this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
963 points (94.5% liked)
Lefty Memes
4354 readers
382 users here now
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
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Oh you mean like is currently happening right now without socialism?
Isn't happening in well functioning capitalist countries
Because they continue what they have historically done: outsourcing the most extreme poverty and suffering to the countries they exploit for resources.
You do know that hunger and malnutrition in the US impacts millions of people every year, and Cuba has eliminated food insecurity for its entire population, right?
If not, now you do.
That's not data, that's a newspaper article. Come back with serious sources.
Give us the numbers, my dude.
He literally countered a baseless claim, which would have the burden of proof and could have been dismissed, and you still want more?
The article is the classic example of concern-trolling.
Instead of showing statistics or actual data, it talks about this "economic crisis" of Cuba, it interviews a particular person to make people feel pity, shows a few pictures of people selling produce on the streets (normal in Cuba since the 1990s' periodo especial)... The writers don't know about Cuba, and don't care about Cubans. It's just a wannabe hit-piece to create concerns in the West about the conditions of Cubans. That's why I'm dismissing it. The claim "there's hunger in Cuba" requires statistical evidence supporting it.
Perfect, so why not say this directly? And why not provide evidence for the other side?
Only focusing on what we do not believe is a big part of how we got to the shitty situation we are in today. Such a bias really hurts us and we must constantly remind ourselves that the other side is just like us.
I said well functioning.
I don't consider the US well functioning by any metric
I agree, which countries do you consider well functioning?
Canada, Sweden Denmark Australia
7 million Canadians going hungry under capitalism: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/new-food-banks-canada-research-shows-7-million-canadians-report-going-hungry-833281882.html
And aren't Sweden and Denmark famously more socialist than other developed countries?
Edit: also I find it interesting that Socialism is judged by the worst example you could find, but Capitalism can only be judged by "well functioning countries". US is peak Capitalism, it is exactly the direction Capitalism goes towards.
All capitalist countries are well-functioning, it's just some are exploiters and some are exploited. But that's not a malfunction, that's there by design.
Or, to quote Chomsky:
Exporting your poverty and starvation to foreign countries where you super-exploit and plunder does not mean that the cause isn't with the "well functioning Capitalist country."