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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, upvoting good contributions and downvoting 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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Cool, so you're a self-proprietor, and still think you can magic the system into a bunch of self-proprietorships. Simply "understanding how money works" isn't all you need to succeed, otherwise the system would work for the vast majority rather than the vast minority.
You clearly have no actual idea what Socialism is if you think it's just welfare, it's worker ownership of the Means of Production. Directing production towards fulfilling needs and uses, rather than the profits and wealth hoarding of the few.
You do realize Lemmy was made by Communists along Communist principles, right?
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.