this post was submitted on 31 Jul 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, upvoting good contributions and downvoting 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,

as well as 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).

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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.

(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.

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(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)

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Simple, really (jlai.lu)
submitted 1 month ago by ElCanut@jlai.lu to c/leftymemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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[โ€“] merc@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This cartoon makes some bad assumptions.

"the workers (aka the proletariat) own their own workplace" That's one way to do it, or you could have that happen indirectly where the workplace is owned by the government and the workers "own" it indirectly. Most firefighters don't work for a for-profit company, but it's also not a firefighter-owned company that goes and sells firefighting services to businesses that don't want to burn down. A worker-owned company might make sense in certain situations, say a clothing store. You wouldn't necessarily want a central government owning all garment manufacturing and sales. A worker-owned collective is probably a better match. You might have a worker-owned sports store that focuses on selling sports gear, and a worker-owned wedding gown store that focuses on that market. Most people are more familiar with the government-owned model, and that's also socialism.

"production is then planned by elected committees"... why? That's the communist way, but that's not necessarily how a socialist system has to operate. And, in many cases, an "elected committee" is absolutely the wrong way. In countries with state-provided healthcare, there's a government minister who is in charge of health, and their ministry hires the experts needed to run the healthcare system. I definitely don't think that system would be improved if an elected committee were in charge of running things. You might still have worker-representation in those setups. For example, the nurses could belong to a union, and a union rep would be part of decision making. But, an elected committee is a weird fit in many situations.

"increases in productivity continuously reduce the work week"... that's just not likely. People who have high paying jobs could sometimes demand a shorter work week, and occasionally they do. But, often they want a more luxurious life in their time off rather than a less luxurious life and lots of time off. I'm not talking about CEOs and other people who are workaholics and own multiple mansions. I'm talking about dentists and engineers who are willing to keep working a standard 40 hour week so that they can take trips around the world, or buy a nice cottage near a lake, or treat their kids to nice presents.

This way of presenting socialism is going to give people the wrong idea.

[โ€“] volodya_ilich@lemm.ee 2 points 1 month ago

In countries with state-provided healthcare, there's a government minister who is in charge of health, and their ministry hires the experts needed to run the healthcare system. I definitely don't think that system would be improved if an elected committee were in charge of running things

Maybe not running things, but the input of local committees could be very welcome. Increasing the number of specialists of some kind because of popular desire, putting a clinic in X part of the neighborhood because there are a lot of reduced-mobility people who could benefit from it nearby, transparency meetings where the expenditure is explained to the people...

"increases in productivity continuously reduce the work week"... that's just not likely. People who have high paying jobs could sometimes demand a shorter work week, and occasionally they do. But, often they want a more luxurious life in their time off rather than a less luxurious life and lots of time off

Ideally, each worker would be able to decide what they want, and shift between different working hours on different stages of life. Construction worker who only wants to have the basics and a lot of leisure time? 20h workweek. Scientist crazy for research who wants to spend a lot of time in the lab? 40h workweek. Said scientist decides to have a kid and wants to reduce to 25h workweek? Done.

The idea is that workers would be able to make those decisions themselves instead of relying on the good-will of their corporate overlords, it doesn't mean everybody has to be present in every democratic decision if they don't want to, or that everyone needs to have identical working conditions.