this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2026
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Lefty Memes
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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.
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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:
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- Sexism
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- Zionism
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Yeah they do.
Socialism isn't an all encompassing economic policy. Even under communism, shareholders can still exist.
Socialism in its basics is just the concept of publicly ran companies. How that's implemented can be all over the board.
Police, firemen, and libraries are examples of socialist industries. But so are the Norwegian oil reserves. TSMC is (or at least was) a socialist company.
Shareholders cannot exist in communism, which requires a stateless, classless, moneyless society with full collectivization of production and distribution. You are confusing socialism, a mode of production, with the government doing stuff. Police, firemen, libraries, Norwegian oil reserves, and TSMC are example of public ownership, not socialism.
Socialism is when the government does stuff.
Communism is when the government does a lot of stuff.
the United States is therefore socialist, and Norway is communist.
Socialism is strictly the public owning businesses. You can have an anarchist socialist business (weird I know) employee owned businesses and/or community stores fall into that sort of a category.
Marxist communism is a stateless society. Effectively socialist anarchy. States that call themselves communist are generally socialist state with a centrally planned economy. Leninism/maoism was basically communist leaders deciding that the populous would never adopt true communism and thus they forced it onto the public.
The united states has socialist programs, they tend to be some of the most popular programs. It's not really considered a socialist state, though, as government policy over the last 40+ years has been to whittle away and remove those programs at every available opportunity.
There's a lot wrong with this.
Socialism is a mode of production, something to be applied at societal scale, not something you can slice out of a broader economy.
Socialism is characterized by public ownership as the principle aspect of the economy, and the working classes in charge of the state. Publicly owned assets in an economy where private ownership is principle isn't socialism, as its used to uphold capitalism.
Communism is a post-socialist stateless, classless, moneyless society where production and distribution are collectivized across all of society. There's no such
Anarchism is, to the contrary of communism, a communalist, decentralized mode of production based on interlinked horizontalist cells with internal ownership.
Marxism-Leninism is just Marxism but with Lenin's analysis of imperialism and organizational theory, nothing like "forcing" communism on the public. Further, socialist states have never called themselves communist, just that they were governed by communist parties working towards communism through socialism.
Maoism is the belief that certain formulations created by Mao as a Marxist-Leninist within China are universal to all revolutions, such as Protracted People's War, Cultural Revolution, and the Mass Line.
The US Empire has social programs, but they aren't socialist. Private ownership is very much principle, and capitalists in charge of the state.
You are assuming there's just one socialist or communist theory.
I grant that what you are saying are in fact forms of socialism, communism, and anarchism, but they aren't the only forms. That is why it's hard to really fully nail down what socialism or communism are.
For example, Market Socialism is a thing.
I'm not assuming that there's just one socialist or communist theory, though. The PRC, for example, has a socialist market economy, while something like Cuba has larger degrees of public ownership. The bigger problem is that you have a lot of misconceptions of socialism and communism to begin with, which is why I corrected them.