this post was submitted on 17 Apr 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, 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,
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:
- 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
(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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Theivery is a result of material needs unfulfilled, not some random genetic drive to go stealing.
Some people are born evil. More than most of us would care to think too hard about.
"The greatest crimes are not those committed for the sake of necessity but those committed for the sake of superfluity. One does not become a tyrant to avoid exposure to the cold." -- Aristotle
How do you believe anyone is "born evil"? What does that mean? Would you support eugenics if this 'evil gene' could be identified?
"Slavery is both expedient and right" - Aristotle
Probably a bad idea to quote Aristotle as a moral authority on anything but the rules of rhetoric.
Clearly he was wrong sometimes.
Was he wrong about the magnitude of crimes committed for the sake of excess being greater than crimes committed for survival? Who steals more - the capitalist class, or the Jean ValJeans of the world?
Said the guy arguing that some people are "born evil" and pretending they can't follow the logical chain from that assumption.
What an idealistic, immaterial look at the world. No, people are not born evil with an addiction to stealing, lol.
Does the billionaire that steals the excess production of the working class do so out of necessity?
Does the cop who steals cash from motorists and lies about smelling drugs do so because that cop is underprivileged and disenfranchised by the system?
Not all humans have working moral compasses. Its an unpleasant reality that can be hard for some people to come to grips with and integrate into their worldview, but failure to understand a problem is unlikely to lead to effective solutions.
People are products of their environment and their material conditions, exactly. You aren't genetically a billionaire or a cop, lmao.
What empty, vague idealism.
You're really not wrong, and I'm not entirely sure why you're being downvoted. Thievery is largely a product of unfulfilled needs or unchecked hoarding of wealth, one could even argue that the latter is just a reaction to living through or fear of the former. An anarchist society solves both of those problems inherently. How do you steal what can be gotten as a matter of course? I feel like the smallest outlier doing such things in a community would just be a mild inconvenience and caught pretty quickly.
Because shitlibs are on Lemmy now.