this post was submitted on 11 Oct 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
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.
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The only wealth redistribution they allow is from the poor to the rich. Bonus points if they can:
The liberal play book is so dumb and yet so effective.
EDIT: To all those that got offended by the dunk on liberals, consider this: When did your liberal government in practice and in a meaningful capacity increase tax pressure on the rich and allocate the increased funds to the benefit of the poor? Also, if you are not for more equitable redistribution of wealth, what are you even doing in this community?
You're forgetting the vehicle of modern plundering: the Corporation
The corporation is the weapon the capitalist class uses to make liberal democracies into dictatorships of the bourgeoisie.
They don't only exploit human resources but also natural resources and communal resources.
The extraction of surplus value is usually done with no regard for and to the direct detriment of the well-being of the foundation on which value is being created.
You spelled conservative wrong buddy
US liberals are conservatives where I am from.
I am living in a liberal (social) democracy and can give numerous reasons as to how and why it is currently failing, even as it is internally miles ahead of any shithole capitalist hellscape such as the US. Goals and ideals matter if they are based upon a factual understanding of material reality.
I am much more interested in a qualitative argument about socialist policy founded on proper material conditions, rather than what you deem to be the historical, and thus I infer the inevitable future, truth of a socialist system.
I am also not going to engage with effort if I do not see some effort in return, which I really do not at the moment.
... while fixating on the historical and therefore inevitable failures of any alternative.
Effort would be wasted against a double standard. If you only want to discuss practice, then the only relevant comparisons are to other real things that already happened. If you get to defend how and why those countries fucked up, by appealing to goals and ideals, and saying they were just shit at doing them - so does everyone else.
This conversation is never worth having unless it's apples-to-apples.
Things rarely go "swimmingly" for the left because it fights against existing power structures, and those power structures fight back. And the countries that tend to have socialist revolutions also tend to start out with terrible conditions, bad enough for people to rise up, and then made worse by the devastation of conflict. Then they have to grapple with future threats from invasions, sanctions, and clandestine subversion.
In spite of this, many socialist countries have made major improvements to people's lives, especially in comparison to what the previous regime had been doing.
For example, Cuba was a gangster state under the dictator Batista, who was in league with the American Mafia and plundered the country for his own profits and those of wealthy plantation owners. After the revolution, in spite of sanctions, life expectancy improved greatly surpassed the US, literacy skyrocketed, and the country now has the highest number of doctors per capita in the world, who are regularly sent abroad to provide aid. Cuba recently (2022) passed an amendment to its constitution which greatly strengthened LGBT rights and gender equality.
Not really, the ones that had promise were conquered by capitalists, and all states should be abolished anyways.
Do you have any examples of right wing governments that don't primarily exist to protect the interests of their oligarchy?
Stalin and Mao, famous capitalists. Yeah? Otherwise, no, history has some prime examples of leftists fucking things up amongst themselves.
If you'd like to compare those historical examples to theory, instead of defending them purely as-they-were - great. But then so would anyone discussing any liberal democracy. It would be dishonest to demand a defense of practice alone unless we're judging against practice alone.