this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2025
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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.
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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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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.
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It should be progressively more expensive to remain rich.
Figure out a baseline of what’s required to provide comfortable subsistence.
Set a tax rate of 0.01% for income above 10x the baseline.
Set the tax brackets to:
If you want to earn more and pay less tax, you work toward raising the baseline.
An economy is a construct provided by the society to help facilitate its function. Hoarding wealth denominated in its currency is intrinsically sociopathic, and societies which tolerate it are suicidal.
I would argue a comfortable subsistence should be a right, and not require any work at all. And this taxation could provide the basics for everyone.
This is a part of a broader thesis, which also argues the ‘comfortable subsistence’ should be treated as a right.
The taxation wouldn’t be required to pay for anything, its primary purpose is to constrain inequality, and incentivise continual elevation of the social floor.
I’d like to see ‘wealth’ accumulation and persistence as a legitimate proxy of how much someone has contributed to and supported the society they participate within, as opposed to its current form of how much they’ve extracted from and damaged it.
They can build their reputation, and be happy with it. Individualism is a lie to justify unequal distribution of resources.
Show me someone born on a deserted island, who built their entire world and infrastructure from the ground up as an individual, and you’ll have a case for someone who deserves all that they’ve built. For the rest of us, we are a species that builds on the works of all others who came before, and we succeed together.
The singular genius myth is a lie built to justify a race to the patent office, and dismiss multiple discovery.