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
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I've seen this episode, at first after the revolution there's three full plates of food. The party is doing well in power, then they consolidate power, the food portions get smaller as party elites get richer and more powerful.
Eventually it's just three plastic replicas of food, as they acknowledge everyone eats differently. Eventually it's just a badge or picture of the plates of food. By that time class based Capitalism has been restarted by the new party oligarchs, they even have more control and oversight than the current Capitalists.
What I mean is, you can't "should" us to a new and better system. You have to fully understand the current one, its weaknesses and strengths and the minds/views/motivations of every class and type in it before you can come up with something that is entirely and peacefully transition motivated, and has a better option to transition to... What's more the whole journey has to appeal to human nature and satisfy some if not all those needs... Even if you don't personally share all those needs... And you have to be realistic about such.
Rules for Rulers comes as close as I've seen on this:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
Or, you know, we could spend slightly more on existing food programs and relax eligibility requirements...
We don't have to put Stalin in charge to better fund SNAP or free school lunches
You say we could.
Why haven’t we ?
Please specify the "We"
The general answer is political and scientific illiteracy combined with corruption in politics (such as money or a party with too much power).
Thats what they said, no?
Cool, glad it got resolved so simply and neatly, good job everyone! 👍
P.S remember when the Black Panthers had to enforce the right to have a free breakfast program, by patrolling the streets with guns? They we're Maoist by the way (Maoism dictates using the community to set up community services). Glad things are so much simpler now. Operating on kind comments, thoughts and prayers 🙏
I don't understand why, when confronted with the idea that we should eliminate hunger, you equated that with communist revolution
That's just how far I've given up on reformist Capitalism and establishment corruption.
...but also on well meaning idealism that has little meaningful to offer.
You know what would be great, an honest, true, and transparent political system, and maximum wealth limits.
...like we can express good intentions and desires all day. That's cool, but there are hard problems in the way, and at some point utopianism is a distraction from realism and genuine analysis of what those hard problems are.
Your idea to end establishment corruption is to give full authority and remove all accountability for the Establishment, such as Mao ZeDong did?
No dumb ass, nor did I ever say that by pointing out that the Black Panthers were Maoist in their food distribution program (see their Wikipedia page for details).
They murdered Fred, while he was sleeping next to his pregnant girlfriend. Then blamed him.