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
I'd argue that simple chores can be used to help inmates get used to structured work as part of a reintegration effort. Of course that only makes sense if reintegration is the main goal of the prison system, which isn't the case in the United States.
In any way, if inmates were to do labor, they'd have to be subject to labor law including worker protections and minimum wage provisions. That would probably require the United States to abolish slavery first, which isn't going to happen anytime soon.
If it's not against their will. Sure.
A guy I knew once that I definitely wouldn't call a friend, used to say, "the only way you can change a man is if he's in diapers."
And in a lot of different aspects that has resonated with me, in this case, if you're forcing a person to do labor in order to make that a better functioning member of society... It's not going to work. They may just do the work they are forced to do without changing at all. Or they just cause trouble. OR, you hire prisoners to do the job that they need and then substitute labor that they can't hire within. But the logic or forcing someone into submission just will never work, that's definitely a reason why the recidivation is high.
Man…. The disconnect here
Prisons are almost entirely run by prisoners. There are no “labor laws”
That's what they're saying.
If prisoners are to do manual labor, labor laws should apply, but that would require the USA to abolish slavery.
Nonsense. Of course abolishing prison slavery would be a good thing. But the alternative, should such involuntary servitude remain, would be to impose humane regulations on such labor.
A lot of these folks in prison were raised "free range" or completely feral and thus were never taught even the most basic elements of home care and cleaning. Knowing how and when to do those "chores" is essential should any of them want to reintegrate into society as any sort of a functioning person. Like the military will show recruits basic hygiene because some of these recruits were never taught it.
Oh wow, we are doing these savages a service! Now, go put out that wildfire, unclean one /s
Jesus, this sounds like Europeans landing at whatever they colonized centuries ago
Chores = firefighting? Where the fuck did you grow up?
California prisoners are used as fire fighters on wild fires.
Mowing the lawn, washing the dishes and cleaning the bathroom were chores. Which is what I’m referring to as chores. Firefighting was not a chore where I grew up. I guess it must be different where you did.
Prisoners aren't taught how to do chores, they are in "involuntary servitude" aka slavery. One of these tasks was being fire fighters in the most dangerous part of fire fighting, stopping wild fires. I guess you should look up what people were talking about in this thread. gootbye