this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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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, 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

Version without spoilers

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.



  1. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Well I'm no anarchist, just a revolutionary marxist tired of all the "social democrats" with a hardon for red aesthetics & imperialism (read: China)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Well, "Revolutionary marxist" is a bit vague anyway. Are you of the ML variety? A Trot? A Luxembourgist? Marx has precious little to say about the process of revolution anyway, so outside of MLs and maybe Luxembourg, there's really only anarchism

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

that's the thing, I don't like confining myself to a specific school of thought/dogma. I'm heavily influnced by Council Communism but also think that Bolshevism (i.e. Leninism + Trotskyism), various branches Maoism and (non-soviet) ML (read: the ideology of a lot of liberationist movements in the 3rd world, like those In Grenada or Burkina Faso) had a lot of good ideas/analyses, even if I do not agree with all of them 100%

I also have respect for anarcho-communists and anarchists in general, even if I do not agree with their theoretical basis. (I mean that in the non "usa-perverted" sense of the word, as in smth like Bakunin's or Goldman's tradition, not the absolutely deranged idea that anarchism is just "anti-statism" and reconcilable with capitalism ("anarcho"-capitalism is mindboggling))

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Hmm, consider that Anarchism is. in essence, the idea of revolutionary socialism without specific school of thought/dogma. It's why Anarchists don't go by specific names like ML-strains. We don't call ourselves Bakunists, Kropotkinists and Goldmanists. The various flags we use is about which praxis we emphasize, rather than a schism. There's no anarchist heresy (and we don't consider AnCaps "Anarchists" in the first place)

Likewise, most anarchist follow the same approach. We learn from what worked. I've read Marx, I've read Trotsky and I've read various MLs and Marxists as well as anarchists and took the best parts for my praxis. So did the other Anarchists I know of. We're still anarchists, not because of what theory we espouse, but because of the non-dogmatic praxis we practice.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Ik that there is no such thing as "Kropotkinism" etc., was just using the "traditions" as a way to differentiate it from/make a comparison with "anarcho"-capitalism

All of the major anarchist works are on my reading list and I do want to understand them once I have a good grasp of Marxism as a philosoph/school of thought.
Thus far I find materialist dialectics & organized (party) work to be one of/if not the best approach(es), but that might change as my understanding grows, who knows :p

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I personally can't stop suggesting the Anarchist FAQ enough as the first stop for getting into Anarchism.