this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2024
578 points (91.6% liked)

Lefty Memes

4290 readers
1370 users here now

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,

as well as 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.

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

(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] mojo_raisin 25 points 6 months ago (2 children)

You can't destroy a system billions of people depend on without killing billions of people. We need to learn to not depend on it first.

Our only hope is to culturally evolve past our current situation, and we're kinda of in the process of that now. I'm almost 50, when I was growing up any talk like this was old hippy fantasy (hippies are 25 yrs older than me), but now it's come back and more real than ever.

More and more people are seeing the police not as a helpful and necessary but as oppressors and sadists. Eating rich people is talked about every day. People are starting to realize that any state is inherently corruptible and if we want peace and sustainability we need to see the string of failures that is the state and realize it's a failed technology.

At some point, hopefully we'll get better at strategizing and acting instead of just complaining and protesting. Realistically using the tools we have available (e.g. the state) to put those currently running the system in their place.

Run for office, vote, be less dependent on the system, do mutual aid.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (2 children)

You can’t destroy a system billions of people depend on without killing billions of people. We need to learn to not depend on it first.

Don't be so absolute. You can destroy capitalism very well without destroying the people within it.

[–] mojo_raisin 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yep, as I suggested. But let's not kid ourselves, most people talking online about destroying the system and aren't joking are speaking of violent communist revolution a la the 1920s.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I'm not blanket supporting the end results of everything, but the "violence" in those revolutions was initiated by the existing states, not by the people doing the revolution. Read up about it. Almost every time the workers just required the obvious (not to be crushed underfoot) and started seizing factories and farms when life became intolerable, and then the state and the rich brought the police and the army to kill them. Sometimes the end result of the state oppression was people trying to survive and opportunist authoritarian leaders taking power, but not always.

[–] mojofrododojo 6 points 6 months ago

You can’t destroy a system billions of people depend on without killing billions of people. We need to learn to not depend on it first.

walkaway vibes. I wish this were practical.

Run for office, vote, be less dependent on the system, do mutual aid.

Indeed. We need to represent a better path than tearing down civilization in the hopes that everyone will get everything on their priority list, while tempering the state from the inside with sanity and decency instead of weaponization.