this post was submitted on 21 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
Version without spoilers
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.
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.
- 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
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I hate that this feels so "you shouldn't live/act conventionally" instead of "you don't need to live/act conventionally". Like, I don't sell things I make because I want the money, I sell things I make because I love things I make being out and about in the world. It helps give me a reason to make them, because I struggle to make things for myself. Doing nothing absolutely kills me, and that's ok. Making things is one of the only things I truly like about myself, of course I'm going to heavily identify with that.
Feel that. Girlfriend made candles as a hobby. I took them to work. Coworkers tried to buy them. Skip ahead a year later and she's got an inventory of nearly 200 candles and a bunch of scents and doing shows and making money. Still in the red overall, but seeing people's eyes light up when they smell them is better than any profit.
Yep. And you know what? If you weren't selling them and just doing it for fun you'd still be in red. So it's not something to worry about.
Hm, maybe that is your own insecurity with the subject speaking? Because the affirmations clearly state that "you don't need to" and not that you shouldn't. Obviously it is fine to capitalize on your passion. But often when you are really interested in any topic or good at something, you get told by all sorts of people that you should make money out of it. So there is a certain societal pressure based on capitalism to do so. And these affirmations just state that you don't need to. But it is with stay at home moms maybe. You sure can stay at home and do the household and care for the kids etc. But you definitely don't need to and it is important to get the message out that these expectations are highly problematic. Same goes for the expectation to capitalize on your interests.
I mean clearly this is through the lens of my own experiences and feelings, that's why I said "I don't like that this feels like" instead of "I don't like that this is".
I understand "hustle culture" and the things that this is addressing, I just don't like the... absolute? feel of it. And that's fine, I'm not out here demanding all the memes on the internet be made specifically to my tastes. I just felt the desire to put my thoughts out there, and didn't restrain it for once.
Oh sure, you are totally right about that. I didn't mean for you to feel attacked or anything. I was trying to discuss if the meme actually did play into some lefty norms of its own. Since you already took up this position I just tried arguing from the opposite position. There are definitely a lot of norms in lefty culture as well, what you describe as "absolute" I guess. And imo it is crucial to keep reflecting upon this and be vary of those norms.