this post was submitted on 15 Sep 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, upvoting good contributions and downvoting 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,

as well as 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.

7. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:

(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)

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[–] hOrni@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

More than just a place to sleep; a place to call your own. And every place I've rented did not feel like my own; most corporate rental contracts make it very clear that this is their property, don't you dare make it feel like home, you only get to temporarily reside there by the grace of their good will (and by paying out your nose, ears, eyes, and ass for the privilege).

[–] NutWrench@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

If you're working 40 hours a week and you STILL can't afford basics like food, shelter and healthcare, then your economy (and your employer) sucks.

[–] jeffhykin@lemm.ee 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Is this true even if a person on an island spends their whole life building a wooden mega yacht for themself?

[–] xor@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

If someone can manage to build themselves a mega yacht from scratch they can keep it

[–] jeffhykin@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Hmm, so we could say the real problem is when someone has wealth disproportionately larger than what they contributed to the world?

That makes sense to me

Phew. I could sense people sharpening their pitch forks. This my yacht and I’m keeping it.

[–] LillyPip@lemmy.ca 19 points 3 days ago

Money hoarding is obscene. And worshipping money hoarders is gross.

[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 39 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

People can have mega yachts precisely because others don’t get 3 meals a day. That’s how the system is designed to work.

[–] Urist@lemmy.ml 30 points 3 days ago

Not because the capital spared from denied meals (or production thereof) are going directly towards yachts, but because the capitalist mode of production requires the threat of starvation to force us into unfavourable compensation for our labour.

Really, we could easily do both at this point (and more), but since greed knows no limits, there is also no limit to what pain the capitalist class will impose on us in order to extract surplus value.

We already produce enough food for a billion more people than what exists, but still around a billion live in starvation to deter the rest of us.

[–] DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 3 days ago (2 children)

grabs guillotine

MAMA WILL FIX IT. 😡🔥

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[–] UFODivebomb@programming.dev 48 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Everybody should have access to clean water. I mean everybody. If I was the President I'd happily enforce that with all powers available.

Then I'd start working my way up the hierarchy of needs...

[–] LillyPip@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Elon could single-handedly end world hunger. But he doesn’t.

[–] state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Well, billionaires should not exist. But ending world hunger takes way more than just money. There is enough food already, it's just not evenly distributed. And even in areas where we send aid, local power plays and corruption prevent the fair distribution. Ending world hunger is a hugely complex issue, unfortunately. Of course I'm not saying we shouldn't try or try different approaches. It's just not as simple as saying "feeding all hungry people costs x money, and some billionaire could pay for that"

[–] LillyPip@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes, but he’s a genius at business and logistics, and several forms of transportation. It should be easy for him to solve those problems, right? (Some /s in there)

In any case, he could hire people to solve those problems if he wanted to. He’s certainly got the resources. Then again, if he approached it like his other ventures, trying to run things himself, he may only make it worse for everyone whilst doubling his own net worth.

One huge issue are the situations that cause people to remain hungry. They are caused by war and widespread poverty. That's not something an immature asshole like Musk is going to solve. After all, he is part of the problem.

[–] jeffhykin@lemm.ee 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

Elon can't even save twitter. What makes you think he is single-handedly capable of ending world hunger.

[–] LillyPip@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

Not with any skills he has – he’s an idiot. I just mean the money he has. He could donate billions and billions to organisations that can, and still be the richest person on the planet.

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 44 points 3 days ago (3 children)
[–] CptOblivius@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Wow, I did not know that. He could definitely drop the percentage he takes from Indy developers. I always thought his 30%, was scummy. Now moreso.

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

From all developers honestly but just from indies would be great considering they already have it in their contract that the % goes down after X$ of sales (which benefits larger devs).

Valve makes enough money to pay their employees more than the competition while also having surplus to have tons of side projects that will lead to nothing and making the boss a billionaire... I don't mind the first two, but that last bit means money coming out of our pockets and going towards buying yachts...

(Disclaimer: I hate all billionaires, this applies to all platforms, we overpay for games [and most other things] in general because there's billionaires at the top of the creation/distribution chain)

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[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 32 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Clean water and a freaking shitter too!

[–] BreadOven@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

And shelter.

[–] Comment105@lemm.ee 10 points 3 days ago (6 children)

Before anyone can have VR or a sports car.

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[–] kindenough@kbin.earth 29 points 3 days ago (5 children)

It does make total sense.

Bezos needed to de-construct a bridge in the Netherlands because his new build yacht wouldn't go through. Fokker paid for it too, probably a fraction of that floating monstrosity. We did not like it one bit but the city of Rotterdam pulled their pants down and bended over.

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[–] rockettaco37@lemmy.world 20 points 3 days ago

Don't forget healthcare as well!

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 18 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Cooking Mama has an ideal outcome - Great

Cooking Mama's idea of getting there was whatever the fuck the USSR was doing... - Not Great

Just Tax the rich while maintaining a strong democracy, it's not hard.

[–] alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 3 days ago (1 children)

you don’t get to communism through “social democracy” XD

any concessions given by the rich in bourgeois “democracies” are funded by outsourcing some of the exploitation to the imperial periphery/global south

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (6 children)

You definitely don't get to a public owned means of production and redistribution of goods through Autocracy for vwry obvious reasons.

The rich need not make concessions when the poor can help write the laws.

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[–] Allero@lemmy.today 1 points 2 days ago

The core issue is that it actually is impossible to maintain full democracy under capitalism. Even under perfect direct democracy with no lobbies and full representation those with the means to promote their voice louder will do so.

And if you have big money (which some will, because the more money you already have, the easier it becomes to hoard even more), you can fund projects that will have to promote you in return, skewing the voting process.

In reality though, political lobbying, corruption, etc. are omnipresent, and extremely hard to combat, because it's in the logic of capitalism to accumulate wealth at all costs, legal or otherwise.

Now, I'm not saying socialist societies are totally devoid of corruption and self-interest, but they at least have mechanisms in place to curb it.

Capitalism is not aimed at increasing people's wellbeing, it's aimed at pursuing profit, and people's wellbeing is fundamentally secondary. If putting people in worse conditions increases profits, this will eventually be done. Socialism, on the other hand, declares people's equality and wellbeing as the core priorities. Resources should be spent in a way that benefits most people.

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 18 points 3 days ago (4 children)

So long as I can still choose to skip breakfast when I want.

[–] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 18 points 3 days ago

Did they fucking stutter? Now chow down that breakfast

[–] ramenshaman@lemmy.world 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

But what about second breakfast?

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