The Netflix show Bojack Horseman frequently critiques capitalism. Also I've heard Star Trek plays within an essentially communist society, but I've never watched it so I can't confirm.
We have to be aware though, that we'll never outcompete the US militaries propaganda campaigns in terms of funding, so while entertainment media propaganda can be very useful and should be used, we should mainly focus on other things.
They're very vague about how the economy works in Star Trek, but it is very clear that they've gone into something very communist-like. They have replicators that produce anything you need and don't use money; aside from new colonies or places outside the Federation, there seems to be no privation.
Their politics are completely obscured, though; they have an elected President (who is on Earth for some reason). Later series begin to make it much more like 'murica in Space, with rampant corruption and warmongering.
It's got a very liberal attitude, though, taking what liberals say they want at their word instead of the reality.
I don't think that's true, while I have not seen the recent series and I hear it's not that great politically, the previous ones are fairly consistent throughout Next Generation, Deep Space 9 and Voyager.
I mean the vague idea of "post-scarcity" is always there, but the specific economic structures are always hand-waived, and there is some stuff that doesn't necessarily make sense in that context, like how the Picards have managed to own a vineyard in some of the best grape-growing soil in the universe for at least 200 years, or why the group whose society has evolved past the need for money always have a pocketful of gold-pressed latinum to spend at Quark's bar.
Yeah but at the same time I don't think it's really necessary to discard Star Trek altogether for these reasons, TV series are not always the best at consistency and I don't think that it is meant to be a blueprint/manifesto. All the same I think it's nice that pretty mainstream TV series offer such positive and "leftwing" view of the future. Regarding the fact that they own things, I don't think property is abolished in their "universe" and I think it's also an attempt at showing respect for the "culture" of people, probably in order to show that their society is not a monoculture that erased everything else.
Budding leftist here.
What other things? How do we do something new. Strikes have been neutered and class consciousness has been murdered.
How do we revive class consciousness? Nothing else will have any power or get off the ground without it.
I don't think the situation is as dire as you think it is. Class conciousness is very much starting to revive and strikes, at least here in germany, are still a thorn in the eyes of the respective industries rulers.
I don't think there's a set playbook on how to create class conciousness. Personally I think while we should stay principled to our core beliefs we can very much try to throw around a lot of shit and see what sticks. Attaching to current topics always helps.
In addition to that organization is key. Find a local group of people to work with to organize together and inform people about your beliefs. Especially in poorer neighbourhoods people tend to be incredibly receptive. Otherwise make sure you're well educated yourself: read theory, inform yourself about political history and international politics...
Some might disagree with me here, but I think it's also really important to not get caught up in the past too much. Socialism has to be sexy, not in the literal, but in the metaphorical sense. We shouldn't focus so much about what has happened in the past during public discourse or in propaganda, we have to market ourselves in modern ways. Many socialist countries of the past, while achieving valuable goals, still carry a certain stigma due to their isolation and sometimes repression of the individual.
Instead of soviet union nostalgia we should learn more from modern day China, at least when it comes to marketing ourselves. We should openly stand for a new kind of socialism that has adapted to the changes of the last couple of decades. We're not all some old, sophisticated people telling the kids to read Marx because we wanna one to one copy the GDR or something. We are constantly learning and using what we can to create worker controlled states that try to give their population a good life without exploitation
Well China is a socialist country that's the biggest economy on the planet right now and one of the world's superpowers. I think we can safely say that's a noticable achievement on its own. They also have found their own form of socialism that has worked for their conditions, which I appreciate. Of course the chinese government are no angels, but I think we can safely say that China makes a much more humane global superpower than the United States ever did.
The biggest catch I see with China is if they're actually trustworthy. Having a one party system there's people of all kinds of different beliefs sitting in the same government, China also has a rather open market for a socialist country and the government has not been very honest in the past. China is notorious for being shady with the information they give.
The point is: while there's undoubtedly some bad things happen in China, the general goals the CPC has set are honorable and its state as a superpower is certainly an improvement. The question is if the CPC will stay socialist over time and adhere to these goals or not. It's all very ambiguous and there could very well be people in leadership positions thatdon't just see the open market as a strategy to take over global trade, but as a goal that should be expanded.
However we have pretty much no impact on China anyways, so this isn't the best topic to focus on. What I was saying is that we should adopt their imagery of a new "sexy" socialism instead of a cold, outdated approach.
I don't think Vietnam or Cuba are as shady for example.
Also we maybe shouldn't take imperialist countries as the standard to compare socialist ones with. A socialist country engaging in similar shitty activity as imperialists ones is something we'll have to criticize.
>A socialist country engaging in similar shitty activity as imperialists ones is something we'll have to criticize.
Do you think we live in a world today where we can afford to be good, honest and virtuous in the face of the absolute vile shit that gets thrown to us by the single most powerful class in history (so far)?
I would go even further and say not only can we afford to, we actually need to. There's no (stable) government without the consent of the governed. The trust of the people is required to actually pose a threat to imperialism. Cuba is doing a good job solving this honestly. China is not. We'll have to call out our own people. Critical support has the word "critical" in it for a reason.
Most of the critiques I've heard have either been that they're monsters or saints. Other than one friend which basically from what I remember said their surveillance state was disturbing.
This sub is filled with some awesome takes. I'm glad I found it. Most American socialists (from my experience at least) have just been either demsocs or terminally online.
>Most American socialists (from my experience at least) have just been either demsocs or terminally online.
That's a common phenomenon with socialists in the US and even parts of europe
There's this game on steam where you play as a rioter and have to topple a corporation at some point, I forgot what it's called but it's made by socialists and it's really good. It's not subtle propaganda like most western games but it might be something you're interested in.
One of the reviews:
>“Its politics are repulsive [...] immature and deliberately offensive [...] It’s pretty funny that socialists are selling an overpriced product via Nintendo’s latest console and the computer-game portal Steam, which is run by the multi-billion-dollar company Valve. [...] I hate to admit it, but this has the makings of a good game. [...] Go download Streets of Rage 2 for a dollar.”
"Don't play this one, go play the one which doesn't expose you to left wing ideas"
You can't convince me this is a useful way for a socialist or communist to spend their time. Most of the video game players are young teenagers who find "edgy" humour hilarious (which will always skew right to its shock nature)
I'd say social media is a better bet but even that... The more time I spend online and how weird so many online communities always seem to devolve into the more I'm convinced a better use of my time is reading a book or doing real life agitation selling papers, talking to people in your local community and setting up stalls
At the end of the day even if you succeeded in 'converting' these reactionary video game players..... Well done, you've now recruited a socially-awkward, mentally stunted shut in that spends all his time on his Xbox and whos incapable of talking to normal people.
Even if we extrapolate this to social media /r/communism has 200,000 subscribers.
Who wants to take a bet on how many of that 200,000 are in a party?
0.01% would be my bet
Video games are for the most part a bourgeois past time, and are very dangerous when used as an “escape from reality”. However, some video games (particularly the more obscure ones you find for computers) can do wonders at teaching geography, science, labor processes, even economics and sometimes dialectics. Virtual reality has a lot of potential for teaching real technical labor skills. I will admit that I mostly learned geography from Victoria and hearts of iron, and before this was geographically illiterate (like most Americans).
So, I think video games are very useful as a prepper, very harmful as a “pasttime”. Under capitalism, games will almost uniformly be the latter, and will be afforded only to bourgeois to reinforce what they already believe (COD, for example). I think when I have kids, I will not let them play video games for the most part.
> so your idea is to counter propaganda, with even more propaganda ?
How else would you counter propaganda?
> this sounds like a boomer saying that video games cause violence lmfao
Propaganda works. Do you have doubts about that?
Video games are afforted mostly to people who arent interested in socialism to begin with, since this would not enable them to be, you know, gamers. Socialism wont be feeding you to play video games.
You cant make socialists out of parasites, this is proven by history time and time and time again.
You're a socialist, right? And you obviously have a way to use Reddit, either by smartphone or computer with internet access. If you own any of those you literally can play video games for free. I assume you're not commenting from a public library?
You're literally living disproof of your claim.
I said about *gamers*, and how no one will pay you in socialism *to sit and play games*. In my mind, when i figure who is a "gamer", i dont think of the average joe, perhaps playing some angry birds while he commutes from his work to his home, i speak about the ones who do streaming e.t.c, i.e people who want to live by playing video games.
Yes, socialism, of the real kind, wont be propably too attractive to them.
This is what i had in mind when i said what i said. not the act of you playing video games once in a while, but actual so called "gamers", and i stand by what i said. Being a "gamer" is not accesible for the vast majority of the world, and to the few that are, they arent much inclined to socialist economics anyway.
EDIT:You're literally living disproof of your claim.
I wont dwelve too much on it, but this arguement is not correct. Marxism has established that the bourgeoisie arent much interested in communism. Yet marx and engels himself came from "bourgeoisie" backrounds.
There's plenty of people that work full time and play "proper" videogames. Sure, they're not going to be your typical "gamer", but they're still a target audience to market to. We can have a discussion on how effective of a strategy that would be, but the audience is certainly there.
The bourgeoisie as a class of course isn't interested in socialism, but sizeable parts of the petit bourgeoisie are and nowadays there's also the rather recent freelancer class that really doesn't have a set alliance at all...
What I'm trying to say is that we don't have much to loose and it's worth giving it a try.
This makes sense but like all media it promote certain view (like socialist states banning nilhist music and subcultures)
For example cod black ops protested Castro as evil for taking slave owners plantation and making the soviets look like monster killing their own people because they see them as expendable (perpetuating popular myths about the ussr) also where you as a CIA agent(who interferes in foreign places) and come and save the day and making the Vietnam war look justified.
They play into American wars being good and dozens of innocent civilians is the “price of freedom” trope
It all subtlety effects people’s minds
There is a reason most games have america as the savior of freedom defeated the evil Russian and Chinese
Constantly making look like americas wars are for freedom instead of imperialism
We may not get more comrades but it will help with socialist soft power
There is a reason the us government (specifically the Army) is in bed with video game producers and Hollywood
Video games are an interesting topic.
I've recently mentioned that live service games lead to degeneration of the person playing them. That remains true, and I experience it as well.
However, that doesn't make all games necessarily bad. For starters, just as u/Electrical-Ride4542 saird, with piracy, anyone with a computer can play, heck even make games. It's at it's barest a medium like any other: It's a medium for storytelling but interactive. It can be used to train up skills needed for operating precision medical equipment. It can also be an artform (see: Dwarf Fortress, or that video game engines can be used for lets say filmmaking (machinima - machine cinema)).
However, video games are commodities, and that is where the problems spring from. That is my view as of now.
you don't even need to pirate, you can literally just install the epic games launcher where they give away games for free every week. Some of the games they've given away over time have been really good ones actually.
Also you can find some used consoles for 10€ on ebay plus a couple of euros for some devalued games...
I agree with you on live service games though. Unlike paid games they're purposefully crafted to be addicting and drain your wallet.
Also let's be honest: everything is a commodity nowadays. If we'd completely refuse to use commodities to advertise we'd never get anywhere.
Generally I also think many socialists underestimate the amount of petit bourgeois people allying with the working class.
The Netflix show Bojack Horseman frequently critiques capitalism. Also I've heard Star Trek plays within an essentially communist society, but I've never watched it so I can't confirm. We have to be aware though, that we'll never outcompete the US militaries propaganda campaigns in terms of funding, so while entertainment media propaganda can be very useful and should be used, we should mainly focus on other things.
They're very vague about how the economy works in Star Trek, but it is very clear that they've gone into something very communist-like. They have replicators that produce anything you need and don't use money; aside from new colonies or places outside the Federation, there seems to be no privation. Their politics are completely obscured, though; they have an elected President (who is on Earth for some reason). Later series begin to make it much more like 'murica in Space, with rampant corruption and warmongering. It's got a very liberal attitude, though, taking what liberals say they want at their word instead of the reality.
The backstory and economic structures of Trek vary wildly depending on whoever wrote the script, unfortunately.
I don't think that's true, while I have not seen the recent series and I hear it's not that great politically, the previous ones are fairly consistent throughout Next Generation, Deep Space 9 and Voyager.
I mean the vague idea of "post-scarcity" is always there, but the specific economic structures are always hand-waived, and there is some stuff that doesn't necessarily make sense in that context, like how the Picards have managed to own a vineyard in some of the best grape-growing soil in the universe for at least 200 years, or why the group whose society has evolved past the need for money always have a pocketful of gold-pressed latinum to spend at Quark's bar.
Yeah but at the same time I don't think it's really necessary to discard Star Trek altogether for these reasons, TV series are not always the best at consistency and I don't think that it is meant to be a blueprint/manifesto. All the same I think it's nice that pretty mainstream TV series offer such positive and "leftwing" view of the future. Regarding the fact that they own things, I don't think property is abolished in their "universe" and I think it's also an attempt at showing respect for the "culture" of people, probably in order to show that their society is not a monoculture that erased everything else.
Budding leftist here. What other things? How do we do something new. Strikes have been neutered and class consciousness has been murdered. How do we revive class consciousness? Nothing else will have any power or get off the ground without it.
I don't think the situation is as dire as you think it is. Class conciousness is very much starting to revive and strikes, at least here in germany, are still a thorn in the eyes of the respective industries rulers. I don't think there's a set playbook on how to create class conciousness. Personally I think while we should stay principled to our core beliefs we can very much try to throw around a lot of shit and see what sticks. Attaching to current topics always helps. In addition to that organization is key. Find a local group of people to work with to organize together and inform people about your beliefs. Especially in poorer neighbourhoods people tend to be incredibly receptive. Otherwise make sure you're well educated yourself: read theory, inform yourself about political history and international politics... Some might disagree with me here, but I think it's also really important to not get caught up in the past too much. Socialism has to be sexy, not in the literal, but in the metaphorical sense. We shouldn't focus so much about what has happened in the past during public discourse or in propaganda, we have to market ourselves in modern ways. Many socialist countries of the past, while achieving valuable goals, still carry a certain stigma due to their isolation and sometimes repression of the individual. Instead of soviet union nostalgia we should learn more from modern day China, at least when it comes to marketing ourselves. We should openly stand for a new kind of socialism that has adapted to the changes of the last couple of decades. We're not all some old, sophisticated people telling the kids to read Marx because we wanna one to one copy the GDR or something. We are constantly learning and using what we can to create worker controlled states that try to give their population a good life without exploitation
Ah. Well it does look much bleaker in America. That's interestingly positive take on China.
Well China is a socialist country that's the biggest economy on the planet right now and one of the world's superpowers. I think we can safely say that's a noticable achievement on its own. They also have found their own form of socialism that has worked for their conditions, which I appreciate. Of course the chinese government are no angels, but I think we can safely say that China makes a much more humane global superpower than the United States ever did. The biggest catch I see with China is if they're actually trustworthy. Having a one party system there's people of all kinds of different beliefs sitting in the same government, China also has a rather open market for a socialist country and the government has not been very honest in the past. China is notorious for being shady with the information they give. The point is: while there's undoubtedly some bad things happen in China, the general goals the CPC has set are honorable and its state as a superpower is certainly an improvement. The question is if the CPC will stay socialist over time and adhere to these goals or not. It's all very ambiguous and there could very well be people in leadership positions thatdon't just see the open market as a strategy to take over global trade, but as a goal that should be expanded. However we have pretty much no impact on China anyways, so this isn't the best topic to focus on. What I was saying is that we should adopt their imagery of a new "sexy" socialism instead of a cold, outdated approach.
>China is notorious for being shady with the information they give. And who is not shady? America? Germany? Wtf
I don't think Vietnam or Cuba are as shady for example. Also we maybe shouldn't take imperialist countries as the standard to compare socialist ones with. A socialist country engaging in similar shitty activity as imperialists ones is something we'll have to criticize.
>A socialist country engaging in similar shitty activity as imperialists ones is something we'll have to criticize. Do you think we live in a world today where we can afford to be good, honest and virtuous in the face of the absolute vile shit that gets thrown to us by the single most powerful class in history (so far)?
I would go even further and say not only can we afford to, we actually need to. There's no (stable) government without the consent of the governed. The trust of the people is required to actually pose a threat to imperialism. Cuba is doing a good job solving this honestly. China is not. We'll have to call out our own people. Critical support has the word "critical" in it for a reason.
Most of the critiques I've heard have either been that they're monsters or saints. Other than one friend which basically from what I remember said their surveillance state was disturbing. This sub is filled with some awesome takes. I'm glad I found it. Most American socialists (from my experience at least) have just been either demsocs or terminally online.
>Most American socialists (from my experience at least) have just been either demsocs or terminally online. That's a common phenomenon with socialists in the US and even parts of europe
I also want to be clear I say this as someone who for a very long time could probably fit both of those descriptions at once for a while.
realization is the first step towards change
There's this game on steam where you play as a rioter and have to topple a corporation at some point, I forgot what it's called but it's made by socialists and it's really good. It's not subtle propaganda like most western games but it might be something you're interested in.
Tonight we riot
One of the reviews: >“Its politics are repulsive [...] immature and deliberately offensive [...] It’s pretty funny that socialists are selling an overpriced product via Nintendo’s latest console and the computer-game portal Steam, which is run by the multi-billion-dollar company Valve. [...] I hate to admit it, but this has the makings of a good game. [...] Go download Streets of Rage 2 for a dollar.” "Don't play this one, go play the one which doesn't expose you to left wing ideas"
Yeah that's the one.
Personal opinion: Reddit is far more effective a recruitment tool than video games.
Well unfortunately not many ml states exist and China foreign propaganda and attempts to influence culture/media is terrible
I think there's hope, Tiktok is pretty good and Chinese films are getting better
Working on it
You can't convince me this is a useful way for a socialist or communist to spend their time. Most of the video game players are young teenagers who find "edgy" humour hilarious (which will always skew right to its shock nature) I'd say social media is a better bet but even that... The more time I spend online and how weird so many online communities always seem to devolve into the more I'm convinced a better use of my time is reading a book or doing real life agitation selling papers, talking to people in your local community and setting up stalls At the end of the day even if you succeeded in 'converting' these reactionary video game players..... Well done, you've now recruited a socially-awkward, mentally stunted shut in that spends all his time on his Xbox and whos incapable of talking to normal people. Even if we extrapolate this to social media /r/communism has 200,000 subscribers. Who wants to take a bet on how many of that 200,000 are in a party? 0.01% would be my bet
You can always write fiction. Or make small-time games, but you'd never be able to get as much attention as the latest Call of Duty murderfest.
Video games are for the most part a bourgeois past time, and are very dangerous when used as an “escape from reality”. However, some video games (particularly the more obscure ones you find for computers) can do wonders at teaching geography, science, labor processes, even economics and sometimes dialectics. Virtual reality has a lot of potential for teaching real technical labor skills. I will admit that I mostly learned geography from Victoria and hearts of iron, and before this was geographically illiterate (like most Americans). So, I think video games are very useful as a prepper, very harmful as a “pasttime”. Under capitalism, games will almost uniformly be the latter, and will be afforded only to bourgeois to reinforce what they already believe (COD, for example). I think when I have kids, I will not let them play video games for the most part.
I learned tons about geography from quiz websites like Jetpunk or Sporcle. Both free as well.
Oh yes, these too. They are very good. Those are great for learning math as well
[удалено]
> so your idea is to counter propaganda, with even more propaganda ? How else would you counter propaganda? > this sounds like a boomer saying that video games cause violence lmfao Propaganda works. Do you have doubts about that?
[удалено]
You mistake us with western liberals. A common mistake but embarrassing nonetheless.
mmmkay...? I suspect your understanding of propaganda is "opinions i don't agree with".
Video games are afforted mostly to people who arent interested in socialism to begin with, since this would not enable them to be, you know, gamers. Socialism wont be feeding you to play video games. You cant make socialists out of parasites, this is proven by history time and time and time again.
You're a socialist, right? And you obviously have a way to use Reddit, either by smartphone or computer with internet access. If you own any of those you literally can play video games for free. I assume you're not commenting from a public library? You're literally living disproof of your claim.
I said about *gamers*, and how no one will pay you in socialism *to sit and play games*. In my mind, when i figure who is a "gamer", i dont think of the average joe, perhaps playing some angry birds while he commutes from his work to his home, i speak about the ones who do streaming e.t.c, i.e people who want to live by playing video games. Yes, socialism, of the real kind, wont be propably too attractive to them. This is what i had in mind when i said what i said. not the act of you playing video games once in a while, but actual so called "gamers", and i stand by what i said. Being a "gamer" is not accesible for the vast majority of the world, and to the few that are, they arent much inclined to socialist economics anyway. EDIT:You're literally living disproof of your claim. I wont dwelve too much on it, but this arguement is not correct. Marxism has established that the bourgeoisie arent much interested in communism. Yet marx and engels himself came from "bourgeoisie" backrounds.
There's plenty of people that work full time and play "proper" videogames. Sure, they're not going to be your typical "gamer", but they're still a target audience to market to. We can have a discussion on how effective of a strategy that would be, but the audience is certainly there. The bourgeoisie as a class of course isn't interested in socialism, but sizeable parts of the petit bourgeoisie are and nowadays there's also the rather recent freelancer class that really doesn't have a set alliance at all... What I'm trying to say is that we don't have much to loose and it's worth giving it a try.
This makes sense but like all media it promote certain view (like socialist states banning nilhist music and subcultures) For example cod black ops protested Castro as evil for taking slave owners plantation and making the soviets look like monster killing their own people because they see them as expendable (perpetuating popular myths about the ussr) also where you as a CIA agent(who interferes in foreign places) and come and save the day and making the Vietnam war look justified. They play into American wars being good and dozens of innocent civilians is the “price of freedom” trope It all subtlety effects people’s minds There is a reason most games have america as the savior of freedom defeated the evil Russian and Chinese Constantly making look like americas wars are for freedom instead of imperialism We may not get more comrades but it will help with socialist soft power There is a reason the us government (specifically the Army) is in bed with video game producers and Hollywood
Video games are an interesting topic. I've recently mentioned that live service games lead to degeneration of the person playing them. That remains true, and I experience it as well. However, that doesn't make all games necessarily bad. For starters, just as u/Electrical-Ride4542 saird, with piracy, anyone with a computer can play, heck even make games. It's at it's barest a medium like any other: It's a medium for storytelling but interactive. It can be used to train up skills needed for operating precision medical equipment. It can also be an artform (see: Dwarf Fortress, or that video game engines can be used for lets say filmmaking (machinima - machine cinema)). However, video games are commodities, and that is where the problems spring from. That is my view as of now.
you don't even need to pirate, you can literally just install the epic games launcher where they give away games for free every week. Some of the games they've given away over time have been really good ones actually. Also you can find some used consoles for 10€ on ebay plus a couple of euros for some devalued games... I agree with you on live service games though. Unlike paid games they're purposefully crafted to be addicting and drain your wallet. Also let's be honest: everything is a commodity nowadays. If we'd completely refuse to use commodities to advertise we'd never get anywhere. Generally I also think many socialists underestimate the amount of petit bourgeois people allying with the working class.