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)
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,
as well as 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.
7. 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
(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
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We've been having market capitalism and IA for YEARS, why are we still having less and less buying power, life expectancy, healthcare access and so on?
Because decay is a natural state of the universe.
Why billionaires will let that happens under capitalism if that benefits them? You can't fix capitalism, it works perfectly for people that owns the capital.
wtf you talking about the world is bigger than republican and democrats and you have countries where religion is not that big with signs of the problems of late stage capitalism.
You can't have all people smart in capitalism without free good education, if education is a commodity the poor people become ignorant and easier to manipulate by the people who own the capital and they will manipulate them to vote for what is best for the capital. You can remove religion and the same problem will continue, you only solve people voting with the ass with education and that is really difficult within capitalism, like I said before billionaires will not let that happens.
To clarify here, your example is what actually happens under capitalism. Literally, not figuratively. F(L)OSS is pretty anarchic/communist in nature.
Hypothetically, maybe, however, the current hyper-commercial capitalism shows no signs of allowing UBI or passing on any benefit from AI and other automation to workers. There's been a complete disconnect between productivity and worker compensation since the 70s, with the capital class pocketing every penny of the difference.
Indeed. I really wish that evidence showed that to be the case, instead, it's the fallacy that Chicago School economics falls for. Humans are NOT rational actors, at least, not all the time. There are also anti-social actors involved attempting to game the system for their benefit at others' expense. Lots of things to account for where current economic systems abjectly fail to provide a fair and equitable society, often intentionally so.
How do you propose doing that? Murdering them en masse?
Why are you saying that?
ooo. i like a lot of what you're saying, except that i think the market capitalism part should be less vital. i'm more in favor of a resource based economy which is overseen by AI. markets would become more of a hobbyist endeavor. some people need to have a little bit more than others and can't help but express their type A personalities, so the markets are there for them to feel like they earned a little more than other people, but without the ability to become billionaires.
Also, UBI seems like a transitional phase solution. in a well regulated resource based economy, currency eventually becomes a vestigial appendage. i mean, it's just a middle man of exchange now, and we're only exchanging things because we can't figure out how to distribute necessary commodities and incentivize people. i believe in a resource based economy where almost all needs are met and education in humanities is emphasized, people will be happy to do their 2.5 hours of weekly labor to keep a utopian system running.