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, discussion and agitprop/stuff that's better fit for a poster than a meme 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. Please post agitprop here)
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
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.
I think all human needs are abundant enough to be made free, I think the rich need to be heavily taxed until there effectively are no billionaires,
but as a counterpoint somebody somewhere is running the tap at all times in a Starbucks or an ice cream parlor during a drought even when it's not free.
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/starbucks-massive-water-waste
They needed to be heavily taxed thirty years ago.
They need to be butchered now, for the damage they have done to the earth. They and their heirs must be exterminated to the last. If there is one survivor, all our futures are forfeit.
Good luck trying to convince a majority of that, but also they can reproduce faster than you can kill them. There will always be opportunists and assholes as long as mankind exists, better to stop them from forming than strike them down as they come about.
There's like a couple thousand billionaires, maybe a couple million of the ultra-wealthy. You wouldn't need a majority
In the last US Election they elected a Billionaire president and immediately started stripping away regulations. You're not just dealing with Billionaires, you're dealing with all of the people who support them.
Don't even get me started on the less free nations run by autocrat billionaires like Saudi Royalty, Xi Jinping, and Putin.
The people who support them are problems. They are not problems that can only be solved with extermination.
Read 'Cadillac desert'
It's orders of magnitude worse.
That's because Starbucks is a corporation; they only care about making their number go up. People don't really behave like that.
A corporation is just a group of people.
Yes, but people acting for their own livelihoods don't follow the same patterns as people acting to maximize wealth. This is a systemic problem, not (or at least not necessarily) a human nature problem.
If humans naturally stopped at enough then billionaires already wouldn't exist.
Your tap water is free?
In Ireland it is, but our neoliberal governments are constantly trying to push wildly unpopular charges.
Is it free or is it paid through taxes? If it's paid through taxes how much does it cost you in taxes? Also, are there any other fees that aren't "paying for water" but functionally are?
For example, I pay approximately $50 per month for water, but if I wanted to be cute I could say I only pay $7.00 per month because the rate is $3.50 per 1,000 gallons. The other $43 dollars are in fixed meter, availability, and stormwater charges (basically the basic price needed to ensure infrastructure is maintained no matter how much water I use).
There's a similar bit to that in the classic graphic novel Maus:
(edited for clarity)
Humans will take more than they need of what’s free, if there’s a way to turn it into profit for them. If profit is allowed to be a way to secure power and control, there will always be be a desire to hoard for oneself.
Capitalism rewards hoarding and profiting, and also rewards making the in group as small as possible.
Other factors can cause hoarding as well to be clear, such as fear of scarcity/needs not being met.
If you're not allowed to do profit then who would do trade and why? Nobody likes working in retail, nobody likes being a plumber. Markets can and should compensate and reward people fairly, the problem is some people are allowed to take too much, and even small profit can be made at the expense of others, will you have an investigative unit that decides when people have used enough water?
I keep thinking of one of the old videos I saw.
"...I dunno, maybe we should get rid of all of the landlords!"
"But who would we then pay rent to?"
I was, like, holy shit, things are so much more complicated than I even realised, everything is based on some dumb suppositions or some shit.
Meanwhile people living in literal deserts are draining the water table to grow lush green lawns and fill swimming pools ...
And powering chatbot training datacenters
Having good health care means you just consume as much medicine as you can. I get vaccinated every day, I own 500 pairs of glasses, and all my teeth have been root canaled
I get vaccines for diseases that don't even exist... Everyone has the small poxs vaccine but I also have medium poxs and even large poxs vaccination.
I will say one I don't recommend is I got the mumps vaccine so I figured I should get a dumps vaccine... It just made me really constipated.
/s this is a joke, yes get your vaccines but only ones for real diseases...
Jokes aside, "great pox" is siphilis. I don't know if there a medium pox...
If you have both does siphilis and small pox does it become mega or epic pox?
I know this is a joke but... Communism doesn't mean "free stuff". Probably the opposite of what this joke implies, it's communal ownership. You wouldn't waste water if you felt it was your water. People waste water when they feel it's someone else's water (government, landlord).
I know it’s not really your point, but I don’t think this is about homeowners. I've never paid for water (or behaved like this) in a rented apartment. Unless you have a well, you often do have to pay for municipal water if you own the property. Even with a well, you’re paying for any filtration based on usage.
I wasn't talking about homeowners. I just reused the water example. In an ideal communist society, you'd still need a way to prevent people from overusing the communal resources.
If one cut out the profit motive, people may be less inclined to waste some resources. i.e. not growing unneeded food in the desert. It would not reduce some wastage due to other motivations. i.e. I won't have access to this tomorrow, so I shall use it for non-productive usages today.
yep. also people wont do any work if they dont have to because all their needs are met. this is why all rich people are retired.
And don't want us to have a 4-day week or work remote.
