this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2025
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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
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)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Use alt text or image descriptions to allow greater accessibility
(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)
We require alternative text (from now referred to as "alt text") to be added to all posts/comments containing media, such as images, animated GIFs, videos, audio files, and custom emojis.
EDIT: For files you share in the comments, a simple summary should be enough if they’re too complex.
We are committed to social equity and to reducing barriers of entry, including (digital) communication and culture. It takes each of us only a few moments to make a whole world of content (more) accessible to a bunch of folks.
When alt text is absent, a reminder will be issued. If you don't add the missing alt text within 48 hours, the post will be removed. No hard feelings.
0.5.1 Style tip about abbreviations and short forms
When writing stuff like "lol" and "iirc", it's a good idea to try and replace those with their all caps counterpart
- ofc => OFC
- af = AF
- ok => OK
- lol => LOL
- bc => BC
- bs => BS
- iirc => IIRC
- cia => CIA
- nato => Nato (you don't spell it when talking, right?)
- usa => USA
- prc => PRC
- etc.
Why? Because otherwise (AFAIK), screen readers will try to read them out as actually words instead of spelling them
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 irrationally 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.
- Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Rape or assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
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No? Socialism literally removes incentives to be corrupt. Why would you accept a bribe f.ex if your needs are covered and money is either gone or no longer useful to hoard? That's not to say that any sort of socialist society would be free of all bad actors, but there's less reason and less ways to abuse socialism because that's sort of the point. The goal of socialism is to remove abusable systems via more democratically and collectively controlled ones.
And in fact, in communism, acts of corruption would stick out more and can be responded to easier.
The main conflict is the inability to maintain constant awareness and involvement in all aspects. It's so prevalent, it has been easily weaponized.
People can't care about everything equally. We have bias and we will act in service of that bias whether we realize it or not. And it is why an egalitarian society cannot last long. What you care about and what i care about will unavoidably come into a conflict harsh enough or enough times that resentment becomes the only answer. And that is enough for any few bad actors to steer an unwitting populace into a downward spiral towards decay.
Right now i think it doesn't matter as much the form of government because people need an incentive to care. Having their needs met means it's not something to care about and so won't care about it. People care when they don't have their needs met. The point is getting them to act on it.
Get the people to act and it won't matter which government exists because there is no government without the people to govern.
A big part of why the US is struggling so much is people don't have the time and energy to care because they are too busy working.
Protests and riots also either happen either because A: people have time to do them, or B: people have time to do them because working no longer provides enough money to live off of.
You are right however that misinformation isn't being countered and that any would be free society would need to work on ways to help people see through such things, and to not allow misinfo to be freely spread the way it is now. It's another core part of the problems we face now, but it's made worse by people literally not having the time to get involved in any way with politics, and with news being motivated purely by profits. Writing good articles isn't profitable anymore, but eye-catching headlines is, regardless of how true they are. If you are concerned about the quality of information today you should also be concerned about news being profit driven.
Within a system where you can hoard wealth and property. You can't under socialism. Really the big problem is wealth inequality. The less inequality there is the less corruption there is too.
How do you stop someone from hoarding wealth?
Land ownership is the way it is because someone with a polity stick decided that they had the exclusive right to parcel it out at their discretion, despite the fact that all humans are born into the earth with an equal claim to it. The method in which land is distributed is not a feature of either capitalism or socialism, but a matter in and of itself.
The truth is the opposite. A concentration of small government power is an incentive for those who seek power(as these types of humans will always exist). Processes are inefficient and slow incentivizing bribes(greed will always exist). A lack of incentive to innovate promotes stagnation and complacency(lazy acceptance of an internal takover).
You aren't describing what socialism is as you have no idea what it is.
You keep bringing up greed. Capitalism doesn't account for greed, it is built on it. It doesn't stop greed from being abused, instead it rewards greed by allowing the few to hoard property and wealth which leads to those few holding more and more power and influence. Capitalism is literally designed like a pyramid scheme which everyone agrees is bad and doesn't work.
Socialism is the idea that if you work at a workplace you own it along with everyone else there. It's the idea that if you live in a home you own it with the other people that live there. It's the idea that we all own the roads and parks together. It's the idea that decision making (political power) and property is shared. There are centralized ways to do this, and decentralized ways to do this. The states you think are communist are shitty little oligarchies that pretend they will implement communism in the future yet never do. The problem with these states is that they aren't socialist, not that socialism is bad.
Most scientific advances are state sponsored.
Hostile takeover is a thing that happens regularly in capitalism. Also liberals are always the first to compromise and then form governments with fascists. So that's more of a capitalism thing I think.
Socialism is built on the idea that we are better at enforcing our rights together, not on putting anyone else above yourself. I have no idea where this notion comes from. Again, you people have no idea what socialism is.
Almost every single good thing that has happened in the west has been achieved through unions and socialist or socially democratic parties. It hasn't been achieved by liberals or conservatives.