Maybe if people with your ideology only make things that harm you it’s an opportunity to reflect.
People on Lemmy are extremely annoying and refuse to use block lists to tailor their experiences and instead engage in endless circlejerks. The people who need to police the tankies are the worst of the worst.
The people who believe they should write alternative, compatible software to impose their own secret blocklists on the “tankies”, unbeknownst to their users, are the actual worst of the worst.
The worst of the worst is actually evil commies who deliberately post shit that they know is going to get a tripple rainbow argument going >:D
They’re arguing about quantum gravity or something down there. It’s fucking amazing.
I already have ideas for the next one.
I’ll just leave this here. I think there is a nice middle ground somewhere. Where idk.
The fact that this Econ 101 slop video has a paid promotion plus ads I forgot to block says plenty. I question its motives, which seems like rehashing cold war propaganda, as well as your smug above it framing. What do you think this video says? Why, in a material sense, do you think socialism is interesting people in imperialist countries today? I think when you talk about a middle ground, you mean between protecting the privileges we both receive from our born-in positions on the world system, and surviving the failure of capitalism to reproduce itself (it shits the bed every decade or so since 1973; we’re both probably from generations that didn’t get what we were promised)
This is really it.
There’s the fascist-owned platforms…most notably truthsocial, but definitely also X and Meta and all their platforms as well. I’d also say spez has absolutely bent the knee…several times. Fuck /u/spez.
And then there’s the communist-operated platforms. Lemmy, and basically the entire fediverse.
I wouldn’t say all instances are communist operated, certainly .ml, but many of them are just liberal, socialist, technohippies. (A term that I just coined now, and would gleefully apply to myself)
Only reddit still gets any of my traffic, and that’s largely out of muscle-memory.
People really don’t care about communists - it’s the authoritarian boot licker we have a problem with.
Some people seem to care quite a bit.
The Americans?
I don’t see any communists here, officer…
Yeah seriously what’s this post on about? There are no communists on Lemmy; but there’s plenty of bootlickers on here cosplaying as such.
If communism is a failed system, why does the HS keep going after communist places? Surely they’re not a threat right? 🤔
Because there are no communist places. There are places where the ruling class plays pay lip service to the idea, but in reality they aren’t communist. And the US tends to just ignore real implementations of socialism round the world.
There are socialist countries. The idea that communist parties can get by with simple lip service ignores how socialist countries actually function.
Socialism and communism are 2 different things. Just because some country hangs the word socialist in their name doesn’t mean that they are. North Korea comes to mind. And lip service it is. After the revolution and they have executed all the bougie people, the strongest leader consolidates their power and bans all opposition parties. And even anyone who might pose a serious threat is in danger of death or imprisonment. See: Lenin and Mao for the 2 biggest examples.
Soviet Russia fell into a straight up dictatorship and well, Communist China doesn’t even bother to hide that it isn’t anymore. And neither government allows for much in the way of opposition then and now.
The socialist countries I can think of, like the Nordic countries, allow for open political elections and other parties to exist and participate in government. And they gracefully share and relinquish power if they lose an election. And interestingly enough, they don’t feel the need to brag about their socialism either. They just are.
Allende, Lumumba, Sankara and Castro would disagree with you.
Allende was president for about 3 years and committed suicide in office. Either it was a Russian style suicide of convenience or he was unfit anyway. So one cannot say if he would have gracefully given up his power or not. But, historically the odds are not so good.
Lumumba was assassinated 3 years into his presidency. So enough people disagreed with him evidently.
And Castro refused to relinquish office until he died of old age. Much like a king wouldn’t you say?
What does “the HS” mean here?
Should have been “US” but my phone had other plans.
…must be that dang communism again 🤣
Communists? On my equally shared, federated social media!? No way!
from each according to their memes folder, to each according to their degree of unemployedness
But I have no memes folder, Good Sir. Am I poor, rich in other things, or just a boomer?
I do want to add this: I’m not big on theory. There was a time when I found that stuff interesting, but ever since I became acquainted with the concept of map and territory, I’ve been skeptical of any kind of total systems models because I think they tend to be far closer to the imaginal than to reality.
I want to keep my feet closer to the ground. Which is why I find a lot of the debates and flame wars about each person’s preferred -ism to be rather pointless. Every system that tries to meet reality with tangible results must contend with hostility from competitors both within and without. No ideology survives this fully intact.
That all said, I think an understated reality is how wildly successful the software and information freedom movements have been, particularly in our capitalist world (if you want to call it that). At least in the sphere of information itself, the gpl and other copyleft licenses lowkey have the potential to strike at the heart of capital, and have gradually been eroding private property wherever it manages to establish itself. At this point it is unstoppable.
Open-source is a communist, or socialist, or anarchist project because it turns private property against itself and builds commons anew. And yes, property is theft.
What you’re describing is the “all models are wrong, some are useful” problem.
the gpl and other copyleft licenses lowkey have the potential to strike at the heart of capital
The problem is they are legal fictions enforced and upheld by a state that is fundamentally controlled by capitalist interests. If they played by the rules of their own game you would be correct, but they have shown repeatedly that the rules are irrelevant only the outcome matters and the outcome you are hoping for is not one they will allow.
I wholly reject your view on software and capitalism. Libre-software has given capitalists a commons to rape and the ability to accrue capital at a rate that’s new. It’s the bedrock of surveillance-capitalism.
(I have an issue with the name: it’s really just capitalism. I am not convinced by Shoshana’s writings that it needs distinction. Because it’s about computers and software it immediately becomes opaque to laymen and accrues a type of mysticism. Commodification of a new product does not necessitate a new sub-type of capitalism, otherwise there should be distinctions between oil-capitalism, consumer-capitalism, marketed-capitalism and so-forth into an endless jumble of nonsense.
Shoshana’s writings are reactionary. They’re the concerned mumblings of a previously privileged class becoming increasingly exploited as capitalism necessitates new markets to exploit–and that new market now necessitates the surveillance of their class to generate data from which services can be sold.)
Libre-software is a very clear example of why socialist programs fail in competition with capitalist endeavors when the structures of capitalism are not dismantled. The reality is the internet and the economy now operates via libre-software. Just as the working-class is exploited for their labour the commons of libre-software is plundered. Both are undeniable.
The plundering of libre-software does not weaken the capitalist’s position. It only strengthens it and reinforces it. It’s the reason you have the Americans attempting to create a technocracy or techno-feudalism.
You read big yudds regurgitated philosophy and just decided to fuck’n’ yeet that baby out with the bathwater huh?
sadly most Foss supports capital. Copyleft and stallman-y radicalism have always been fringe vs permissive licenses and projects paid for by corpos.
: Person posts something about communism.
: Buncha people in the comments inevitably say the same stale, dumb things about communism.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My girlfriend is different from all the other communists. She doesn’t count.
B-B-B-But Chai-nyha
China? Russia? US? Where’s that 3 Spiderman pointing meme?
"I mean yeah, they absolutely did.
Communism is fantastic in theory, but in reality it doesn’t work, and it won’t ever work, because our species just doesn’t work like that.
People are, by and large, greedy, power hungry and prone to corruption, and this is why we can’t have nice things and are destroying the planet."
OryxAndCake, please enlighten me. From your perspective the need for communism must become immediate. If humans are myopic and selfish the enshrining of an economic system that rewards the most base characteristics of humanity–capitalism–must be opposed now. Safeguards–systemic regulations–must be created to guard against the worst characteristics of mankind. These characteristics are immutable. The need is undeniably apparent. These systems should be democratic, with all citizens being participants exactly to diminish the baser flaws of our nature. That is exactly what communism aspires to do!
Capitalism is contradictory in theory and barbaric in reality. Your dimwitted snark doesn’t make sense. From such a position the capitalist that adulterates their product should be shielded from any consequences. There should be no regulatory decrees or no body polities at all, because those are naive things. No courts or magistrates! Of course this makes sense: humanity is trash! Because of this eternal truth let’s dismantle every polity that attempts to bring justice and enforce laws. Burn it all down, because why would anyone every do anything altruistically?
Don’t you know: people are awful. This is an unchanging constant. The fact nation’s even have any benign or positive institutes is contradictory and is not real, because people are awful: they wouldn’t even attempt such a feat in the first place! They wouldn’t exist, yet they did and they do. Your premise is maddening because it’s not a premise at all. It’s pure infantile snark. Its only purpose is to highlight the need for regulation and the participation of those being governed.
It’s a banal quip about totalitarianism, not communism. It’s misplaced.
I guess TLTR summary could be added here
you uh, replied to the post but I think you meant to reply to that silly sausage who is insisting communism is childish.
It’s a little refreshing to see a communist Mr. Gotcha for once.
?
Hey now not all of us are communists, some of us are deranged Rednecks who throw out the term Jeffersonian socialist to annoy and confuse people.
People really do come into comments sections instead of going to their doctor about their high blood pressure.
Low blood pressure* we’re self medicating.
I wish lemmy had a silence replies feature.
yeah but HASAN PIKER!!!
screams in terror
