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.
Surely having to use what few bucks they scrounge up on a new tent 5x a month will help them afford an apartment faster
😮💨
No matter how many times you refer to them as "unhoused" to make yourself feel a little bit morally superior, the homeless literally couldn't give a single fuck how someone refers to them
They'd prefer a sandwich or some socks to be honest
I'd actually prefer a home, but you know, whatever I guess.
Ehh. I hear you, and definitely.
But another reason to use to term unhoused is to point to the solution, we need more affordable houses. I work in government and I don’t mind the shift, helps frame the problem a bit better and makes it more of a society problem (something we as a government could do something about) vs an individual problem. Build houses. We can do that as government/society. We could provide housing to vulnerable populations in ways that work for them.
No.
Do you think the reason there is a housing shortage is because there isn’t enough houses?
Listen I know that SEEMS logical, but it isn’t in this case.
The reason for the housing shortage in America isn’t because there isn’t enough houses to go around.
To understand the housing crisis you have to understand how investments work. Investment and financial institutions are allowed to purchase homes for investment reasons. There is no limit to their greed. They buy out entire neighborhoods and artificially keep surrounding prices high. This props up the rest of the market. It keeps rental prices high and it keeps home purchases high.
The reason building new homes doesn’t work is because these investment firms will gobble up these homes. They won’t go to the people you want them to go to. This will only make the problem worse.
If you want affordable housing you need to go after the investment firms. Take away their ability to buy homes for the sake of “investing”. They are single handedly the reason for the insane home prices and nothing will change as long as they are allowed to sit on empty homes for eternity.
Let me come at you in a slightly different angle. There is a massive amount of empty homes in the USA. These empty homes are owned by the investment firms, not to sell or rent out, but to keep prices artificially high. The point is the homes are there. We don’t need more. We just need to pry them out of the hands of the monopolies. More empty homes won’t solve this problem. Removing investments from this will solve the problem.
You both agree on the problem, it's just big and encompasses all both of you said. Using the term "unhoused people" just shifts the narrative to "we just need to put them in houses", be that new government funded housing projects, or changing regulations to dissalow empty houses, or stopping short term rental from eating central houses in cities.
No matter how many times you post in an angry tone without using full stops, you still look ridiculous.
Next day: Why are there so many homeless people sleeping in entrances and public buildings out of a sudden?
The fact that we have homeless people at all is abhorrent. It should be impossible to be homeless except by choice in what is supposed to be the wealthiest, most powerful, supposed greatest nation on earth. Like, what the fuck are we even doing to let this happen?