this post was submitted on 11 Oct 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!
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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
That means condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
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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).
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The only dangerous minority is the rich.
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We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
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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.
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They weren't workers? is this "absurdly educated engineering" like a magic ghost inhabiting the halls of Apple HQ? Is this "engineering" in the room with us right now?
Seriously, I fail to grasp the point you're trying to make here...
.......you do know what engineering is, right? It's... Definitely not a magic ghost inhabiting halls. It's learning physics, electronics, programming, and, well, engineering to create novel solutions to problems people have.
My point is that capitalism, for all of its failures, does indeed sometimes produce better things. You unequivocally hating on it, for no discernable reason; I I can't find a reason for that.
You do know that engineering doesn't exist independently, right? It comes from humans. And you know what those humans typically are? Workers.
[Citation needed].
Workers produce better things. Have been doing it before capitalism and will be doing it after. There's no need for a leecher class above them.
I'm starting to think you're not just playing devil's advocate...
How will we educate those workers, in order to produce better things? I guess some "workers" will be smarter than others. More intelligent. Should we send those stupider workers to the fields? Make them work off their stupidity while the genius, better workers invent new machines?
blinks
What does education have to do with anything? How does that even follow towards someone "sending them to the fields"? This is the mother of non-sequiturs...
Do...do you think education itself exists because of Capitalism?!
No, and I never said that I did. Do I think that people are motivated to be educated and create things by capitalism? Yes, of course. It's provably happened on both of our lifetimes.
Does that make capitalism the best solution? No. But obviously you're gonna need to provide more data against it to convince other people. This is a weak argument.
People were motivated to be educated and create things long before capitalism and will be long after capitalism.
Yes, I think I've already agreed to that fact. Which brings us back to: how should we pay for those people to be educated? Who should we choose to create things? What should we do with everybody else?
We don't have to "pay" to be educated outside of the capitalist system. "Paying" for education is a capitalist thing. In fact, most places outside of the US don't expect people to pay to be educated. Even within capitalism, various people have found ways to make education and healthcare a public service. Imagine that...
People who want to choose it themselves?
"We" don't "do" anything with other people.
Well, no. Paying professors isn't free. Some places just hide their salaries in their tax money. But sure. Everyone gets education (I agree with this). Some people choose to be artists and... I guess they just fend for themselves?
Now, let's be absurd. Pretend I'M a artist. I made a blank canvas, and I'm willing to sell it.
They laugh at your notion of money but you do you bro, they invite you home to share some of the excess of food that has been harvested by the people that had an honest desire to feed their fellow humans, instead of... getting power through making art?