this post was submitted on 24 Nov 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.



  1. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:

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[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

i would argue that american liberalism has been pretty successful historically, though it's had rough times over the years, we are a new nation, so that is to be expected. And a lot of those were fairly global at one point.

So i'm not really sure i follow the inability of it to function in society. Although i don't think liberalism functions properly in society primarily because people are improperly using it, and then getting surprised when it doesnt work.

fullness and equality of responsibility for its citizens.

also this is a fairly strict way of defining a political ideology, the most broad way to define it would be "a governmental form of societal cohesion to promote function as a unit towards a common goal" There are broader ways to define it, but you start getting outside of politics at that point, and into society at large.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

we are a new nation

Not really.

My point was that liberalism functions pretty similarly to monarchy or and kind of tyranny when those conditions about responsibility are not met.

Not a new idea too, digging through treasure troves of antique literature one can find it said many times. Not just equality, but fullness of responsibility. You can lay down the responsibility for your existence and actions.

[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Not really.

i'm not sure how you're defining this. But if we're going by a governmental definition, the modern chinese government would be quite a bit newer, but the chinese people, and previous governments have existed LONG before. The US as a nation, and as a government is considerably newer than basically every existing nation, even more so when considering scale.

My point was that liberalism functions pretty similarly to monarchy or and kind of tyranny when those conditions about responsibility are not met.

i think i'm following, but i don't see how this is explicitly unique to something like liberalism. I think this is an objective challenge for basically all forms of government, including tyrannical ones.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago

Yes, that's exactly my point. Every valuable political ideology works at keeping some important dimension in the minds of the masses. There's none as far as I can see in that part about responsibility. That is, it was existent in fringe things I've read about religion and deontology in my childhood\teens, in the context of science and philosophy and ethics, but not generally popular.