this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
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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, upvoting good contributions and downvoting 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:

(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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[–] TAYRN@lemmy.world 3 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

... It's coming from the culmination of, like 5 decades of absurdly educated engineering. If you want to call them workers, then sure.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

They weren't workers? is this "absurdly educated engineering" like a magic ghost inhabiting the halls of Apple HQ? Is this "engineering" in the room with us right now?

Seriously, I fail to grasp the point you're trying to make here...

[–] TAYRN@lemmy.world -4 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (2 children)

.......you do know what engineering is, right? It's... Definitely not a magic ghost inhabiting halls. It's learning physics, electronics, programming, and, well, engineering to create novel solutions to problems people have.

My point is that capitalism, for all of its failures, does indeed sometimes produce better things. You unequivocally hating on it, for no discernable reason; I I can't find a reason for that.

[–] gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 21 hours ago

My point is that capitalism, for all of its failures, does indeed sometimes produce better things.

I've yet to see how capitalism has done that where other systems could not, though?

The capitalists are the ones who own Apple in the OP, so the designers using decades of research are still workers. Apple paying them a bunch to work together is what gets them to make the iphone, sure, but you can't say that no other system wouldn't have eventually had a similar invention

In fact, I'm quite certain that if we had a more anarchistic system instead of capitalism we'd have gotten phones or something similar sooner, as groups of nerds were working on them as early hobby projects but told to stop by their bosses and work on other more profitable shit instead

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

You do know that engineering doesn't exist independently, right? It comes from humans. And you know what those humans typically are? Workers.

My point is that capitalism, for all of its failures, does indeed sometimes produce better things. You unequivocally hating on it, for no discernable reason; I I can’t find a reason for that.

[Citation needed].

Workers produce better things. Have been doing it before capitalism and will be doing it after. There's no need for a leecher class above them.

I'm starting to think you're not just playing devil's advocate...

[–] TAYRN@lemmy.world -5 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

How will we educate those workers, in order to produce better things? I guess some "workers" will be smarter than others. More intelligent. Should we send those stupider workers to the fields? Make them work off their stupidity while the genius, better workers invent new machines?

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

blinks

What does education have to do with anything? How does that even follow towards someone "sending them to the fields"? This is the mother of non-sequiturs...

[–] TAYRN@lemmy.world -2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

what does education have to do with inventing anything?

  • db0 (paraphrased)
[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Do...do you think education itself exists because of Capitalism?!

[–] TAYRN@lemmy.world -5 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

No, and I never said that I did. Do I think that people are motivated to be educated and create things by capitalism? Yes, of course. It's provably happened on both of our lifetimes.

Does that make capitalism the best solution? No. But obviously you're gonna need to provide more data against it to convince other people. This is a weak argument.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Do I think that people are motivated to be educated and create things by capitalism?

People were motivated to be educated and create things long before capitalism and will be long after capitalism.

[–] TAYRN@lemmy.world -5 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Yes, I think I've already agreed to that fact. Which brings us back to: how should we pay for those people to be educated? Who should we choose to create things? What should we do with everybody else?

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

how should we pay for those people to be educated?

We don't have to "pay" to be educated outside of the capitalist system. "Paying" for education is a capitalist thing. In fact, most places outside of the US don't expect people to pay to be educated. Even within capitalism, various people have found ways to make education and healthcare a public service. Imagine that...

Who should we choose to create things?

People who want to choose it themselves?

What should we do with everybody else?

"We" don't "do" anything with other people.

[–] TAYRN@lemmy.world -3 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Well, no. Paying professors isn't free. Some places just hide their salaries in their tax money. But sure. Everyone gets education (I agree with this). Some people choose to be artists and... I guess they just fend for themselves?

Now, let's be absurd. Pretend I'M a artist. I made a blank canvas, and I'm willing to sell it.

[–] dwindling7373@feddit.it 4 points 20 hours ago

They laugh at your notion of money but you do you bro, they invite you home to share some of the excess of food that has been harvested by the people that had an honest desire to feed their fellow humans, instead of... getting power through making art?