What happened to beauty? Now I'm not an impotent reactionary mindlessly moaning against everything about the present. In fact, I quite like today.
But with all our progress in science and technology and human rights, I feel like we've completely abandoned beauty.
What happened to gorgeous paintings? Marble sculptors of glorious people? Why is modern architecture so absolutely fucking hideous? Why is philosophy today utterly retarded?
I don't know how I can rationalise my left leanings with my preference for the aesthetics of the past, when socialism is so clearly responsible in many ways for the grim state of our cities and art and music. Maybe socialism needs another Arts & Crafts Movement.
Anyone got any suggestions for me? Are there any Classicist Commies? Romanticist Reds? Books for this feel?
I went to Catholic school where I was fed very reactionary ideology. However, one thing I miss was the emphasis on the high arts and philosophy, which the modern left has outright dismissed. And let's face it: a lot of leftist art just isn't that compelling. There's no sense of "epic" like you see in the classical arts, it's all really preachy slam poetry, ugly-ass art that's supposed to be ugly and depressing on purpose, you get the idea. Plus, I feel as if when it comes to philosophy the far-left just doesn't explore most concepts as they see them as too "bourgeois" or whatever, which is sad because metaphysics is an important thing to discuss.
Dominic Thomas
My fucking god. There isn't even a socialist movement, and you're blaming the hidious art of capitalism on socialism, and wanting an "arts movement" within a movement that doesn't exist. Once we get state power we can have this discussion. Rude sage.
There are a lot of good technical artists out there, but realism is boring and most people would rather draw animu or furshit. The amount of good music getting pumped out is insane, but most of it isn't getting picked up by labels. I think you are being too negative. If you don't like what art is getting made then you should make your own.
Matthew Harris
Yeah, I mean the reason why we rarely see grand realist paintings anymore should be pretty obvious, a photographer can go out and take a crisp and clear shot of anything that really exists, and even for historical stuff he's more likely to dress actors up and make a TV show out of it. The reason why art has become more about fantasy and unreality should be obvious.
Capitalism commodities everything. Once the best of society were the only ones able to effect the arts and as a result we had great art. Now that the masses can vote with their wallets i.e. music for 99cents a song art has conformed to the will of the masses which is shit
Support the Modernism of the nineteenth century that created Marx.
Most “socialists” in the west are postmodernists which is responsible for artistic stagnation/regression.
I’d fuck Nico and Rin though
Still why is it that painters a century ago were better at unreality than those today? Also all Marxists should support artistic realism due to Marxism being a realist ideology. We as Marxists look at the world as how it is, not how we want to see it. This is what separates us from liberals and the far-right. For they strive towards the real, while we strive towards the logical resolutions to the contradictions present in todays society.
Fuck off with this elitist bullshit. Part of why paintings are so trash today is that their used for money laundering.
I realise I may have came off too aggressive with that point. I'm just really sad and annoyed that when I walk about my ancient and noble English town, trying to ignore the filth and litter lining the pavements, and I can't help but be forced to notice the grim, gray waterstained depressing council estates with their crime, and this cityscape being raped by affronts to taste, it can in many cases be blamed on the left. It's talentless leftist architects with who design it. It's loathesome wealthy champagne socialists who fund it. It's smug leftist critics who sniff their own farts that defend it and look down upon the common people who hate it.
do you have anything else but butthurt? The aristocracy are not involved in drug dealing so you just help my point
Hudson Gutierrez
It's elitist and borderline fascist, the point of socialism is not to go back to the good old days when the patriarchs and monarchs controlled what art got made.
Owen Carter
Fucking source?
Benjamin Rogers
He's getting confused between leftists and liberals. Plus ignoring the fact that council estates were a huge step forward for the British poor, if you don't like tower blocks I hope to go you never see the kind of prewar slums that existed and may exist again once they're torn down.
Michael Hernandez
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John Watson
"Back in the olden days when only the 'best' (ie hereditary nobility) were in charge things were better" sounds like fascist tradition worship, sorry bro.
So it's bad that people get to consume art they enjoy? I agree that without the completely base impulse of profit culture would flourish but not by closing it off completely to the wishes of the masses. Art should inspire the masses not be masturbated over by pretentious wankers.
Landon Hernandez
Yeah you strawmanned me and twisted my words because i hurt your feelings
It is bad that capitalism has commidified culture
The pretentious is a result of art being accessible to the middle class and upper middle class i.e. high paid proletariat
Isaac Brooks
I mean yeah, that isn't exactly what you said, but it's what you implied, when exactly was art a meritocracy? I'm pretty sure in High Medieval Europe the monarchs weren't going around the pig farms looking for great painters among the peasantry.
Actually I meant you.
Andrew Evans
FUCK PRETENTIOUS LIBERAL ARCHITECTURE FUCK YOUR INAUTHENTIC ANTIQUATED POSTURING FUCK YOUR NOSTALGIC MIMICRY FUCK ALL OF YOUR "FEELINGS" IN GENERAL THIS IS NOW AN ARCHITECTURE AND CITY PLANNING THREAD
What I'm saying is that only massively privileged and wealthy by birth people could ever devote their time to art rather than digging crops, art wasn't limited to 'the best' but only the people who ever got to try it in the first place.
Luis Bailey
hot take: leftypol really should embrace furries given how heavily left-leaning the entire community is and how anti-reactionary the very concept of anthropormorphized animals is.
Bentley James
Being an oldfag I hate to say this, but furries are okay. They are haven't been on my list of annoyances for more than a decade and as long as they continue to keep to themselves I don't give a shit. I still won't "embrace" them or whatever. Our focus aren't subcultures, but rather an entire class and maybe some of the sympathizers outside of it.
Christian Sullivan
Fair enough, I suppose it would be better to say that we should bring them into the fold. Lotta furries are poor and unhappy and would readily jump to socialism if we offered them FALC species-changing genetic modification
Logan Jenkins
Revolutionary art is as epic as it gets. When it comes to philosophy socialism goes much broader and deeper than reaction. Weak strawman tbh.
Imagine being this deep in bourgeois ideology that you openly acknowledge them as aristocrats but insist they can do no wrong. Frat bros sniff coke. The CIA harvests Afghanian poppy fields. Drug lords are bourgeois.
user… atleast post good transit-oriented city planning
That pic is hilarious to me because the city on the left looks like it has more density and public transit because communists and social democrats in the 20th century fought for that. See Red Vienna. It's unironically more like what socialist urban planning should be than the block on the right.
I have zero issue with furry socialists, but I won't make an effort dealing with them. We should focus on the issues impacting people in general like shit wages, no healthcare, overpriced food, overpriced rent, and generally shitty services from our current government. Furries, weebs, and all the other internet subcultures will fall in line when they see only the left will meet their actual needs.
Eli Green
Ah yes. Of course! That's why universities are known for their very right-wing philosophy and fine arts departments. Leftists have absolutely no interest in those fields of study. You're talking out of your ass.
Sebastian Bell
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Ayden Ross
Ok but people digging up crops wouldn't be good artists anyways
Landon Roberts
literally irrelevant to the conversation
Joshua Wright
city on the left is better
Jackson Cook
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Ryder Hall
LOL, ok, you realise the majority of money laundering is to avoid taxes & disguise embezzlement/shady deals as opposed to direct profits from organized crime right?
As a visitor from /monarchy/, let me opine with some reactionary takes on materialism.
Now I'm the first one to disbelieve, and scoff at the notion that dialectical materialism necessarily results in communism. Evolution does not have a goal, and the same is true of markets and economies; they are aimless beasts on the landscape, competing for survival.
But I think I know why art used to be good, and is now bad; it's all about the economics. Or put another way, excessive wealth leads to excess/unessential and often disposable crap. This extends beyond the plastic garbage gyre in the Pacific Ocean made of your shitty plastic water bottles, and extends even so far as buildings. Skyscrapers are a good example; a building that has no alternative uses other than being office space or apartments. Or take the strip mall; it could have been designed as a plaza, and hence would be useful later for non-retail oriented small businesses, but instead it was designed to be torn down wastefully in the event that it needed to be repurposed.
In short, throwaway culture (the thing that actually happened to beauty) is itself a feature of unrestrained capitalism. That's not to say I approve of communism, but facts are facts.
And no amount of supposedly leftist faggots creating eco-homosexuality positive buildings, some of which will fall down due to the erroneous idea that structural supports are toxic masculinity architecturalized, are going to change the fact that the ugliness is only made possible by rampant capitalistic exploitation and narcissism.
Be an authoritarian for good reasons instead; like the fact that freedom is overrated/mostly a political talking point for America and her allies.
Evolution generally leads to a more perfect form of whatever it applies to over time: matter, species, economies, etc. Though the participants may not be intentionally promoting this end it occurs regardless. With economies, increasingly developed means of production, the base, command a new superstructure, such as the institutions and values of a time and place. The progression of material bases as it regards to these things is linear in history: first there was primitive communism, wherein labor and productive forces were collective, then came feudalism, with its accompanying social relations of lord and peasant and such, and now capitalism; with its newer relations that were compelled by mass industrialization and the accumulation of this new form of the means of production by capitalists, who became the ruling class. The technological advancement of a society, as evident through basically all of history, correlates with the evolution of social morality, norms, economic relations, and all such.
Yes, and in another way: as the US industrialized and began to come into its own, Americans desired to create art, however that was largely a European tradition and so in reaction they began producing their own domestic kind of art; "modern" art, which took off in the Cold War as a further reaction against socialist realism in the Eastern Bloc. With this, agencies like the CIA helped promote by creating shell companies and creating artificial demand for this kind of style (independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html). And of course, it's cheaper to have people value something inexpensive to produce than something that has more proper composition to it, which very usually takes more effort. This more so applies to buildings and such, where city planners and architects forego details and intricately-placed colors in favor of big blocky structures which give more profit margins.
Michael Hill
Gonna stop you right there. Evolution doesn't care about perfection/there is no such thing as perfect, only reasonably efficient/not half-bad given the circumstances. Need I remind you that Giraffes exist? Yes that ugly fucking thing with the supersized neck. Or the koala, the only creature dumb enough to eat eucalyptus leaf as its sole form of nutrients. Sort of like how Venezuela decided that the only thing it would do is shit out oil for eternity. Both are headed for extinction.
Let me fix that for you; massive amounts of wealth being generated by technological advancement, resulted for a 150 year time-frame in history, in a very real need to distribute those resources equitably. Socialism was just the attempt to go from equity to equality and hope nobody noticed. This resulted in an evolution (not better or worse mind you, just a change) in social morality. The second the free-flowing faucet of cash turns off, society will revert to the way it was evolving over the antecedent 18 centuries. Meaning that for a society that is not so rich, equity loses relevance. Think instead of how non-industrial and low-industrial societies manage themselves; hierarchy, authority, feudal relationships, and loyalty, these correspond to the material conditions of a society where money is expensive, so social life is lubricated by stark certainties and metaphysical realism because these generate the most trust, and trust lubricates an economy. Hence, such a nation is inherently monarchical; it seeks to have a good father for the nation, as in the household.
In short, we've had it too good. Anyway, not trying to go full /shtf/, it probably won't be too rapid a decline, more of a slow thing that will happen all our lives. However the migrant crises is a symptom; those people were supported by American Petro-Dollars to pick bananas for our tables. Now less of them are needed, so they are unemployed, with no opportunities, and their own governments don't have the welfare to help. Economics are dismal.
Didn't know this, thanks
Life mirrors art doesn't it? We produce throwaway garbage, so our art is throwaway garbage.
