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)
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 read the sidebar and you seems to dislike "Democratic Socialism". I wonder what's wrong with it? I mean ideally, we actually have a class-less and state-less society, but isn't Democratic Socialism a decent type of transition government? I'm not an expert in politics btw.
-Rosa Luxemburg
So-called democratic socialism is a form of reformist liberal revisionism. The answer of reform vs revolution has been answered for more than a century, with the revolutionary side being proven right and right again by history and current societal developments. Bourgeois democracies are designed in a way that makes systemic change - especially of the economic base of society - virtually impossible (at least in the imperial core of western/northern nations) and even if a movement manages to bring relevant change through the ballot, it is either instantly reversed or faced out over the years by following legislatures but more often than not results in a (fascist) coup instigated by capitalist-imperialist powers, with the leaders getting the award which most decent folk get in the aftermath of such a situation: a bullet in the head
If you want more information on this, I suggest you look up the following:
The history of Salvador Allende and the Chilean Coup of 1973
What happened/is happening to the implementation of the nordic model of social democracy (spoiler: it has been largely dismantled thanks to developments starting in the 90s)
What all the huge leftist parties of the 2nd Internationale in Europe did in prelude to WW1 (spoiler: they gave up any principles they might have had and replaced them with national chauvinism and support for their respective national bourgeoisie)
The history and development - or rather degeneration - of all major western but mostly european communist parties (most notably the PCI (CP of Italy) and the PCF (CP of France))
If you want, you can also check out !actualsocialism101@lemmy.dbzer0.com for learning more about actual socialism (though it's still under construction)