this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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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.
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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)
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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.
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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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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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Yeah this is exactly right. Last time a union went on strike in my company, I kept hearing from people "fuck thise selfish union assholes, they want the company to pay for their health insurance, and I have to pay for my own health insurance - they should have to pay for their own health insurance like me"
I always would counter "why are you mad at the workers fighting to get free health insurance? Shouldn't you be mad our hundreds-of-millions-a-day making company doesn't want to pay for your health insurance? They clearly can afford to but they choose not to"
What's funny is almost everyone that heard it phrases that way agreed they would rather we all get free health insurance - it's like they never even thought of it on that way. Seems the human brain is wired by default to claw everyone down to their level, like fucking crabs in a bucket
Remember this as 340,000 UPS Teamsters workers may go on strike at the end of this month. They have been able to do away with a 2-tier wage system and have gotten agreement on air-conditioning in their trucks but are still negotiating with management over cost of living increases and wages for part-timers. Remember this as the Teamsters are looking to unionize Amazon.
Ordering mail-order stuff used to take a week or two to get to you, and nobody died for having to wait. If you absolutely needed it sooner you bought it locally. This was as recently as the mid-90's (Amazon went public at $18/share in 1995) not horse and buggy days.
We should be willing to wait patiently for parcel delivery or go local for as long as it takes to show solidarity with these workers!
That's fantastic if you have a car and can drive to get items from shops at the other side of the city or from a different town/city altogether. Much less convenient if you don't have one or can't drive at all. Like I would love to buy my homebrew supplies locally. In my old city that was an option. In my new one not so much...
We also need better public transport that would help with this but still. Some people can't even get groceries without having it delivered (especially the elderly and remote). Some people would literally starve if they couldn't get deliveries on time.