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!
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.
The American prison system is designed to make money. Prisons get paid based on how many people they house. Making sure people don't wind up in prison is literally the last thing the warden wants to do. Anybody thinking America is gonna change it's ways out of the goodness of its heart is fucking delusional.
I watched a video of a random streamer who ranted a bit about the elections. He had some great points, and he was basically saying what most people are thinking. He talked about voting and the people that refused to vote. He then added: how can you become president as a criminal but you are not able to vote as a criminal. And then continues with, he agrees that criminals shouldn't be able to vote, because they are criminals with bad intentions. Fucker, the system is designed that most people ARE criminals. You can go to jail because a copper doesn't like your face.
Oh it's worse than that. California voted to make more homeless people, expand the three strikes system by turning some misdemeanors into felonies, and voted itself a slave state to take advantage of all that new prison population.
All that's left is to privatize the pipeline.
But it's okay, they removed the defunct ban on same sex marriage so they're still progressive! Yay!
One person was arguing that they shouldn’t be able to refuse to do “chores” in prison, but the things they do there are things like making license plates, furniture, and fighting wildfires. A bit far from mopping up and taking out the garbage.
Don’t blame me! I voted Yes!
The baffling thing is that the other side didn’t even file an argument against the measure in the voter guide… and it still lost!
Like, if your side can’t even be bothered to come up with an argument for or against particular legislation, I’m voting with the other side, full stop.
I know it has that reputation but I really don’t think California is the most progressive state. Maybe Oregon? Vermont? Not sure to be honest.
It’s pretty much just basic liberals here. And lots of fascists but they hide out away from everyone else most of the time.
Voting for democrats more overwhelmingly doesn't necessarily mean more progressive, just more acceptance for the Democrats in California, who are generally establishment neoliberals.
And yet in local races, primaries, ballot initiatives, progressive candidates and issues all lost. Almost every issue I voted on went the other way. So that has been my experience with California, that it is not very progressive. Admittedly this was a particularly bad election but similar things have happened before.
Yep. Cali is ideologically very neoliberal, from the SanFran techbros to the large presense of the Military Industrial Complex. People's ideas are guided by their material conditions, which includes their class interests. I made an introductory reading list for Marxism if you are interested, the section on Dialectical and Historical Materialism as well as Scientific Socialism goes over said phenomena in further detail.
I realize I misunderstood what you were saying. Yes I agree.
I don’t find Marxism very compelling personally but I agree that material conditions certainly do have their influence on many things, perhaps including this issue.
I understand if you don't want to talk about it, whether it be here or in general, but what is it about Marxism you don't find compelling? I can either offer clarification or contextualization, if you want. I'm a big Marxist theory nerd.
I also feel like people forget how fucking enormous California is. It's really just a few big liberal areas separated by a giant wasteland of racist rednecks that spans nearly the entirety of the United States from north to South in between. It's huge. If you start in San Diego and drive north for 12 hours you'll be....almost to the top of California. If you do that on the East coast you can drive through nine states.
It’s not even racist rednecks in most of those in-between areas. It’s a lot of Hispanics, and let me tell you… there’s a whoooolllleeeeee lot of racist Hispanics in this state and a lot that are happy they got in and fine with no one else coming in behind them.
You don't have to be white to be racist or a redneck. Go to places like Fresno or Victorville and you'll meet plenty of both. A huge proportion of Hispanics regularly vote against their own interests in California
California has the second largest population of Republicans in the US after Texas.
California also has the largest population of all states. A direct numerical comparison is disingenuous, a statistical comparison would be more valid.
Of registered voters in California, about 25% are Republican. In Texas, 38% are Republican.
https://independentvoterproject.org/voter-registration-by-state
I have huge skepticism about the Texas number.
Texas DOES NOT have voters register for a party.
Wait… only 38% of voters in Texas are registered republican, yet they win every single time?!
California is not the most progressive state. It's just so big that it being progressive makes the news more.
This is a spin on the truth. Slavery has ~~never not been illegal~~ always been legal per the US constitution, as long as the slaves are prisoners. We had a prop on it to disallow mandatory labor in prisons in California. We voted against it because Americans have a hard-on for punishment. Personally I think being caged is punishment enough, ESPECIALLY when you consider the sheer volume of for profit prisons in the US. Hurray, private business can keep doing slavery in the state -_-
It has been and still is legal in federal law across the US
How is it a spin on the truth? Forced labor sounds a lot like slavery and they voted in favor of it. Just because some people justify slavery with a reason like "criminals deserve it!" or "but look at their skin color!" doesn't change that they're voting for slavery. Just because the criteria isn't directly skin color (80% of prisoners are not non-hispanic white... so its pretty much is still forced labor based on skin color) doesn't change it at all.
Wow you really put a lot of cheap assumptions on what my point was instead of just waiting for me to answer (especially when I said exactly why it was a spin the first time...), you kind of suck. Stop assuming the worst as step 1 in how you deal with other people.
The spin is they took the truth "this will continue to be legal in California and the US" and spun it into something that makes it sound like its just California, like were upholding some ancient California law. It is a shifting of the narrative that this is legal across the entire country, which is much more concerning, and making it seem like this is a California only problem.
Also the title saying the US is collapsing, being active tense, implies that this decision is part of the cause or a symptom of, like this hasn't been in the US Constitution since 1864.
But yeah were definitely collapsing, just for other reasons lol
Basically because we're the 4th largest economy in the world, and thus, billionaires also run this state.
We also didn't get rent control adjustments, or a minimum wage hike. So yeah.
At least we already indexed minimum wage to inflation a while ago so it will still go up, just not by as much.
The US is working exactly as planned
And will collapse as has been predicted.
I've seen this. Isn't it because of prisoner firefighters?
Fucking wild
You can absolutely still have volunteer programs like that. Volunteering to work time off faster shows a willingness to work on the problems that landed you in prison. Forcing it just creates misery.
That's what pretty much all prison labor is. They coerce you with "Good Time" and something to do.
It's still slavery, it's not like they have a real choice. Do I rot in my cell or work and maybe get out a year early? Of course I'm gonna work. I'm not getting (really) paid for it, I'm just getting punished less. Sounds a lot like indentured servitude to me, which we all agreed was slavery too.