this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2026
551 points (96.9% liked)
Flippanarchy
2295 readers
1217 users here now
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
-
If you post images with text, endeavour to provide the alt-text
-
If the image is a crosspost from an OP, Provide the source.
-
Absolutely no right-wing jokes. This includes "Anarcho"-Capitalist concepts.
-
Absolutely no redfash jokes. This includes anything that props up the capitalist ruling classes pretending to be communists.
-
No bigotry whatsoever. See instance rules.
-
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.
-
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.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That wasn't democratic socialism, it was social democracy. Seems like a small difference but the impact is huge. Democratic socialism eschews capitalism entirely while social democracy preserves capitalism with heavy regulation. Boomers didn't grow up in the solution, they grew up with the symptoms of the disease being treated, but it was no cure. Because the underlying causes of inequality were not addressed they eventually overcame and reversed the regulations designed to keep them in check. We should learn from the mistake and go beyond half measures next time.
I mean the same thing.
The main benefit of capitalism is the free market that it establishes. But it requires regulation to prevent control being centralizes by private oligarchs.
Communism has the same problem of central control of capital and markets, but in their case, its state connected oligarchs.
If we could have the free market without the incentives to centralize wealth and control, I would be very interested.
The "free market" and regulations are mutually exclusive. You can't have both, unless you consider a "free market" to exist on a spectrum between no regulations and maximum regulations and draw an arbitrary line between free and not free.
This is an issue with vanguardist marxism-leninism, not necessarily communism. I understand that this is the ideological strain of communism that people - especially Americans - are most familiar with for historical reasons, but there are many other strains that oppose centralized command and control economies, preferring more federal and democratic or consensus-based systems. In fact, the Bolsheviks initially rallied around the slogan "all power to the soviets." Soviets are workers' councils - the primary decision-making bodies and drivers of the Russian revolution - and they operated independently, freely associating with one another by choice. It was only after the revolution succeeded in siezing the state that the soviets were dissolved and replaced with "one big soviet" which was loyal to Lenin. It was briefly still somewhat decentralized and democratic (at least relative to what came before) until Stalin came to power and rapidly centralized the economic and political structure of the soviet union.
What exactly do you mean by "free market?" If we go by the conventional definition of a free market (capitalism without any regulations or checks of any kind) then what you're asking for here is fundamentally impossible. The economic system of capitalism is one that creates the incentives to centralize wealth and control by allowing - and then enforcing - private ownership of the means of production.
I think it important to distinguish between a free trade market, which should be largely unregulated. People should be able to buy and sell goods on an open market.
Capital markets, or ownership and control of wealth should be heavily regulated.
Derivatives should be outlawed and stock trading should have minimum asset holding periods of 24 months or more. Return it to a platform for making investments and raising capital, rather than a gambling and market manipulation platform.
I would also change the law that the duties of publicly traded company's board and executives is not profit, but the long term sustainability of the organization.
communism is stateless and classless and moneyless
In theory, in practice, it was a tool for state control over ownership.