this post was submitted on 11 Oct 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!
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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.
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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.
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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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Okay, sure, I'll play devil's advocate. The engineering that goes into a single iPhone is unfathomable. It would take an entire lifetime of study to even try to produce something close.
But Apple pays about a jillion engineers about a jillion dollars each, and so they're able to create new iPhones every year or so. That was 100% powered by capitalism.
Yeah, workers physically put the pieces together. Do you think any of them could design an iPhone without any help or reference? Or a single body to tie it all together?
Yea we can still innovate without capitalism, though, and even in spite of it people still develope things just for the fun of it. They even create non-profits designed around making things accessible and writing standards to help keep everyone organized. Fuck, Linux distros are free, dude. Literally this post points out that the people working on the software and the design are also of the working class and you’ve glossed over that.
Capitalism is the system which puts capital first. It a system whereby having money is having power and not having money is a death sentence. It is a system that that says equates your current monetary value with your value to society and which suppresses anything that cannot be monetized. So many people can’t even have hobbies anymore without some feeling of guilt and weird conservatives won’t stop shitting on the arts like they’re so broken as people they no longer understand the concept of enjoyment or living for more than just producing stock value.
Under a system that focuses on making sure people are cared for you can still have private business. A system which has safety nets and offers free education, healthcare, and basic utilities is one in which the ordinary person is free to live their life instead of worrying about losing their job and their employment-connected health insurance.
You’re not playing devil’s advocate by ignoring important details, you’re just being weird and wrong. Also no one fucking asked, anyway.
I don't disagree with any single point that you've made. I agree with most of them.
But you mentioned linux. Tell me again, Linus Torvald, was he employed under a capitalist country when he created linux? How about most of its contributors?
Your point is easily defeated. Please make a better argument.
You can’t genuinely believe that that’s an argument for why mine has been “defeated”?
It took my two seconds to verify that Linus Torvald did his work with Linux on his own time and at university, not in the pursuit of capital. Since his childhood he has simply found joy in computers and does these things because he genuinely wants to. He worked at Transmeta for six years afterwards and then left to go work for one of the non-profits that eventually became the non-profit Linux Foundation. His whole fucking shtick is that the software should be open-source.
He’s also from Finland, a country well know to prioritize its citizens’ well-being. That care allows citizens to pursue their goals with a level of safety that capitalism cannot offer.
You’re either a weird, pathetic troll and/or unfathomably stupid. Either way this conversation isn’t going to get us anywhere.