this post was submitted on 04 Dec 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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[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You can’t liberate the fucking working class when you’re allowing someone to make the billions of dollars that should be going to the working class. China is a fucking hypocritical country and you are programmed by them. Goooodbye Wumao

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Can you explain how an American managed to be "programmed" by the PRC despite not speaking any mandarin? Is the PRC that powerful? Again, I point you to Marx:

The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

Markets centralize and lay the foundations for public ownership and central planning. You can't wave a wand and command these internal mechanisms for planning to spring out of thin air.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You can quote whatever you want. You cannot have a communist country where people are not equal.

Goodbye Wumao

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Marxism is not about "equality," and in fact recognizes the very real differences in people as individuals. Marx railed against "equalitarians" his entire life. Is Marx "wumao" too?

But one man is superior to another physically or mentally and so supplies more labour in the same time, or can work for a longer time; and labour, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labour. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment and thus productive capacity of the worker as natural privileges. It is, therefore, a right ot inequality, in its content, like every right. Right by its very nature can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by the same standard in so far as they are brought under the same point of view, are taken from one definite side only, for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers, and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labour, and hence an equal share in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right instead of being equal would have to be unequal.

But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and with it also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but itself life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

Critique of the Gotha Programme

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

No, just you. lol. You’re making a fool of yourself. It at least you’re getting your money.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

How am I "making a fool of myself?" Am I misrepresenting Marx? Misanalyzing the PRC? Are you capable of answering anything without repeating unproductive ad hominems?

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If your goal is to help me prove my points by offering no actual opposition, then you're doing a splendid job.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You aren’t proving anything. You’re copying and pasting propaganda, which isn’t an original thought.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Marx and Engels are propaganda?

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Anything can be used as propaganda in the right setting.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Then explain where the differences are between the intention of Marx and Engels and how the PRC operates today. I have been asking you to give any reasoning, but you've failed to. If you believe what I say to be "propaganda," then you're only aiding me by refusing to counter it yet continuing to engage via ad hominem.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I’ve accomplished my goal. Goodbye.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thanks for your help in providing a sounding board to bounce points off of, comrade 🫡

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Glad I could help you make money. Spend it wisely, and one day you might be a billionaire too.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Never will be, considering I am not being paid for any of this, but hopefully this exchange will help convince onlookers of the validity of Marxism.