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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Lol replace "Socialism" with "Individualism" or "Individualist capitalism" and pretty much the definitions match. So socialism = Capitalism? Right I don't think capitalism means what you think it means.
I don't think you understand the implications of this. He who creates owns. So he who creates can create a license to rent or he can sell that right to another. So say Bob builds a house. Are you going to tell Bob he can't charge someone for using his creation? Do you even realize how bizarre that sounds? Now what if Bob wants to sell his house to Charlie? Just like one would sell any other widget. Again are you going to tell Charlie he can't charge for use of his purchase? That is what rent seeking is. If you banned rent seeking it would set a precedent to limit any monetary gain from any use of a created object. Are you going to ban Air BnB? What about subletting? Software licensing? Video rentals? Where does that ball of yarn end?
Also if you don't like monopolies why is it okay to use a monopoly on violence to tell someone else what to do or not do with their stuff in the first place?
So long as it was voluntary does it matter?
Possibly but then no one forced those other people from selling their food stocks. This is essentially the same kind of debate Nestle is having with Canada. Nestle believes that no, people do not have a right to water and everything is for sale. However Canada's water is essentially collectively owned as part of Crown land and part of the commons. Technically Canada is still under British rule even though we're independent and self governing. Ergo all that collective land is technically owned by the Crown, in this case now King Charles. Thus is why you can go to any lake or river in Canada and the cost of the water is like $0.01/gal. Nestle tried to take advantage of this and there was a huge court battle. IIRC they were banned/fined. But yeah the core issue is are resources owned collectively or competed over? Also a nice middle ground might be a cooperative. Or you might do what the FN did and do away with the concept of owning raw resources entirely. You can't own water, dirt or land, just what you make. You could also make x territory a legal entity to prevent excess harvesting and pollution. Or just disassociate from those that didn't respect the earth. But yeah. So what if people are starving? If they have nothing to trade then they starve. This is where we get back into the gift economy bit.
Do you know how much land is required to run a farm? To grow grain crops like wheat, corn, oats, barely? You don't need to have a cult to need a ton of cubic. And maintanaince is simple: hire some people or get some volunteers. What if you wanted to start a homestead? Or start building a settlement? Also back in the day you could accrue it by just working the land. If you don't need the govt's permission then you just go out and claim an area of land and start developing it.
The inhibiting factor for land development is land taxes and aquisition. If any random person could find a spot of undeveloped land and start building you'd find a lot more homes built and stuff being made.