Lefty Memes
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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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
That means 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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something a lot of people miss is, that some people have to shop for more than 3 or 4 people, when I grew up we were 5 plus a somewhat big dog, you can't really do weekly shopping without some kind of help under these circumstances
I use public transport to get everywhere I can, which is pretty easy where I live, but having 4 full shopping bags on a tram sounds like a horrible experience
People in countries and cities with good public transport don’t really do “weekly”. They stop in to the local market on the way home daily or every other day. There’s literally an express type grocery store every block or three, and a full serve store probably 10-15 minutes walk.
I spend a lot of time overseas for work, and getting groceries is without a car is zero trouble.
It tends to be much easier in walkable/well designed areas because you have a much higher density of grocery stores.
I have about 8 within a 2-10 minute walk. So I don't really do a big weekly shop, but rather a couple small ones throughout the week.
So yeah, depends hugely on how human-friendly the area is
Look at Mr Fancypants, with enough money to live in a desirable area and have enough time to go for strolls to the grocery store(s).
Seriously though, this is not the norm in the states.
I mean, there's a bunch of factors to this some social some geographical, but it turns out, the US has almost uniqiely bad design of towns and city with the auto-lobby holding a firm grip on their balls.
Literally every town or city in Europe is like this.
I'm not in a particularly desirable area... I'm also not in the US though.
A bug reason why the only desirable areas tend to be walkable in the US is just because there are so few.
If you promoted widespread walkable city-design, then prices will become more accessible to everyone. Even the poorest areas lf my city are super walkable, even moreso than many of the richer areas.
Which is why there's traffic
human-friendly as in you can live there in poverty or human-friendly as in it's great if you're middle class?
I mean, being poor sucks everywhere, but there's a lot of intermediate steps between dense well-designed city and car-centric hellhole. Arguably the latter is way worse if you can't afgord a car.
I actually live mostly surrounded by public housing! But I'm also not in the US...
The poorest part of my city is also the most densely populated and has an absolute shit-load of walkable grocery stores.
Just shop daily instead of weekly. A grocery store just opened three blocks from me so I just walk down with a single canvas bag and grab what I need for the next day or two. For the dog, we walk down to the pet store together to grab his food and a treat or toy for him.
Obviously not possible in many suburbs, but when you live in a walkable area it works great.
I hope I never end up in an American suburb.
Shopping daily sounds terribly inefficient. I don't even want to be at the store once per week, much less every single day.
It takes less than 15 minutes to do a shopping trip. 4 minutes by bike to get there, 4 minutes back. Time inside the store depends on how much stuff I need but usually not more than a few minutes, including self-checkout.
It's really minor when you just walk in and grab like... some vegetables for dinner. It's like a 5-10 minute detour.
Maybe you're right. I'm where I'm at, I drive about 10-12 minutes to get to a nice grocery store with decent prices where the parking lot won't be sketchy or crowded. But having one on my way as I'm walking to and from somewhere else would be pretty great. Most of the stores like that where I'm at are considered "concenience" stores, and the prices are wildly inflated there, so I never shop there unless I just want a drink or some junk food real quick.
As someone who loves cars and is cool with car culture, I do feel that it should be completely optional, and more walking based infrastructure and public transportation would be nice for everyone.
Sure. But one car ride a week to fulfill the daily needs of six living beeings doesn't cause congestion. What has this to do with anything?
If you live in more urban areas, you even don't need your own car for that.
Have you heard of grocery caddy? It has wheels and can carry more groceries than one person can lift with their own hands.
The heaviest thing I often see people load in their car is a 6-pack of water or soda bottles. It's better for health and just simpler to drink tap water. Drinking from a plastic bottle means drinking microplastics. And I don't need to explain why water is better than sodas.