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!
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.
ACAB, especially that bastard relative of yours.
The capitalist state and it's forces in the form of Police and Military primarily exist to protect the private property of the rich. All other functions are secondary.
Serious question, how do you suggest we enforce laws without police?
The way I understand ACAB is not to remove all cops, but reform the system fundamentally. It's a flawed system encouraging bad behavior and silence.
If the goal isn't to remove "all cops", isn't it pretty counterproductive that the first two words in ACAB are "all cops"?
ACAB is a statement, not a plan of action
As in, "All Cops Are Bad," not "All Cops Must Be Bad by Definition."
It's perfectly possible to create a law enforcement arm of government that's actually concerned with protecting vulnerable citizens, but that's not what the institution of policing actually focuses on.
To suggest that we can't have law enforcement without propping up a toxic system of professional predators is exactly the presumption they want you to make in order to preserve their jobs. We don't need to capitulate to a lawless fraternity to enforce our laws, we can replace it with something that isn't built on principles of oppression.
That said, their main job at the moment is to protect hoarders of wealth from the social consequences of wealth hoarding. Personally, I don't see that as necessary.
Nobody is advocating for zero police. It'd be better to move the police budget to more social programs to try and help people so they're not pushed into a life of crime. An ounce of prevention is worth of a pound of the cure.
You know, I hadn't thought about it, but I guess being against police brutality must mean I think there shouldn't be any law enforcement at all. Cause I certainly can't imagine a world where there are police who uphold the law but don't beat the shit out of people and kill them indiscriminately.
Your question is absurd. Pointing out that cops beat the shit out of people and kill them indiscriminately in no way presupposes that there should be no cops.
Well, if ACAB, then so are the ones that simply uphold the law without resorting to brutality. It's not SCAB after all. So if that's the idea, asking for a alternative solution to law enforcement does not seem that absurd to me.
ACAB is a critique of the policing system as a whole, not individuals.
Good individuals enforcing a bad system are still as bad as the systems they enforce.
Law enforcement should truly be built around the idea of protecting and serving the greater public, but at this time it's really just legalized violence controlled by the rich, like a hit squad.
The cops are not inherently bad, it's just the system currently encourages and supports bad ones while driving away good ones. Change the system, cops get less bad.
Defunding or otherwise reducing the number of police is just a temporary harm reduction measure, since in a lot of places things are actively worse WITH police (as they stand now) than they would be WITHOUT police. That's not to say things would be great if we permanently abolish police. It's just a choice between two evils and, crazy as it is, actual criminals are the lesser evil in many cases.
Ideally, we would have police, but an entirely different set of police with an entirely different structure supporting them.
For example, make "protect and serve" a job requirement instead of a slogan, end qualified immunity, get rid of grand juries for police, etc
It's true. The good ones get purged and blacklisted, while the bad ones get hired at another station if they get fired for good cause. Just listen to the stories that the actual good cops tell when they're forced out for actually being good.
The system can be fixed, but it would have to be remade from the ground up with a select group of trustworthy people who would have to be very scrupulous about background checks and creating a culture. We might be able to bring in outside consultants from places with better cops, like Europe or Canada.
For starters you don't actually need to enforce law a lot of the time, it's sufficient to simply verbally reprimand or do a number of other non-law-enforcement things to correct bad behaviour.
This is why german/nordic police are famous for how not terrible they are, they're more likely to help you out rather than punish you.
Nothing in this posts says "remove all the cops" but by using the logic of this meme we could remove all the cops by training them to a point of professionalism in which they get terminated from it.
It would take a lot of training.
I don't believe this post is saying that we should fire all cops, and a good cop is a cop that is fired.
What it is saying is that good cops are often fired for speaking out against bad cops. There are many examples of whistleblower police officers being terminated.
What this meme is saying that to identify a cop, the good cops were fired, and the bad cops are beating people up.
It's advocating for a shift in policing where the good cops and retained and model good behavior, where currently, the bad cops are the ones that are retained and model behavior
Restorative Justice is the best if not only way to reliably reduce crime, including that of the chronically abusive cops themselves.