this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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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.

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as well as 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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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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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

In the financial sector, cooperatives are very common actually. Germany has a long tradition of "Genossenschaftsbanken" - banks that are owned by their customers. In the US, there is Vanguard for example, the seconds largest investment company, that is also owned by their customers.

Well, customers, not workers. Businesses are successfull when their customers are happy and purchase their goods and services, and they pay also the workers salary. Those cooperatives can have an competitive advantage over other types of corporations, as they don't need to make external investors happy, and are less prone to hostile take-overs.

If workers have significant influence over the business strategy...yes, automation wouldn't kill their shares, but it would kill their jobs and their monthly income, and most likely the yearly dividend is not high enough to replace your salary (unless you are an old worker close to retirement, maybe).

There are historical examples of workers cooperatives, however. In post-war Germany, there were real estate cooperatives where, instead of paying rent, you build new houses and get to live in one of them in return. Today, these cooperatives also collect rent but instead of construction work new tenants are required to invest into the cooperative, to they kind of transformed from worker-owned to tenant-owned.