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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
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.
- 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
You speak as if we're in a functional system where people are safe, getting here was smooth sailing, and I'm proposing a preposterous idea. Our system currently does not work and billions have died to get to this fucked up place. Why would you think a different system will fail because it is not like just the current failing system?
The community, a functional anarchist community wouldn't tolerate this, it would become a crime in itself. A functional anarchist community would defend itself and have members ready to do so. If somebody shot another person for something like shoplifting (which wouldn't be a thing in anarchism duh) that would be murder and that person would now be at risk of termination as a mortal threat to the community. People don't usually desire to escalate things though, so contrived examples like this are silly.
I'm not one of those that thinks anarchism is a drop-in replacement for capitalism or that anarchism can come from violent revolution. If anything close to anarchism could ever happen it would take at least a couple generations (of cultural change) and co-occur with degrowth. We know that our current system is unsustainable, so we're either going to end up with something like anarcho-communism + degrowth or we won't exist anymore. There is no way a hierarchical system that exploits that planet to support billions will be able to exist beyond the next decades, can't happen. Even socialism just makes things more equal while we destroy the planet.
The scale and ways of life now are the result of an exploitative economic system. Without that it's not our nature to form into efficiently exploitable structures. We'd form into manageable communities as humans have done for hundreds of thousands of years prior to the appearance of the state.
You and your community work to keep the lights on and other needs met. For asbestos and lead pipes, the motivations to do these things come from an exploitative economic system. In anarchism, if someone sells you poison, you can defend yourself. There won't be many people selling lead pipes when their life is on the line rather than a fine or job loss.
So instead we should have the opinion of the rich powerful racist people enforced by people with a license to kill and who use in inordinately more often on vulnerable populations who cannot legally protect themselves?
Yes, and the community might say, "well, he deserved it, have a taco". Our current system basically allows most men to rape women and the woman has no recourse because the state protects the rapist. This is not a working system.