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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
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?
In a society enslaved by a capitalist mode of production there clearly does not exist any checked capitalism. No chance even.
My best bet is some undiscovered more enlightened aliens. Just because we don’t have it does not mean it can’t exist. Or if you want me to repeat the example from my tiresom discussion below. The gamemakers who try to sell a story with it, the scientists who try to simulate it to explore the concept academically.
For the record i do not desire or am trying to create “ethical capitalism” so i dont care about who would need to check it. I fucking hate it for all the harm humans have committed trough wrongful expression of it.
But if some day some humans do find a way to incorporate the capitalt concept in some harmless way i will neither be suprised nor call for purging that entire community. Which is what i am getting the feeling some people would do. The devil isn’t real.
Bro, read some theory. This is borderline stream of consciousness.
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'm sure you consider bigotry and evil just fine in all contexts just like you do the worst of capitalism.
What the F hell, absolutely not! The current dystopia is literally killing me.
I am a genderfluid autist, you think i am ok living in this world that has been harmfull to me non stop?
I just also a philosopher and like to know how reality works and what i discovered is that “evil” is an emergent concept from how humans express themselves in ways that overruled others consent. From being forced to listen to insults by the boss to physical assault.
You could not have judged me more wrong friend(?).
Not op that you replied to, but i find it funny to read your comments. I distinctly remember as a kid that i was playing with lego and i then realised that things like "justice" and "evil" are just in the eye of the beholder.
The good guy wanted to "protect his people and slay evil" (very hero-ist of the king lol) while the bad guy wanted to "have justice for being exiled and have better living conditions". I realised they were both, essentially, the same thing. Both involved evil acts ( killing and fighting ).
So reading this chain of comments reminded me of that memory, and how true it is, at its core.
When we add factors like humans and power things gets vastly more complicated, but the core is the same.
Just like how current AI at its core, is interesting and super cool, but its been twisted and turned into something terrible because of humans, power and money
My autistic secret is i never stopped playing in my head. The ability to build words from fantasy with my drive for scientific realism allows me to experiment and study any idea or concept i encounter. I struggled a lot to understand my existence as a kid and it provided much more then school possible could.
But shh, dont tell anyone. People tend to find this weird (although i am getting the perception people are much more open to the action of daydreaming these days)
Huh, interesting. Im autistic myself and whenever i try to imagine a situation or place i kinda generate a world or scene in my head and apply what i know, or try to think of what could happen in that situation. In my day job this helps a lot to detect problems or make designs for things.
But i have never stood still to think that what you linked is what i might have, and is like a mature, overpowered version of what kids have. Thats flipping interresting
It is believed that bigotry was beneficial in very primitive humanoids: If you don't know germ theory (or any biology tbh), bigotry helps against spread of diseases (while it might lead to incest... so you gotta balance it!)
Your immune system shows signs of heavy bigotry.
Evil is a category. Lion's survival is "evil" to a gazelle while it is "good" to its offsprings.
Look at this guy defending bigotry.
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?
The parts where legitimate attempts at a socialist society has been attempted anywhere in the world...of which all failed for human dickish reasons.
And where would those be?
How did the anarchist collectives "[fail] for human dickish reasons"? Is outside pressure from fascists a problem inherent to socialism?