An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the “ML” influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is an undogmatic, constructive and good-faith environment for Anarchists and Marxists (and communists of all stripes rly) to discuss the merits, differences, and similarities between Anarchism and Marxism.

A certain knowledge of Anarchism and/or Marxism is expected, if you are new to this/interested in learning, please visit c/Socialism101 and c/Communism101 respectively, before participating here. The 101 communities will gladly help you by answering questions, providing resources etc.

Memes go in c/Lefty Memes and c/Commie Memes respectively.

Please don’t forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, upvoting good contributions and downvoting those of low-quality!

Rules

0. Don’t just post memes, images, or videos. This is a place for text-based discussion

Relevant images and documentaries related to your question or prompt are welcome to be linked, however.

Also refrain from low-effort posts and intentionally provoking/baiting people.

1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith discussion is enforced here.

This entails:

• Not strawmanning
• Refraining from adhominems
• Not spreading baseless assertions
• Not basing your argument on [Person X] said [Y]. Not everything Lenin or Kropotkin wrote is automatically correct bc it was written by this or that personality. Arguments should stand by themselves without appealing to a personality/authority

And just generally trying to keep an open mind. Remember: other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven’t considered yet.

Please also feel encouraged to include context and resources/sources in your posts and comments. Provide those things if you are asked in good faith.

2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such,

as well as condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the “anti-USA” flavour.

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 “Noble Numbat” 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.

7. 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

(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)