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Lefty Memes
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of "ML" (read: Dengist) influence. 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, discussion and agitprop/stuff that's better fit for a poster than a meme 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. Please post agitprop here)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Try to use alt text or image descriptions to allow for greater accessibility
(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)
We encourage 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.
0.5.1 Style tip about abbreviations and short forms
When writing stuff like "lol" and "iirc", it's a good idea to try and replace those with their all caps counterpart
- ofc => OFC
- af = AF
- ok => OK
- lol => LOL
- bc => BC
- bs => BS
- iirc => IIRC
- cia => CIA
- nato => Nato (you don't spell it when talking, right?)
- usa => USA
- prc => PRC
- etc.
Why? Because otherwise (AFAIK), screen readers will try to read them out as actually words instead of spelling them
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" (read: Dengists) (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.
6. Don't irrationally 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
- Sexual assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
The prevalence of the first comment (looking at you peter theil) made me a socialist. If the capitalists themselves dont believe its compatible with demoracy, its not compatible.
It was the second comment that did it for me. I grew up knowing the people who believed in money above all else were evil, but seeing how the “good guys” kept kowtowing to the “bad guys” made me realize they are all bad and the only solution is to dismantle capitalism.
Grew up around both. Ended up an anarchist
Conservatism is still conservatism.
There must be a well defined, stratified, social hierarchy, and this system also must be morality itself.
This is what all conservatives believe and hold most dear... it does not matter that they are often too stupid to consciously realize this about themselves.
Their swollen amygdalas are terrified of uncertainty and the unknown, and a world that doesn't follow a fairly simple set of rigid, universal rules is essentially an apocalypse to them.
All that has changed in the last ~250 years is that democracy became normalized by way of violent revolts demanding it, or the powers that were acquiesing to reforms and limitations of their own power... so as to avoid a violent revolt.
This allowed capitalism to arise... initially it appeared to, or at least rhetorically presented itself as offering a more democratic approach to conducting an economy... but it has enough fundamental flaws that it guarantees the recreation of a stratified hierarchichal society.
Now, capitalism has fully captured most of the governments and much of the population of the West... and the Western Conservative is a-ok with this: Capitalism offers its own social castes, rules, morality system, and has the coherent power to be able to enforce these.
Democracy is a just... a vestigial element of society, to a modern Conservative. Ancient, outmoded, optional. So long as the hierachy exists, and can perpetuate itself, of what use is allowing a potential for disruption?
capitalism is compatible with democracy
In the same way licking the elephants foot is compatible with life, yeah.
In the long term, I don't believe it is.
The pressure from capitalism to:
These pressures arise due to desire for profits, as well as the tendency for citizens to feel a lack of agency when they dont control their economic freedom, and therefore voting for the trumps of the world.
We could try regulation again, but thats what FDR did, and look where we are.
When money is power, votes mean nothing.
No not really. Capitalism seeks to exploit, it will exploit democracy (see:the world)
As much as economists like to pretend, capitalism is not a political system. The goal is exploitation because we choose so. As a society we could just as easily choose to make our goal the maximal fulfillment of the needs of the public. All that takes is preventing those without a personal concept of "enough" from controlling capital.
That's just not possible when you factor in both accumulation of wealth (it's exponential like compound interest) and the competition between capitalists for profit. The competition does not come from their moral beliefs but from the incentives created by the system itself.
This would require to remove capital from the hands of individuals and either throw it in the hands of the state, or change its (corporate) ownership to co-op model (one worker - one vote). Both have been shown to work but that would no longer be capitalism but instead a form of socialism, as private capital would no longer dictate what's produced in the economy and how it's distributed. Instead it would be dictated by the state which is controlled by the people through some form of democracy, or democratically by the workers within each corporation, or both. In both cases what's produced is dictated by the needs of the majority of the workers in that state. And that's textbook socialism.
How to make a cluekess dude read Marx? It's baffling that we have to answer the same questions again and again.
Capitalism is an exploitation system. It will exploitation what it needs to, to ensure it continues. If that is policies then it will do so. Preventing those without the concept of enough from controlling capital is an an uphill battle. Easier said than done
Not if you make greed a capital offense (pun intended).
Sure but who will enforce that what is defined as greed? It gets very muddy
you're a fucking idiot if you think they're what capitalism means. democracy implies the common man has voting rights. capitalism means that the market determines the value of every product
Capitalism doesn’t have a monopoly over the idea of exchanging goods and services. It’s all about accumulation of wealth and will pursue it endlessly because it has no endgame. Union busting; laying off 8,000 employees on leave (Meta); appeasing shareholders over the customers that made them wealthy; burying us all in AI slop.
Man, the amount of people that think capitalism is a system of money exchange almost seems like one of the major issues somehow, as if people are afraid that they won't be able to afford things, because there won't be money. Neglecting that they already can't afford things, because capitalism is a parasite that kills the host, not because tokens of value can exist outside that perversion.
That's not what capitalism means. Nice projection though!
markets dictating the market is exactly what capitalism means
A free market is often (not necessarily) a characteristic of capitalism, but it's not what makes a system capitalist. Capitalism is specifically when the means of production (the "capital") are privately owned (by a single "capitalist" or a group of shareholder capitalists).
This is opposed to socialism where the working class owns the means of production. Socialism vs capitalism basically comes down to who owns the mills and factories , the people who work there or some fat cat on a yacht somewhere? You can Google it for better explanations than I can give.
Maybe you should try a cursory internet check for the definition first
if I'm then explain
Really? How come the "free market" fails entirely without regulation?