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] Try to use alt text or image descriptions to allow for greater accessibility
(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)
We encourage 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.
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
In order to answer as best I can, I'll have to be a bit picky with the term "capital" as you use it here. Capital isn't just the means of production and distribution, it's MOP and MOD employed essentially to pilfer surplus value. This is called "valorization" of capital, where the capitalist "casts out the net of money, returning back to his pockets more money," or mathematically expressed, the M-C...P...C'-M' process (where M is money, C is MoP and labor-power, P is production, C' is the produced commodity of higher value than what C was purchased for, and M' is the greater sum of money that becomes the new M).
All of that is important because this process is the general path of capitalist accumulation, that works out only because capital owners own capital. This circuit is where profit comes from, which has tremendous impacts on the structure of the state, the distribution of wealth, and how power itself is distributed. It creates an owning and a working class.
To return to your actual question, what's the difference practically for administrators in a socialist state or communist society (at which point in development there are no classes and thus no need for a state, but that's me being picky with terms again)? The difference is that management of production and distribution is not the same as employing it for personal profits in that same circuit described earlier. In capitalism, managers and CEOs are rarely owners of capital, but merely servants of the actual owners (though owner-managers do exist, of course). Management is socially necessary labor, especially in highly advanced production, but ownership creates not one bit of value itself, as I'm sure we agree.
This is why I say that the problem isn't that production is managed with intra-class hierarchy, but instead the form of the superstructure. Socialist states aren't perfectly democratic, because they exist in the real world. The measures we put in place to advance democratization are organizational structures that are vital to constructing more effective socialist management. Council/soviet democracy is one such example, where local and regional committees elect delegates to higher committees. Protections against corruption can come in the form of recall elections and frequent elections, and education itself on how the system works and bringing the people up into the system with mass participation also helps.
Administrators are not magically immune to corruption, of course. We have to learn the best structures through testing theory to practice. Socialist democracy has gone through many changes over the years, and each socialist state that exists today has its own form, even if they may share characteristics. The important takeaway, though, is that because administrators in socialism do not actually own capital, but merely direct and steer production, they do not participate in a circuit of accumulation for their own profit.
They can abuse their power, but do not form a class, and thus share the common class interest with the rest of the working class: develop the productive forces to a level where they can be fully collectivized, and run to a common, scientific plan. Both administrative workers and non-administrative workers share this interest, as it benefits all, and this process naturally requires greater participation by all in the running of society simply to keep up with the advancing complexities of production and distribution. This has an equalizing effect and erodes the distinction between administrative and non-administrative labor.
This was a bit of a ramble, but I hope I made sense!