Flippanarchy
Flippant Anarchism. A lighter take on social criticism with the aim of agitation.
Post humorous takes on capitalism and the states which prop it up. Memes, shitposting, screenshots of humorous good takes, discussions making fun of some reactionary online, it all works.
This community is anarchist-flavored. Reactionary takes won't be tolerated.
Don't take yourselves too seriously. Serious posts go to !anarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Rules
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If you post images with text, endeavour to provide the alt-text
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If the image is a crosspost from an OP, Provide the source.
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Absolutely no right-wing jokes. This includes "Anarcho"-Capitalist concepts.
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Absolutely no redfash jokes. This includes anything that props up the capitalist ruling classes pretending to be communists.
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No bigotry whatsoever. See instance rules.
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This is an anarchist comm. You don't have to be an anarchist to post, but you should at least understand what anarchism actually is. We're not here to educate you.
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No shaming people for being anti-electoralism. This should be obvious from the above point but apparently we need to make it obvious to the turbolibs who can't control themselves. You have the rest of lemmy to moralize.
Join the matrix room for some real-time discussion.
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This is some Marxist nonsense my dude. Societies don’t have inevitable endpoints.
Have all the western countries that have had rising fascist dictatorship movements in the past few years come about through some other unrelated means?
We’re clearly in a trend of rising authoritarianism, but that doesn’t mean it’s inevitable. Such waves have receded in the past and they likely will again.
I just don’t like these inevitability narratives because they deprive people of agency in shaping society. Sure, maybe liberalism has a tendency to creep towards fascism, at least under some conditions. But this happens through the actions of the people that make up those societies and it can be resisted.
Capitalism inevitably results in fascism. It's just the end result. The choice there is people maintaining a system that's results in fascism.
Capitalism has existed for centuries and usually did not end in fascism. There’s no historical support for this claim. It’s simply an invention of authoritarian leftists because it’s useful to convince people they need to choose one brand of authoritarianism or the other.
Fascism at its core is a way for a minority of the population to say, "we deserve wealth and power over everyone else regardless of merit. We're going to take away rights and opportunity from everyone in order to give ourselves an unfair advantage. We'll make it so only our group counts a fully legally human, and we'll dominate society and the economy accordingly." In this general sense, capitalism for the vast majority of its history has been some flavor of fascist, in the general sense. Obviously as a specific political system, fascism is more particular. But in the general sense of its mechanism, where one group tries to take control by stripping the rights from everyone else? That is the norm in capitalist societies, not the exception.
For the vast, vast majority of capitalism's history, it's been built on defining a certain in group who have rights, and an out group who have no rights and can be exploited. Western countries didn't even give economic freedom to the majority of their population until the last 50 years or so. Women were legal property and couldn't have bank accounts. They were legally not considered fully human in the same way men were. Men didn't want to compete with women, so they took away women's freedom and didn't allow them to compete in the marketplace. The majority of the population, completely excluded from economic life, in the most capitalist societies on Earth.
Or you could look it from a racial lens. De jure discrimination was written into the law until the 1960s or so. And de facto racial discrimination never went away. You say that capitalism doesn't usually end in fascism, yet the US kept a substantial portion of its population in a nightmare system of fascist apartheid. White people didn't want to compete with black people in the market, so they stripped black people of their civil rights.
The key thing to keep in mind about capitalism is that in a true free market, no one earns any profits. If there were no barriers to entry, starting competitors would be easy, and profit margins for all businesses would be razor thin. But that's not how capitalism works in the real world. There are barriers to entry, and in capitalist countries, owners and those in power do everything they can to give themselves unfair advantages so they don't have to compete in the market. And one of the easiest ways to make sure your group doesn't have to compete freely in the market is to simply declare large swaths of the population as not fully human and thus undeserving of economic freedom.
Interesting points but I think you’re conflating fascism with what I would call authoritarianism. If you define fascism as any system where a minority clique takes control of society then you’re going to have to call nations like the USSR or China fascist. Which, while I agree they have similar features, are getting pretty far from the colloquial and academic definitions of fascism.
But you’re absolutely right that no modern society has had universally equal rights. We still have many groups that don’t have much legal protection including felons, children, immigrants, even animals could be viewed through this lens as well. But I don’t think that makes any societies that don’t meet this very high standard fascist.
It's an easy thought-free assertion which makes all opposition to a system heroic, which means it gets wide traction.
Absolutely. This is a thought pattern I find very annoying. Just because you’re opposed to capitalism doesn’t make every critique of it correct. Defeating it means understanding and identifying its real features, not some caricature.