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!
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.
Make sense. In its inception, capitalism was putting work as the source of value creation. Rental is about asking money while nothing is produced.
The message is all confusing today because the people talking about the value of hard work are actually the ones who want to get huge returns from investment while paying as little as possible for the work done. Their end goal is to avoid working themeselves. Smith would despise them just the same.
Capitalism is based on the theoretical right of ownership in an era where only feudal aristocrats could own anything, in the present day and age many people in a capitalist society own their home and primary mode of transport and there isn't a law per-se that restricts anyone from even being allowed to own a home or car or horse or whatever other than being under aged.
The next step is the degree to which that right should be that you can in theory own a home, vs the right to own a home in fact. IE, the equality of opportunity vs the equality of outcomes. This is another dimension in which class struggle is in fact intersectional with identity politics, as that same equality of opportunity vs equality of outcomes struggle is what defines a lot of modern race and gender relation conflicts in the present day, or at least what did before the right decided to drag us all kicking and screaming back to the 50s, the 1850s.
Capitalism is feudalism with a marketing team.
Land/capital shouldn't be more important than people. Economies are supposed to be lowly tool of a society to maximize the equitable and efficient distribution of goods and services within a society for the benefit of the citizens of said society, not a few thousand sociopath families at most of society's expense as it is.
Our society (the US in my case, but increasingly the entire west) literally lives in perpetual servitude to one of its broken tools. A catastrophe should have leaders coming out saying they'll take every measure to protect their people and society, not their fucking economy and it's quarterly private profit expectations.
The innovation of capitalism is that the right to own land or other capital assets isn't an exclusive right of the aristocracy. There is no law in letter which says you cannot ever own a home, and that is a new thing in the west. The next capitalist innovation was that you don't have to own something to have the rights of people who do own things, which was unheard of prior to the liberal capitalist revolutions of the 1700s and 1800s.
It's important to understand that things we take for granted in the present day did not always exist, nor are they necessarily guaranteed to keep existing unless specific effort is made to prevent them from being destroyed by the forces that want to go back, in today's day and age, that being the emerging class of inheritance billionaires who through various means are acquiring more and more outsized political power as well as more and more outsized ownership of resources, creating an in fact reversal of the liberal reforms of the feudal system which even Marx hailed as a huge and essential step in the right direction for the era it happened in.
These things did not happen because of capitalism. These things happened despite capitalism.
Not even Marx would agree with this statement.
You are not permanently tied to your landlord, nor is your landlord your judge and president. You don't usually work for your landlord, either.
Capitalism is different. It still sucks and exists because of the squeezing out of surplus value. It isn't feudalism.
As for economies being lowly tools, they're not. They're quite literally the most important part of society. They're how we eat, drink, and survive. Unfortunately we live in a class society, and have done so ever since a couple of dudes during the dawn of agriculture started racketeering. As a result, "a few thousand sociopath families" have distributed resources in their own favour for a very long time, and will continue to do so until class society and the state are abolished.
That's what's wild- Adam Smith has been totally whitewashed by modern capitalists. They want to believe he is the exact opposite of Karl Marx, but their boy actually has many similarities with Karl that they choose to ignore. Kinda like how they ignore the parts of Jesus's teachings that don't vibe with their free markets and guns for all.
Yep. He had a lot to say about social welfare, how horrible poverty was, how shitty monopolies are etc.
I don't really want to rehab Adam Smith or crapitalism but when even the poster boy for the scholarly justifications for this system would be like "excuse me, what the fuck?" maybe alarm bells should be ringing?
Georgism ❤️
“Capitalism has this HUGE THING in common with COMMUNISM! Your MAGAt hat (made in Jina!) will Never Be The Same!”
/checkmate
horseshoe theory deniers in shambles.
Well for Adam landlords immediately demonstrated the concept of capitalists being bad at capitalism.
It's less that Capitalists are bad at Capitalism, and more that Capitalism contains within it contradictions that lead to its own demise.
Okay.... What is your proposed plan to fix this problem?
let LAND_PRIVATE_OWNERSHIP = False
Obviously... reactionaries these days aren't even trying. smh my head.
That.... Isn't exactly a "plan". Can you elaborate on how we will get there?
Right click the society, select open directory, locate the society.config file, right click and edit it. Set the variable there.
Do I have to spell everything out?
Very funny.
I guess I misunderstood. I thought you wanted to change things, instead of just bitching and making memes on the internet. That's on me.
Maybe you should read a few books instead of antagonistically demanding to be educated in the comment section of a joke?
We've gotten very far from the topic on hand, but sure, can you recommend me a few books I haven't read?
what do you want to learn? How revolutions work and their stumbling blocks? How different societies have or might manage land? how we got here?
I want to learn how you would go from your current system, wherever you are in the world, to one without landlords. I'll cut the bullshit and just openly say that I don't think you've thought it through.
There are about a million pieces in the middle that are missing, and I promise you that none of them are pretty.
If there was a step by step plan with 100% certainty people would just do that obviously, but that's a ridiculous standard to have.
There are many approaches to try and soften things: from political agitation for heavy taxes on multiple properties and inheritance taxes to rent caps and so on. Ultimately though, as is currently the case, the landed class will use violence the moment they feel sufficiently threatened and any movement that wants to succeed will need to be prepared to meet that.
Like you can and will be killed or gaoled forever if you resist being homeless sufficiently hard because a piece of paper says that someone has exclusive rights to land they're not personally using. All the rights we currently enjoy were won through sacrifice. Unionists were killed for sick leave and holidays, people were killed for voting rights, people were killed to be openly gay etc. Dismantling these tools of oppression and violence will involve violence, it is naive to think otherwise but we don't need to go there before offering peaceful redistribution.
I understand and absolutely agree with everything you've said, but I'm not asking for 100% certainty. I'm asking for A plan, no matter how absurd it is.
Every successful revolution in the history of the world has had an endgame. I'm not sure I see yours.
So at this stage where I live is very far from any sort of organised resistance to capitalism. Rebuilding foundational institutions of mutual aid and working class organisation such as food coops and unions is more productive than trying to march in the street for abolishing landlords. One activist was recently in the news for organising squatting which I think is rad, and he handled himself masterfully when dropped into a neoliberal shark tank on TV.
There are many laws that favour landlords: such as negative gearing, capital gains tax discounting, and absolutely fucked renters rights. Attacking these politically helps to build a movement and aids real people now. One political party is pushing for major increases in public housing, assisting them undermines the strength landlords have by reducing their power over homelessness.
I don't have a plan for Australia to ban landlords because that's far in the future, groundwork needs establishing first and that takes the form of spreading ideas, seeking consensus, aiding political allies, and participating in local coops and so on to build solidarity and class consciousness.
The end goal is imho a society organised around mutual aid, collective ownership of the means of production, and abolishing private ownership (not personal btw, your toothbrush is safe). There are any number of utopian visions for what that might look like but we have so much to do from now till then that overly fixating on a specific codified system is a waste of time. First people need to believe another way is possible and be empowered to build it.
Sure. Increase property taxes by 400% if the owner does not list the home as their primary residence. This frees up the small homes. If it doesn’t work, keep fucking increasing it.
Implement immediate federal rent controls to tie increases to inflation. Establish a federal rent oversight agency where landlords must file appeals to prove their property value increased or prove they added value to the residence to increase rent beyond inflation.
The crux of this issue is that it requires leftists to be in government. I vote for every leftist on my ballot, local state or federal. And only the leftists.
This doesn’t do anything about the fact that capital has spent the last 80 years violently suppressing global leftism which has left the US with two parties: right-wing extremist, and outright fascist.
See, pretty simple when you don’t act all cute “just asking questions” full well knowing you’re a bad faith actor and will simply handwave away any concrete evidence put forth.
Except you don’t give a shit. Nothing was going to change your mind at all. Yeah sure you “agree” with all that.
Pretty goddamn funny how you ghouls always come in pretending to agree and just seeking one more info on tired old topics that have been addressed thousands of times already.
Here’s a tip, leftists don’t act like that. It’s pretty obvious when you do it.
Eh, the SocDems would probably point to Vienna's social housing as something that's going well and try to do something similar. But you'd need socialists in government to build a duck ton of housing, and fund repairs adequately. Some places that's not too ridiculous of an idea, others would be nearly impossible.
Economies are pretty big, complicated things. It's easy to state an ethical standard you have, but it's very hard to find a good way to do it.
Rent seeking should be banned unless there is significant continued investment by the owner.
That's an interesting proposal. I can see how that would eventually fix the problem.
I'll have to look more into it, but right now I think I'm on board.
Only allowing publicly and personally owned housing. Remove the concept of endlessly profiting off of dead labor.
All systems will be morphed by the powerful to secure their power
To eliminate the problem you must eliminate greed which hasn’t seemed to work out considering it’s a sin
