this post was submitted on 15 May 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

Version without spoilers

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.



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

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[–] sus@programming.dev 7 points 6 months ago (14 children)

It's just the paradox of tolerance again. Too much freedom causes a power vacuum, which almost inevitably causes some small but determined authoritarian group to gobble up that power until they get so big they can overthrow the whole system. And then you're back to square one, except now the system is probably fascist.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 6 months ago (10 children)

How do you you "gobble up power" in a group dedicated to preventing anyone having power over others?

[–] sus@programming.dev 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

That group won't exist in a vacuum. It needs to be resilient to outside interference. Even inside that group there are going to be people that only identify with it out of convenience rather than true belief. It is still possible for individuals to accrue social capital, form "inner circles" and individually stockpile resources - and stopping them would logically infringe on their freedoms to associate, freedom to dig holes, etc.

[–] Drewelite@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 6 months ago

So you're saying that in whatever system is created for libertarianism there will be a potential for people to use their freedom to subvert libertarianism, right? That makes sense to a point, but it's the same issue that exists in every other system. Socialist need to have checks and balances to ensure the government doesn't subvert the needs of the people, capitalists need to bust monopolies to ensure someone doesn't takeover the market, etc. I know I'm mixing economics and politics, but I hope you see my point.

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