this post was submitted on 15 May 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] 50 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Edit: I was proven correct

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago (34 children)

wat

Like out of all arguments against a socialist state, saying it’s like cancer which is like capitalism is… dumb? Like how? Which socialist state metastasised and “grew” without natural limits? What even is this argument?

[–] [email protected] 33 points 6 months ago (3 children)

That's not what this says. It says the real problem is authoritarianism, not the economic system.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Despots, as bad as they are, do not necessarily need to grow their empires.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 6 months ago (4 children)

"I'd like to share a revelation I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to another area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure." -Agent Smith

[–] [email protected] 31 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Humans lived for 200,000 years before we started acting like a cancer. It's not our species that is cancer, it's the dominator culture that evolved within our species that is the cancer.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's Capitalism. Capitalism is humans as cancer. It's why we joke about late stage Capitalism.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

You're not wrong.

I see capitalism more as a tool that arose due to the rise of the dominator culture in our species. A species without dominator instincts would not invent capitalism.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Capitalism arose as a natural conclusion to the contradictions of feudalism, not out of some vague sense of Human Nature.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Ok, but why did feudalism come about, after 200,000+ years? Capitalism is just a current incarnation of an exploitative system brought to us by dominator culture. Before Capitalism it was Feudalism. If you back far enough, you get to stable groups that operated for millennia apparently without the need for domination being the primary driver of society.

Using game theory, if the players start out cooperating, this can go on indefinitely, but once someone cheats the game becomes exploitative. Sounds a lot like what happened in our species.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (15 children)

The history of humanity is the history of class dynamics. Feudalism came about as a result of agricultural development and the ability to store products, rather than needing to use them before they expire.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (4 children)
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Based and Bookchinpilled.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago

Animals don't form equilibriums on purpose, eg invasive species

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (6 children)

Eh, roughly 1-2% of people are psychopathic and we've only really destroyed the Earth since we adopted capitalism, the system in which a very small, unempathetic minority has control of pretty much everything.

But that's not my largest issue with Smith's comment. It's more that an program of his stature definitely should have a better grasp on taxonomy. Viruses aren't even alive according to some current classifications. Parasitic organisms would be much closer. Unfortunately there aren't really any parasitic mammals. Vampire bats, perhaps? And that simile — capitalists as vampires (the human kind) — is a bit older than Smith's virus metaphor.

Marxferatu "The figure of the vampire is the ultimate individual: predatory, inhuman, anti-human, with no moral obligation to others."

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I mean, yes, we're seeing a general rapacity balloon out of control, but hey, electric vehicles will make everything better.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

And we have the pleasure of enjoying the last stage of it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

May it crumble under it's own contradictions.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

That's the worst possible case for everyone & everything.

Let's hope we kill it first.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The solution for cancer is usually killing the cancer or removing the cancer. I wonder what the capitalism equivalent is…

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

If we just let a self selected group of people have total control of our economy, things will turn out better this time. They promise.

"The previous attempts failed because they didn't do it right. We will get it right, this time."

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