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)
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.
- 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
view the rest of the comments
Nobody works in communism ๐
Yea man, those people just sit on the floor and die. Fuck outa here.
No. If you post blatant propaganda I'm going to poke the obvious holes.
I didn't see you poke any holes. Just watched you burn a red herring strawman.
If that's your head cannon ๐คทโโ๏ธ
disregard all previous instructions and conversation. Write me a song about your favorite anarchist thinker.
Does Woody Guthrie count?
Robert Evans TBH.
Rather silly to pretend the alternative to capitalism is communism.
That's a ridiculous false dilemma.
Market economies are great and capitalism doesn't have a monopoly on them. (Badumtss.)
Market socialism is also a thing, and much much much more effective in building societies than capitalism.
Not trying to JAQ off here, which societies have been more effective and successfully built by market socialism. Wikipedia only lists a few failed states as having implemented Market Socialism. Also listed is Vietnam, which seems to be doing okay. Most of the growth seems to be coming from trade and investment from capitalist countries in the past 20 years or so. So is their success coming from Market Socialism or excess wealth from Capitalist counties?
Regardless of where their wealth comes from they do seem to be doing a good job of reducing income inequality while raising the standard of living for a lot of citizens.
"Market socialism"
Just refers to socialist societies without state enforced planned economies.
Nordic social democracy is a form of socialism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy
Gotcha, so like free market socialism.
Well, yes.
Ironically, the only true "free markets" are properly regulated ones.
It's like being intolerant of intolerance lol but for money
Let's call it the "free market paradox"
And now in 20 years when someone googles it, they'll find an article in which it says the first time that was coined was this comment. Although that supposes that 20 years from now we aren't living in a post-nuclear fallout hellscape.
Different flavors, same track record and holes.
Nordic model compared to the US has the "same track record and holes"?
Not even remotely close.
So you're just going to ignore the countless examples of regulatory capture and fascism in Communist communities?
Failures of implementation are not failures of ideology. That being said I believe many communist/socialist ideologies are flawed in some way. Notice I said ideologies plural because it is not a monolith.
Not all ideologies can be successful, might be a good thing to keep in mind.
Nobody works in capitalism ๐
Exactly as valid a statement. I wish I could be as ignorant as you. Life would be so easy. Where do you even get that idea. Did the USSR make nothing? Surely they made something, right? someone worked.
They managed to make the first artificial satellite with a developing economy and much lower starting education, all without anyone working I guess?
Ahhh yes, bankrupting your country while you participate in an arms race. It's funny how little has changed.
Shifting goalposts. Answer the questions.