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!
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.
Good thing we (the US) lost the war, or this lady would probably have her own team of lobbyists running their country.
The death penalty is always wrong.
Murder is not a punishment and once you've stripped her of her ill-got gains there is no longer any reason to kill her.
I hear you but if I’m honest, and tomorrow America announced it was going to execute every billionaire, I’m not going to put up too much of a protest.
Take the money, sure. Then they're no longer billionaires and there's no need to kill them.
In other words, you don’t murder disarmed prisoners of war.
During class war they are the enemy and deserve what comes to them. If taken alive and their weapon of war removed, they don’t need to be dealt with the same way.
Once they are no longer a threat you can work on rehabilitation and restitution.
First off, I agree with you.
But...second...I struggle with the rehabilitation bit. Some people cannot be rehabilitated. It is a hard truth I have learned, coupled with pain and regret, many times in my life. I'm just curious what you think the course of action should be at that point?
I'm not suggesting death/murder, but I do struggle with the idea that if they're miserable, and the people around them are made miserable, and the people trying to help them are made miserable...what do you do?
The way these people affect so many lives negatively with their fraud is much worse than a person committing murder.
The literal misery they cause to so many people for their own benefit without a fucking iota of shame and their sociopathic behavior is enough to consider eliminating them from society.
I disagree. I don't subscribe to a world view where every life is sacred. Society has a right to protect itself from persons that will always endanger other people and that includes killing them. However, it has been quite clear that we cannot guarantee that no innocent people are killed. And that's why I'm OK with the death penalty only in principle, not in practice.
While I agree in principle I tend to think there are still unforgivable crimes and irredeemable people out there.
While I agree in principle I tend to think there are still unforgivable crimes and irredeemable people out there.
Then you don't agree.
I wasn't aware crime was about forgiveness.
I thought in-so-far as societies implemented systems of justice, their purpose was restitution and rehabilitiation.
No one gains anything from a person—irrespective their prior actions—being murdered and we all lose a bit of our soul each time a state execution is allowed to take place.
I really expected better from Vietnam, whose "quarantine at gunpoint" public health policies I heartily endorse.
While celebrating a billionaire getting their just desserts is always fun, not really sure that this is a reflection of the decency of the Vietnamese government.
Since there's no rational hope of addressing the other 3k or so billionaire parasites on Earth without building a really big Titanic wreckage tour sub and making little paths of stock certificates leading to it like reese's pieces in ET, I'll take whatever incidental vicarious revenge against humanity's oppressors I can get.
I mean, celebrate the revenge, for sure. Just don't mistake it for decency. Vietnam is about as corrupt as India.
We're no less corrupt in the US, merely more expensive.
Our cheats just hire lobbyists to make their corrupt practices legal, shout out to Citizens United, and/or hire enough lawyers to make the consequences meaningless, like fining a company that makes billions a year thousands for profitable criminal activity.
Our "solution" to corruption is simply to make it legal for the right price. Donald Trump should have lost his empire and gone to jail for his business practices long before he was a game show host, let alone POTUS, but he learned and inherited enough from daddy to understand how to wield American style corruption, and he's still free.
We’re no less corrupt in the US, merely more expensive.
We're very corrupt in the US. That's not the same as being corrupt to the same degree. I... would encourage looking into the relative corruption of countries. We, in the US, are near the bottom of the the list as far as developed countries go (beaten out by only such luminaries as Italy and Greece), but we aren't even close to as bad as it can get. We're just more aware of our own corruption than of other countries. I mean, we are Americans. We're barely aware of the existence of other countries, much less their corruption.
Since when is it leftist to support the death penalty, let alone take glee in it. This is like the boomer FB shit
I'm against the death penalty in general, but I also acknowledge that in terms of tangible damage to humanity, any billionaire walking the Earth makes any serial killer who has ever walked the Earth seem positively quaint by scale.
I also recognize that we are living under class occupation. The owner class handily won the class war by convincing most of the developed world not to fight it half a century ago.
The peasants don't have the luxury of taking prisoners. We are the losers of a war, in spite of the fact that many have come to worship their occupying oppressors.
Keeping the most destructive humans locked away and well fed until they die of natural causes is a peacetime luxury for those in charge, and unless you're holding a reprehensible amount of capital, that isn't us. You might believe we are in peacetime, but if we refuse to stop them, and it looks that way, they will force our shared, communal habitat to stop us all through their insatiable, sociopathic avarice.
We love to think we're not, but we're still subjects wholly dependant on this world, even the owners activily attacking us and it simultaneously.
well fucking said.
The French revolution shows that the guilotines don't necessarily stop when the aristocrats are all dead. I'm not enthusiastic about mob justice
It is perfectly reasonable to oppose the death penalty, but the foundational event of the modern left movement was people chopping off a king's head.
I'm against the death penalty on the grounds that I don't want the government to have the authority to kill because they keep fucking it up. Either they get the wrong person or botch the execution.
There's no question that a person is a billionaire.
Since you can't make a revolution with white gloves.
The term "leftist" is too broad and "death penalty" too loosely defined.
Auth-leftists definitely support the death penalty, as in a powerful state should have authority to kill.
Anarchists don't think there should be a state therefore there is no body authorized to kill. If someone must die, it would be at the hands of an individual or an ad-hoc grouping and be called "self-defense".
Thinking things can change without the 0.1% being killed at all is a liberal idea.
This is like the boomer FB shit
Welcome to Lemmy!
billionaires aren't people. their existence requires a river of blood, and they all deserve death, regardless of the states opinion.
I think its good to remind them they can be killed. I think they forget.
Interesting if you read about it, while many were found guilty I think only a woman is being sentences to death while many men are just getting a decade in prison for their involvement in it.
If she was the ringleader, sure... I guess (not that it makes the state's murdering of folks alright). But odd that she gets death while all the men don't even get 20 in jail.
I don't think we should have billionaires but celebrating state sponsored murder is fucking gross
“We” isn’t this the case of other billionaires getting mad at one billionaire?
Maybe we can trigger a feeding frenzy...
Not a fan of the death penalty
Me neither, but killing some of the capitalist class has always been part of leftist revolutions so I can let this one slide.
I don't think the state having the power to round people up and kill them, even if I don't like the people it is being done to. It seems really dangerous.
Wake me up when Trump sees even just a shred of accountability, or Musk, or Bezos, or ....
Also how does it get to 12.5 billion before people do something? Had they intervened with something less severe at 1 billion then there would still be 11.5 billion and a life not lost.
According to my quick Google search, there are about 100 million people in Vietnam. The average wage is $150 per month. $12.5B shared among each person is $125.
Why not make her pay that amount instead of a death sentence?
That's actually what their "death penalty" is trying to do. Apparently most of the money she stole is in overseas bank accounts and relies on her taking action to actually give it back. She has appeals and if she paid up the appeals will probably back down from the death penalty.
Well then. Murdering someone as ex-post "punishment" for past actions remains abhorrent, but holding a gun to her head until she gives the money back is cool and good.
There is a difference between threatening violence as a deterrent against currently engaged in harms a person has the ability to cease and claiming moral authority to end a person's life due to things they have no control over.
There's distinction between "Put down the box or we'll shoot you." and "Having touched the box in the past, you now need to die regardless."
Still don't fuck with "The death penalty" as a framework for the threat, however.
I have neither the emotional nor mental bandwidth to read up on this, too stressed being poor. Does anything say what is happening to the money?
That's typical communist competitor purges, it has nothing to o with redistribution of wealth.
This is the correct answer. It's not the kind of revolution people are thinking, like with France.
This is more like Stalin level shit to send a message.