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it's just human nature
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
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this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2025
1149 points (97.0% liked)
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, discussion and agitprop/stuff that's better fit for a poster than a meme 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. Please post agitprop here)
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.
0.5.1 Style tip about abbreviations and short forms
When writing stuff like "lol" and "iirc", it's a good idea to try and replace those with their all caps counterpart
- ofc => OFC
- af = AF
- ok => OK
- lol => LOL
- bc => BC
- bs => BS
- iirc => IIRC
- cia => CIA
- nato => Nato (you don't spell it when talking, right?)
- usa => USA
- prc => PRC
- etc.
Why? Because otherwise (AFAIK), screen readers will try to read them out as actually words instead of spelling them
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 irrationally 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
- Sexual assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Humans will take more than they need of what’s free, if there’s a way to turn it into profit for them. If profit is allowed to be a way to secure power and control, there will always be be a desire to hoard for oneself.
Capitalism rewards hoarding and profiting, and also rewards making the in group as small as possible.
Other factors can cause hoarding as well to be clear, such as fear of scarcity/needs not being met.
If you're not allowed to do profit then who would do trade and why? Nobody likes working in retail, nobody likes being a plumber. Markets can and should compensate and reward people fairly, the problem is some people are allowed to take too much, and even small profit can be made at the expense of others, will you have an investigative unit that decides when people have used enough water?
As others have pointed out, profit is not the reason for trade, and profit is not the reason for currency to exist.
Understand that you are coming from a place of having grown up under capitalism and anytime you questioned it, or anytime you saw it questioned, those were the responses. “Of COURSE we need to profit! Why would LITERALLY ANYONE do LITERALLY ANYTHING without profit? We’d all still be cave people like those DAMN DIRTY COMMIES”
But my brother in Christ, you’ve never profited before! The owner class profits. The owners get to take all the wealth generated by the workers, and fucking keep it for their own power! It’s that simple. We don’t get it, they do. The profit we generate for them doesn’t protect us. It doesn’t enrich us. They can take away our wages at anytime, they can manipulate their markets and often gamble with our nest eggs. They set up systems where they can rob us of any money we did not allow to remain under their control (civil forfeiture), they allow us access to the illusion of wealth in exchange for all of wages for the rest of our lives. And they don’t even take good care of us to do it.
It’s all a scam brother, whether or not it’s a good system doesn’t matter if it’s allowed to be captured and manipulated. It’s a trap, don’t be a sucker.
Because one can't possibly own or learn everything so you'll have to trade some thing you have for something you want. Skills, food, stuff, art, tools, music.
Are you arguing against a medium of exchange? Bartering is just less efficient trading.
A medium of exchange is entirely unrelated to profit that bartering still enables.
And while we're at it, since it's difficult to get everything you need in exchange for something they need, it would help to have a universal token of agreed upon value for us all to trade with. /s
And your point here being...?
Are you implying that currency is a product of capitalism or that currency only exists under capitalist societies?
Lol, I'm no historian but I almost sure that currency has existed in basically all big societies way before capitalism was a thing...
It was implied by the parent comment they were responding to when it brought up trading non-monetary things. Is the lack of reading comprehension (here & here) willful?
Yes, capitalism is when money exists. Good point.
I love working in retail. I was a contract analyst for some years (very boring, highly paid and painstaking insurance work), now I work in a bakery as a barista, and I’m dragging my feet about finishing my masters because I don’t really want to stop working there.
Sometimes people are shitty, but it’s clear work that doesn’t stress me out at home and I’m glad to provide my community with bread.
I can’t really imagine plumbers hate being plumbers- it’s work that they train years for, with very transferable skills if they wanted to switch to anything else along the way. Do you have any evidence that plumbers hate their jobs?