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Lefty Memes
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)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Use alt text or image descriptions to allow greater accessibility
(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)
We require alternative text (from now referred to as "alt text") to be added to all posts/comments containing media, such as images, animated GIFs, videos, audio files, and custom emojis.
EDIT: For files you share in the comments, a simple summary should be enough if they’re too complex.
We are committed to social equity and to reducing barriers of entry, including (digital) communication and culture. It takes each of us only a few moments to make a whole world of content (more) accessible to a bunch of folks.
When alt text is absent, a reminder will be issued. If you don't add the missing alt text within 48 hours, the post will be removed. No hard feelings.
0.5.1 Style tip about abbreviations and short forms
When writing stuff like "lol" and "iirc", it's a good idea to try and replace those with their all caps counterpart
- ofc => OFC
- af = AF
- ok => OK
- lol => LOL
- bc => BC
- bs => BS
- iirc => IIRC
- cia => CIA
- nato => Nato (you don't spell it when talking, right?)
- usa => USA
- prc => PRC
- etc.
Why? Because otherwise (AFAIK), screen readers will try to read them out as actually words instead of spelling them
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 irrationally 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.
- 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
Communism isn't bad. Socialism isn't bad. Capitalism isn't bad. It's what humans do with them that is bad. Don't be a greedy dick and they would all work fine.
Capitalism demands greed and infinite growth in a finite and resource-limited world. It's inherently contradictory, regardless of your ethics.
They're all just finely tuned creations from whoever is in charge. They can be all of those things, or none of them.
In the end, it's been oligarchs everywhere, so far.
Man is it refreshing to read some good takes on this. Spot on rumba.
Capitalism is definitely real fucking bad.
Not really at its core, the problem, is like most things humans touch, is extremism and twisting it into an excuse to be an evil piece of shit.
Same with communism, it doesn't limit free speech or create dictatorships. It's just every attempt at it so far as ended up there
The overall issue with every system so far. Is they've been completely incapable of keeping the worst humans from rising to the top and ultimately destroying the system.
For some reason you just continue to ignore that capitalism is designed to allow for the worst humans to rise to the top.
And communism isn't? It's much worse in fact, as it provides zero control. There's a reason every attempt at communism so far has turned into a dictatorship before it even got started.
Note, in no way am I saying capitalism is good.
The real issue no system is capable of controlling human greed long term...
Socialism is democracy expanded to the economy. And I hope we can all agree that democracy is better than feudalism / oligarchy. The unchecked power disparities that capitalism creates betray every ideal that democracy stands for
Sure thing... it's not like capitalism is fundamentally designed to empower the pathologically greedy or anything, eh?
No i get their point.
Unchecked capitalism evolves into evil. But capitalism itself just a concept. Concepts are not evil.
It might be possible to transfer the dynamics to something that isn’t the economy, my favorite example is “as a game mechanic” or “as a sexual fetish” the big one is that all participants/players consent to it and have the right to stop and retract consent without losing the means to live and survive.
I can argue the same thing with consensual (Mussolini) fascism, which arguably already has an ethical expression within master/slave bdsm role play.
Lol! "Unchecked capitalism," you say?
Do tell, genius... who is supposed to do the "checking" in a society enslaved by the capitalist mode of production?
Bigotry is a concept. Evil itself is a concept.
Bigotry and general evil as attributes of the bad guy in a tabletop rpg where such settings was communicated beforehand and your right to opt out at any point respected by all players and the dm.
If people do not express a concept in a way that harms people and overrules there consent then there is no harm at all.
Again in bdsm there even exists roleplay of force/rape. But with safewords to indicate real consent the expression of rape becomes harmless play. (I dont understand this btw but i a wont kinkshame and its an interesting social case)
One of my biggest gripes with capitalism (besides that i simply dislike the profit win game) is that it no longer appears optional, to provide for myself and my family i have to partake in it. My consent is overruled without option to not play the game and still survive in health.
I hate the "unchecked capitalism is bad" bullshit. It's such a cop out.
It is inherently bad.
sigh
I mean you only just entered the conversation i recon.
I have spend rather a lot of time today to clarify the philosophical reasoning that in reality “inherent evil” does not exist and borders on religious dogma. Evil is emergent of how people use/act/express and not the tool/systems themselves, which could have undiscovered ethical uses.
You can look trough my comments history if you want. I mainly learned not to debate philosophy in a popular meme community, even if I believe its important and relevant to anarchism.
Cool. But I think you know what I meant.
What do the pathologically greedy do in a socialist or communist system? They find a way to gain power except they have almost no competition.
And where's your proof?
All of history.
I didn’t need to do research because i already knew about these successful societies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Family
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Autonomous_Administration_of_North_and_East_Syria
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Oaks_Community,_Virginia
My guess is you where trying to refere to the ridiculous attempts by the soviet union which to my understanding where designed to fail to set an example. (Look it up)
The core issue is that a nation has a centralized government that is always opposes to disbanding itself. Lenins vanguard party was a fascist takeover of marxist decentralized principles. (look it up)
You didn't list any socialist societies. The first is a group of people who go camping annually together then go back to their real lives(in a capitalist society). Second is an authoritarian society which bans independent media and the third is another group where you vacation in this society until you get tired of it and just leave to your real life so that another can join(they also ban media).
Unless banning types of media is ok now for socialist societies?
None of them are an actual socialist nation. I wouldn't be thinking of the Soviets, no. There was nothing socialist about them other than an initial. I wasn't hinking of any in particular because there are not any. I wish there were and I hope for one but there isn't one yet.
I have no contacts within the latest two but there are absolutely people in the rainbow family who live like that all year round with their entire family.
They are nomadic, have no homeland. There is no leadership, no scarcity (they often have leftovers they don’t know what to do with) its pure anarchistic communism.
Also dont trust to much from what you see online, these communities are aware bad actors and governments dislike them. You need to be invited for actual whereabouts.
This may be a possible reason why the syrian group may democratically ellect against media presence. What i found most interesting about them is that its one of the first Islamic communities i heard of that explicitly calls for equal gender rights.
Which parts of history, exactly?
Mmm capitalism is definitely bad.
Capitalism fosters/rewards the bad.