this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
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Lefty Memes
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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.
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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)
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- etc.
Why? Because otherwise (AFAIK), screen readers will try to read them out as actually words instead of spelling them
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If I want to learn to bake bread I voluntarily accept the bakery te4acher as my superior in this matter for the duration of the lessons. If the first person had said voluntary hierarchies are the only valid ones they might have had a point!
here's my reply to another comment like yours:
This really seems like it only makes sense in the context of contrived definitions of "authority" and "hierarchy". Expert Authority (authority deriving from an individual's expertise in a particular field) is a well-established and widely recognized concept.
"Hierarchy" does not inherently imply that the relationships are involuntary. If you want to call such structures "involuntary hierarchy", knock yourself out, I'll agree with everything you say against them. But voluntary hierarchies are still hierarchies by the actual definition of the word, and when the structure is based on expertise (judges, teachers, trades experts, administrative coordinators, etc) they are extremely effective.
Redefining words to exclusively refer to the most negative aspects of the common definition is bad rhetoric, intellectually disingenuous, and ineffective at spreading a message. Like I said, if you would like to be specific, and append an appropriate adjective to existing words to refer to a particular subset of a concept (involuntary hierarchy, arbitrary authority) you'll have much more luck convincing those who know what the base words mean.
It's the problem that occurs when a term that is being used in a narrow more academic context makes contact with people who use it in a more colloquial conversational sense. Neither definition is "wrong" really, it's just very confusing unless clarified, and becomes a problem when both sides refuse to understand that context comes into play here.
That's not really what I see happening though, these aren't academic terms, academia uses the "colloquial" definitions. This is a niche in-group co-opting words, changing their definitions, and using them as jargon.
Wrong, it's how the term is used in a lot of anarchist literature because precisely defining what they mean by "hierarchy" is important for discussions about it. So yes, it's a bit of out joint with Standard English usage of the term, that doesn't make it wrong. They aren't being obscurantists, or trying to fuck with you by using hyper specific terminology to trick you into thinking they mean something else. Also words can't be "co opt'd", different groups use them differently all the time, it's a normal feature of all languages don't be an ass about it.
Again, no. Anarchist literature is an in-group. Do you consider the conservative definition of "homosexual" meaning "homosexual child groomer" to be correct as well?
Again, "involuntary hierarchy" is a fine and accurate term. Generalizing that term to just plain "hierarchy" is in-group jargon. The fact that many anarchists use it that way doesn't make it any more correct than conservatives using "homosexual" to mean "homosexual child groomer".
I know it's semantics (er...is it diction?) and at the end of the day pretty pedantic, but this is the first time I've seen the suggestion that hierarchy necessitates authority, and that authority necessitates compulsion (or an institution, or a command/control relationship). I mean yeah, they definitely have those connotations, for sure. And maybe in the context of anarchist theory, this is their functional definition.
But in a general sense, we still have hierarchies that are completely outside of the realm of social organization, like top down hierarchical categorization of...things...right? Like, stuff? And similarly, we have authorities that aren't necessarily relevant to compulsion, like an authority on a particular niche subject. I guess we're compelled to believe them, but, I dunno...
I'm kinda thinking out loud here. But I guess if I met, say, a master woodworker, and she was guiding me through building a bookshelf, I'd still say she is the authority over my actions, even if I decided to do something contrary to her commands. For sure, she has the right to tell me how to build the bookshelf -- she is the expert, I recognize the authority over me in this matter -- and she retains the authority even if I defy her. Idk maybe I'm talking about a different definition of authority.
No True Scotsman would ever have a hierarchy!