this post was submitted on 01 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

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)


0.5 [Provisional Rule] Use alt text or image descriptions to allow greater accessibility


(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)

We require alternative text (from now referred to as "alt text") to be added to all posts/comments containing media, such as images, animated GIFs, videos, audio files, and custom emojis.
EDIT: For files you share in the comments, a simple summary should be enough if they’re too complex.

We are committed to social equity and to reducing barriers of entry, including (digital) communication and culture. It takes each of us only a few moments to make a whole world of content (more) accessible to a bunch of folks.

When alt text is absent, a reminder will be issued. If you don't add the missing alt text within 48 hours, the post will be removed. No hard feelings.


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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[–] KevonLooney@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is the "Paradox of Thrift":

The paradox states that an increase in autonomous saving leads to a decrease in aggregate demand and thus a decrease in gross output which will in turn lower total saving. The paradox is, narrowly speaking, that total saving may fall because of individuals' attempts to increase their saving, and, broadly speaking, that increase in saving may be harmful to an economy.[1] The paradox of thrift is an example of the fallacy of composition, the idea that what is true of the parts must always be true of the whole. The narrow claim transparently contradicts the fallacy, and the broad one does so by implication, because while individual thrift is generally averred to be good for the individual, the paradox of thrift holds that collective thrift may be bad for the economy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_thrift

[–] RustyShackleford@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

the paradox of thrift holds that collective thrift may be bad for the economy.

Collective thrift is great for the economy. It's just bad for corporate parasitism, economic stagnation, and cataclysmic wealth imbalance.

It renders parasitic business models as unviable and allows for the rebalancing of resources and development capital towards products that provide actual meaningful value for the vast majority of people.

[–] KevonLooney@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, it's bad. It creates a deflationary spiral that kills all kinds of businesses. Japan's economy has been fucked for decades by low growth because of deflation.

If people don't spend money, companies fire workers. Then people spend less money because they have no jobs. So companies fire even more workers. Thrift is bad in aggregate.

[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I like to remind people that the last time we had a really bad deflationary recession, it was so bad that we called it a "depression"...

[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The major difference between that and what Japan is experiencing is that The Great Depression was cause by inflationary causes, not deflation, and the US government printing more money wasn't going to help there. Meanwhile Japan has been printing boatloads of money for decades trying to trigger inflation, and are barely managing to stave off deflation.

The other major difference is that during The Great Depression, US couples were having children. Japan has been in a population Freefall the entire time.

[–] someguywithacomputer@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm skipping meals (and cutting out other things too) as part of my cost cutting strategy to save up for a dentist appointment. Guess I'm responsible for the downfall of society. 🤷

[–] McDropout@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A reminder to keep boycotting Kellog’s, Starbucks, McDonald’s and Nestle. :)

[–] Wes_Dev@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm familiar with the others, but what the heck did Kellog's do?

[–] McDropout@lemmy.world -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Their CEO said that people who cannot afford a dinner should be eating cereal for dinner.

His wealth is increasing exponentially every year.

Let them eat Flakes: Kellogg’s CEO says poor families should consider ‘cereal for dinner’

[–] snownyte@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's pretty true.

The only reason companies are as rich as they are, is because we keep choosing to fund them by buying things.

[–] suodrazah@aussie.zone 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] snownyte@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Does the word or context confuse you? Come on, think.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I can think of plenty of companies I'm nominally a customer of, but which were actually chosen for me. My mortgage and student loan servicers, for starters, since my loans were sold and I had no choice about who bought them.