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.
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, updooting good contributions and downdooting 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
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.
- Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
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- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
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- (National) chauvinism
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- Zionism
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Why do you think stock has value? It's because it's a piece of ownership of the company. Yes it's a way for the company to get some capital, but it's also the way for private company owners to cash in on their company being successful.
Why is being paid in ownership insane? It's directly tied to the performance of the company, if the company does well the stock does well, and it's incentive to drive the company in the right direction to reward employees of all levels with stock.
It's insane to tax this ownership, it's not worth the amount it looks like. If an owner had to sell their stock, the stock value would plummet not only because of the huge uptick in supply of stock available to trade, but because the person running the company now has little to no stake in the success of the company.
You know who this also screws over? All the middle class people trying to retire on their stock values going up. You tax wealth, stock values will plummet, and there goes the middle class retirement, no thanks!
Of course I know what hedge funds are, and that people manage them. It's all about actively buying and selling stocks, bonds, and options.
You can call it a terrible retirement vehicle if you want, but it's literally how the middle class is able to retire. From 401k, to Roth IRA, to other much every other retirement account available to the middle class, it's based on stocks, and it's worked well for a ton of people.
It only bankrupts idiots like those on /r/wallstreetbets or those who put all their money into one stock. Yes the market may go down, and it may go down a lot, but that's not going to make you bankrupt unless you make extremely dumb choices.
Luckily most retirement plans come with a target date fund, which is an easy way to diversify and get basically guaranteed gains.
Also, it's the only retirement the middle class has, so you can't destroy it.