this post was submitted on 21 Jun 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.
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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.
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as well as condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
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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).
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The only dangerous minority is the rich.
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We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
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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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(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
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I disagree with the "doing nothing is good for the soul" one only for UBI experiments bearing out that even in a vacuum of satisfied needs people will still tend to make project work for themselves just to have something to do to not be bored.
Being able to relax at one's own discretion and necessity is healthy, but having something to say you do for yourself is evidently somewhere in that hierarchy of needs.
It is definitely healthy to be able to take time and actually do nothing though. Like having a cup of tea in the morning, and just sitting and waking up slowly. That's good for the soul
Yeah but that's not "doing nothing" as much as just relaxing
To me "doing nothing" means sedentary subsistence living
I believe the spirit of "doing nothing is good for the soul" in the context of the whole, is pointed more at the dissolution of the thought that you ought to be doing something productive.
I would credit you the question, can one ever "do nothing?" Sitting on a park bench is something. Listening to birds in the morning is something. Breathing is something. These things are good for the soul, they are not "productive" in a capitalistic sense and I think that is the point of the list.
Well at that point we're stepping into the realm of the "read theory" international english dictionary.
Like you said, none of those activities are what reasonable people would consider "doing nothing", so why should we give credence to the capitalist notion of such by quoting it?
At the same time my earlier point still stands, there are very few people in this world that are actually capable of feeling personally satisfied living in a fashion where they have nothing to fill their days with.
We can recognize the balm to the spirit a calming walk, or a day relaxing under the sun, or even just a day staying bed can be to the spirit without adopting a rhetoric that makes it seem that those are permanent states to aspire to.