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While you were worried about socialism…
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this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2024
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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)
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,
as well as 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 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.
7. 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
(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
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I came to Lemmy because I like the free and open source aspect of it from a software perspective.
Now, FOSS and communism do share common ideologies about collaboration, community, accessibility, etc. But they are fundamentally different.
I hope you realize that 'business' and 'making money' usually mean exchange of services. You buy something because you need it. You sell/work something because someone needs it.
Generally speaking, from a capitalist perspective, the more money you have, the more useful you are to society. It means that what you have to sell/give/work is more valuable and people need it.
Socialism isn't all bad, but generally wants to redistribute resources to people that might not necessarily deserve it. And I think perfect equality is a hoax.
That's all well and good, but the devs have outright stated that they are Communists and made Lemmy along Communist lines. I didn't say that because Lemmy is FOSS, but because of what the devs have said.
Trade does exist, yes. That's not Capitalism.
Completely and hilariously incorrect. The bulk of the money in society is owned by people who contribute the least amount to it and simply gain more money from ownership.
Socialism wants Worker Ownership of the Means of Production, so the people that contribute to society can control their lives instead of working for warlords as wage slaves. As such, the workers deserve no less than the products of their labor without a parasite sucking it up. Capitalists are parasites that seek income from ownership, not labor.
What the hell is "perfect equality?" What Socialist has said they want "perfect equality?"
I see that you emphasize a lot on ownership.
I do agree that some things should be managed publicly like healthcare, education, etc. Because those are necessities that everybody need.
But other than that, I think most common trades should come from private property. That's how businesses and wealth are built. I want this in exchange for that, and money often being involved.
Also, ownership doesn't always mean that you don't work at all, it simply means that you use your resources and what you have adequately. Someone that has a lot of resources can probably manage to not work much, but still has to make important decisions on how to use these resources.
We could obviously go into the small details, and I understand that private property can be abused when it goes too far. But that's why I think we need a healthy balance of socialism and capitalism. Some things should be owned publicly, while other things are owned privately. It's up to the society to create laws and regulations depending on their values.
That being said, one of the reason I like FOSS is that it's outside ownership system. It's public, yet you retain all ownership rights.
Wealth for the business owners off the labor of the workers, ie exploitation.
Management is labor, but labor no different than any other labor. It doesn't entail many, many, many, many times the profits it entitles in Capitalism that comes directly from the Workers.
Private Property is abuse no matter how small, because it requires Workers be exploited. Additionally, it cannot last forever, and leads to increasing disparity and increasing exploitation. Society won't magically legislate better laws, the laws are decided by those with power, ie wealthy Capitalists, and they would not allow their power to be stripped from them.
Please read any leftist theory. The works I linked would be fantastic for you, but any kind of leftist knowledge would benefit you at this point.
I might look more into it.
But whatever you're explaining seems way too idealistic. To me at least.
Everything obviously has power dynamics. The worker and the manager, for example.
Capitalists have their own power. Coming from wealth and private ownership.
And socialists also have their own. Coming from equality and collectivity.
But I think expecting everything to be all nice, free, equal and collective is too good to be true. You have to be competent, useful and valuable to society.
I have a friend and neighbor that is 68 and never worked in his entire life. Now, he's quite intelligent but he decided to live on welfare his whole life because he could. I have absolutely zero respect for that. You talk so much about exploitation and abuse. Here's an example of someone who abused and exploited a socialist system with his laziness and uselessness.
Just like making everything private isn't the right solution either.
What power do Socialists have in a Capitalist system? This makes no sense.
Who is saying that everything should be "nice, free, equal and collective?" What does that word salad even mean? Why do you think Socialists wouldn't be useful to society, and why do you think parasitic Capitalists are useful?
Not only is Welfare not Socialism, but this person has stolen far less from the Workers than Capitalists do every single day.
Please, read theory. It's clear that you're just vibing your takes and don't actually understand the underlying mechanisms.
Why is this so hard to get for people?
Layers and layers of anti-socialist propaganda and misdirection.
Everyone deserves to eat, to have access to clean water, to have a roof over our heads, to have our physical and mental health needs met, and access to a quality education. All these are enablers to become what you define as "deserving" and are also good for society at large.
NO ONE has worked hard enough to deserve a billion dollars, and they certainly don't deserve it because their parents supposedly did. The hoarding by those people (and IMO anyone in the "hundreds of millions" category) is the reason artificial scarcity of water, food, and healthcare exists, and why secondary education is unobtainable for many, and things like UBI and single-payer healthcare look unsustainable to folks who don't want to support those measures anyway.
These are people who could continue to live fantastic amazing lifestyles that most of us can only dream about, even if they gave huge sums in taxes to help the common good.
You also seem to suggest that everyone who works hard is deserving. Plenty of hard working people live in poverty, and deserve the things I listed even by the most cold-hearted conservative standard.
Edit - I'm going to pick just ONE thing: UBI
https://www.businessinsider.com/universal-basic-income-works-red-state-blue-state-2023-10?op=1
https://gizmodo.com/universal-basic-income-has-been-tried-over-and-over-aga-1851255547
https://globalaffairs.org/bluemarble/multiple-countries-have-tested-universal-basic-income-and-it-works
The biggest problem I see - folks hung up on what people "deserve." I got news for you - no one deserves to be a billionaire. No one.
I can see the point.
Being a billionaire is most likely morally wrong and probably exploited tons of people to reach that point. I can see why people might think it's unjust.
But if a billionaire trully worked hard for it, than I don't see what's wrong. He can do what he wants with his money.
It might effectively trigger people like you. Maybe that's a reflection of your own inability to create wealth for yourself.
Your argument that every body deserve to eat, clean water, roof, etc., it sounds good on paper.
In some cases, I'm sure it truly helps some people to get back on their feet and create a better life for themselves.
But I don't think that's a long term solution. Why? Because then, people can decide to be usefulness and not work. Why would they? Everything is given to them. It encourages laziness and poverty.
Why would a billionaire who worked hard to reach that point not deserve his money while a homeless person who purposely decided to not work derserve to be given anything?
I had to stop when you started in with the ad hom like you did against the other guy.
My parting tip to you - if you assume that the only way people could disagree with you is if they are failures in life, that's a fairly shallow and myopic view.
Challenge yourself to imagine what you could actually do to deserve to be one of those 8 people in the meme. (Try to think more specifically than 'work really hard.') You are one of 8 people who collectively hold more wealth than the next 3.6 Billion combined. Many of those 3.6 billion are suffering. What exactly could you have done that makes that a deserving position to be in? And has anyone alive done that thing?
Good day to you.
Everybody is suffering. Not only the 3.6 billions.
In your world, it seems like being a billionaire is the ultimate end of suffering. Eventually, everyone dies. Even billionaires.
I think they simply have problems that we can't relate to. I don't know what it's like to be a billionaire.
Should they share that wealth? I don't know. Maybe? Maybe not?
Now, I don't think I'm defending them. But as a business owner, a part of me values wealth creation and capitalism.