this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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Lefty Memes

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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

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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


(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)

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.



  1. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I mean you could even take the bottom number and leave them with the top number and they could still live in unimaginable luxury forever. Or just take the lot because fuck em lol.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I couldn't imagine spending $1 billion in my entire life, let alone 3-4.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Most of their billions is ownership in companies they grew into what they are today. It's not like they have billions to spend, it's that their ownership is worth billions according to the market.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

True, but that ownership gives them access to very low interest loans that they then use as spending money and don't have to pay taxes on it

https://www.businessinsider.com/american-billionaires-tax-avoidance-income-wealth-borrow-money-propublica-2021-6

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

So what? We should take away that ownership because they can leverage it? Also the same people suggesting we tax wealth like this want to also close those "loopholes" of low interest loans on shares.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yes to taking away wealth or the way to leverage it?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Taking away (extreme) wealth. There's no reason one person should have that much. There's countless better ways to use that money/wealth than for one persons extravagant lifestyle. And even if they don't have an extravagant lifestyle, what are they gonna do with it? Doubt they will build infrastructure out of good will with it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

So take away ownership of a company just because it's too successful? That wealth is mostly in company ownership, so are you really suggesting we steal away legitimate ownership in successful companies?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Yes. Fuck Capitalism.

It's not stealing their legitimate ownership. They don't have legitimate ownership.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

If they are self-made millionaires/billionaires as they claim, take everything they have/own and tell them to start the quest again, no glitches, DLC, or saved progress.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You all realize they don't have that money laying around to pay the IRS right? They own companies, those companies are worth that much. To pay that you would have to liquidate those companies. So no more Amazon, Tesla, Space X, etc...

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago

I highly recommend you to read the paper billionare argument. The market can stand the liquidation of most of those companies without making them go bankrupt, we don't want them to stop existing, just to make them smaller and not a threat to democracy.

For the whole scale of wealth I also recommend going through wealth shown to scale

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Tax billionaires until there are no more billionaires

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's really insane that we legally treat the tenth billion dollars at the same level as a working persons house or car.

Everything is legally just "property".

No, fuck that.

The law should protect the first million of every citizen with ferver. (and when we tackle wealth inequality, most people will have this level of wealth at the end of their working life. The fact that most currently don't is due to inequality. )

Up until 100 million, it should be taxed at a reasonable level. Because at some level, it's fair that people prefer watching Taylor Swift instead of me sing on a stage.

Above that it should be taxed heavily.

And above a billion, it should be just confiscated. As in, oopsie, our system malfunctioned, you weren't supposed to end up with more wealth than what a thousand normal people would save up after a whole lifetime of work, so we are taking it back.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

At a billion you get a small plaque that says 'yay you won capitalism', they name a park bench after you and you replay from scratch.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Do billionaires actually have billions in real money sitting around? I've always thought the billions were in stocks and couldn't be taxed until they cashed it out and they could technically lose everything if the stock price falls. That's really fucked up if true

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Nobody keeps that amount of cash. Even below a million, most people have most of their wealth in either real estate (their own house) or financial securities (stocks, ETFs, bonds).

Yet, we all gotta pay property tax and capital gains.

The billionaires just have loopholes that they use to never realize gains with loan schemes and trust funds.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Wealth taxes are stupid. That said, nobody needs multiple hundreds of billions of dollars.

The solution is to have regulations and laws in place that prevent them getting this large in the first place. The fact that Amazon and Google own 90% of the internet is absolutely fucked.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Sad day when "billionaires should pay taxes" is considered a far left position.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Regardless of how hard it's to do this, you'll get what out of this... 15B? That's nothing... the government spends that in less than a day. Maybe cut government spending in half first. None of this is sustainable.

https://www.usdebtclock.org/

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You hear that everyone? $15 billion is nothing.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago

You do understand that the government budget is 4 trillion per year, right? Do the math! What's wrong with you?