Communist Thoughts posted:

its a loving wonder we are as normal as we are

Raskolnikov38 posted:

NOT THIS AGAIN AAAAAAAAAA

Shiroc posted:

Federici was solidly in the period of second wave feminism so it wouldn't be surprising if she ended up being a terf, if unfortunate.

CoolCab posted:

it's super regional too. i know for a fact i've talked about cuba and castro while working as a TU rep, because my favourite branch secretary and extremely good comrade would take all her vacations there for explicit ideological reasons and come back to brag about how much better it is, lol.

the revulsion appears almost completely localized in america, neither america's hat nor america junior have anywhere near the same antipathy. if she'd been saying similar about say north korea i'd think she'd lost her mind.

Truga posted:

genericnick posted:

Yeah, Americans seem to be special in that regard. I knew a guy who grew up there and came over to study on the old continent and he absolutely couldn't deal with public buildings being named after Marx.

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

It's virulent to them.

I was reading about the relationship between socialism and the avant-garde (and socialist realism in the USSR), and found a definition for the avant-garde that I liked, which is that the avant-garde (which comes from "vanguard") seeks to impose the artist's will on their own art, to be uncompromising and to make art on their own terms, which is the source of the conflict between the artist and society -- or the concrete institutions which comprise (bourgeois) society, like "the market" or art museum curators or Sotheby's. It's not really about "transgression" for its own sake, although some bad artists who try to be edgelords think it is, because they're trying to make "avant-garde" art from the perspective of "society" rather than actually fulfilling their role as the vanguard. At the end of the day, they want to be recognized by society as being naughty.

From the perspective of the avant-garde though, being recognized or accepted by "society" is kind of a defeat, like making music because that's "what sells," where they lose this struggle against society and are commodified / recuperated / absorbed into it (think of Banksy), which is also a reason why I suspect some of these artists who started out on the avant-garde in a general way became depressed when they became famous and were being feted by major record labels:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTWKbfoikeg

So the implication here, and why that American man's reaction to buildings named after Marx provokes such a bitterly hostile reaction, is that what happened in the 20th century is that socialism as a vanguardist -- avant-garde -- movement won in several countries.

Over time, a period of radical avant-garde experimentation in the arts receded for more institutionalized forms of art in these countries. The propaganda posters and socialist realism can be kitschy. But because it "won," after the counter-revolution in Russia, this stuff returned to where it started, and retains its virulence as an alternative, at least to that American guy. I haven't seen socialist realist paintings in American art museums. Maybe there are some, but for the most part I don't think it's considered "real art," instead it's "Stalinist propaganda," from the perspective of (bourgeois) society. This kind of performance started out as avant-garde theatre around the time of the October Revolution:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjPokm47tnU&t=17s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLihunxEzwE

Brain Candy posted:

please be normal

Truga posted:

In Training posted:

There's also a lot of avant-garde artists who were dedicated anti-communists, I think the individualism of outsider art is a siren song for reactionaries of many stripes.

In Training posted:

The Soviet film masters still get screened, taught & celebrated though so it isn't a universal rejection of socialist art practices.

mawarannahr posted:

Stalin was an expert appraiser of normality. He had to tell Eisenstein to be normal and make sensible movies that don’t break workers’ brains.

Brain Candy posted:

please be normal

wynott dunn posted:

apropos to nothing posted:

this has been my once yearly attempt to say

thanks to whoever made it as i cant remember and yeah just like, please get organized and fight for socialist ideas cause thats what being a marxist is all about

Ferrinus posted:

but all that said i assume that an alt-history trotsky who wound up as the general secretary of the party would have ended up making the same moves that stalin did (and end up reviled by Zinovievists or Preobrazhenskyists or whatever) because while men make their own history, they do not make it as they please

unwantedplatypus posted:

How is it already evident?

Atrocious Joe posted:

The bigger issue in the US isn't a microscopic fraction of people idolizing North Korea, it's millions of people who don't realize that the US committed genocide there and still practices nuclear bombing runs against it every few years. The US government is still sanctioning the country and stopping fuel from being sent there! Even if the DPRK is a hermit monarchy, it should be a priority for US socialists to stop the war and sanctions.

Zodium posted:

is north korea socialist? i don't know, because the only information I can get about it comes from north korea's enemies, who I do not trust to tell me about north korea. maybe it's very nice and the people are happy. maybe not. either way I can't do anything or even really know about north korea.

Tankbuster posted:

So whats the deal with Juche and why is it so different from lets say "socialism with chinese characteristics"?

apropos to nothing posted:

is north korea an example of a socialist society that you would put forward to people in the streets in the us or anywhere else? do you see it as aspirational? if not then yeah why would you call it socialist? does china have a socialist mode of production? it doesnt. doesnt mean you agree that the US should destroy them but the reason the transition happened is cause if you actively put your politics forward to the people in the labor movement then you have to have politics that meet reality.

if one of your coworkers asked you about your thoughts regarding north korea or china or the ussr or stalin or tito or trotsky or castro or whatever/whoever would you be able to give them a full and honest answer, like not hide your real views? i can and do, to coworkers and neighbors who are conservatives, who voted for trump, who are liberals, whatever. online spaces encourage this kind of weird politics where people say stuff that they would never say or agree to in person.

apropos to nothing posted:

theres a pretty big leap between "socialist parties have to adapt to their environment" and "juche is marxism." if you think that, welp then i dunno what to say, like its actually not really possible i think to have any kind of useful discussion cause its just so beyond the pale imo. but yeah your politics have to fit the conditions, but they also need to be universal enough to not be at odds. like when china and the ussr worked against each other for decades. or like why it would be wrong to advocate for NATO intervention in the war between russia and ukraine in ukraine even though a lot of working class people there have illusions in it as a solution to the crises theyre in.

Communist Thoughts posted:

Also jesus christ the Methodist leaders were weird and evil, in a way that really foreshadows some of modern British ideology.
No fun allowed, everyone is a sinner, abase yourself before even the worst master, work until you die and you probably won't even get to heaven

DeimosRising posted:

you can read about juche straight from the source https://www.kfausa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/The-Juche-Philosophy-Is-An-Original-Revolutionary-Philosophy.pdf

Zodium posted:

thanks, but this pdf doesn't load?

unwantedplatypus posted:

What has your side done in the intervening time? Like actual concrete results for the working class? What have Trotskyists built?

unwantedplatypus posted:

So if you’re continuing a long tradition that has its roots 100 years ago.

What has your side done in the intervening time? Like actual concrete results for the working class? What have Trotskyists built?

Tankbuster posted:

So whats the deal with Juche and why is it so different from lets say "socialism with chinese characteristics"?