by fedidb.org
this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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Lemmy is cool and all but the amount of communist obsession here is a bit much.
It was founded by a Communist, and decentralization appeals to leftists. The non-Communist lemmy is Reddit, basically, or making your own instance or finding an anti-Communist instance.
The simple answer is that Communism does not in fact rely on everyone being perfect and unselfish. The complicated answer is telling you to go read Communist theory.
Why do you hold the belief that Communisn requires everyone be perfect and unselfish to function any more than Capitalism does? Can you describe the principle or structure that leads you to believe this?
Honestly, no I'm far from an expert in political or economic matters. I'm just yet to see a system proposed that could work in reality given how complex humans are and how "value" is almost impossible to define when everyone sees it differently.
Plenty of countries have tried though and none have made it work from what I've seen. This is possibly (probably) a gross oversimplification but ultimately someone (or some group) ends up at the top of the tree and unless that group is uncorruptable forever it ends with imbalance.
Asking everyone to share as needed and own nothing would be great if everyone wanted everyone else to be equally happy and nobody was trying to take more for themselves (and if everyone had the same idea of what everything is worth). I think at the very least we can agree that some people are more selfless than others and other people will always exploit that given an opportunity.
How deep of an understanding do you have of these supposed proposed systems? As a leftist, the vast majority of mainstream leftist tendencies have strong theory that specifically deals with what you consider to be their ultimate flaw: an assumption of human good. It's hard to actually answer for every single leftist Tendency, because you haven't really given any specifics.
As for your second paragraph, there have been remarkably few countries that genuinely have tried Socialism, and all of them were developing countries. Don't take this to mean that I'm a fan of Marxism-Leninism, but there are two prominent examples of countries that most would consider did in fact "work," those being the USSR and China.
Again, not defending the USSR or China overall, but asking for clarification on your definition of working, as they were and are economically strong.
Your point about the top of the tree is, bluntly, extremely bad. You offer no explanation why a Socialist or Communist structure cannot be democratically accountable to any lesser degree than Capitalist structures, and assume absolute power. This goes directly against all leftist theory, even Marxism-Leninism, which is centered on the principles of Democratic Centralism.
Your point about Communism being "sharing everything and owning nothing" is also entirely incorrect, and further proves my point. The entire final paragraph is so divorced from any sense of actual leftist theory, that it can only be a product of someone fully believing a right-wing pundit's propaganda, and not the actual primary sources for leftist tendencies, to the point where I'll break down each sentence.
Communism, principly, is a far-future status by which the whole of the productive forces can meaningfully provide whatever anyone wants at any time, and work is done for the pleasure of working, rather than for the necessity of being. As such, it must be built towards over a long period of Socialism, which is chiefly Worker Ownership of the Means of Production. Communism and Socialism are built on the idea of earning what you actually work for, rather than allowing individuals to own the products of other's labor via ownership of the tools they use. You make the error of assuming immediate implementation of Communism, rather than gradual.
We can partially agree on your second point, but given the actual structures proposed by various leftist tendencies, it doesn't matter for this conversation, and you've yet to prove why.
Sorry for the wall of text! I truly think that you should talk to leftists, actually read some Marx, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Lenin, Luxembourg, and so forth, and actually get an idea of what the various leftist tendencies are actually saying. You don't have to be a leftist, but you absolutely should understand leftism before attempting to disavow it entirely.
It depends on which instances you visit, the one I'm in is pretty chill, but slow. Though it does have a Chilean theme going on, so it might be harder for you to find something interesting.
It'd be cool to see hosted lemmy instances where people can pay for their own without having to go through the setup process, then curate their own feeds. Unless that already exists somewhere.
I wouldn't say it's super easy, but self hosting on a VPS is definitely possible
That was actually my next logical step. I just need to spin up the node and configure and set DNS and whatnot, just need the time to dig into it.
This is why Lemmy will never be anything more than tiny a niche platform. It's a place for the far left by the far left. There's nothing here in place for anybody else. I don't just mean politics wise, I mean everything. There's nothing for fandoms, shows, movies, sports, or anything really. You have to be privacy/tech nerd or some left wing extremist to really enjoy this place more than Reddit. Since the portion of the population that this platform is trying to appeal to is extremely small, this platform will always be small. There's little to not attempts by the devs or the community to make this place appeal to everybody else.
What, exactly, could be done to make it appeal to non-leftists, structurally? Addition of advertisers? Lol.
There are few things the developers could do. For example, they could make the platform easier to use. Many people don't even reach this place because they're not that tech savvy or simple don't care enough to figure it out. It's much easier for them to just create an account and get started on Reddit or elsewhere. This leaves extremists with nowhere else to go and tech bros... which are the two groups that dominate this place. The process of getting on board and finding instances/communities needs to be easier. There needs to be something like centralized site/app that is easily accessible and shows all the different instances and communities in one place.
It's not that complicated, go to an instance and sign up.
What actually dominates Lemmy are groups of people that value bottom-up organizational structures, decentralization, FOSS, and other general structural decisions made with creating Lemmy. This leaves people that like these principles, and actually care enough to move to an instance despite mass adoption of a more top-down, Capitalist site like Reddit.
Well said!
Decentralization isn't left wing or right wing, that's just a moronic analysis. Decentralization has a wide appeal but unless it gets simplified and standardized it will never become adopted by the mainstream. Places like Lemmy which are littered with gatekeepers like you doom this place to forever being a niche. If this place ever hopes of rivaling reddit, it needs to appeal to more than political extremists and tech nerds
Decentralization is far more left than it is right, hence why Lemmy has a ton of leftists. It wasn't just chance.
Just use this to find communities.
That's not very revolutionary of you, comrade
There's a lot on lemmy that's too much, this isn't really a surprise
Wait lemmy is full of tankies? Fuck.... When I left reddit and twitter, i thought i would never have to see the terminally online left again.
Oh, and before the leftists come at me, I hate conservatives more, and yall need to admit that joe biden is doing a great job and exactly what you asked.