Maybe if people with your ideology only make things that harm you it's an opportunity to reflect.
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!
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
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.
tl;dr of my response: China ain't Socialist, and shouldn't be emulated in our struggle for socialist revolution worldwide.
Many leftists don't consider China and the CPC to even be socialist, many socialists around the world see the CPC as a ruling class of another capitalist country, albeit with much higher rates of nationalised industries.
We think you can't really call yourself socialist when the workers don't have meaningful democratic control over society. And unless you're being dishonest or are just misinformed, the workers most certainly don't have control of society in China. Less so then here (Australia), even.
One only need to talk to people in China to realise this, most people I've spoken to in China, even though who support the government, describe a very hierarchical benevolent government.
One simply can't look a lefty in the eye and say China is socialist, unless those "Chinese Characteristics" suffixed to "Socialism" simply stand for "without democracy".
There is no meaningful method to agitate for political change (no, being in one of the other parties most certainly doesn't count), there are no workers unions (strikes are heavily repressed and the only union that exists is controlled by the CPC, though despite that some groups of workers still sometimes bravely strike 💪) no freedom of political association, no democracy in the workplace.
It's really hard to claim China is socialist, yet people outside of China still do, just because they're holding the banner of socialism...
I don't hate China, it's a pretty nice place, with lovely people, and certainly a nicer place than the shithole of the US. I've been to China multiple times, and you wouldn't catch me dead in the US.
But they just ain't Socialist, and shouldn't be emulated in our struggle for revolution worldwide.
I think that's a bit reductive. While I am a sceptic that they'll ever really succeed and think they've fucked themselves a bit with how much power Chinese tech companies have been allowed to amass, there are true believers among the party and the central committee. I mean they teach Marxism in school (sort of).
In general chinese people describe extremely high satisfaction with their government, and respond more positively to questions like "If I have an issue I can go to my local politician and resolve it"^[https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/] than Westminster derived systems (which I would also not dignify with the word democracy) and it is worth asking why this holds while most so called democracies have hostile and parasitic governments.
If the will of the people is enacted then this is a sort of democracy, while if you vote and then the people you elect serve elites and ignore you this isn't really democratic.
Structurally some things in China are working vastly better than elsewhere, and it's worth trying to understand /why/ their government seems to work for the people so much more than other systems.
But I was merely relaying what they claim about themselves to point out even people fully committed to toeing their party line would not call them communist.