this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2025
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Lefty Memes

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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

Version without spoilers

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 theyโ€™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.

  1. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:

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๐Ÿ™๐Ÿ™๐Ÿ™ (lemmy.zip)
submitted 3 weeks ago by dogbert@lemmy.zip to c/leftymemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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[โ€“] lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

The ones that didn't give up & dismantle themselves, because they couldn't deliver on their promises[^promises] or beat the west even on their own terms & measures of success[^failure]?

Other communist states still exist: Cuba, China, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea. China is a strong contender. However, it achieved its economic edge by liberalizing its state capitalist economy. Its economic inequality is worse than that of liberal democracies in Europe, Canada, East Asia, Australia: check out the detailed view of this world map of gini coefficients. Its civil & political rights are difficult to understate & its recent campaign to repress its LGBT+ population is only the latest episode. Nonetheless, it's credibly a "more successful iteration of socialism".

Beyond communist states, social democracies in the West are "successful iteration[s] of socialism" with lower economic inequality.

[^promises]: The Soviet constitution of 1977 made a number of promises it couldn't realize. - labor, free from exploitation, as the source of growth - continuous improvement of their living standards (art. 39) - steady growth of the productive forces (art. 40).

It never fulfilled its founding promise of a communist society.

[^failure]: Forced labor camps/Gulags are the opposite of labor free from exploitation.

When the wall fell, East Germany was significantly poorer than West Germany: [GDP per capita less than half][germany] with lagging living standards.
Other economies that started poorer than East Germany beat it or caught up to West Germany.

Chronic shortages increasingly led people to the [second economy][second-economy] with its [blat][blat] (favors) network.
[They were unable to sustain economic growth to increase living standards][9789004480209].
> The Soviet experience of socialist ownership and the concomitant centrally planned character of the economy showed the difficulties of realizing economic growth in order to ensure an increasing standard of living. Growth in the Soviet Union had been high in the nineteen thirties and early fifties, but had been deteriorating ever since.

Eventually, the last Soviet leaders, conceding failure by their own standards (economic, social, & cultural rights) & western standards (civil & political rights), dismantled the system from within: [Western governments had exceeded their communist state by all standards][9789004480209].
> The end of the Cold War has changed the focus of the debate on human rights. The West, with its focus on civil and political rights, no longer opposed the Soviet states, with their emphasis on economic, social and cultural rights. The demise of the communist systems gave rise to a certain extent of triumphalism in the West, which had proven to be not only superior in political and civil rights, but also in economic and social rights. The economies of the western countries produced much more income and the material welfare of their populations was much higher than that of those living in Eastern Europe.
[โ€“] dogbert@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Social democracy is not socialism. How many times do we have to teach you this lesson old man. Having characteristic of socialism does not make something socialist otherwise capitalism would be socialist. If the workers dont own the means of production, it is not socialism.

[โ€“] lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com -1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Social democracy is a social, economic, and political philosophy within socialism

There's nothing to teach: you're just wrong. An impure economy doesn't make their philosophy non-socialist. It promotes a welfare state with a corporatist system of collective bargaining. It's a gradualist, reformist, democratic approach to socialism.

The US economy is also impure: firms don't own public services, run welfare, or regulate the markets. By your reasoning, "having characteristics of capitalism" doesn't "make it capitalist".

Even economies of USSR & China were/are state capitalist according to communists.

Most current communist groups descended from the Maoist ideological tradition still adopt the description of both China and the Soviet Union as being state capitalist from a certain point in their history onwardsโ€”most commonly, the Soviet Union from 1956 to its collapse in 1991 and China from 1976 to the present.