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)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Use alt text or image descriptions to allow greater accessibility
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.
- 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
view the rest of the comments
Yeah.
And that would never happen. Same goes for communism. On paper its all pretty but in practice you have to deal with han beings who want their own thing.
The only way to push through communism (or anarchism, for that matter) is to force people to follow it. This inevitably leads to the dictatorships we all know and love where people were murdered by the thousands only for disagreeing. Corruption will flourish because you'll keep having a richer class who just hide all their crap better, and those backroom deals are just awesome for a system corrupt to the core
Just acting as if the current problems with capitalism only exist because most people are blind while you "opened your eyes" is an attitude I'd expect from a 15 year old who is just repeating slogans
I like that your argument against Anarchism is that people are selfish and greedy, so having a system where individuals have huge amounts of power and wealth and can get what they want is better.
Because (many) Anarchists would say that humans being selfish and wanting more for their own benefit is (one of) the most important reason(s) for stopping humans having power and control over others.
I didn't read him as saying that though. They are not stating that capitalism is better, they are stating that human greed will attempt to corrupt every system.
There have to be safeguards in place to stop the greed. And yes, there might be safeguards within one anarchist collective (which anywhere else would be known as "laws"), but not another one that gets greedy and wants to take over your collective and has bigger guns.
Fighting against greed is an ongoing project no matter what political system you are under. Switching systems does not miraculously solve this.
Agreed. The flaw in the system is people. I hate to say it with the context of this comic, but the solution unfortunately isn’t “no rules” anarchy. That’s similar to the libertarian view, which somehow relies on the idea that if you get rid of regulation corporations and people will suddenly behave well by themselves when in fact history has proven time and again that it just turns into a big power grab. Corporations start dumping waste everywhere, get rid of environmental and worker protections, etc. whatever it takes to get ahead and make the most money. Same for people. There might be some places that can sort out some kind of effective shared governing and resource managment, but that still means rules, not anarchy.
Rules and laws keep people, the rich, and corporations from running roughshod. Problem is that those same people try to bend and shape those rules so that they can get away with doing just that. There is no “win” and being done, it’s a never-ending battle against greed.
I agree with your last paragraph fully.
I'd also say Anarchism is more a process than an end goal.