this post was submitted on 13 Nov 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

Version without spoilers

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


That means 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.



  1. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I totally get this. But.

It's a tiny majority of people causing most of the damage. They have all the power, and they are doing all the damage. We can't stop them because we don't have any power.

Humanity isn't the problem here. The tiny cabal of selfish, evil people who are ruining it for everyone else are the problem.

The difference is that one of them can be solved in the other can't.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I think handing most humans the toxic power of effectively infinite capital is a highly effective corrupting influence. Most people who, whether by action or inheritance, have the power that comes with hundreds of millions of dollars plus begin to see themselves as Gods above ants. For every Dolly Parton that uses their wealth to buy babies books, there's 100 wannabe masters of the universe that want to cut public funds to cut their own taxes to inflict their will on society, fully believing they're making it fair because they're willfully only considering their privileged position.

I don't believe a class of people with billions of dollars in a sea of people who can only accumulate a few million through honest labor at most over their entire lives can lead to anything but this. There has to be a hard, enforced limit on how much power an individual can accumulate, but we've branded that "punishing success" and even the victims eat that lie up, as the truth is those people profited from the benefits of living in a society, and therefore should have responsibilities to it as the "winners," but instead choose to declare themselves rugged individuals who did it all themselves out of ego.

Capital is power, power currupts, and currupting levels of power are not just tolerated, not just permitted, but celebrated here, with those that attain it deified, and those that don't deluded into chasing it or being shamed for not doing so.

You can't solve people having billions in exploited, society warping levels of capital being allowed to control that society, when the root cause and only solution would be to strip them of it and reshape the economy to tax all income above a level that risks capturing one's own elected/appointed regulators.

Not without the necessary, but painful collapse and rebuild poor people will actively fight against despite it being the only way their kids might have a better life. It's a paradox by design, a hostage situation with the gun pointed at the capitalist subsistence opiates, fast food, social media, literal opiates, etc, to keep the laborers laboring for fear of uncertainty.

How do you get people en masse to turn, as they need to, on the very concept/dream of being rich and sitting above society? People who've been propagandized their entire lives to see that as the highest and most socially encouraged of all pursuits?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Brilliantly stated!