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!
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)
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 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.
ID: A Sophie Labelle 4 panel comic featuring Stephie in different poses, saying:
Landlords do not provide housing.
They buy and Hold more space than they need for themselves.
Then, they create a false scarcity and profit off of it.
What they're doing is literally the opposite of providing housing.
There is a solution for landlords that we've known about for a long time.
And its doesn't involve the a massive, powerful state controlling where people can live.
Its a 100% tax on the value of land. It would stop the landowning class from unfairly stealing huge amounts of money from the poor in the form of rent. It could fund the government (allowing us to decrease taxes that hurt labor, like an income tax), or be redistributed as UBI.
Seriously, if you are at all interested in potential solutions to the housing crises and wealth inequality, please, please, google Land Value Tax and Georgism.
I live in a city where property values have increased by an order of magnitude over about 40 years.
Yes, we have a lot of speculators and wealthy landowners who need to be taxed out of existence.
But we also have a problem where seniors on fixed incomes who have owned their homes for 30 - 50 years cannot afford their property taxes because the land their homes are sitting on has exploded in value.
There is a solution to this: homestead exemption. A lot of states already implement implement this with their normal property tax. If a property is your primary residence, then the tax you pay on it cannot increase by more than x% a year. Some states also give preferential tax treatment to senior's primary residence. Their is no reason we couldn't implement these same breaks on a LVT.
So they wouldn't be able to afford their taxes with a LVT, but they can't afford their taxes under the current property tax regime (in which land value is also a factor). I don't see how this is an argument against LVT.
But, zooming out, is it beneficial to society to have empty-nesters, and elderly single people, living in 3- or 4-bedroom houses when there's a critical housing shortage for young families? Is it even good for them to live in a big house, when a nearby, smaller dwelling that's cheaper, and easier to clean and keep up? The problem in the United States is that those smaller dwelling units don't exist at all in most neighborhoods, and about the only option is to move to an "independent living" facility on the edge of town, away from family an neighbors, for $3,000 a month.
It could be a win-win: Elderly owners of high-value land could realize the cash value that's currently locked up in their houses, while the city could benefit by intensified development of that same land, increasing nearby land values even more. We need to change the zoning code to allow building that missing-middle housing in the same neighborhoods, but if we did that, a land-value tax would help incentivize its construction.
What does this mean? It sounds like paying rent to the government using different words. A better solution I see is limiting the amount and type of property an individual can own before taxes are raised significantly or more severe steps are taken.
Why not pay rent to the government? Without a profit incentive, the value of housing would go down and the money you're paying in rent to the government would go on to fund public services rather than private equity firms, bank executives and shareholders
I think most people's goal is to one day own property so they can stop paying rent.
Paying rent to government is better than paying it to my horrible multitrillionaire landlord who has like 3 or 4 apartments or something and is using the income to focus on his music instead of working, but eventually I'd like to not pay rent to anyone, at all.
I'd be willing to consider it if there was an extreme homestead exemption.
Landlords would just raise rent and claim the taxes as an expense. If they couldn't claim it as expenses they'll just increase rent even more.
So because other landlords will be trying to raise money to pay the land value tax, they will be more desperate for renters, and will offer a lower price. So if your landlord tried to raise the rent, you would have a lot of cheaper options to leave to. It would make landlords compete against each other.
See here for theory and empirics, including an example from Denmark
USA government is far too greedy and won't ever do it.
Especially if it helps old people or people living off of 'benefits'.