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, 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!
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. 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
- 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
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- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
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view the rest of the comments
Revolution and the end of capitalism aside, I have yet to find a Lib who can explain to me why it would be wrong to take everything from the rich except, say, 500 million. There would be no losers. The rich would still be rich, but we could do so much good with the money.
"it would be wrong because one day i might have 500 million bucks and a penny and i'm not giving you that fucking penny" shitlibs i guess
Can you show a single example of someone actually expressing this sentiment, though? I've seen "quotes" like this hundreds of times, but never anyone on the 'other side' ever actually make this argument.
i could but i'm not doxxing the idiots i live near
You've never gone outside and talked to Americans have you?
100 million tops. 50 million ideally. These people buy governments for tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. No one should be wealthy enough to even consider buying elected officials, also all solitary positions of executive power should be split into councils of not less than 9 people, but always an odd number on the council.
Even number but nobody works every single day.
One of the issues is that their value isn't fixed. A billionaire as relatively little in the way of liquid (or liquidatable) assets. Their company might be worth billions, but, by taking it, you will destabilise it. Its value will plummet.
In order to access that money, you need to syphon it off more slowly. Think of the goose that lays golden eggs. Cutting it open won't get you a glut of gold. The counterpoint is that you still need to collect the eggs!
In my opinion, we need a tax setup that forces individuals to regress to the mean. (Default is the rich and poor both move towards average when they are of average performance).
We also need to force companies to follow a power law. A few big companies, with the number growing as you move down. A tax setup that punishes forming big conglomerates, and so encourages more medium and small companies would be optimal. Have it adjust based on the overall industry. This both keeps industries competitive, and syphons money from those most able to bear it.
There is a huge difference between knowing what is needed, and how the fuck to implement it however!
Kill the poisoned goose, see if it's children can function as democracies rather than dictatorships.
Killing the goose blindly is just self destructive. We want to them to be able to die, but we need to reduce their size first. That way better options can take up the slack.
Answer me this. Collapse every company worth more than $1B simultaneously. What would happen to the quality of life of those at the bottom? It would be...bad.
Not much worse than the current system that has a planned economic meltdown every decade or so, to prevent the poors from ever gaining a foothold.
You massively underestimate the complexity and fagility of the systems supporting you right now. Food, power and good production would basically collapse.
The biggest problem is the megacorps, they are too big to fail and so need to be broken up. The best way to do that is to make it financially in their interest to shatter themselves. Power law taxes would help both so it now, and keep companies from growing to that level. It also controls the speed of the change, so the supply lines we rely on remain functional.
You massively underestimate the number of us who don't need those systems, and have nothing to lose.
The rich own the people (and now, drones) that stand between you and taking it from them.
There are roughly 50,000,000 of them that enforce the current system. There are over 8,000,000,000 of us. We don't need everyone, just 500,000,000 of us could topple them.
When you put it like that, the liberal brain implodes.
Don't ask me exactly how or why, it just does, they become emotional and irrational at that point.
Maybe pictures of dragons sleeping on piles of gold would help, stories about how they only leave them to terrorize nearby village folk, occasionally abduct a young girl and steal her away to a mythical island, for god knows what purposes.
It's wrong because theft is wrong. Just because the thing you're stealing is something the victim can do without, doesn't magically make it not theft.
So theft it remains, and wrong it remains, because theft is wrong.
Pretty simple, really.
It’s not theft. It’s restitution.
Theft is what happens every day in every working relationship. Value is always and exclusively derived from labor. If someone has capital worth 500 million, that means they have the labor value of 500 million. Did they earn this value themselves? Of course not, it is the value of our labor that they have stolen.
But even if that weren't the case, this argument is roughly on the same level as “drugs are illegal because they are prohibited.” Always remember: in the Third Reich, it was legally forbidden to hide Jews. But it was legally permissible to kill them. What the law says must never be the basis of morality. And on top of that, the law is simply something that is determined as such. It can just be changed. In your words: we can easily define it as “not wrong.”
That's a ridiculous statement (re "exclusively"). As an extremely simple/obvious example that refutes this: the best cashier in the world's skills are worthless unless a store already exists for them to cashier in.
It's absurd to think the worker is entitled to 100% of the value their labor produces. Both employer and employee come together for that value creation to be possible. Neither entity alone can create that value, so they both deserve a portion of the result of their symbiosis; neither side deserves 100%.
"Profit = theft" is a moronic notion.
No, it isn't, at all. I'm talking about morality, not legality. Total straw man on your part.
Nevertheless, without labor, the store will not generate any (exchange) value. If you think the store itself has value, that value was also created solely through labor. Exchange value is created solely through labor. After all, labor is ultimately what is exchanged. Anything that did not require labor has no exchange value.
What does the employer bring to the table? Exactly one thing: the means of production. But even those were created by labor. So the capitalist didn't contribute anything either. He just has capital. Everything of value, the entire economy, every invention, every mashinery, every computer, every commodity, was created solely through labor. Capital is the parasite that appropriates a large part of the value created by society without doing any work itself.
Yes. The worker alone creates the value. He does not need the capitalist. But if the means of production were in his hands, he would not have to work for free for the capitalist's profit.
You grew up in capitalism and have internalized capitalist ideology. That's why it seems natural to you that we allow an entire group of people to do nothing (except rig politics in their favor) and still accumulate most of humanity's resources. But in fact, it's a huge scam against me, you, and everyone else who has to sell their labor to survive.
Yet your argument is: It's wrong because it would be against the law ("theft"). But that's merely a matter of definition.. And it's not theft to take back something that belongs to you.
No, your assumption is apparently that the word "theft" has an inextricably law-based definition. It doesn't—stealing's immoral, that's all there is to it.
Agreed, but irrelevant, as you're talking about taking, not taking back. It doesn't belong to you just because you decided it does.
Either way, it's a question of definition.
And it doesn't not belong to me just because you decided it doesn't. What is “belonging” if not a legal status? However, my assertion is that in our capitalist society, we have established a legal system whereby even though you and I produce things, they do not belong to us. Instead, under threat of punishment or, alternatively, the threat of starvation, we give them to another group that has contributed nothing at all. What do you call that? Robbery! What the capitalists call property, they took away from us first. You need to get rid of that neoliberal mindset and stop fighting for their interests and against your own.
This is what you've arbitrarily decided is the case, though, not the reality.
But what does the owner class do? They buy company shares and wait until the money generated by our work lands in their accounts. Let's take a look at a simple calculation: I buy shares in an index fund with 2 million euros. Conservatively estimated, this yields a 6 percent return each year. That means that on December 31, I look at my account and see that 120,000 euros have been transferred to it. But where does this money come from? You earned it with your labor. I didn't contribute anything. Yet your annual salary is probably significantly lower.
Now, of course, you could say that I then use this money to make investments and, for example, buy additional means of production with which wage workers can produce goods and services. But remember: this money was only generated through your work. So why am I the one who is now investing in order to profit even more from it later? Why don't we organize society in such a way that those who do 100% of the work are not also the ones who own the company? Or that the means of production are generally socialized. Profits are distributed fairly, investments are decided democratically, and everyone can participate.
In other words, capitalists are only part of the value creation process because of the way ownership is structured in our society. Not because they contribute anything. Again: everything that has exchange value only has it because of the labor that went into it. Every store, every factory, every commodity. Just everything. We created it all. But it belongs to others.
You and I belong to the vast majority of humanity who have to sell their labor to survive. That's why we have to stick together, comrade. Because there is another group that not only doesn't have to work and lives off our labor, but also accumulates incredible resources and influences politics according to its will. A few super-rich people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos own more than the poorer half of humanity. How can we allow this to happen? We would all be better off.
Retrieving property stolen by a thief is not theft itself
They stole it from us first in the form of unpaid wages.
I suppose the common response would be that preventing billionaires from hoarding insane amounts of wealth would remove incentive from them to “innovate and create jobs”. Not that I buy that as being true or worth the wealth disparity currently seen.
To that I'm thinking that humans have an innate desire to innovate, and we wouldn't need jobs if we had fair taxation of the ultrawealthy and UBI.
So basically... the main argument against UBI? LMFAO
Yeah, I mean whether you subscribe to the belief or not, that is the general liberal thinking. If they thought differently, they probably wouldn’t be liberals anymore.
IMO the main argument against UBI is:
"I think all the money would go to landlords because I don't know what elasticity is but nonetheless feel qualified to speak about economics."