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.
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)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Use alt text or image descriptions to allow greater accessibility
(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)
We require alternative text (from now referred to as "alt text") to be added to all posts/comments containing media, such as images, animated GIFs, videos, audio files, and custom emojis.
EDIT: For files you share in the comments, a simple summary should be enough if they’re too complex.
We are committed to social equity and to reducing barriers of entry, including (digital) communication and culture. It takes each of us only a few moments to make a whole world of content (more) accessible to a bunch of folks.
When alt text is absent, a reminder will be issued. If you don't add the missing alt text within 48 hours, the post will be removed. No hard feelings.
0.5.1 Style tip about abbreviations and short forms
When writing stuff like "lol" and "iirc", it's a good idea to try and replace those with their all caps counterpart
- ofc => OFC
- af = AF
- ok => OK
- lol => LOL
- bc => BC
- bs => BS
- iirc => IIRC
- cia => CIA
- nato => Nato (you don't spell it when talking, right?)
- usa => USA
- prc => PRC
- etc.
Why? Because otherwise (AFAIK), screen readers will try to read them out as actually words instead of spelling them
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 irrationally 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:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Rape or assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
view the rest of the comments
There can be no united front with any liberals. They will use the first opportunity they get to betray any such united front and help the fascists out. Please learn that from history, we need not repeat it.
No liberal organisation is in our best interest. The only thing that helps against fascism are left organisations, extra-parliamentary opposition and extra-legal action.
FFS, even Mao and Lenin didn't think that way. But then they didn't see the lay liberal as a serious impediment to their efforts at de-colonization. They saw them as an impediment to the yeoman's work of reorganizing the body public on a mass scale. And they addressed the impediment through Mass Line politics and iterative, experimental reforms.
Liberals are going to organize whether you want them to or not. And in a country as heavily weighted towards older, liberally educated service sector professionals as your average western state, you're going to get a lot of them popping up under every regime of any political valiance.
Conservatives have spent 60 years building a media and a body politic that manipulates liberals into supporting their agenda. Leftists will have to learn to be at least as persuasive and compelling. Because liberalism isn't something you can ignore. And the western leftist movement isn't in any position to call the shots. The whole point of a Vanguard Party is to spearhead a revolutionary program that can sway and mobilize the body public. It isn't going to be able to staff every bureaucratic position, much less to impose a universal orthodoxy on everyone, nor should it try.
Liberals and the democratic party are class enemies. Mao and Lenin very well did see the threat of the liberals and their treachery. Lenin quite literally lived through those times when in Germany liberals used proto-fascists to murder socialists and suppress the revolution there.
Liberals can organize all they want. They'll still fail and hand power to fascists eventually. Let the American scum suffer their fate.
They will always be our enemies. The only way any kind of temporary united front will work is if liberals accept to work beneath us, not the other way around. If democrats were willing to follow a communist party for an united front, then it would be acceptable for the time being. But we should never let liberals lead any such endeavour. Because this strengthens them as well. And when all is well and done we need to exterminate liberals along with any fascists and other reactionaries. No united front has ever lead to socialism.
We're far better off organising on our own. Our own mass parties need to lead to the establishment of vanguard parties. Or do you really think liberals will allow a Marxist vanguard to take the lead of any uprising or on the political stage at large?
The vast majority of liberals and the bulk of the Democratic (and much of the Republican) rank-and-file are the same working class schlubs you'll find at any DSA meeting. They're all still proles, subject to the same degradation of the industrial process as any proper socialist. Their understanding of the world differs, but their material conditions are much the same. Forming a mass line necessarily minds finding common causes that liberals and leftists can unify under, whether it is an anti-war movement or environmental activism or a civil rights crusade.
Organizations of every stripe can and do fail. Fascism, as a tendency, is an eternal existential threat. This isn't an excuse to distance yourself from your friends, your family, and your neighbors on ideological grounds.
Vanguards are a great way of mobilizing a small number of committed activists to radical action. But the point of the vanguard is to lead the body public, not to fight the body public.
Ignorance is no excuse in the court of law. It should be no different for ideological matters. Liberals choose to become class traitors or were already class enemies by being born not into the working class. They should suffer the consequences of that choice.
Also we're not just talking about individual people but a political party. It doesn't matter who the voters are, the party leadership is class enemies, they aren't working class, the party itself is designed as capitalist party. No compromise should ever be made with those. As quoted before we have nothing in common with the cause of the class enemy. Ever.
I think you're misunderstanding the purpose of a mass line or rather what purpose it serves for us. A mass line that is not lead by Marxists will ultimately benefit those who are not Marxists the most. That is a bad deal for us. Mass lines only work with a communist party in power already.
Take a look into recent history with the Occupy Wallstreet protests for example. They all amounted to nothing and fizzled out because they were "liberalised".
Lastly the vanguard doesn't fight the public body. It's not what I propose either. The public body is not liberals. Those are a parasite inside the public body that needs to be removed. You're following the enemy's logic by equating liberalism with the people.
I wish someone would tell the SEC.
Which is, again, the purpose of a Vanguard movement.
At the same time, vanguards need to accrue power and public exposure over time. It doesn't happen overnight.
You will inevitably have to deal with people who enjoy more authority, access more resources, and command a larger audience than you, who aren't Maoists.
How do you deal with them? Throw hands? Pretend they don't exist?
You do not acquire power by handing it over to liberals. That quite in the contrary depowers us more.
As I said we need our own mass parties that are lead by us, not liberal parties or movements.
Take a look at other countries. In the UK Corbyn is currently forming his own party and drawing in great numbers after he was slandered out of Labour leadership.
In Germany Sarah Wagenknecht, long term former leader of the communist platform within the left party, is forming her own populist mass party.
In France the new popular front has been formed under left and not liberal leadership and won the elections.
Joining fold with the democrats is not building your own mass line. It makes you a collaborator in building a mass line for liberals.
Also dealing with class enemies is only something that can be truly done once you've consolidated power. Then it doesn't matter how many of them there are as long as you have the means to hold onto power and decimate them. Every revolution needs its revolutionary terror to take care of counter-revolutionaries.
The goal is not to take part and win in bourgeois elections. That is systematically impossible actually. Taking part in those elections only servers as a platform to reach more people. You don't need an actual majority for a successful revolution or coup. The Bolsheviks did not have the majority if you look at the first Russian elections after the overthrow of the Tsar, yet they still won the civil war.
Leftists don't have power to hand. You make it sound like leftist leaders are already in power.
During WW2, certainly. And it worked out well enough, until FDR plotzed.
United fronts that protect and preserve the lives and livelihoods of residents, accelerate the accumulation of industrial capacity, and generate the kind of economic surplus necessary to enter a socialist stage of economic development are fully within the interests of the working class as a body. But like any large scale public policy, there are winners and losers. It is very easy for a bourgeois media to portray a subset of working people - coal miners during a green revolution, insurance sales reps looking down the barrel of unemployment on the eve of a single payer health care plan, fascist state bureaucrats in the wake of a socialist revolution - as victims of an oppressive left-liberal reform policy.
M: Son of the Century does a great job of breaking down Mussolini's rise to power. And it was the direct result of large swaths of ex-military and special forces divisions being galvanized by private incendiary media platforms bankrolled by bourgeois class interests. This wasn't Giacomo Matteotti playing too nicely with liberals. If anything, the socialists' failure of the 1920s was in not extending their revolution to the professional classes in opposition to the unchecked violence of the Nationalists.
For some reason my dumb ass read united front as popular front back when i wrote it from work, mb mb