this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
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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.
Serious posts, news, and discussion go in c/Socialism.
If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, updooting good contributions and downdooting those of low-quality!
Rules
0. Only post socialist memes
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)
1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here
Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism.
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" flavor.
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 "Mantic Minotaur" 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.)
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And time and time again this has lead to people in the government abusing this power and assuring for themselves and their families a completely different standard of living than the rest of the population. I've lived in a socialist country and the end was not pretty.
It sounds great on paper and has proven great on small scales (with the option to leave the community if you want), but on larger scales human nature always messes things up.
Sure, so let's try nothing, because the current system works so well. I mean, what with us having solved homelessness, having equality, and fixing the climate, I can't imagine why we should do something different.
I understand that you've had a bad experience, and I also understand that the real world examples of nation states claiming to be socialist have been less than ideal, but, as a species, we have to decide what is more important, because we're running out of time. I'm not a Soviet fan boy or a tankie, I'm an anti authoritarian, libertarian socialist. But it's a bit like the US election right now. I don't like Kamala, but I'll take her over Trump, and continue to work outside of that to achieve my actual goals. I don't like state socialism, but it's better than what we've got. If the biggest problem with socialist states has been corruption in the upper echelons of power, then that is excellent real world data to draw from when we considering alternatives to both our current system and the experiments of the past. Strict transparency, more citizen involvement, less concentration of power. Sure, again, not my ideal system, but it's something better. We have examples to draw from, both in failures and successes. Yugoslavia had a lot more personal freedoms than the USSR, and a strong focus on worker cooperatives. Cuba has managed to create one of the best healthcare systems in the world with shoestrings and belt buckles. The USSR gives us an example of just how quickly progress can be made in areas like industrialization, crucial information that could help us in the transition to renewable energy. The US and Western Europe have created citizenry that are unwilling to accept, at least in theory, authoritarian, iron-fist control. We absolutely can create something that blends these philosophies, but it is imperative that it's focus be on the creation of an egalitarian society that works towards ending tyranny, which includes the tyranny of workers, and seeks to solve the climate crises. We do not have a choice if we want to survive the next few decades.
Not where I was going with it. There are definitely a lot of things that should be done, especially in the US, which I wouldn't even call socialist, just common sense (like universal healthcare). But you can't tell people "you're not all equal" and suddenly they all believe it. That's why most socialist countries were also authoritarian. Maybe over many generations of progressive change things can go differently.
Most socialist states have been authoritarian because most of them of were authoritarian before their socialist movements. They are a product of their own cultures. In addition, most are authoritarian because they're attempting to recreate the successes of the Soviet revolution, and using their system as a baseline.
Also, my first paragraph in that comment was aggressive and I apologize for that. I should have come better than that. But the fact remains, socialism is not the problem. Authoritarianism is. They're not one and the same, nor is one required for the other.
Human nature? Which part of human nature? Humans are multifaceted. Also, there has never been an example of socialism in practice, even moderate social democracy that secured domestic mineral and oil resources for its own people, that hasn't come under direct attack, invasion, embargo, sanction, etc., by western capitalist powers. It usually isn't human nature messing things up, its direct capitalist imperialist intervention.
Also what model of human nature are you using? I prefer the dialectical construction of Benedict Spinoza in his book Ethics, have you ever considered what you mean by it or where you picked it up from? I see a lot of hand waving about human nature from people, but no description of what it actually is. How do you know you aren't using a flawed concept in your determination?