Because most of the working class are convinced that this system is the best one, they just think the other political party and their voters are the reason everything sucks.
It’s really genius.
this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
835 points (98.2% liked)
Lefty Memes
4298 readers
429 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
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
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
It's not even just politics either.
We are taught not to share what our wages are and to compete against and rat out our co-workers, all for the benefit of The Company and often the detriment of ourselves and other working class people.
I often see people vehemently against lower skill jobs like fast-food earning a living wage simply because "I do x and I don't make that much, why should they?"
That kind of attitude is exactly what they want you to have because in reality better wages for fast-food employees would force your employer to also raise wages.
They want us actively keeping each other down.
Unions are powerful because they bring members of the working class together.
Yep you’re totally right. I’m in a union making 15 dollars an hour more than I would outside of the union in my trade. And I get pension and top end benefits. Unions are the shit.
I work in a non union workplace and my wages are twice that of similar jobs in my company in other parts of the country, because unions are strong in this region so nonunion companies have to offer more just to keep workers. Unions are awesome. I wish there was a way for me to send some portion of my check to them as thanks for the benefits they've indirectly given me.
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.
Most can't even comprehend what living without capitalism would be like. They can't comprehend montivations not shaped by capitalist ideas that gave been indoctrinated their whole life.
For some reason there is a large group of people who think they have more in common with billionaire parasites like Musk, Buffett, Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos than the local beggar on the street.
In reality, well over than 90% of us are closer to the penniless homeless person in terms of net worth than a billionaire.
They are just apolitical, kek. I, being from r-ssia, was kinda surprised how many logical hoops ordinary people would make to rationalize not even showing support to corpo-rats, but killing people for money, being shot for doing that. Class conciousness needs a lot of work to start to be. There's none at this moment.
Have you seen them lately? All that Botox... Yuck
We only have to eat one!
One per year
Because in the USA the police murder peoples that go at the rich.
Everywhere works like that. Police are there to serve the rich
That is the problem.
I wish there was some kind of saying with an easy abbreviation that could express this
The working class literally can’t afford to revolt.
ironically we have more to loose now than in the age of revolutions (at least in the imperial core). When most people truly had nothing to loose but theirs chains. Nowadays most of what we have "to loose" tho are empty platitudes, it's not bread and circuses anymore, just fastfood and apps...
Can't afford to exist though either, so surely doing all out on the one that might actually get change is the better way?
(that's more rhetorical, sadly I am well aware of all of the hurdles put in our way by the very system we seek to destroy, and that keeping us fighting for survival, and against each other, so that we have no energy or resources to fight those in power is a feature not a bug)
perhaps they are saving that for sweeps