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.
California is the USA in a bottle. You got progressive cities, conservative suburbs, rural areas and industrial hotspots, poor folks as well as the obscenely rich. Ronald Reagan was Governor in California for 8 years before becoming the blueprint of conservative candidates for the presidency.
This. Larger population than all of Canada = smorgasbord of different ideologies and classes.
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!
Why that bear don't have 2 heads?
Because it isn't 2189 yet.
Also, please use the spoiler tag.
The urge to re-install New Vegas grows...
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.
Literally every single person is one police encounter away from being a criminal, unless you're rich that is.
It’s worth noting that California did abolish private prisons a while ago.
I thought the bear in their logo had two heads
Soon
The bear in the flag was over-hunted and had its habitat destroyed so it’s no longer found in California. It’s a great metaphor.
That comes after 2077
"Scratch a liberal, and a fascist bleeds." Makes you question if Californians really care for the marginalized.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
