this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2026
488 points (98.0% liked)
Lefty Memes
7153 readers
966 users here now
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of "ML" (read: Dengist) influence. 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, discussion and agitprop/stuff that's better fit for a poster than a meme 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. Please post agitprop here)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Try to use alt text or image descriptions to allow for greater accessibility
(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)
We encourage alternative text (from now referred to as "alt text") to be added to all posts/comments containing media, such as images, animated GIFs, videos, audio files, and custom emojis.
EDIT: For files you share in the comments, a simple summary should be enough if they’re too complex.
We are committed to social equity and to reducing barriers of entry, including (digital) communication and culture. It takes each of us only a few moments to make a whole world of content (more) accessible to a bunch of folks.
When alt text is absent, a reminder will be issued. If you don't add the missing alt text within 48 hours, the post will be removed. No hard feelings.
0.5.1 Style tip about abbreviations and short forms
When writing stuff like "lol" and "iirc", it's a good idea to try and replace those with their all caps counterpart
- ofc => OFC
- af = AF
- ok => OK
- lol => LOL
- bc => BC
- bs => BS
- iirc => IIRC
- cia => CIA
- nato => Nato (you don't spell it when talking, right?)
- usa => USA
- prc => PRC
- etc.
Why? Because otherwise (AFAIK), screen readers will try to read them out as actually words instead of spelling them
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" (read: Dengists) (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.
6. Don't irrationally 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
- Sexual 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 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Saying today is oligarchy not capitalism is like saying you don't have cancer you have stage four cancer
Communism is by definition a stateless society, not sure where you are getting those ideas about a communist government. Define "didn't work well". Nations such as Cuba have not achieved a communist utopia, but they did significantly improve the lives of their citizens in pretty much every way compared to pre revolutionary Cuba. Those states are obviously not communist and it is debatable to what extent they are socialist and not state capitalist.
Almost all European countries are currently in the process of removing as much of those social guarantees, which is a logically process that pretty inevitably happens as long capitalism exists.
Oligarchy is not caused by capitalism. These are different things. I'm not really sure if capitalism really caused it - it could just accelerated it. Bad people would so evil things in any system unless regulated
Communism requires state. Otherwise, it would be an anarchy - which never worked. About utopian communism: 2.1 USSR - failed on the way to the communism due to economic reasons. The system wasn't able to handle it all, and USSR had huge deficits and poorness. 2.2 China - "a communistic" country. Which is not really anymore. It just masks itself as one to still have a single leader (in their case a single party) 2.3 about Cuba I have no idea, no experience
That is unfortunate. But this social guarantees are being removed by rich and power hungry people that are trying to aggregate more power. And power is money. Imagine money = capitalism = bad. But if we will remove money from the system - bad actors could still abuse their power in different ways (political weight, connections)
Im downoted to hell for a different opinion from lefties, righties and centrists. Cool. I love society. But it is not a reddit and no karma, so it doesnt matter :)
Anarchy never worked except for the vast majority of human existence.
The vast majority of human existence: slavery and feudalism
You young earth creationists get wilder all the time. Now the Earth is younger than bronze?
Your thinking of written history, almost all of which was written by slavers and lords to justify them doing nothing and getting all the stuff.
The vast majority of human existence, from when we first diverged from apes until the agricultural revolutions, was organized around anarchic tribes and clans where they shared there resources and the leader "ruled" at the discretion of the tribe.
These were not benign, cooperative social structures. They were tiny dictatorships. The leader controlled the "discretion of the tribe" by eliminating dissent. The controlling principle of their social structure was "might makes right".
Other words for the broad concept you are describing are "harem" and "cult".
That sort of tyranny won't last long because there is no real method to monopolize violence before the agricultural revolution.
A tyrant could rule over a village by taking all the surplus, buying weapons and armor for him and his goons, and spending all their time training and specializing in violence to the point where there small group could easily threaten the remaining men in the village to work for them.
Before agriculture there was no surplus, no specialization and no advanced weapons and armor. So the difference between men matters far less and it becomes a numbers game. If one guy tries to monopolize the women and resources of the tribe then the rest of the men would rebel and easily take him and his goons.
Also pre agricultural society was nomadic, so if a tyranny ever came the oppressed could just leave.
If all the other men leave, or the tyrant kills the dissenters, then that leaves them vulnerable to attacks from other tribes. So naturally these tribes filled with strife and tyranny would die out while tribes that were able to keep consensus and coherence among the men would prevail.
Thus the leader in Hunter gatherer society ruled at the discretion of the tribe. If he deviated from the will of majority the threat of rebellion would loom over his head.
This is also why we saw a loosening of hierarchies after the invention of the gun and the loss of the importance of violence specialization and the increase in the importance of man power.
That sort of tyranny is the defining characteristic of these primitive, tribal social structures.
Gorillas, elephant seals, wolves... If you look hard enough, you can find similar social structure even in invertebrates. If the tyrant is ever overthrown, he is always replaced by those overthrowing him, and the tyranny continues. This structure was successful because a tribe's tyrant was a bigger threat to neighboring tribes than his own.
What really happened was that the departing group posed a competitive threat to those who remained, so they group collectively turned on the rebels. If a rebellion was ever actually successful, it quickly established the same structure with new players.
Tyranny thrives with surplus, scarcity, or anything in between.
The lesson that arises from this is submission. Submit to the tyrant of your tribe, or the tyrants of other tribes will be coming for you. If any in your tribe would turn against your tyrant, you owe a duty to your tyrant to eliminate them, and come to your tyrant's aid. Your tribe will die out, unless you keep consensus and coherence in support of your own tyrant. You become a supporting member of the tyranny long before you ever pick up a shovel or hoe. The pinnacle of anarchy is submission to the nearest tyrant.
That shit happened after agriculture.
agrarianism isn't universal, and humans who eschewed it are just as capable as people who embraced it. it's not before or after.
Exactly
2.1 The USSR had economic problems, especially near the end, but it also had achieved great economic progress. If you consider the full existence of USSR it's economy grew equally to that of the West. The USSR however had a way worse start as it inherited a feudal society that had just lost a war and was attacked immediately by capitalist nations such as the USA. Other countries that had similar starting conditions grew significantly less than the West or USSR in the same time period. The USSR saw a significant increase in life expectancy:
. It's economy later declined due to mismanaged and a expenditure for the military that wasn't feasable, but all in all I don't think it's fair to call the USSR a economic failure.
USSR has a different stages. One of stages where was burst growth in almost all the aspects - medicine, science, military and economics - was when Stalin was rule. Lenin was a dumb ruler that stealing food from poor people and he is make people poor starting inner war. After Stalins death USSR have some inertia, not so dumb ruler like Khrushchev and vibe of scientists country that have a flight into the space and so on that now sometimes shows in games or other media when it wants to show strong country. But then USSR with dumbest Brezhnev was finally tasted crude oil selling and thats was needed for its elites to live rich. With the outer long wars like Afganistan its become a break point from where the USSR doesn't solve his problems but silenced and accumulated them before the end. (in 80th USSR start money printing to prolong its death, but there was too late)
So is anarcho-communism an oxymoron for you then?