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
That's a long shot and needs a large scale prognosing. And even in the best case, it would work only if you have a lack of workforce. It isn't the case for most countries. Moreover, productiveness can easily be forced by oppression, especially if we're talking about an unqualified workforce (and we do, because most of those who are hungry currently aren't specialists)
I'm not sure I agree, I do think that broadly positive things happen from more people using their time to do "more stuff", in the most general sense - for me this is the nature of life being decidedly not zero-sum. An unavoidable consequence, part of the same fact, basically.
But adding all of the caveats I'd attach to that statement I just made, along with just my original acknowledgement that of course the worst among us will reap the (by far) largest share of rewards - I mean it would make for a comment too long to be worth reading, which I already struggle with because I crave accuracy of delivery.
With that said, you're exactly right that the most vulnerable people and the least-training-required jobs make for exactly the disgusting combo of exploitability that we already see, and that are easiest to compel, on both counts. As to not make a euphemism of "compel", I of course mean force, by causing suffering, of all the many available ways.
I'd go farther (though provisionally) and say that you pointing that out has all the familiar hallmarks of one of the many moments in my life when I have the good fortune to consider a POV in a way that causes me to go "hmm, yep, just found an old remnant of indoctrination in my head, that idea has gotta go". So I'll do some sincere thinking, and I appreciate you.
Add one more nuance to your analysis: extreme ineffectiveness of the wealth and well-being measurement. Owners of factories count money as the simplest method to evaluate the effectiveness. And, as any self-tuning system, where there is some "performance indicator", all is tuning to increase the indicator value, not the value itself. So, as a result, we have factories producing an enormous amount of useless shit that is bought by customers only because all factories behave in this very way. All this leads to an excessive usage of resources and energy while providing very little to the well-being.
The lack of long-term analysis is to blame. Nobody cares what will be in 10 years.
Believe me, it's already in my long list of caveats. Not to mention the environmental damage of it all (which I guess you probably meant too). And yep, the numbers are goosed anyway.
Ultimately the choosing of what to do and how is the central element of whether "doing more stuff" is good. Still, short term, I'd rather see more people in jobs and affording necessities and feeling some degree of agency. And to my original point, I do think it would make the owner class richer probably, not that it's a goal of mine lol.
But yep, as Deceptichum pointed out, they could never stand the idea of leaving something deliberately unexploited, lest it be exploited by someone else. It's basically their defining feature, this need to exploit and extract, first and most thoroughly among their hideous peers.
Anyway, cheers, getting off my gripe-horse for a while.
There is a pretty close relationship between overall productivity and relative wealth and well being of the general population. See all industrialized nations.
People who can look beyond surviving start to consume, which drives demand, which drives the need for workers. Productivity can be forced shortly, but in the long run it goes down as people have less energy, are less focused, more accidents happen, more things break...