Lefty Memes
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of "ML" (read: Dengist) influence. 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, discussion and agitprop/stuff that's better fit for a poster than a meme 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. Please post agitprop here)
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" (read: Dengists) (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
- Sexual assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
view the rest of the comments
I think people wouldn't fight over countries if there weren't any states
Ok, fine, but do you think people wouldn't fight to protect themselves and their friends?
But why are they and their friends being attacked? Are those attacking them doing it because they just don't like them or because they are being told to by a state?
Who cares why, there's 10 million reasons why.
10 million reasons for one person to kill another maybe, but 10 million reasons for hundreds of thousands of people to fight each other with billions of dollars of weapons that aren't created by states? I don't think so, but if you know one please tell me. If you're asking if I think there wouldn't be any violence at all in communist or similar society, then no I don't, but I think none at this scale
Well, I believe a stateless society would be capable of anything and more that a state would be. Why wouldn't a stateless society be capable of creating unfathomably devastating weapons?
And wheres the line between the individual and the state? Maybe my family and I build weapons and wage war? Or my community, or a group of like-minded folks I met online. If you understand it for individuals, why not 50 people? 500? 50000? What is a state
I didn't mean a stateless society wouldn't be able to make devastating weapon's, I'm saying it's unlikely to do so. A state is monopoly on violence. That means that the decision to comit violent acts (war) isn't made directly by those performing the violence but by the state. The difference between an individual and a group is that most reasons for killing someone can't be scaled. Someone killed your mother? I could see you killing them. I can't see a group 50.000 people killing 50.000 mother's and then waging war against 50.000 people without mothers. This becomes more unlikely the larger the scale and the smaller the scale the easier a society could prevent such escalation
And what if the stateless society over there has the natural resources we need?
And I mean, you've basically just described feudalism. If you kill my mom and I kill yours back. And then your brother kills 2 mom's from your village back, you end up eventually killing 50,000 moms
Then we'd trade for them because war economically is almost always a loss. Also, it what sense do we need the recourses? Will we starve without them? How many people would be willing to start a war they have to fight in if they can live fine without the potential of dying?
Why the fuck would you kill my mom and not me? I also don't think everyone would kill someone if a family member gets killed, I said I could see someone killing another person because of it. And at the beginning of such a cycle wouldn't a stateless (or any other) society that exists long term stop such a process. Do you think that e.g. in precolonial North America there were massive wars whenever someone mother got killed?
I mean yeah, but the main thing they developed to deal specifically with those issues was the state my guy
But they were able to manage it without a state? If you want to dive deeper into the topic I'd read The Dawn of Everything, but a state is not necessary to control violence
I know it isn't. That doesn't mean you're not still on some bullshit though yourself. I believe in a stateless future, but I also believe we're all joking if we think we have it figured out problems sorted from all our philosophy books
This is not a philosophy book. It's a anthropology book. It deals (among other things) with how stateless societies have worked previously. Being able to control violence is in my opinion one of the bare minimum things that have to be organized for a stateless society to exist at all
Ok John Lennon