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!
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
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.
devil's advocate: "actually, if the factory owner disappeared, the factory wouldn't be able to run because there would be nobody to replace the roof after it caved in; i held off on repairing it for 3 years to buy a vacation home but that's not important.'
Nuhuh I'd be celebrating hard
Don't have to imagine it. It's literally what happened during the COVID lockdown.
The billionaire parasites were nowhere to be seen - they even disappeared off our tv's. They became irrelevant overnight, while everybody scould easily see for themselves who it really was that made our societies tick.
They did not appreciate that at all.
"Imagine waking up tomorrow and every billionaire vanished."
I imagine this almost every night. It's called a "dream."
It's good to have dreams.
I typically tell it with a less drastic story / time frame. Send the CEO on a month vacation vs sending all the workers on a month vacation, and then see what has the biggest impact on the company.
I wish we get to make the first outcome real.
We all do
Who is "we all"? Unfortunately there's still plenty of people that side with their oppressors.
People who regularly post here
Maybe we will be lucky to see it in our life..
But maybe we’d also realise that the majority of work done is just callisthenic activity to enrich a tiny minority of freeloaders, and we could reorganise society around sharing expediency and creating leisure and creative time?
That would be Star Trek communism, we can't have that. We gotta live in the Star Wars prequels instead.
A bunch of companies would start acting really weird as multi-millionaire board members get into knife fights over corporate control.
Some of them would become billionaires if they wrangle control.
So billionaires are really just the symptom, the entire system is the cause. Leave the system in place and your symptoms come back almost immediately.
Even if these companies somehow magically, within the realm of imagination were to split up or disappear and it's just small to medium sized businesses who are left, capital would inevitably concentrate back again. The billionaire narrative is beyond ass istg
Bug infestations of your house sometimes reoccur as well. Doesn't mean you shouldn't exterminate them though. You just got to keep doing periodically. That's part of Home Maintenance. Exterminating billionaires periodically is part of society maintenance.
If infestations are the analogy we are using, I'd use mold infestation as an example.
When you get black mold on your wall, what do you do? Do you replace the drywall and wait until it comes back to replace the drywall again, or do you figure out what is causing the mold (ie. The source of the moisture) so you can get rid of it for good?
I think its simply adorable that you think human greed can be "fixed". But no, like some bug infestations there are times when shit goes bad and you have to deal with it periodically. There are not always magical one time solutions to everything.
I don't believe greed is inherent, I think it is a result of our material conditions (our economic system rewards it), your condescension won't shame me into believing otherwise, sorry if you thought it would.
I don't disagree that sometimes you must play catch-up for a while, but that doesn't mean we should just give up on trying to solve the overall problem.
You think greed is not inherent? That is a hell of an opinion. Truly difficult to Fathom how you came to it. Considering there are just mountains of evidence otherwise.
The overall problem is human nature. Greed is part of that nature and has been so for millennium. That's simply undeniable. Through the Ages through every human society through every human economic system it rears its ugly head every time. It's not new. It's not specific to the current world. Denying that is simply childish. Thinking you can fix that is simply childish.
Some things take constant work and constant vigilance to fight. Magic solutions don't exist. Any system you create that doesn't account for these factors and doesn't have consistent safeguards is destined to fail.
mfs would rather do fucking human sacrifices than read marx
We can do both.
I disagree that the "billionaire narrative is ass" because it does help to unite people in the moment, however you're right that billionaires are a symptom and not the cause.
The issue is not just the capitalist system in the west, it's the fact that the overarching system of the world is capitalist, and capitalism operates by rewarding maximization of profit (by means of exploitation) with concentration of power.
So while the billionaires are a symptom rather than a cause, demonizing them helps to turn working class people -- a lot of whom lack the education or context to understand the systemic issues creating billionaires -- against the concept of concentration of power as reward.
At least, in my opinion, anyway.
In what way does the working class benefit from the anti-billionaire narrative, assuming that we live in an imaginary world where their goals are realized and reforms are put into place (which have no chance of happening in our world)? Who benefits from this if not nation states arming themselves for upcoming imperialist war or medium sized capitalists absorbing the company splits?
This narrative isn't even being spearheaded by "the working class", but progressive bourgeois standing to gain for it via either opportunism or the aforementioned capital absorption/takeover. Workers aren't some goycattle that you need to tell who the enemy is and bam, you suddenly have class consciousness, that's how the world works only in fiction.
My answer is in my initial comment and I don't wish to elaborate, I am not emotionally attached to this opinion enough to defend it further.
I believe you have good reason to think that narrative is ass, I just disagree with you (for personal, idealist/optimist reasons that likely won't change your mind), and I'm okay with that as I don't think you believing that is causing any issues.
True, if every billionaire vanished then literally nothing would change, workers would still be forced to participate in wage labor for their survival and be exploited!
And we can't seem to convince people to use this power even for their own best interest.
They believe they can build some sort of heaven, if they just kill ALL the poor.
Imagine that.
But who would own everything? Liberals cant think.
Depending on how/where we vanish to, I could go either way.