Lefty Memes
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
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)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Use alt text or image descriptions to allow greater accessibility
We require 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.
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
view the rest of the comments
To be incredibly pedantic (and I love being pedantic), this means that billionaires specifically are the problem, right?
What about medium/large business owners who are far from being billionaires, or small business owners who are trying to get their business off the ground, are they not also problematic given how they still exploit workers to the same degree (or even to a larger degree like small businesses, given how they enjoy a lot of discriminatory legal exemptions worldwide and have to cut labour costs in order to compete better) and are more likely than not to support reactionary rhetoric that divides the working classes further due to their class position?
If only there was a word to encompass all of them
Capitalism? Sure billionaires aren't the only problem, but in a plutocracy they are a good place to start.
I like calling people by their actions instead of any label. In this situation I would call them Wealth Hoarders. I think that covers the many labels of the rich on varying scales of wealth ownership without singling out any specific group.
I find the over use of labels to be a tool for distraction. It's easy to argue the definition of a label and ignore the actions that are actually happening. Describing a person's action leaves less room for debate and returns the focus back on shitty, unacceptable and unwanted behaviour.
As a nice bonus, describing shitty peoples actions and behaviours to them makes them visibly uncomfortable. At least from my experiences.
"Wealth Hoarder" isn't the best term, given how it could also include decently affluent working class people who have a decent amount of savings. They technically hoard wealth for themselves albeit to a lesser extent, but are these people problematic/part of the problem?
Also, it was a rhetorical question, the answer is bourgeoisie (or capitalists if you don't want to use 19th century English). It's definition literally is the employers and people who own and run companies/factories, and rentiers who live off of rent (so landlords). Instead of describing an action, it does something better and describes their material position, what they have.
I personally don't see any reason to spend time defining labels. The people causing harm don't even care about the definitions of the labels they use. It's their actions which are causing harm and and our time is better spent addressing their actions.
If we aren't spending our time addressing their actions then we are being distracted from the harm they are causing. That benefits and enables their harmful actions while doing nothing positive for us who want a liveable future.