Is there a sadder sight than people who come on here, learn about leftist theory and the nature of capitalist society and then still go on to post threads asking for "leftist" media, music, video games and other assorted garbage? First, this is pure lifestylism and obsession with shallow aesthetics and secondly, it is willingly engaging in the capitalist culture industry. Before liberals and consumer "leftists" flood this thread, let them remember that all culture is colored by class, whether we are talking about art, music, games, TV shows, literature, etc. All culture has a class-character and anyone denying this is either 1) not Marxist or 2) unknowingly influenced by bourgeois ideology. There will never be genuinely revolutionary mainstream music or media in general. Even your taste for these things has been profoundly manipulated from birth. The easiest way to smoke out a liberal is to mention these undeniable facts.
Anime, music, video games, television, movies…into the trash they go
I play games but i don't really care if they have leftist "values" and never come here for advice, i've noticed you guys prefer strategy games and other weird ass shit.
William Miller
Since you admit that its 'mainstream' culture that is bourgeois then surely people asking for 'leftist culture' are entirely valid, no? Unless you are making the leap from 'all culture has a class character' to 'and that character is always bourgeois' or moreso 'bad and unacceptable for consumption'.
I feel like leftist film and music are a distinct category from videogames, television, etc. In the most obvious case because the Soviet Union and her allies were prolific producers of both, but also due to the circumstances of their history - the degree of class consciousness attained historically - especially with the industrial action of the 1970s - filters through to a greater or lesser degree to the media produced at the time. Some television was produced by explicitly marxist writers in that period in the west. The problem with videogames, not inherent to the medium, is that the technology to operate them correctly only came to prominence after the reaction of the 1980s successfully struck down the class consciousness achieved to that date, and finding genuinely leftist media produced after the 1980s is a dubious task. In your zeal to oppose lifestylism, you overreach.
There's definitely an element of consumerism which runs through things, but I think it's better to attack concrete action than attack principle in this case. If someone is going to pirate music with vaguely left wing aesthetics and facile atheoretical platitudes, that's fine. The problem arises when that consumption is translated into concrete action - i.e. it is bought, for a feeling of increased "genuineness" or for some facile ethical-consumerist notion of supporting the originator. (this applies to books by the way why do so many pay full price for new copies of the communist manifesto rather than nabbing one for like $5 on ebay or just reading it for free on their computer/phone/watch/nike shoes?)
On the other hand I've always wanted to make a thread about the inverse, about the most vulgar, propagandistic, greed-is-good, america-fuck-yeah-iraq-deserved-it cultural artefacts. The kind of things the good leftist sneers at instinctively and can extract enjoyment from by knowing they're above this without necessarily even having to do critical thinking. That's almost certainly ideologically improper in one sense or another, but hey, could be fun.
Oliver Price
colour me surprised
Luis Sanchez
OP is 100% right, only w*sternoids disagree
Grayson Roberts
i'm mexican and i play vidya, how u explain that nigga
Blake Jackson
I agree with you. Since I have become a marxist, I can no longer enjoy capitalist arts and media. The ideology is so dominant, I simply can't bear it.
I'm interested what kind of media China will produce in the future. Their Marx anime is really good, it is a true masterwork.
Cameron Garcia
Is it still consumerism if you're a piratefag?
Camden Martin
Movies are fascist.
Television is fascist.
Video games are fascist.
Sports are fascist.
Novels are fascist.
Social media is fascist.
Narcotics are fascist.
Alcohol is fascist.
Restaurants are fascist.
Fashion is fascist.
Dating and casual sex is fascist.
Music is fascist.
Dancing is fascist.
Board games are fascist.
Camping is fascist.
Fishing is fascist.
Going to the park is fascist.
Clubs are fascist.
Meet up interest groups are fascist.
Anime is fascist.
Manga is even more fascist.
Proper revolutionary praxis is to sell all your possessions except for a plain mattress, plain clothing or a robe, preferably made from a coarse material, portraits of Comrades Marx, Lenin and Stalin and a cat o’ nine tails (and acquire these things if you don’t have them already). Every day, kneel before the portraits of Comrades Marx, Lenin and Stalin and focus on some action or thought you have engaged in that was fascist or imperialist, and then administer three blows across your back with the cat o’ nine tails. Do this for at least an hour whenever you have time off. Spend what time you have left preparing bland food (spices are imperialist), purging the spirit of ⛏️rotsky from your house with incense and rehabilitating the image of Comrade Stalin on Twitter. This is the ‘’only’’ non-fascist lifestyle.
make sure you think critically about the things you steal
smudging is imperialism for suburban wikkkans
Andrew Torres
This but unironically
Grayson Rodriguez
So, you're telling me that enjoying shallow entertainment is inherently bourgeois and I should quit consuming it as soon as possible?
Man, this communism stuff is harder than I thought.
Maybe I'll just be a "high holidays only" communist.
Luke Miller
For some of us this stuff is escapism. I've already gave up on new clothes, electronics, furniture etc. so I can deal with one type of consumerism, I guess. Especially since I'm a dirty pirate.
Nicholas Cook
Class's in the sense of Marx's perceptions of capitalist society do exist and the terms worker and capitalist are simply descriptions of existing Material condition's
Class character as a concept is a little more complex as individuals being part of the one class or another Dosent really indicate what their character as an individual or what their belief will be
Dominic Bennett
None of this makes calling class character a spook any less ignorant, though
Alexander Morales
Your first error was to think media has an unalterable class character. Art is deeply polymorphic and the same piece can be seen as deeply revolutionary by communists and deeply fascist by fascists.
Jaxon Cooper
post of the year so far imo
Angel Stewart
The most dangerous enemy you can possibly face is one who is utterly convinced that their cause is righteous and that you are evil.
People are at their most dangerous when they think they are the good guys.
Julian Butler
1) You are in the w*Stern homosphere 2) You border the most disgusting w*Sternoid country, namely the US of A 3) You are probably some kind of gusano Which explanation do you like the most?
Brayden Carter
well, no, i don't think México is in that shit yes, i live in what people say one of the most americanized states been living here my whole life, so no
Ryan Cox
...
Ethan Powell
just like collections of words on paper are bourgeois no matter what arrangement they're in right? ANTI-BOOK GANG
Anything produced by the USSR is not engaging in capitalist culture and is leftist media, music etc. Additionally ethical consumption under capitalism doesn't exist. Asking about leftist-themed products under capitalism is an aesthetic choice, one that does not deserve derision… unless its some cringy hipster rad-lib shit, belonging on Zig Forums
William Clark
Shut the fuck up fascist. There are only two types of video games. There is the virtual drug. This game functions by requiring the player to do some task in order to get a reward. It simulates the process of developing a useful skill, learning something, making something, or just plain doing something in a way that is simultaneously more gratifying and far more empty than the real thing. Then there is the walking simulator. This game is defined by the lack of a game loop. It appears deep and meaningful to the hideous, low-IQ gamer who is completely incapable of identifying anything beautiful and good. In reality, it is just a vulgar rejection of what makes a game a game. Holy shit this is the single least dialectical post on this board.
Benjamin Wilson
Being artless is counter-revolutionary. Fun will be had.
spec ops is not the game most artsy fucks in the gaming community tell you is a masterpiece, check out stuff like uh
MAREO
Jaxon Lee
oh fuck well guess i'm a gusano after all, just like every single person in that part of the world
Jason Jones
the fact that theoretically socialist videogames can exist doesn't negate the fact that nearly all videogames in history were created during the most reactionary time period since the french revolution.
This. I don't understand why this is such a hard concept for so many comrades. The fact is, for many anons here their ideas on art and culture are indistinguishable from that of Zig Forumsyps once you strip it of buzzwords.
Brayden Rivera
So?
Ian Cruz
I'm not saying art can never be good or you should never have fun, you stupid fucking liberal. I'm saying art as it currently exists in the mainstream and the idea of fun as it exists in the mainstream are bourgeois. That's the only idea of art you could possibly subscribe to if you think video games are art, and it's the only view of fun you could subscribe to if you think my complaints about video games make me anti-fun. Stop being a silly little faggot who's terrified of talking about ideology in a serious way. Unironically read tnr postmodern Neo-Marxists, and don't admit to the whole world that you can't read critically by whining about how they aren't Marxist enough.
Honestly, anyone who says this "Art is a hammer" type stuff is a piece of uncultured shit who skipped their literature class. If you look at basically any poet, yes you will likely see some politically oriented stuff, but all of them also created poems through witch they purely expressed their emotions and feelings. Or look at fluxus art, or or the art of the 1920's or so that purely pushed the understanding of what art is. In USSR art was heavily regulated. Things like abstract art, surreal, cubist, neo-realist, vulgar or in any way critical of the current society were prohibited, artist of this type shunned. Basically it was the classical era (you know, the time when people called Shakespeare a barbarian) all over again. These fucking ideas about art as "a hammer to shape society" are not only incredibly totalitarian, but would also result in boring art that absolutely everyone hates and takes the piss out of when the authorities don't hear.
Jaxson Rodriguez
Lol, okay “intellectual” scum So Mao was right
Daniel Lee
Then why the fuck did you sperg out when someone simply said "fun will be had"?
I actually mostly agree with you on this, and for what it's worth, I don't consider video games to be art. I play videogames like I smoke cigarettes. But I do consider them to be the most cancerous form of entertainment media, completely obsessed and built around the self. I'm not in favor of banning them in a hypothetical DoP, but I do see them as irredeemable, and as you said more akin to drugs than to art.
I've been thinking about this quite a a lot lately in contrast to films. However bourgeois the message of any particular film may be, at least you're always empathizing with emotions and connecting to a form outside yourself. The compact form also forces a film to be "honest" about the message it's giving, since the filmmaker has limited time to to make his choices and deliver the desired impact.
Vidya, by their very nature, require you to drown inside your own head, experiencing everything for yourself. You're invited to be constantly lost in mindless immersion. Don't think or ask questions, just fucking experience. If there's an ostensible message it's some half-baked shit explored a thousand times in other forms. The real message is in the form itself. In this sense video games are the polar opposite of film. I see a similar development with tv-shows, though with them the cinematic form at least keeps them from becoming a complete narcisistic immersionfest.
What I do find autistic and anti-fun though, is people getting sanctimonious over some anons asking for leftist art/entertainment. As if abstinence from all forms of art that suffer from politically incorrect taint isn't turbo-lifestylism in and of itself. I think it's a worthwhile endevour to look at capitalist (meaning, made in capitalist countries) art with revolutionary bent, and study how they were made and got passed into circulation. There are Burger films that are unironically more Based and Redpilled than 90% of the shit that came out of USSR post-Eisenstein, like pic related (ironically made during the red scare period).
It can be refreshing to see a movie, play a game, listen to a song, etc, that is not soaked to it's tits in ideology. It's cool that you can dedicate your entire life to larping, but I need leisure time to cope with capitalism (namely, work). I saw black panther and it left a bad taste in my mouth that lasted for weeks, I was really pissed I saw the movie at all, extremely reactionary, all around disgusting. Instead, it would be nice to spend my time watching good films, playing good games, etc, that are not ridden with liberal ideology. Popular consumer media is made for and consumed by the popular masses and people should not be condemned for liking or consuming it. This includes reggueaton, shit movies, harry potter, etc. You can point out the reactionary aspects of said media, but you can't force people to stop liking things.
Noah Hughes
Ok, here is my point boiled down: political art never worked out. It didn't work for the monarchists with their supper controlled classical era art, didn't really work for the soviets either, and, if they had won, it probably wouldn't have worked for the nazies either
Evan Martin
Mass art burning soon
Nicholas Bailey
Yea, that is kind of me IRL tbh
Michael Murphy
it's you we should burn instead of art. save the extra step.
Jonathan James
I understand Pol Pot’s motives just a little bit more everyday. Internet intellectuals and university goons need systematically re-educated through labor. Fuck your art and intellectual masturbation
Jordan Miller
That wasn't passive-aggressive, just regular aggressive.
Wyatt Butler
Kek, and here I thought I was responding to his passive aggressive outburst with an honest aggressive aggressive outburst.
It's no wonder you understand autistic psychos like Pol Pot, since you clearly don't understand two shits about what makes a normal human being tick.
Xavier Wood
If it takes “autistic psychosis” to establish full communism and the abolition of classes (like was done in DK), so be it. Liberals get out of the road or get ran over
Chase Rodriguez
Why does it need to be revolutionary? You can enjoy things without failing to notice their liberal status quo undertones.
Only if you’re brainwashed. Notice how retards keep posting the same “no fun” image over and over. This is a form of mental reprogramming. Capitalist freedoms = harmless fun, says the meme. Who drew this meme? What was their class background, ideological standpoint? Sure enough the meme originates from an image related to Sonic and Sega – a multinational Japanese corporation built off of exploitation. It is pushing capitalistic messages
Nathaniel Rivera
you and /pol pot (marijuana man) are the worst posters, you defend some of the weirdest socialist leaders
Juan Adams
If you literally think fun is capitalist, then your "socialism" cannot possibly be anything other than barracks communism.
I’m both the Juche poster and the Pol Pot poster. My job’s to set the record straight in regards to their achievements
Owen Adams
explains it all, holy shit, i guess i can admire that
Dominic Rogers
Barracks communism is the way to achieve communism, as demonstrated by Democratic Kampuchea’s revolution under the Angkar. Marx couldn’t even criticize “barracks communism” besides just spluttering the word out pitifully against Nechayev. Empirical evidence shows that what Pol Pot called the “collectivistic path to socialism” is the only way that does not degenerate into bureaucratic domination and state-capitalism. Fun is a subjective term. The “fun” of this mode of production will not be the “fun” of socialism and thereafter communism. You seem not to be able to comprehend the class character of the things you post – disconnect yourself from consumerism and bourgeois ideology
Liam Sullivan
the meme has no origin at this point, it has been stripped of context entirely.
fuck you. Life is shitty enough, I see no benefit to make it even shittier by refusing to consume porky media, which is all of it, basically. Fucking puritanical bullshit. I cannot masturbate more than thrice a day, what do you suggest I do for fun once I'm done with the third time? inb4 sports, I don't like most, the ones I do like are too expensive for me right now.
Bentley Price
I'll take what is Catalonia for a hundred points (Kampuchea didn't last much longer). Enjoy boredom and being working to death just like capitalism. Different material conditions from Krushchevs time, bro. Juche is cool though.
Read Walter Benjamin you fucking plebs. You can't somehow absolve yourself from commodified existence, which is here our now basic relation to materiality. Commodities do have the potential for revolutionary practice and consciousness. It's stupid to think you can somehow purify yourself of aesthetic experience, or avoid the reality of the objective pleasure of consumption. This is one of the reasons why the right are infinitely superior at gaining members, because they acknowledge these relations and blatantly use them to their advantage.
It’s message remains the same, as I have indicated. Emotional outburst with latent liberalism. Live like Rakhmetov, not a degen.erate consumerist drone.
Adam Wood
You do realize what the paintbrush in the Juche symbol represents? And are you also the same guy who claimed that the Vietnamese are the "hereditary enemy" of the Cambodians?
He also said that it implicitly only made sense in an authoritarian society with a secret committee ruling everything. You seem to be OK with that for some reason. You aren't talking about the mode of production in any way though, you're talking about the products themselves. If all of the products of capitalism were tainted to the point that they are inherently anti-revolutionary, then you could not appropriate any factories and your revolution would /at most/ be a return to primitive communism. Neither Marx nor Engles were proletariat, although from what you've posted, it seems like you don't consider yourself a Marxist at all so maybe that isn't a problem.
Eli Wright
Holy shit, so this is the reactionary mind at work. Might as well be a fucking fascist at this point with how enchained you want the individual to be.
Adam Jones
Zig Forums pot (marijuana) niggas are crazy
Connor Allen
Of course, but Juche is focused on the independent movement of the popular masses. The popular masses are formed at the core with the proletariat. I recognize the intellegentsia-problem and how in the imperialist context they directly serve reaction (unlike how in national liberation strongs they MAY be a progressive force). This is Juche applied to first-world conditions. A synthesis, a higher stage Of course
Aspects of it I accept. Democratic elements are needed to some degree. Barracks communism and democracy are not incompatible. Totalitarianism is essential, however. One party, one leader, one class. One will never gain revolutionary consciousness through engaging in consumerism and hedonism. Retards on here will due it because “boo hoo life is so hard being a labor aristocrat”. Self-denial in pursuit of self-revolutionization is possible. Mori Tsuneo knew other methods.
Logan Bennett
Forgot pic. This is how you reform labor aristocrats
Strange how once someone starts referring to philosophy and actually makes a point they don't get any responses from the "communists" spamming "HAHA DUMB LIB WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DONT LIVE IN A HOLE IN THE GROUND FREE FROM SOCIETY"
Bentley Taylor
Where did I ever say that self-denial is necessarily wrong? I said to not define yourself in relation to capital. Perhaps define yourself in relation to what seems to work to further the advancement of communism (although what you seem to think that communism is I'd prefer if you weren't successful), but this requires taking a ambivalent relationship to misery and joy, it does not consist of asceticism. So do all workers, they produce surplus for the bourgeoisie, literally giving them power.
Ryan Taylor
Classes are an economic relationship. Is this the power of /liberalpol/ thought?
Anthony King
OP you have correctly identified that any and all media, no matter what, is going to be viewed through the lens of someone who has grown up in a bourgeois society and that the media itself is going to have been produced by someone in a bourgeois society or even more reactionary socieites. What you haven't made is a case for why we shouldn't partake of it.
Jose Smith
Who decides where production is? Who decides who works and how they work? Who decides who gets the products? All economic questions are fundamentally decided by the party/leader which in no way includes all of society. You advocate for a formal abolition of classes in a more reactionary and weak way than the bourgeoisie does in its formal equality.
Nathan Richardson
Haven't read Walter Benjamin, but this is pretty much what I was getting at with this post:
It's not at all like you're trying to rob the proletariat of it's capabilities for dissent, and destroy any outlet for independent expression, so that you can tell yourself that they actually love it while you crush them under your boot.
Owen Powell
hurr durr
John Brooks
You do not understand Juche and Pol Pot-ist thought. Read a book
Christian Bailey
m8, I'm an M-L; pro-soviet etc. but this is just some ridiculous shit. How does THAT become relevant as to why he was killed?! This is Adorno levels of shit, except instead of calling everyone fascist for breathing, its executing anyone who doesn't conform exactly.
Henry Rivera
They can be drawn over to the socialist side, as in the case of a significant portion of the old intelligentsia during the October Revolution archive.org/details/OctoberRevolutionIntelligentsia And as Stalin pointed out, there are different kinds of intelligentsia, the best forces of which belong to the revolutionary party.
Benjamin is essential for understanding commodity culture and aesthetics. He has a much more nuanced view than Adorno and Horkheimer
Jason Rogers
It's ironic to complain about life stylism when your LARPing this hard
Lucas Lopez
Holy shit how do you get this braindead
Jaxon Moore
what more do you want kiddo?
Adrian Barnes
a nice life would be great too
Bentley Ross
...
Hudson Perez
bourgeois intellectual detected
Noah Myers
I sure as hell don't if by it's standards Maxim Gorky "served the froces of reaction" by the virtue of being part of the intelligentsia, initaly in bourgeois society.
Brody Walker
The leader and party which you advocate for does not merely guide the laborers through trust and deference, but through violence and coercion as well. This implicit or explicit violence is the exact same that underpins private property. The violence that underpins bourgeois property is certainly in the main enacted by the proletariat, and while the proletariat may oppose some instances of the violence needed to maintain such relations they nonetheless tacitly consent to the form of capitalist property in general. Your only way to distinguish between your party's property and capitalist property is not say that the party, with its exclusive rights to everything concerning the economy somehow does not count as having "property" (what utter sophistry), but to equate the proletariat with the party. But if you are to do this then they must be equivalent in material terms, which you in no way advocate for.
Aiden Sullivan
This post is so satisfying
Alexander Sullivan
Not if you agree with Marx it wasn't.
Nathan Lewis
Anprims are fucking stupid. Your quest for eugenics shows only how scientifically illiterate you are when it comes to natural selection. People choose what's best suited for the the body and they treasure and the genes that dominate naturally win out and beat back things that cause shit like diabetes. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk. How is being bored and worked until you die any different from being bored and worked to die in capitalism?
this chart is telling me if a brown eyed person mates with a blue eyed one the baby will be born with two different eye colors and then asexually reproduce a cyclops with a brown eye
