this post was submitted on 30 Sep 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)
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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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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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So all those times I've gotten mail about using my shares to vote, what was that about exactly?
Of course they do, I don't expect a given employee who isn't the owner or high level exec to have a larger fraction of ownership.
So what? What's your point?
Mostly it was about fooling you into thinking that, as a worker, you have even an iota of power within that company.
You: "The owners deserve all the value that results from owning the company and not the workers because the owners own the company, duh." Reread what you said and note the ridiculous circular logic.
The company would continue to function perfectly fine without the owner(s), yet would immediately cease to function or even exist without the workers. The only role the owner plays in the company (that the workers operate), is to siphon the value away from the workers who made it and unto themselves.
The workers get paid, they get value out of it, they aren't slaves.
The company wouldn't exist without owners, someone created it, someone started it, someone owns it. The owners are also the ones usually making the big decisions, they have a lot of skin in the game when it comes to the future of the company.
Look at a company like Blockbuster. With a better owner they could have changed their position to stay around as a company, but the owner made bad choices. If there was no owner what would have happened? It probably would have failed even quicker because there is nobody making decisions and most employees probably didn't see the wiring on the wall until it was too late.
A good owner would have seen the direction the market was going and changed the company to prepare. Netflix has been fighting this fight for a while now, switching from streaming other's content to making their own content. Without an owner they would have died a long time ago.
Americans are so pro-democracy, but they'll bust out the most self-defeating, thoughtless, begging-the-question-ass logic to argue against having democracy in the workplace. Sad.
I hope you can realize this is a false equivalency, but maybe you can't?
If you believe so little in democracy in the workplace, why do you bother with democracy at all? Should other institutions that govern our lives also function as oligarchies, dictatorships, autocracies?
Maybe a workplace and a government are different and shouldn't be run the same way? Just a thought.