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
Authoritarianism of the proletariat is required. It sucks and would be cool if it could be done peacefully, but that is how you deal with oligarchs. Re-education centers for the reactionary masses, and the chopping block for the oligarchs.
Keep waiting for your perfect moral socialism while they slowly kill us all…
And then the most psychopathic and power hungry individuals get filtered to the top of that authoritarian structure and whoops you've got a political ruling class who control everything and have no interest to relinquish their power. Totalitarian state capitalism à la Stalin.
I'm not saying that you can't break a few eggs for the omelette, but you absolutely need to keep things decentralized and democratic. The alternative sets the stage for failure. The "dictatorship of the proletariat" shouldn't be a literal dictatorship as in rule by the few.
Sorry, but those landlords deserved what they got.
I used to be afraid of the "authoritarianism", but all socialists need to realize the class war is a real war being waged, a war between the people and the most advanced and all-encompassing enemy in history. We must have a serious and disciplined response and it requires organization like that of an army. Is it authoritarian to follow the commands of your captain when you are in battle? Maybe it is, but without this coordination and discipline we will be destroyed.
You can have a strong military response without authoritarianism. The Anarchist military during the Spanish civil war were formed from the bottom up: a group of soldiers elect their commander, those commanders collectively elect their general, etc, with any of those positions of authority able to be recalled by a vote (outside of battle) at any time if those elected positions weren't fulfilling their duties adequately.
This structure was doubted and questioned at the time by a military advisor to Durruti (an important Anarchist figure):
Source of that qoute.
That structure worked very well from all the historical evidence we have, and they were effectively able to fight the fascists with very few resources, until the combined weight of the stalinist's betrayal and Franco getting constant supplies from Hitler and Mussolini became too much to bear from a logistical point of view.
If your whole life is a war, and you're living in military state, then sorry, but you're already in a way worst scenario than you think. Look at weird paramilitary groups that are using kids as a army, brainwashing is strong and they are saying what you said.
This is the problem with authoritarian stare. It steals your humanity and freedom, it thinks for you, and it control's you. It doesn't matter if you're slave of rulling class in capitalist stare or slave of rulling class in whatever you're referring to. It's the same state but with different flags and slogans.
It's not the same as being in the trenches under fire, but the class war is waged with violence and has casualties and deaths, front lines and such. Seeing it as a war isn't a choice to live in a military state, you feel it when you are working class trying to live and the rich are doing their best to let you die. The class war does steal your humanity and control you, taking a militant stance against it is meeting the opposition as they are. They use militarized police and all the means of psychological war to fight against the poor.
I'm not saying it's necessary to subsume your individuality to the will of your leaders and forget autonomy or follow anything with blind obedience, just that what some call authoritarian I have come to see as potentially necessary steps to take when fighting such a ruthless enemy.
How you want to choose your new leaders, how do you want to make decisions? There's not a lot of freedom in authoritarian.
If through the democracy, voting, discussions, then you system is opposite of authoritarian, it's a direct democracy and it's somewhere in the anarchy, syndicalism area (I like that idea).
If power will be given to group of people, how you want to choose them, how you want to take power from them after some time. Power corrupt people, and this is leading to authoritarian state.
And giving a lot of power to group of people creates new rulling class. How do you want to prevent it?
All forms of government and all forms of state are inherently authoritarian. You live under authoritarianism right now…
What matters is who is doing the authoritarianism. China has figured this out and I find their political model to be favourable.
China well known for state capitalism. Lack of basic human rights, genocides, and so on?
Dude. You know that in china regular person have almost sero power of what's going on?
You cannot call a country free and rulled by the people, when there are laogai, hundreds or more of them.
Also china is closed ally of north Korea, totalitarian regime, with small rulling class and starving people.
China is just better in capitalism than neoliberal countries, but this is not make it great.
lol genocide? Don’t tell me you fell for Uyghur “genocide” propaganda in 2026… You got some work to do still my friend.
Lack of human rights, where everyone gets a home, free healthcare, education, affordable healthy food, and nobody dies in the street. Even “vagrants” that are unemployed are taken care of.
Compared to America…
You will literally never see the above imagine in China. I bet if told you this was China and these were Uyghur Muslims you would outraged.
People of China absolutely have power. Corporations are required to have 5 year plans that provably better the country and its citizens. Corporations even have credit scores to keep them in check, while America only subjects its citizens to a similar system.
In America you are free to die. That’s it.
China good because USA is collapsing?
Nice whataboutism.
Of course let's ignore laogai, tianamen massacre, lack of basic freedoms, lack of free media and press, tack of basic democracy.
Also we can talk about working conditions, but please don't do whataboutism again. There are plenty of inside videos and articles like this one https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-life-death-forbidden-city-longhua-suicide-apple-iphone-brian-merchant-one-device-extract
Of course our anti freedom supporters of state capitalism and rulling class will pretend that one party Central government and rilling class is a good thing because neoliberal country like USA is turning into shit.
Btw.maybe you can compare working condition of state capitalist china to way more socialist country like Norway or Sweden?
You say “collapsing”, yet America has always been this way. The poor have never been taken care of, and the homeless are used as a reminder for the poor. There is no incentive to fix these problems, even when America thrives.
My point isnt that China is “good”. Defining a nation by terms like good or bad is useless. Countries are defined by who they serve, and China serves its people, for better or worse.
Norway and Sweden are not socialist countries, they are social democracies. They both have the term “social” but mean very different things. Norway and Sweden are still capitalist nations. Norway has considerable wealth inequality, while Sweden’s is growing as well. In a social democracy, instead of the workers at home being squeezed dry, the exploitation is exported to the global south. Citizens of Norway and Sweden may live in comfort, but it comes at the cost of black and brown bodies you may have less sympathy for. The goal should be to end worker exploitation, not export it.
Here is a great video debunking the Tiananmen Square narrative. The original upload was removed by your authoritarian US empire.
https://youtu.be/Oo6cs0_URL0
Nope, after the war, when USA had very high corporate tax and very high state investment in science and middle class, American dream was a thing. Then in the 70' the switch to neoliberalism, middle class start getting poorer.
Of course not. As long as you have rulling class and they have all the power, state is serving them. You can call them kings, oligarchs, party, priests, pope, tzars, and so on. But the problem is the same. State is serving the rulling class.
Like USA after the war. USA was afraid of socialist revolution, so rulling class decided to stop it by creating middle class, supporting poor people and so on.
In Europe this approach was done for so long that we almost forget what are oligarchs. It was a shame to have bilions and openly control Media or politics. Because we saw what's goin on in the Russia after Soviet collapse.
Still social democracy is way better and way more socialist than state capitalism.
So we agree, and now you don't like china? Working conditions in china are way worst than in Norway. Finally we're agreeing on something.
There's a very good novel called Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, set ~1940, if you've not heard of it. It's a long read, but the gist is - The American dream was not a thing, it was just that, a dream. Of Mice and Men had a similar theme.
People in America have been ever more under the thumb of the capitalist machine, which has always been extremely wasteful and punitive on the working class, even high corporate tax and state investment didn't fix the issue, just ameliorated it a bit for some - neoliberalism is just another expression of the same fundamental problem.
And, as a European, oligarchs are a very prominent part of the ruling class, we're just like, 95% ruled by rich people as opposed to America's 98%. I'm a little shocked to hear you claim otherwise.
I fully agree. But life after the war, before neoliberalism was still better than after it was introduced. Neoliberalism is just a capitalism on a steroids.
Where did i stated that?
In the world we have countries where oligarchs are openly ruling the country, in europe years ago it was a little bit secret that this is going on, and people were pretending that democracy works. Nowadays, thanks to USA and Russia oligarchs, It's kinda cool to be oligarchs. And that's sad.
China? Genocides? Even the US-funded rubes pushing that narrative have given up. How many Chinese people living in China are you friends with?
Like tiananmen never happened, there is no rulling class in china, working conditions are not way worst than in the EU and citizens can choose who is in power...
Dude, state capitalism, and country controlled by rulling class is the same shit as other types of capitalism and authoritarism, because you have no power.
Nobody claims Tiananmen protests / deaths never happened (though none happened in the square itself), and people in China have democratic control over their officials at every level, at least as much as in the EU. There's a fair bit of strawman and lack of research here. I'd suggest genuinely researching it instead of taking the 'common knowledge' at face value.