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I don't know the way, but this ain't it
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2024
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Lefty Memes
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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.
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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.
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as well as condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
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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).
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The only dangerous minority is the rich.
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We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
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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.
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(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
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Not according to your definition. My childhood house burned down because of an electrical fire. So according to your logic, the purpose of electricity is to burn down homes. It's absurd.
Yes, the system of electrifying houses is to enable widespread use of electrical devices at the cost of a few electrocutions and fires.
So why do we have the National Electric Code?
I don't know who we is here, by the blithe arrogance I'll assume usa.
Presumably because people decided there were too many electrocutions and fires and so modified electrification of houses to reduce that? What do you think you're point is? It's not that people are gleefully throwing children into fires for their TVs, it's just that stuff does what it does.
Sweet. So the point of electrification is to power homes, with a side effect of burning some down. But we can try to improve electrification, so fewer homes burn down. And over time, as we've improved the system, fewer homes have burned down.
The purpose of the system is not to burn homes down. The purpose of the system is to power homes. Some homes burn down, but that doesn't mean that by using electricity we're okay with that. And it doesn't mean we should abandon the idea of electricity. It means we should take the system and try to improve it.
Now we can bring that back to our current democratic capitalist social system. Democracy and capitalism are systems that sometimes produces death and misery. Death and misery is not the intent of the systems. We can still use the system without accepting that death and misery are a natural part. Instead, we try to improve the system. Not tear it down, improve it. And it has been improving. Not steadily, it jumps forward and then falls back at times, but over time there's been a general upward trend in happiness and quality of life. People in the 2020s have a better quality of life than people in the 1920s, who had a better quality of life than those in the 1820s. We're making things better. We don't need to tear it down.
You're being stupid and trying to wiggle out from something so obvious as to be tautological https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does
That's a cool thought experiment, and can be useful in cases where people are lying about the intent of a system (ie poll tax - - > voter suppression), but it's just a thought experiment, not a tautology. It's a way to look at a system from a different viewpoint to gain insights. It's not descriptive of reality.
Again, the point of electrification is not to burn down houses. If you agree with this statement, then your premise is wrong.