Communists are against consumerism and luxury production as a general rule, on this site alone there’s a lot of mocking of treats, society needs bread but does it need circuses? At what point is asceticism good and when is it reactionary?
was just about to say this. The Soviet Union under Stalin literally looked at how boogie the French champagne market was and how it was quite literally a luxury only the rich could enjoy and decided to decommodify the champagne market by mass-producing domestic bubbly. The result lead to a rather tasty and cheap drink that the average worker and peasant can afford and use for whatever special occasion they wished. The production of Soviet champagne continued well past the collapse of the Soviet Union, as Belarus kept the factories that produced it open and also kept it generally cheap. Thank you Belarus.
want to try communist champagne? here's the semi-sweet version and here's the semi-dry version of course if you live in NY you can just pick it up locally, or if your local stores sell it get it there. If you purchase it on the store they'll ship it to your door (but it's expensive so make sure you get a few of them or some other stuff to make the shipping charge worth it)
Rule of thumb:
"Are kids starving? Then let's feed them before we circus"
"Children fed, can we circus now? Pleeeease"
"Fine, yer can have a little circus, as a treat"
What if being a carny was dignified? Only under communism lads, doing it for the love and not for the money. An artist of fun.
"Carny" is short for "carnival worker", so someone who works the rides or the games at a carnival, especially when it's a traveling carnival as opposed to like Disneyland.
Here's a great parody of American traveling carneys in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh-43YBGgpc
it's little a not a little ffs
get your anti-italian racism right.
Communists are against consumerism and luxury production as a general rule
No we aren't. We're against them when it's irresponsible, like when we're putting energy into Funko Pops instead of housing the homeless or building and maintaining automobile infrastructure during a climate crisis
Marx was describing capitalism under which he defined luxuries as only being enjoyed by the capitalist class.
Communism is not a religion of stuff Marx said anyways.
This line of thinking is akin to those people who think restaurants are antithetical to socialism or whatever
That sort of dogmatism seems a little close to the infantile disorder, no?
This line of thinking is akin to those people who think restaurants are antithetical to socialism or whatever
Is mcdonalds antithetical to socialism? Is overpriced bougie shops antithetical to socialism? Hell is severing meat antithetical to socialism? It’s a controversial topic that is not discussed here because sectarianism. I think the answer is it depends.
If you actually want to have this conversation seriously you have to define your terms. Private jets and hot sauce are both luxuries but they are not the same.
Treats are fine. The problem is most of our treats come at the expense of the global south and treat culture is there to distract from the horrendous conditions that capitalism produces and like many other things produced under capitalism, treat production is super wasteful and not distributed fairly.
I swear the term global south is like the leftist equivalent of hitting yourself over the head repeatedly with the guns germs and steel book. It’s an appeal to environmental determinalism.
...or it's a shorthand for the exploited peoples that were forced into extractive relationships by colonial powers to supply cheap treats to the imperial core.
Join Date: Sep 08, 2022
is this a bit?
Counterpoint, it’s the leftist equivalent of saying western civilization and including Japan and Australia in what you are saying. It’s just such a broad and ambiguous term that means nothing and I hate it with a passion. Also yes my account was made on September 8 because the queen died and I find that very funny.
No it pretty unambiguously means “countries outside the imperial core that are exploited by imperialism” and is useful for addressing the implications of that fact like @ultraviolet did. Bc other terms for it are either loaded as others have pointed out (3rd world) or carry an implication of chauvinism like “developing countries” so people try not to use them. If you want to reduce all meaningful context down to “this is a term for a general region” then I guess you can say that but it’d be useless to do so.
Its not perfect bc obviously a lot of imperialized countries aren’t in the literal global south but a lot are that’s how it got it’s start and most people who aren’t being obtuse know what it means in a political discussion and it doesn’t have to match the literal definition to be useful. Real life language is like that some time as terms evolve
The global south does not include Australia and Japan in the same way the west does not include South America, even though it's in the western hemisphere. So you're right in a sense, most of the global south is in the northern hemisphere.
The global south generally includes counties outside of the imperialist triad of the USA, Europe and American vassal states in the Oceanic region. And excludes Russia.
You can use periphery if you prefer that word
it’s the leftist equivalent of saying western civilization and including Japan and Australia in what you are saying.
Japan is a client state of the US which is a country made of European conquerors' descendants, and Australia is a country made up of European conquerors' descendants. They are part of 'western' (european) civilization.
I don't because it originally meant non-aligned countries and that's not usually what I mean
That's usually used to refer to countries that were aligned with the Soviet Union during the cold war
counterpoint: Australia/NZ are some of the most southern nations in existence
3rd world has a charged valence, not everyone hears Mao when they hear it
How long until someone says Russia is the global south? HOW FUCKING LONG???
Russia is in a weird position between Global South and Global North, being exploited by the West and at the same time trying to become exploiter itself with varying results. Kind of a Global Center, lmao.
:downbear:
It's useful shorthand for the countries outside the imperial core i.e. those exploited by it. You are literally the first person I've ever seen complain about the term.
It’s not useful, it’s an overgeneralization that furthers the reactionary arguments that geographic location determines economic success. And imperial core, what use is that word in an era of globalization?
revolutionaries are ascetics and obsessive disciplinarians so their children can be artists.
that we have people who are/seem that way is because we're in the before period, not the after. popular art fucking exploded in the USSR after the periods of trouble, movies, operas, books, art education, available to all and plentifully. they may not have had as many luxury goods but a soviet citizen got to see more art, had more leisure time, and was much better read than an american
Asceticism as a personal choice is probably fine. Asceticism as a goal of society is not good.
Most revolutionaries are into some form of asceticism in order to maintain discipline. Hell, I'm just a normal guy, not a revolutionary, and I don't drink or do drugs because I don't want that.
But after a certain revolutionary period or stage, to organise society around it? I don't think that's maintainable long term. Or even desirable
I'm gonna address this question within the context of capitalist first world society, not within hypothetical or actual socialist societies.
Basically, it's a bad idea to let yourself become dependent on things you don't need, might not always have, and wouldn't have if your society were behaving rationally.
For example, two things that cause a lot of environmental and other harms are cars and meat. Seriously addressing climate change would likely mean eliminating or drastically scaling back both. People will tell you "we need systemic change, so there's no point to me going car-free and vegan as an individual." And to an extent, that's true. But what's also true is that Americans are so addicted to cars and meat that any effort to make systemic change would be DOA due to massive public resistance. See anti-COVID-restriction protests for an example in miniature of how an addicted culture reacts when their treats are threatened. This presents serious problems for any effort to solve global problems. The most pessimistic reading is that first-worlders are so addicted to the spoils of colonialism (of which climate change is one form), that any systemic change cannot come from within the first world.
If you allow yourself to be addicted to things that you really shouldn't have, then it means that when conditions change and that consumption is threatened or no longer viable, you'll experience the pain of withdrawal. And that pain may push you in a reactionary direction. That's one argument for why you might consider living a more frugal (or environmentally frugal) lifestyle.
i lvoe this site. multiple long, thoughtful answers to a lazy troll post.
asceticism as asceticism is a religious principle arising (in christianity at least, i know other religions have similar traditions) from the ritual mortification of the flesh to bring one closer to divinity. i really don't know of anything in left political thought that maps onto it. for all the ecstasy and joy of revolution, it also inevitably brings a lot of uncertainty and suffering, so marxists will occasionally assert that class consciousness only arises when the needs and desires of the proletariat aren't being met by the standing order. i think there's lots of good historical evidence to support this claim, but it become paradoxical if we vilify those same needs and desires. the central thesis of the anarchist Kropotkin's Conquest was that meeting the needs of the masses was a precondition for a successful revolution, and we can put this idea in a progression with striking American textile workers' demand for "bread and roses" in 1912. we can find the valorization of self-denial all over the postwar guerilla movements, but always for a higher purpose, never a moral end in itself.
