this post was submitted on 09 Dec 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
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).
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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.
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Leftists are capitalists too, they just know that strong social safety nets are required to keep the ball in play instead of letting the billionaires take it home with them.
Those are Social Democrats, a subcategory of liberal.
Gross, wrong
In what manner?
He doesn't know how to spell Anarchy.
In the same manner that everything in humanity is labeled. If the group you're labeling doesn't agree with you then you're creating a false stereotype
Social Democrats support Capitalism with Social Safety Nets. They oppose Socialism and support Capitalism, ergo they fall under the umbrella of Liberalism.
It isn't stereotyping though. The political spectrum is built with a non existent center, or rather at the center one would not care who owns the means of production. Right of center is that the means of production shall be owned by private people/companies. Left of center is that the means of production are owned by the people as a conglomerate. Now anywhere you lay on that (because ideologies and beliefs don't stick to a 2 dimensional spectrum) you can view people to the right of you and people to the left. But by definition, the democrat party in the U.S. firmly believes the means of production is owned by private citizens/companies. Thus a farmer can buy 1600 acres and farm it as they will. Leftists by definition believe the means of production shouldn't be owned by individuals or companies as they do not have the good of the people at heart, and will often choose their own self gain over the gain of others.
So people can yell "The Democrats are Marxists" and it immediately sells them out as not knowing what they are taking about, because the very root of what makes Marxism, isnt accepted by Democrats.
Where parties land varies all around the world, but the means of production is the stagnant center point. (Assuming you can get people to agree what makes up those means of production haha)
I put the center between the believable extremes. Utopian communism and anarchy just don't work, so putting them on the political spectrum is disingenuous at best until it does work. Until we have Star Trek replicators or something to fight against scarcity and/or artificial scarcity.
So with that in mind, avoiding pure idealism, left of center would still include a hobbled capitalism.
Every worst group ever has come up with a bullshit label about how democratic and socialist they were.
Not all leftists are capitalists. That's absurd. Socialism is a left-wing ideology.
No, you are clearly not a leftist. Everyone should get a ball, or at least be communally shared. If we seize the means of ball production we can **** CEOs without worrying about going ball-less.
And here you see a microcosm of the problem. "Leftists" range from "we have to destroy the system and everyone in it damn the consequences" to "I just want the government to provide reasonable services". (but no, only I am the true left)
Literally nobody defends anything like this. Destroying the system is the tool to liberating everyone inside it and to give them better lives, what moves leftism is a desire to rise the human living conditions
Leftists exist between liberal and communist.
And since communism can't work with our current understanding of humanity leftist is about as left as you can get
In my analogy everybody does get a ball because that's the social safety net necessary for gameplay. Not everybody gets a fancy hat with a neat feather though