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, 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:
- 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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Edit 3: one last edit that I'm putting at the top because I'm not sure if people are only reading part of what I've written, jumping to conclusions and then putting words into my mouth; or if I've just been very bad at conveying what I'm trying to say.
Firstly: I'm arguing from an American perspective, something I failed to specify.
Secondly: money is great, however, many people need more than money. By all means, give them money, but make sure they have other resources in case they need it. If nothing else, there are a lot of people in homelessness or poverty with serious mental health needs. Money isn't going to help if they can't afford healthcare.
Thirdly: I also failed to give examples of what I meant by, do something else too. I meant, cap rent, build public housing, ensure that people have access to food even when CEOs are renting out pineapples, etc.
Finally: the US runs on greed. Prices in the US are outstripping wages dramatically because CEOs realized they could charge more. I think the reason why giving money works in studies is because CEOs don't know who's getting the handouts; if they did, they'd absolutely try to fleece them for the assistance money. That's why doing it universally, so that CEOs know that a lot of people are getting additional money, without any other form of assistance, will just lead to people being priced out of life again.
Not sure how much I'll contribute or respond after this. I'm feeling kinda discouraged due to how many people are putting words in my mouth (it may be a misunderstanding, but it's still demoralizing).
Oh my god, I'm using fish as a metaphor for money, and teaching someone to fish as a metaphor for ensuring their ability to provide for themselves. That's what the metaphor is about. Ensuring people's ability to provide for themselves. Is that really what y'all are confused about? If you see me referring to "fish" then I'm talking about money, not food.
I'm not convinced that just cash will solve homelessness or poverty. It may help, but it seems like a "give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime" kinda situation. Give people the fish so they can eat, but if you want them to actually be independent, then you gotta make sure they have the tools they need to do so.
And you know what, maybe they just are that way, maybe they're just cursed to always be a dependent on someone. However, if that's the case then they're going to need way more help than just fish. In the meantime though, maybe treat them like human beings that are down on their luck but otherwise capable of supporting themselves. Yeah, make sure they have food, a roof over their head, water, toilets and so on, but don't stop there. That's why I'm saying this, there may be people who see your post and think that just throwing money at the problem will make it go away. It'll help, but it's not gonna fix it 100%.
Edit: I'm not sure why it's controversial to say that people need more help than just money. Personally? If I was homeless or in poverty, I'd want more than just money. Like, I'm not saying to not give people who are homeless or in poverty money, but what I'm trying to say is that you shouldn't stop there.
Edit 2: I don't understand why people are so confused here. I'm not saying it won't work for some people, but there are people that it won't work for. To repeat something I said further along, in my experience, there are people who take these things literally. In my experience, there are people who would look at this meme, say, "sounds good, let's do that" and then get mad when it doesn't work for everyone.
I'm not saying that money won't help a lot of people; it would. It's just that there are people who will take this literally and believe it's the only thing you have to do.
Research seems to show that a lot of people just need a small step up to get back on track.
So you basically just did the meme.
What about the people that don't? That's what I'm saying. Yes, it'll help significantly, but the meme is presenting it as if it's the only solution.
No, it's presenting as the "primary" solution, which it is.
So start by throwing money at the problem, then see what's left.
What will be left will be mentally ill and addicts which can further be helped by throwing money at support instead of punishing them.
The meme literally says,
It literally says, "no, just give them money."
The reason why I'm hung up on this is because the meme is trying to be informative and funny at the same time but imo it misses the mark because it oversimplifies the issue. It's literally saying that you just give money to poor people and poverty goes away; but that's not how that works. It may help reduce poverty, but capitalists will just raise prices again and now you're back at square one.
Edit: expanded a sentence (in bold).
So it's best to leave the money where it is then?!? WTF? You think that corporations raise prices in order to prevent homeless people from buying their products? What kind of crazy logic is that?
No. What I'm saying is to do more than that. Why is this so fucking hard for people to understand? I feel like I'm going crazy.
In my experience, people take these things literally.
In my experience, there are people who unironically would read this and think, "oh, all we gotta do is give money and then it'll be fixed" and then get mad when it didn't work for everyone.
What am I missing here?
Edit: also,
No. But they're going to hear the words, "[homeless will have] more money to spend [for necessities]" and then start salivating because they're greedy as fuck. Haven't we established that greed is the reason why prices keep getting raised?
You're missing that you yourself argued that giving poor people money would push prices up and wouldn't solve the problem, but charities are increasingly finding that no strings money is the most effective and fastest and surprisingly, cheapest way of getting people out of destitution and into accommodation, employment and reconnection with family.
So please stop saying that giving people money is somehow an ineffective way of dealing with extreme poverty. You're incorrect. It's very effective indeed.
Firstly, I forgot that a lot of countries don't have the same level of greed as the US, but I'm arguing from an American perspective. Giving out money may legitimately work in other countries, but I think American executives are too greedy for something to work like that in the US at an official capacity without additional intervention. Secondly, I'm not trying to say that. I'm saying to do more than that because I believe that companies in the US are too greedy to allow it to "just work".
Money is great, but do more than that.
Money is great, but do more than that.
Money is great, but do more than that.
Like, how many times do I have to repeat myself?
Money is great, but do more than that.
Money is great, but do more than that.
Money is great, but do more than that.
Prices are increasing faster than inflation but wages have stagnated, yet you're saying that more money won't lead to people once again being priced out of life. That runs contrary to what is already going on.
You need to do things like cap rent, build public housing, make sure they can afford food even when CEOs are renting out pineapples, make sure they have transportation, make sure they have somewhere to live, and so on.
The US specifically runs on greed. If CEOs hear that everyone's going to be getting more money, then they're going to start charging more money because that's how the US works. Just giving out money may work for other countries, but the US is fucked as hell. Charities giving out money doesn't equate to everyone in need getting money which is why prices don't increase, companies don't know who to fleece; but if CEOs could find out who was getting the charity money, they'd absolutely try to charge them more. If everyone is getting money, then the CEOs will just fuck people over again to afford a new yacht.
And even then. Even then there will be people in very poor mental health who desperately need attention but they cannot afford mental health services. These people will not be able to function with money alone. These people need serious help. Money alone will not help these people.
The message I'm trying to convey is that you should have other things available to them if they need it; but you seem to be saying to just throw money at them and tell them to fuck off.
I never said you shouldn't do anything else, I only disagreed with you when you suggested that giving them money wouldn't help and that somehow giving homeless people money would be a driver for inflation, but homeless people eating isn't a driver for inflation.
Guess what's cheaper than hiring shrinks and physios and medics? Giving homeless people enough money to get food and shelter. Guess what doesn't help homeless people solve their problems? Keeping them on the street trying to scrape together enough cash each day to get into shelter for the night.
And can you please permanently get lost with the thinking that says that we NEED abject poverty and starving people and rough sleepers to keep prices low?! Seriously, shut up. It's not working. It never worked. The USA has some insane levels of inequality and it didn't keep prices low in the USA. It just doesn't. False. Crazy talk. Stop it. Wrong. No. Doesn't help. Never helped. The poorest people having money was NEVER the cause of inflation. Nope, it isn't, it won't be. Please don't come back with that shit again. Stop saying it because it's really very stupid indeed.