to invent a strawman to argue against. The intensity of the argument isn't the problem, the illegitimacy of the argument is.
I don't think it was with you specifically, more hexbear in general? https://lemmy.ml/post/28545991
Oh, good catch!
I sure do love being treated like I'm a part of a hivemind, and that everyone on Hexbear is interchangeable with no individual characteristics... 🫠 /s
Seriously though, I thought that was an odd statement, but that makes sense.
Yup, that was me. Sorry for mixing you up. I guess you spoke to me like a human there first, that's why your name stuck.
I feel it still doesn't take away too much from my argument. While OP's post is outright malicious and is meant to start a fight, I wasn't doing that on what I thought was a proper place for discussion.
Again, I don't want to jump to conclusions, and I did make a mistake, but don't you see what I'm trying to get at?
Personally, I try my best to adhere to the principle of "no investigation, no right to speak." I'm not perfect at that, but I do my best. Someone who has a strong stance on a subject without doing the due dilligence to justify that strong stance muddies the water. I believe you were guilty of it over in that thread, and I believe OP is guilty of it here. Does that make sense?
Goodness, does it ever.
But my problem was that the group put me in a box. Nobody wanted to know my level of education, just if I read this or that book on communism.
It is a totally fair reason not to engage in argument. It's just... How can I put it...? Just because I didn't read a book, I can't be knowledgable on a subject?
My guesses are that your community is so exposed to bad faith arguments, so you cannot give everyone the time of day. I haven't gone back to reread the thread, but you can probably see how I was basically backing into a corner through the whole thread.
It's a combination of Hexbear having a higher population of well-read communists and anarchists than most instances, and your guess that there are so many bad-faith responses that they are quickly shut down. Hexbear also doesn't have downvotes, so people are forced to actually reply if they want to express why they disagree.
As I said in the other comment, once you stepped back and clarified your position more, you were treated better.
As long as the state holds control of the large firms and key industries, and resolves class contradictions in the favor of the proletariat and against the bourgeoisie, then as the economy develops and grows it will continue to take on an increasingly socialized character.
When has this been achieved in communism?
Cuba, USSR, PRC, etc, though these are/were socialist. Communism, in the Marxist sense (not anarchist), must be global, fully collectivized, etc, while these are examples of single states in the context of a globally capitalist-dominant system. Nevertheless, they are all examples of socialism, where as they developed as socialist countries their economies became increasingly developed and collectivized.
The USSR dissolved for myriad reasons, such as liberal reforms that set elements of the system against each other, and the PRC at one point under the Gang of Four tried to shortcut its way to communism out of a dogmatic approach to socialism, but post-reform as the PRC has been developing, it has steadily been increading the socialized character of its production. The large firms and key industries are firmly held by a proletarian state, and over time as the small and medium firms grow, these are more and more controlled by the public sector.
The USSR dissolved for myriad reasons, such as liberal reforms
The USSR collapsed because of internal contradictions and oppression.
The former is partially true, (though not intrinsic to socialism, but the unique flaws in the later years of the soviet system), the latter, no. The large majority of the people supported the system and wished to retain it until the very end due to the social instability at the time, and the larger majority regret its fall. The "internal contradictions" were the liberal reforms that added elements embodied into the system that worked against a collectivized and planned economy.
The soviet economy was relatively strong, but towards the end because of liberalization, as well as problems from needing to dedicate a large proportion of production to millitarization to keep parity with the US, it began to decrease the rate of growth that was so rapid earlier on.
More importantly, it's absolutely true that the dissolution of the USSR was avoidable. The mistakes made by the soviets towards the end don't need to be repeated, we can learn from what worked so well with the socialist system while also not repeating their mistakes. The torch is carried on by countries that have learned, like Cuba, the PRC, etc.
Marxism is a science, and is improved through practice.
Marxism is a political religion with sacred texts, prophets, a promised paradise on earth, and superficial pseudoscientific trappings. It has killed more people than any other ideology in history.
Whatever is written in a book is right — such is still the mentality of culturally backward Chinese peasants. Strangely enough, within the Communist Party there are also people who always say in a discussion, "Show me where it's written in the book." When we say that a directive of a higher organ of leadership is correct, that is not just because it comes from "a higher organ of leadership" but because its contents conform with both the objective and subjective circumstances of the struggle and meet its requirements. It is quite wrong to take a formalistic attitude and blindly carry out directives without discussing and examining them in the light of actual conditions simply because they come from a higher organ. It is the mischief done by this formalism which explains why the line and tactics of the Party do not take deeper root among the masses. To carry out a directive of a higher organ blindly, and seemingly without any disagreement, is not really to carry it out but is the most artful way of opposing or sabotaging it.
You're deeply unserious.
Marxists will always have a wall of text full of theoretical facts and logic to point to. Practice looks very different. It means no diversity of opinion, oppression, secret police, gulag, millions of deaths.
Contrary to you I actually know people who have lived in socialist countries. I even have a former high ranking party member in my family.
lifting billions out of extreme poverty
Industrialization did that, not Marxism.
Not only do Marxists have theory, we also have practice. Practice doesn't look different from theory, actually, you'd know this if you actually understood that Marxists reject the perfect utopian wonderland from earlier socialists like Robert Owen. There is diversity in opinion, spirited debate, and many different perspectives. The bourgeoisie is indeed oppressed, as they should be. Socialist states do indeed have prisons. The "millions of deaths" you hint at, in reality, corresponds to far fewer deaths than the victims of liberalism and capitalism.
I have spoken with people that grew up in socialism, and current citizens of socialist countries like the PRC. I don't rely on anecdotes for my stances, I read historical texts, statistics, track metrics, and engage with theory and practice. I don't care who your family member is, I can find Flat Earthers or those who think the US is the greatest country on the planet. What matters is the actual, on the ground facts.
Industrialization in a planned fashion, with a direct focus on uplifiting the proletariat, was the cause of uplifting from poverty. Without Marxism, using England as an example, capitalism skyrocketed poverty. The working class had it far worse than as independent peasants for a long time, life expectancy dropped, and it was only when the proletariat began to organize violently did concessions come and begin to eventually surpass feudalism in England. In socialist countries, the impact was immediately positive.
You're deeply unserious.
Marxism is a good ideology if you want to stay in power and radically transform a society and economy. That kind of revolutionary transformative power also means huge mistakes are in store as well. Sure the workers remained fed by taking away the food from the peasants and causing famines. See the Holodomor and cultural revolution for examples.
Some of the socialist planned economies made big progress initially industrializing, providing education, and health care. They hit a wall at some point though.
Have you looked at the newly independent countries from decolonization in Africa and elsewhere? How did they fare compared to others?
You act as if unions and labor movements are unheard of in liberal capitalist countries. Their activities and the higher overall economic prosperity lead to workers in the west being overall better off than in the socialist block.
That's a horrible misattribution of the famines in the early USSR and PRC, where famine was common before collectivization and industrialized farming. It wasn't a misappropriation of food, but natural causes and a government ill-equipped to overcome the force of nature without industrialized farming. See why despite the early famines, life expectancy was consistently rising, unlike England where the introduction of industrialization caused a drop in life expectancy for a long time.
The "higher economic prosperity" in the global north is because of imperialism. African countries are no longer traditional colonies, but are largely imperialized by western countries. The global south does the majority of the labor and production, the global north does the majority of consumption. The fact that you don't even consider that this is true means you likely have never actually engaged with Marxist theory (which, to be fair, was already obvious, just moreso now).
The "wall" hit by the USSR was an increase in liberalization, recovery from 20 million dying due to World War II, and having to devote a ton of resources to millitary purposes to prevent the US from nuking them outright. It wasn't because of socialism inherently. Again, see the PRC, where there's no "wall" in sight despite the economy being increasingly socialized.
The unions and labor movements in the global north also depended on the USSR as an example of what happens if concessions aren't given. When the USSR fell, workers rights in the global north shrank massively and wealth disparity rose massively. And, again, they depend on imperialism! The socialist bloc produced for themselves, their positive acheivements didn't depend on imperialism, but their own labor. Not true at all for the global north.
Again, you're deeply unserious. You have no clue what you're talking about. If I heard from 3 family members about how Biden is an ultracommunist and Trump is going to save the world, that doesn't mean shit. What matters is looking at the facts, statistics, trends, and metrics.
Edit: lmao, of course you're a genocide denier that supports the fascist Zionists. No wonder you don't factor in imperialism, you think it and settler-colonialism are good things. You bat for the IOF for free and say they are doing a good job of minimizing their genocide.
“higher economic prosperity” in the global north is because of imperialism.
The Soviet Union was just as imperialist as the Russian Empire it inherited. They ruled puppet states across half of Europe on top of that.
No, it was not. It did not export capital, nor was it under the control of finance capital. The Soviet Union wasn't imperialist. Again, you're deeply unserious, have no idea what you're talking about, and are a genocide-denying Zionist sycophant for the IOF.
I like how they completely skipped over the genocide denial part lol. Even if they did address it, there's not much excuse to justify genocide denial lmao
Yep, if you check their history it's filled with pro-IOF hasbara, I even think they're debating in other threads today on if Israel is commiting genocide or not.
I know lol, I saw their comments a few months ago and just tagged them as a zionist. Liberal mental gymnastics never cease to amaze me, defending a literal proven genocide 🫠
Absolutely. Not only was it genocide pre-October 7th, but now it has ramped up to spiking sugar with narcotics, opening fire on Palestinians running for aid, and so much more. Fuck anyone trying to play cover for the IOF.
The Soviet Union wasn’t imperialist
They just loved oppressing worker's revolts like in the GDR and CSSR and invading Afghanistan. Totally not imperialist. Russification of Siberia and Ukraine totally not Imperialist. Deportations and ethnic cleansing of millions, must be anti imperialism. A war against communist China to conquer outer Mongolia? Just a friendly visit of working class solidarity.
Gotta love gish gallop, a dash of outright lies, a good deal of completely inventing a new definition of Imperialism, and a large heaping of ignoring that you're a genocide enthusiast that bats for the IOF for free, and thus isn't worth taking seriously.
Holy Jesus am I glad my new account is on an instance that defederated the tankie triad. Looking at this thread without logging in is something else.
This happens like clockwork whenever a meme makes fun of authcoms from a typical anarchist perspective. Always! You should see the 1000-comment salt mines of the very first such post I made.
I kind of miss them. Seeing their unhinged political opinions made me feel normalish.
Tankies <---> Liberals. Same thing, different imperial branding.
