Socialism |OT| The Dawn of a Red Era

[Deffers]

Oh yes, Golden Age superheroes were occasionally pro-labor and outwardly humanitarian but once people got "politics out of comics" they became allegories for sustaining the status quo at all costs. I was referring to mostly modern superheroes because that's where most of my experience with them lies.

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Oh yeah, don't worry-- I didn't mean that in a hostile way. It's just that superheroes as an idea were an expression of a really quite radical hope that's been rehashed and recontextualized to the point of meaninglessness. If I were better about my terminology, I could say something eloquent about how it's emblematic of capital subsuming much radical thought into the spectacle-- but I'm not, so I'm probably butchering whatever point I'm trying to get across.

Still, with regards to that image above, I guess we'd be a pile of 1940's superheroes.

 

[Mekanos]

Superheroes are naturally fascistic/conservative. They exist above the law, are not democratically accountable, only fight threats that concern the destabilization of middle to upper middle class society and not, say, poverty, or lack of healthcare. Superman will save an old woman from falling and breaking her hip but he won't pay her healthcare bill. Tony Stark will invent a revolutionary energy source but not displace the coal industry.

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For the many flaws of that game, I think Persona 5 scratched a certain itch of mine that I wish superhero media tackled more often; solving problems that exist within society and try to lift everyone up, instead of saving society from a foreign force. It was more about a group of revolutionaries than the elite protecting the status quo. It's not perfect by any means but it's an angle I would like to see more, and would make a lot more sense for characters to keep secret identities.

Too bad about the homophobia, misogyny, and pedophilia.

 

[Luminish]

For the many flaws of that game, I think Persona 5 scratched a certain itch of mine that I wish superhero media tackled more often; solving problems that exist within society and try to lift everyone up, instead of saving society from a foreign force. It was more about a group of revolutionaries than the elite protecting the status quo. It's not perfect by any means but it's an angle I would like to see more, and would make a lot more sense for characters to keep secret identities.

Too bad about the homophobia, misogyny, and pedophilia.

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Definitely agree on that. It's a shame that it does that not so great stuff when it's one of the only games willing to make an entire level/chapter out of the fast food ceo abusing its workers.

 

[Juan29.Zapata]

Finally got around to read the 30-page document about the Bolshevik opposition to Lenin, focusing on a man called Gavril Myasnikov, that House posted. And man, he was a true revolutionary.

I am a bit confused, why was being called a Socialist Revolutionary (SR) a derogatory term in the USSR?

 

[whiskeystrike]

Kind of a shitpost but would Jesus have been a socialist?

 

[Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!]

Kind of a shitpost but would Jesus have been a socialist?

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Assigning modern social/economic philosophies to people who lived in 1st century Judea doesn't really work.

 

[samoyed]

Democratic Socialist with some kind of state or maybe a dual-state system with religion and state side by side.

In the New Testament, Jesus in Matthew 25:31–46 identifies himself with the hungry, the poor, the sick, and the prisoners.[10] Matthew 25:31–46 is a major component of Christianity and is considered the cornerstone of Christian socialism.[10] Another key statement in the New Testament that is an important component of Christian socialism is Luke 10:25–37 that follows the statement "You shall love your neighbour as yourself" with the question "And who is my neighbour?", and in the Parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus gives the revolutionary response that the neighbour includes anyone in need, even people we might be expected to shun.[11] (The Samaritans were considered a heretical sect by Jews and neither would usually deal with the other.)[11]

"Jesus Expels the Moneylenders from the Temple" by Giovanni Paolo Pannini
In the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus says, "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall be satisfied" (Luke 6:20, 21).[12]

Christian socialists note that James the Just, the brother of Jesus of Nazareth, in the Epistle of James criticizes the rich intensely and in strong language:

Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up for treasure for the last days. Behold, the wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you have kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter​

— (Jam. 5:1–6).[13]​

During the New Testament period and beyond there is evidence that many Christian communities practiced forms of sharing, redistribution and communism.[14]

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_socialism

A commune based on a local religious monastery which provides for all is basically religious municipalism.

 

[teague]

Democratic Socialist with some kind of state or maybe a dual-state system with religion and state side by side.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_socialism
A commune based on a local religious monastery which provides for all is basically religious municipalism.

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Hey this link is dope but mostly I came to say every time I see your avatar on the homepage it cheers me up

Also, not a hot take that the guy who made his followers take a vow of poverty and said "It is more difficult for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven" would have been a socialist. Quakers and Shakers among many other types of Christian communes were probably the most successful utopian socialist societies depending on how you count success (longevity/peacefulness in this case)

 

[samoyed]

I came to say every time I see your avatar on the homepage it cheers me up

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I'm glad my avatar can do that for you.

The not-fire-and-brimstone parts of the Bible tends to be pretty ethically minded and compatible with socialist ethos, it's a shame most practicing Christians don't realize this. An allegory for the corrupting influence of wealth perhaps? The Catholic church is one of the wealthiest and longest lived holders of capital in the world.

Luther can be viewed as an anti-capitalist concerned strictly with the relationship between the church and money:

Hillerbrand writes that there is nevertheless an undercurrent of challenge in several of the theses, particularly in Thesis 86, which asks: "Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?"[34]

Luther objected to a saying attributed to Johann Tetzel that "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory (also attested as 'into heaven') springs."[35] He insisted that, since forgiveness was God's alone to grant, those who claimed that indulgences absolved buyers from all punishments and granted them salvation were in error. Christians, he said, must not slacken in following Christ on account of such false assurances.

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Some of his rhetoric would ring true today.

Too bad he was a virulent anti-semite.

 

[teague]

The not-fire-and-brimstone parts of the Bible tends to be pretty ethically minded and compatible with socialist ethos, it's a shame most practicing Christians don't realize this. An allegory for the corrupting influence of wealth perhaps? The Catholic church is one of the wealthiest and longest lived holders of capital in the world.

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A little more than an allegory, I'd daresay. They're not handing out indulgences any more but they've got more than a couple of Martin Luther's theses left to address.
It's also interesting to me how many of the monastic orders are so incredibly divorced from the nation/state/capital hoard that is the Vatican while theoretically being the most devoted Catholics in the world. But not everybody has the personal wherewithal to renounce worldly possessions, I guess.

 

[teague]

Too bad he was a virulent anti-semite.

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A lot of historical figures unfortunately have big red flags like this... I'm glad we've come a long way but also, yikes at history sometimes

 

[samoyed]

Monastaries, Christian or otherwise, might be real examples of municipalism in practice but their weakness is that they cannot change the world, only change their local/internal conditions. They have disentangled themselves from the capitalist society (mostly, except for ones that operate on tourism) but by doing so they have given up the ability to change that society.

 

[Deffers]

Let's also not forget that the whole "each gave according to his ability and took according to his need" thing comes from Acts, describing a perfected society of Christian harmony happening in the immediate aftermath of the Pentecost. I'm a Christian and I've always found the parallels between Christianity and socialism to be fascinating. Particularly when it comes to eschatology.

I would agree with Samoyed about monasteries. Across multiple religions, monasteries tend to reply with the charge that they can't change the world with some variant of the monastic life being the best you can do. Sometimes I wonder how much of a point they do or don't have. I mean, the secular socialist equivalent would be setting up a commune or seizing an autonomous region and then just kinda chilling. Doesn't necessarily disentangle you from capital, or radically transform the world around you, but it sets you up to live a more fulfilling and less alienating life assuming the structures of capital don't begin to replicate themselves within your community. Which, come to think of it, is by no means a guarantee. Monasteries managed to avoid these problems mostly by having nothing important happening within their walls. I guess that's one way to deal with these things. I also suspect monasteries, while being removed from the institution of capital that is the Vatican, were still receiving some amount of financial aid in the first place. A lot of the communes that successfully started up in the US after the New Left had financial backing from businesses too, if I recall correctly-- could be wrong there, though.

 

[Shy]

Let's also not forget that the whole "each gave according to his ability and took according to his need" thing comes from Acts, describing a perfected society of Christian harmony happening in the immediate aftermath of the Pentecost. I'm a Christian and I've always found the parallels between Christianity and socialism to be fascinating. Particularly when it comes to eschatology.

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Tell that to raptor riding, M-16 wielding. Republican Jesus.

 

[samoyed]

This talk about monastaries gave me an idea of about futuristic society who lives in monastic, technologically advanced communes with minimal centralization of powers. Would make for a cool sci-fi setting. Like Star Trek but less space-y.

 

[Bonen no Max'd]

how can Martin Luther be anticapitalist when capitalism didn't really exist yet

 

[sphagnum]

Aside from the fact that it's never a good idea to project ideologies backwards in time, Jesus' actual teachings cannot be construed as socialism anyway, at least to the extent that the Bible portrays them. Jesus is clearly not a materialist - he believes that this world more or less doesn't matter and what matters is the condition of one's soul. When he says the meek shall inherit the earth, he's not talking about a proletarian uprising but about the common person having a purer connection to God because they are not obsessed with riches and material pursuits. He doesn't like rich people, but it's not because they're exploitative necessarily - it's because they focus on earthly rather than heavenly treasures.

He offers no strategy for making life better in this world politically or economically, even telling people not to concern themselves with how they will find food the next day. He explicitly rejects establishing an earthly kingdom to overthrow the Romans, with his "kingdom" being a shared purpose among the believers. The apostles pooled their resources but it was clearly not a requirement for the faith or else it would have stuck around.

Jesus was an apocalyptic millenarian who believed the world was going to end and you needed to get right with God, so none of the distractions of life mattered. He didn't have an interest in democratic control of the means of production.

He was certainly no Mazdak.

 

[samoyed]

I mean you'd argue the same for Buddhism proper but barring some unfortunate genocidal sects, Buddhists are generally good people. I think being amaterialist naturally puts you opposite of the moral/ethical trap of wealth hoarding. I mentioned before that monastic orders tended to forfeit their ability to move the world and I think we're talking about the same thing, just framing it in different ways.

Mazdak is new to me though.

 

[Mekanos]

Posted this in another thread but always a classic meme to share:

 

[brainchild]

I'd say Jesus was a communist, not a socialist, based on his/his disciples cultural practices of the time (outside of his teachings).

Anyway, I think secular humanism is the way forward (morally speaking) and once that succeeds, it will have paved the way for leftist policy.

 

[Deffers]

Aside from the fact that it's never a good idea to project ideologies backwards in time, Jesus' actual teachings cannot be construed as socialism anyway, at least to the extent that the Bible portrays them. Jesus is clearly not a materialist - he believes that this world more or less doesn't matter and what matters is the condition of one's soul. When he says the meek shall inherit the earth, he's not talking about a proletarian uprising but about the common person having a purer connection to God because they are not obsessed with riches and material pursuits. He doesn't like rich people, but it's not because they're exploitative necessarily - it's because they focus on earthly rather than heavenly treasures.

He offers no strategy for making life better in this world politically or economically, even telling people not to concern themselves with how they will find food the next day. He explicitly rejects establishing an earthly kingdom to overthrow the Romans, with his "kingdom" being a shared purpose among the believers. The apostles pooled their resources but it was clearly not a requirement for the faith or else it would have stuck around.

Jesus was an apocalyptic millenarian who believed the world was going to end and you needed to get right with God, so none of the distractions of life mattered. He didn't have an interest in democratic control of the means of production.

He was certainly no Mazdak.

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Counterpoint: not all socialist philosophies are strictly materialist! I've actually been looking for a reason to bring this up, but there was actually a strong tradition of occultism and mysticism in the formative socialist movement. Odd to think about, considering you're the only guy who got Fourierist in that one quiz we all took. Eliphas Levi is a huge name in occultism-- but his first publications were actually under the name of Alphonse Louis Constant about socialism and and socialist Christianity. While a lot of people think he moved away from socialism later in life when he gained his fame in the occult community, once speech restrictions in France were lifted he went and added socialist rhetoric back into his magical texts. Jack Parsons, that one occult rocket scientist who *probably* blew himself up with fulminated mercury, also started off politically as a communist, though later in life became an Objectivist after HUAC came calling. So oddly, socialist thought has always been popular in some of the most unlikely places and often seen as part and parcel of the experience.

You don't even have to go that weird to see fusions of religious thought and socialist thought (though it's fun)-- liberation theology is a whole thing, and as I understand it, some version of it was popular among the Sandinistas and helpful in its causes. And while I'm sure Sandino wasn't True Socialism, because nobody ever is, you're going to have a harder time convincing me he and and especially the people working with and especially following him weren't trying to be True Socialism.

Consequently, I would argue that, yeah, it's true, Jesus projects a strong message of millenarianism (of some sort) and the importance of the world to come and connection with God. That's inescapable, and inarguable. If we accept that that doesn't preclude a socialist ethos, though, the means by which you get right with God often connect pretty directly to Socialist goals. Wealth redistribution, dissolution of false boundaries between people due to prejudice, speaking truth to power and tearing down the pursuit of wealth to the harm of the weak. Remember, Matthew 23 is where Jesus does His takedown of His critics, and economic matters are central there. The exploitation of widows, the view of money, overemphasis on tithing... add to that the fact that service and care for your brethren is seen as an important element of connecting to God and there's a strong argument that could be made (well, strong ignoring the fact that projecting ideologies backwards in time is moot and useless nearly 100% of the time) that Jesus' teachings had something of a socialist character since the material conditions that happen to be best for you spiritually happen to line up pretty closely to distributive material conditions, questions of overthrow aside-- and those are more complicated questions carried into the future, as believers will have their own understanding of what that rejection of overthrow meant and means for them now.

 

[samoyed]

As an aside, I think it'll be easier for Christians around the world to transition to Christian Socialism than to abandon their faith for Materialist Socialism.

I was raised areligious but I know well faith is hard to kill and the future probably involves cooperation with faith.

 

[Shy]

Watch till the very end.


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[sphagnum]

The CTH subreddit is going to get banned over jokes about killing slaveowners, of all things.

On the one hand that's dumb. On the other hand...not a ton of value lost?

 

[Mekanos]

The CTH subreddit is going to get banned over jokes about killing slaveowners, of all things.

On the one hand that's dumb. On the other hand...not a ton of value lost?

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Yeah, it sets a worrying precedent, much like Twitter banning people for calling a TERF a TERF... but also, CTH sucks. Brocialist hive.

 

[Deffers]

CTH subreddit being banned is like this to me.

Heartbreaking: worst person you know gets owned for the worst possible reason.

 

[Bonen no Max'd]

there's obvious ways to add a Christian character to socialist or leftist ideology, I just think "akshullay jesus was a socialist" is just conservative baby's first recognition that maybe conservatism is kind of fucked up, it's otherwise a pointless argument because the economic structures of first century Israel have nothing in common with our own.

I also don't think it's really that different than nationalist appeals towards egalitarianism but as someone who wishes he was a little more religious I also love a little corny civic nationalism so take from that what you will

there are some good folk songs on this tho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TvfBxIkupA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDS00Pnhkqk

edit: you know what I'm being uncharitable here. I think arguing about whether Jesus was a socialist is pointless but I literally wrote a paper in undergrad about the christian tone of american progressivism so idk why I'm coming off so antagonistically.

 

[manchego obfuscator]

The CTH subreddit is going to get banned over jokes about killing slaveowners, of all things.

On the one hand that's dumb. On the other hand...not a ton of value lost?

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haven't been keeping up with it but it's just embarrassing if it gets banned and r/stupidpol stays up

 

[samoyed]

r/CTH should splinter off into its own site.

I mean we all know silicon valley is run by cryptofascists/white supremacists. This is just more evidence.

 

[Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!]

The CTH subreddit is going to get banned over jokes about killing slaveowners, of all things.

On the one hand that's dumb. On the other hand...not a ton of value lost?

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If it was over the slaveowner joke then that is stupid, but do we have any proof that it was? Or were those guys demodded for a number of reasons and the Chapo subreddit saw the slavery one and latched onto it? God knows I've seen worse things there.

 

[sphagnum]

If it was over the slaveowner joke then that is stupid, but do we have any proof that it was? Or were those guys demodded for a number of reasons and the Chapo subreddit saw the slavery one and latched onto it? God knows I've seen worse things there.

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Looks like it was over "violent posts" according to a stickied thread:

Overview of what's going on:

On the situation regarding the removed old mods, they were removed by the admins for approving posts the admins removed, usually violent posts

we have to enforce rule 4 stringently now or we get banned. violence is going to be removed, including "in minecraft" and similar jokes. we're going to look through offending posts and re-write the rules just so its clear what counts as violence.

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[sphagnum]

I am a bit confused, why was being called a Socialist Revolutionary (SR) a derogatory term in the USSR?

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Missed this post, but the SRs were a separate party that had some different ideas from the Bolsheviks about what they should focus on (in particular agricultural policy, since the Bolsheviks wanted to nationalize and collectivize farms to support the urban proletariat but the SRs' base was the peasantry so they just wanted to redistribute land).

The SRs split into two factions, the Right and Left SRs, with the Right wanting to maintain support of the Provisional Government while the Left sided with the Bolsheviks in overthrowing dual power and handing over control to the soviets. When the SRs won the first post-October elections, the Bolsheviks argued that it was unfair because the Right and Left SRs had split but were still on the ballot as one group, so they redid elections and won. The Left SRs were then allied with the Bolsheviks in the government but they soon fell out over policy, Lenin's power, and disagreement over the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. There was a Left SR uprising against the Bolsheviks that got beaten back, one SR named Fanny Kaplan tried to assassinate Lenin, and otherwise a bunch joined the Whites. Others stayed loyal to the Bolshevik alliance and joined the Communist Party when Lenin banned factionalism.

So, in short, like every other non-Bolshevik socialist group, they came to be seen as counter-revolutionaries.

 

[Juan29.Zapata]

Thanks, sphagnum!

 

[Shy]

 

[sphagnum]

 

[sphagnum]

So that Fox Business Capitalism vs Socialism "debate" happened and it's as shitty as you'd expect. Richard Wolff and Bianca Cunningham on one side, a rotating group of Fox News apparatchiks and Herman Cain on the other side. For the most part Richard and Bianca were arguing in favor of market-based co-ops except for the beginning where Richard for whatever reason opened with a pseudo-defense of China, but at least someone, somewhere, maybe??? will have had their interest piqued.



That's part 1 but there's 4 in total, if you hate yourself enough.

 

[Deleted member 19066]

Watch till the very end.

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I need to learn more about the Panthers. Specifically Fred Hampton and his work towards his rainbow coalition. I read an article, and with modern online progressive liberalism in mind, I could hardly imagine black radical marching in solidarity alongside rural whites with the star and bars flying. The Young Lords seem interesting as well; according to wikipedia they viewed women's self determination as a core tenant of their cause. "A revolution within a revolution" they called it.

 

[House_Of_Lightning]

 

[House_Of_Lightning]

in the aftermath of the GoT debacle, this piece of literature is relevant again:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle

The Society of the Spectacle is a critique of contemporary consumer culture and commodity fetishism, dealing with issues such as class alienation, cultural homogenization, and mass media.

When Debord says that "All that was once directly lived has become mere representation," he is referring to the central importance of the image in contemporary society. Images, Debord says, have supplanted genuine human interaction.[2]

Thus, Debord's fourth thesis is: "The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images."[11]

In a consumer society, social life is not about living, but about having; the spectacle uses the image to convey what people need and must have. Consequently, social life moves further, leaving a state of "having" and proceeding into a state of "appearing"; namely the appearance of the image.[12]

"In a world which really is topsy-turvy, the true is a moment of the false."[13]

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[Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!]

in the aftermath of the GoT debacle, this piece of literature is relevant again:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle

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It's also relevant to the half dozen threads that appear on the front page everyday about the latest marvel movie

 

[sphagnum]

New Gallup info. 43% of Americans consider "socialism" to be "a good thing" (obviously talking about social democracy here).

https://news.gallup.com/poll/257639/four-americans-embrace-form-socialism.aspx

 

[leder]

in the aftermath of the GoT debacle, this piece of literature is relevant again:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle

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It always strikes me when reading work by this era of continental philosophers (Debord, Deleuze, Foucault, Barthes, et. al) that the concerns over simulacra and the real were actual issues in their time. In retrospect, experiences in the early postmodern era feel 1000x more "real" than today. Wonder what they'd have to say if they were still around.

 

[Xiaomi]

in the aftermath of the GoT debacle, this piece of literature is relevant again:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle

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This articulates a lot of the misgivings I have with education policy right now. In my school there's this big push for technology education and getting kids interested in tech jobs — and I realize I'm going to sound like a bitter humanities teacher here — that venerates work done for little else but enlarging the Spectacle. Now I like technology and even teach a computer class but these kids are just awash in meaningless bullshit that does nothing but perpetuate its own false reality, and we (teachers) are expected to support children going into that, as "STEM education" rarely has anything to do with the S, E, or especially M parts if they're not tech-focused. The cynic in me says it's just a demand to flood the market with tech majors so that companies can pay them less and sift out the unionizers.

I think the core of it is seen right here:

The spectacle is the moment when the commodity has attained the total occupation of social life. Not only is the relation to the commodity visible but it is all one sees: the world one sees is its world. Modern economic production extends its dictatorship extensively and intensively. In the least industrialized places, its reign is already attested by a few star commodities and by the imperialist domination imposed by regions which are ahead in the development of productivity. In the advanced regions, social space is invaded by a continuous superimposition of geological layers of commodities. At this point in the "second industrial revolution," alienated consumption becomes for the masses a duty supplementary to alienated production. It is all the sold labor of a society which globally becomes the total commodity for which the cycle must be continued.

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[House_Of_Lightning]

Now ya'll will know I'm not crazy when you see me ranting in the next moron "woke inter-sectional corporatism thread".

 

[Deffers]

I mean, I've held for years that the STEM boom is all about fucking with the employment pool for the labor aristocracy. Disempowering them is crucial to the capitalist class as the transition into automation further separates them from the concerns of the working class.

 

[Bonen no Max'd]

Now ya'll will know I'm not crazy when you see me ranting in the next moron "woke inter-sectional corporatism thread".

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no but i will be annoyed that you don't know how to use corporatism correctly :P

 

[Funky Dude Sparks]

A kinda dumb question has popped up in my head. actual one or more question

What was with Stalin that made him an authoritarian communist? and isn't authoritarianism kinda against what communism/socialism is about?

Would socialism or a communism be about the sharing of power?

 

[Luminish]

A kinda dumb question has popped up in my head. actual one or more question

What was with Stalin that made him an authoritarian communist? and isn't authoritarianism kinda against what communism/socialism is about?

Would socialism or a communism be about the sharing of power?

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My understanding on surface level knowledge is there's a problem on how to get to that ultimate goal of everyone sharing power, and I guess Leninism/Stalinism is about using authoritarianism to make the transition, which sounds like a sure to backfire way to do it.

There's now a lot of easy to understand content explaining why capitalism is bad, but I do wish there was more on the flavors of how socialism works in practice historically or theoretically.

It seems to me the transition is either going to have to be incrementalism through democracy (as in the New Deal being incremental, not centrist dem's minor tweaking), or just get a big enough group of people to just stop doing capitalism one day and only fight back when they try to make you do capitalism.

 

[Mekanos]

in the aftermath of the GoT debacle, this piece of literature is relevant again:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle

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RIP all those little girls named Daenerys.

Both this and and Endgame (which I liked) really illuminated to me how much we obsess over these longform stories and treat them as part of our identity to consume them. Being a fan and participating in fandom is fun, of course, but it's still intellectual junk food for the most part. It's best that we try to have a healthy diet than keep eating junk food and hoping it will nourish us. (I say this as someone who loves both intellectual and literal junk food)

Stories are great and part of a human tradition that exists as long as we have - that's why I work in the film/TV industry - but it is just a story, not a religion or way of life. My mom was disappointed in the GOT finale and said that it's "more than just a show, people invested a decade of their lives into it," which yeah, they did, and it's open season to criticize it. But I think we need to be more self-aware of how we consume media and story, when obsession becomes devotion.

 

[House_Of_Lightning]

What was with Stalin that made him an authoritarian communist? and isn't authoritarianism kinda against what communism/socialism is about?

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Historical determinism.

Revolutions are, defacto, authoritarian. Modes of Production are authoritarian. The Socialist Revolution and its program will be authoritarian.

This is "authoritarian" in the sense that there simply can not be any deviation, just like the Capitalist Revolution made feudalism and its adherents obsolete, so will Socialism in regards to Capitalism. It is authoritarian and violent.

The Stalinist's believed themselves the vanguard of this Revolution, that the arch of history placed them as the architects of a new society. Their consequentialism and ideology instilled in them their violent, authoritarian politics.

You take this type of determinism and combine it with a misunderstanding of Marx and history. That Socialism is authoritarian and "anti democratic" justified their authoritarian and anti-democratic politics within the Capitalist system.

You see similar misunderstanding's with Communists with the Marx quote "religion is the opium of the masses". Marx didn't prescribe the violent abolition of religion with this comment but that's certainly how many Marxists, and especially Stalinists, took it.

Ultimately, the Stalinists did fulfill their historical role, but not in bringing about Socialism in their respective country's but instead the modernizing, bourgeois Capitalist revolution in these formerly backwards country's hanging on to their past.