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.
ID: A Sophie Labelle 4 panel comic featuring Stephie in different poses, saying:
Landlords do not provide housing.
They buy and Hold more space than they need for themselves.
Then, they create a false scarcity and profit off of it.
What they're doing is literally the opposite of providing housing.
100% tax on the value of land is the policy proposal. It makes economic sense, would let us abolish regressive taxes on labor and sales, would incentivize more abundant housing. Seriously. This is the solution.
how?
a one-time 100% tax on the value of the land?
how does that change anything except make landowning less accessible to everyone except those born wealthy.
or is that the point, that you want nobody to own land at all?
I think I need some more context here
Sorry if I was unclear. It would happen continuously, over time. So like monthly or yearly, just like rent to a landlord.
no worries, this is a paradigm shift, lots of details to get lost in.
so you would pay 100% of the value of your property annually?
how?
how would those property values be estimated?
I don't see how anyone could have a home if they had to pay multiple times their yearly salary every year.
So the importantly, you would only pay tax on the value of the land your property is on, not the entirely of the property. Essentially, society owns the land and "rents" it to anybody who wants to use it for housing or a business, and that "rent" would belong to society, either as UBI or as funding for services.
So if your house is in a really rural area, the land isn't worth that much, your LVT would likely be quite low. If your house is in a high demand area, like manhattan, the LVT is high, and you should probably build and apartment or something so lots of people can live there. If the land you want to use has a lot of valuable resources under it, it would be expensive, and you have to pay a lot for the right to use it. This is essentially what Norway and Alaska to get as much money as possible out of oil companies and give it to citizens.
land not property.
got it.
that helps me wrap my mind around it.
I want to look more into that, especially where it's already in practice.
thanks