this post was submitted on 17 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.
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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.
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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).
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The only dangerous minority is the rich.
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We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
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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.
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It's a dream. Capitalism would be great and completely valid without some greedy fuckers trying to get everything for themselves. Communism would work without some greedy fuckers trying to get everything for themselves. Anarchism would work without... You get the jist.
Our problem is not politics, it's the human nature. No matter how many loving hippies there are, there are always going to be some people who try to exploit everything for their own good
I'm cynical (or old) enough to agree with this sentiment to a point, but capitalism has greed built in, it's a feature not a flaw.
You are 100% correct.
Capitalism is greed. Acquire and accumulate at all costs. Hoarding is not just acceptable, but praiseworthy.
It inherently incentivizes greed, it's not built in per se. As are all traits of the dark triad. This is what makes capitalism the worst choice and really sad. It brings out the worst in us. And those who are better have no chance.
Greed came long before capitalism. Capitalism is the current way to organize greed.
Wealth disparity has always existed as a result of greed, not capitalism. There have always been extra wealthy and poor. There has always been nobles and serfs. Patricians and plebians. Bourgeoisie and proletariat.
Any system of economic equality cannot exist unless there is a very tight framework around it and people designated to enforce that framework, which, ipso facto, eliminates equality, as that then puts a monopoly on a legal use of force. With a legal use of force, corruption is only a matter of time.
They'd be out-competed by those who used their wealth to screw over the competition and drive small businesses under.
Greedy fuckers are going to be making anything worse, but that only means that a complete utopia is impossible, not that all systems are going to be equally bad. Would you argue that the average absolute monarchy would have just as much abuse as your average liberal democracy?
The problem is the human condition of greedy tuckers, so let's keep political systems which give a few people who want all the power all the power, rather than work towards anarchism where no one gets the power?
you're wrong my comrade