298
Literally France right now
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
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 08 Jul 2024
298 points (79.3% liked)
Lefty Memes
4411 readers
26 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
The US used to have between 4 and 6 parties, depending on how you counted. That gradually worked it's way down to 2. The election of 1860 had one Republican running against 4 different Democrats, all with their own little micro party. What Republican and Democrat mean in this context doesn't mean what it means today, and that's really not the point. What the point is is, that was the last time.
That election saw the Republican take more than 50 percent. We had some "issues" for a few years, and so elections prior to 1877 won't really have much to draw a comparison here, and the election of 1880 we had two parties and no more. No little factions trying to gain power, no off shoots quarreling and splitting the vote. Two massive parties of people that mostly agreed with each other.
Prior to that we had a number of elections which were arguably two party, more than one where out of spite everyone ran under the same party regardless. But none since have had a reasonable showing of any significant third party. With two major exceptions, so major they each get their own blurb in the text books as unique elections. When Theodore Roosevelt decided he didn't like who replaced him, lost the nomination and started his own party knowing full well it would give the office to the Democrats, and 1992, when Ross Perot decided he didn't like Bush that much and ran against him as an independent, splitting off just enough votes to give the office to the Democrats and causing both parties to literally change the rules on who could conceivably run without their blessing.
You don't have two parties now.
What you have is a coalition, effectively a party, and I'm response, because apart they lost, another coalition.
This is how you get two parties.
Europe is not homogenous in political landscapes, and "coalition government" means very different things depending on where you are.
There are countries like France where most elections are first past the post, with a very strong culture of "a single party must have an absolute majority in order to govern" and a system that leads to 2-3 heavily dominant parties. Coalitions like NFP are therefore devised before the elections, so they basically function as a single party with diverging internal ideologies.
There are also a lot of counties where most elections are some kind of proportional representation, where a single party almost never gets an absolute majority. Coalitions are negotiated after the elections, often made of parties with widely diverging ideologies but still trying to work together. I believe that it's a more democratic system as there is better representation, governing parties keep each other in check and consensus culture helps taming the most radical elements despite its inherent instability.
As we are, we are in a Northern European situation with no majority despite ou electoral system, but we would need a massive shift in political culture in order to get there. Our tankies (LFI mostly) and neolibs (Ens) spent so much time in the last years shitting on each other that they refuse to work together despite it being the only way to get an absolute majority and actually get shit done and make the fascists irrelevant.
Coalitions are literally the primary way the rest of the world avoids devolving into the US’s corrupt two-party system. It’s proven quite effective.
If that could be combined with RCV in more countries (or US states), then it could far more strongly prevent the consolidation of political parties and return more power to the people themselves.