Lefty Memes
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
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Okay, and? Again, some people are gonna need more than just money. Furthermore, money doesn't help the fact that they're being overcharged for rent, food, healthcare, whatever. Give them money and the prices will just go up. You have to address the cause too.
The cause is doofuses saying crap like "don't raise the minimum wage, it's inflationary" so that the corporations get away with hunger wages. Countries with significantly higher minimum wages famously don't have significantly more expensive burgers.
I can tell you for a fact I'm working for a burger place right now they haven't raised the wages in 3 years but they've raised the prices three times since then. I'm about to not be working here anymore
Well done for going for something better.
The cause of most inflation is corporate greed, not excessive wealth amongst poor people!
That's because they go the extra mile and do things like cap rent and shit. If you want to solve poverty, that's the kind of thing you have to do. The US is run on greed, which is why prices are rising faster than inflation, but wages aren't even keeping up with inflation.
So what on earth made you think that giving money to poor people would be the cause of inflation?! I'll tell you what, it's corporations spending a lot of money and time buying politicians who will parrot their line that raising the minimum wage will make inflation get out of control, whereas the main thing they're worried about is not making quite such astronomical profits. MW has barely changed in the USA over decades but has risen much more elsewhere. If the theory were right, USA would have been largely free of inflation and the rest of western democracies would be far worse, but I'm fact inflation is bad everywhere. Why? Corporate greed. Poor regulation. International tax avoidance.
US dollars make up nearly 60% of the world's reserve currency. I could be mistaken here, but my understanding is that means a significant chunk of the world is using the USD as a significant part of their currency standard (#2 is the euro with just under 20%). As such, if I understand correctly that means that if the US dollar undergoes inflation, then the rest of the world will experience at least some inflation as well.
This is only true if you look at federal minimum wage. Wages aren't keeping up with inflation, but most US cities have an official or unofficial minimum wage of $15/hr. I think that shift happened about 10yrs ago, and afaik nothing's changed since then.
Exactly. They knew they could charge more, and so they did. That's what inflation is. Everyone realized they could charge more, so they did. The dollar decreased in value because prices went up across the board.
Inflation.
Seriously? You went from giving some homeless people enough money to get accommodation and food to a global inflation crisis?
I mean ,that's some really absurd fear mongering right there.
You've got to be a Republican if you can swallow or invent nonsense like that. No, global inflation crises are caused by corporate reactions to war and stock market scares, not by charity projects.
Who the f*** ever heard of the global RedCross inflation crisis of 1987?! There wasn't one!
The World Food Programme guacamole price hike of 2014?! There wasn't one!
The International Rescue Committee credit crunch of 2018? There wasn't one!
The The World Health Organization cancer treatment rising expense scandal of 2023? There wasn't one!
Why didn't these things happen?
Because giving people in dire straights enough to get them back on their feet IS NOT a cause of any kind of inflation. Stop making out that your crazy catastrophe theories are even slightly plausible,
Charitable crisis solving is safe. It's unequivocally good for the economy. Keeping people on the streets and hence out of work is bad for the economy. Alleviating abject poverty is unequivocally GOOD.
I give up. You're not reading what I'm saying. I'm actually pretty far left, further left than it seems you or most of the people here are considering how they object to the idea that people should receive whatever assistance they need, not just have money thrown in their face and told to fuck off
Edit: sigh one last try. I think you're fucking with me, and if so then you're doing a really good job, so congrats. Well done, you got me pretty good.
Actually yes. It sounds unhinged, but when you're talking about rich people, they'll do whatever to get richer. Rich people will unironically bring the economy to the brink of collapse if it means they'll get richer. Where have you been the past, oh I dunno, all of human civilization?
It's not poor people's fault.
It's nothing they've done.
It's all rich people.
Get rid of the rich people. Now you won't have to keep increasing the money you give poor people. Otherwise someone might be able to afford tools today but be unable to buy new ones tomorrow.
I didn't object to any of the extra help. That's a straw man. I just have to keep reminding you that giving people in abject poverty substantial chunks of no-strings unconditional cash has a large and growing body of evidence showing that it's more effective and cheaper than leading with non-cash interventions, which are slow, have limited long term benefits and high drop-out rates. You do them too, later, but you lead with cash. Actual cash. You know, to fix the lack of cash issue that's causing most of the rest of the problems.
That's literally what I've been saying this entire fucking time you dingus.
Edit:
Key sentence in bold and italics. From my first comment in this thread.
Not quite, it isn't, not in overall message, and if you read what I said, you'll see that I didn't object to any additional help, I just insist on substantial cash first and reject most firmly your absurd histrionics about inflation.
Listen, I may have been horrible at phrasing what I'm saying, but that's legitimately what I've been trying to argue. The difference I guess is that I'm anticipating the possible negative outcomes and saying they should be resolved simultaneously instead of just saying "throw money at them".
Okay, sooooo... Again, apparently I was bad at explaining myself, but that's basically what I was trying to say, just that instead of cash now, resolve issues later, I think that you should resolve the possible issues at the same time.
Why is it hard to believe that rich people will happily destroy the world if it means they get an extra dollar or two? They're already doing it. Recent history has firmly established that rich people are consistently among the worst human beings that humanity has to offer. They would unironically feed a baby into a blender if that meant their company ran 0.1% more efficiently. That's why I'm convinced they'll just fuck people over again. You have to either remove them from the equation as well, or at the very least, quarantine them so their obscene wealth and influence can't hurt anyone in the real world.
And we can make it quick bby. It doesn't have to take long~.
Inflation is a real thing and will really happen. It's just that charity programmes have absolutely nothing to do with fuelling inflation. You have cause and effect utterly backwards.
The difference is that I'm hearing the people doing the things and analysing the results who are saying no strings cash is far and away the best thing you can do. All the other stuff has to come later.
If it's 103 outside and you haven't drunk anything since the morning, your mouth is parched and you're starting to feel dizzy and I show up with a shrink and a sachet of electrolyte-rich powder, I'm just not helping. If I show up with three pints of cool but not cold water then you might be prepared to take some electrolyte powder in it but I bet you $100 you don't want to wait for me to mix it into the first pint, because here's the thing, the water is the main thing you need. Pint 2 or 3 you might accept the electrolytes, but frankly they can wait. And don't bother with the shrink yet either. Don't lead with the powder, don't lead with the shrink, lead with the water.