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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!
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.
The thing is some externalities are acceptable and how that is to be determined is via the democratic process and for that to work the means of production need to be owned by the working class, not by an isolated, cushioned capitalist class that are isolated from the consequences of i.e. climate change.
We can absolutely create value for our species from natural resources, to imply that something like vaccine research powered by nuclear energy is a zero-sum exchange from elsewhere is deeply absurd and reeks of rightoid socio and bio essentialism ("x people are just y and you cant change that")
Why do vaccines need to be made by private companies for private profit at all? Why not publically funded research at universities and agencies that charge reasonably for use, where that capital is either turned into more public research or other commons? Other than the fact that we starved public research almost to death to cut private industry for private profit's taxes.
Also private industry does NOT belong in basic utilities everyone needs AT ALL.
There should not be a single power plant or utility that's for private investor profit. It's too important to have any allegiance other than serving the citizenry full stop. There should be no private investor in a position to advocate sticking it to captive customers (or our sole shared communal habitat), who need any common utility like elec-fucking-tricity, to increase their quarterly private profit expectations. But here we are.
The first lie that capitalists sold was that capitalism rewards innovation. It doesn't, at all. It rewards exploitation. Innovation is occasionally a by-product, but only as another avenue for exploitation. Human beings are naturally creative and will innovate out of boredom or laziness. Competition does not produce creators, it produces predators.
It's genuinely absurd how companies like Uber get away with positioning themselves as tech companies to investors when they're really just a booking agency in an app that undercuts the competition through exploitation of labour by using the freelancer/contractor loophole.
Yup. I agree with you a 100%. Value for our species is not private profit and is often at odds with it. Public ownership regardless of centralisation criteria is the way.
This reality hurts, but let me.just say it hurts so fucking much more that people will read this exchange and think "hahahah no. I enjoy being fucked."