Horseshoe theory, lol!

To use this exact tactic, we’d have to hand out theory as “the government doesn’t want you to read this”, but that would absolutely work. Especially in places where current public trust in government is at an all time low.

I mean, this would absolutely work on nonconformists who break rules for the sake of breaking rules, and kids/teenagers. Want a kid, or someone with a childish mindset, to study something, the best way is to convince them they’re not supposed to and they’re getting away with something. Use that on people with demand avoidance tendencies or who break rules to break rules, and use “the government doesn’t want you to read this” to reach a broader group. But yeah, if you want to get teenagers reading ML theory, this would probably work better than anything a lot of young commies are doing to radicalise peers…

I had a similar experience the first time I got harassed for allegedly being a communist, because someone in a position of limited power wanted to make trouble for me…

I’d heard of Marx, but never been interested in reading his work, but I had no idea who Lenin was, when I was brought down to the front office of my school, to be asked some questions by some guys from the district. They asked whether I was a communist, I told them I had no idea what a commie was, besides that we beat them in the Cold War. They asked if I’d read Lenin, and I told them I’d never heard of him. They asked if I could point them to any of my classmates to ask the same questions to, I told them that there are no commies in this tiny little Catholic school and they’re wasting their time questioning us.

I didn’t actually read any theory right after that, that took a lot more time and a few more nasty incidents, but I did find out who Lenin was and learn a lot more about communism than I’d known before that incident, so.

Yep. It’s so weird to me that Americans don’t seem to have electric kettles all that often, since they’re quite common in a lot of places, including my country.

Actually, there’s probably some interesting commentary to be made on modern workplace coffee culture being created and encouraged by the bourgeoisie to squeeze more productivity out of the proletariat…

But I’d rather bash the Trots for how they make their coffee, than do actual Marxist analysis of the ways the working class uses caffeine.

exactly 10 paragraphs of theory reading

I’d probably have to up that to properly time a cup of coffee… my mum says I read too fast.

You should see how Americans make tea. It’s even worse.

You should read the Communist Coffee Maker story on NotAlwaysRight. I also seem to remember another story I saw online where clueless Americans accused the CPC of spying on them through cheap coffee machines made in China… like a good 90% of cheap consumer crap on Turtle Island. It’s not just coffee machines! It’s all bloody made in China! But they’re not worried about any other consumer goods spying on them…

You’re specifically the British or English local party of whatever your tendency is, then. Tendency probably depends on whether you use individual mugs or a teapot, how you heat the water, and whether you use teabags or looseleaf, and if looseleaf, the exact way that you put it into the water and remove it from the steeped tea.

(Or, you’re a modern Chinese commie, see the pics of Xi with two teacups in front of him. But I like the British party branch joke better. Took me longer to write.)

Feel free to invent a new tendency

Like the Trots keep doing? (Party splits)

Or… Trot pretending to be a proper ML… I’ve run into a few of those. Most Trots are proud of being Trots (they shouldn’t be, but at least it makes 'em easy to spot and ignore), but there’s a few weirdos out there…

I don’t know in what context Bugs Bunny would dress up as Stalin, but hot DAMN, even a bunny looks good stealing Stalin’s look.

Yeah… on the one hand, the dragons are a little more creative than drawing China as a panda bear. On the other hand, the panda bear always looks cuddly and detracts from the meaning of the propaganda and I think that’s an incredibly funny juxtaposition.

They’re trying to counteract previous mistakes of drawing China as a panda bear, which… the Soviet Bear thing worked because you can draw a grizzly bear that looks scary (although I find most Soviet Bear junk to look hug shaped anyway), the panda allowed for good Sino-Soviet jokes, but they eventually figured out that it’s very difficult to draw a panda bear that doesn’t look hug shaped and adorable, so they started drawing China as a dragon instead… which only serves to make China look badass. Though I do miss the cuddly panda bears.

That would be amazing and I’d love it.

Except that it’d never exist, because it could only be real workplace nightmares and real union organising under capitalism, but it would never be filmed or aired in a capitalist country. The USSR absolutely would have been willing to make something like that back in the day, but the necessary class contradictions, and unionising as the only means of recourse, simply weren’t present.

Marx explains why it happens. Lenin tells you what to do about it.

This is one of the most succinct explanations of how Lenin builds on Marx, that I’ve read in a while. Nicely put, comrade.

The delightful Soviet aesthetics of the Cold War are gone, and every modern commie thing looks exactly the same as capitalist design styles, with hammers and sickles badly bolted on and maybe a coat of red paint… and the powerful united front that was the Warsaw Pact is gone, leaving scattered small AES states that are far from achieving anything close to communism and not really able to rebuild such an organisation. Yeah, being a socialist nowadays sucks. Everything looks and feels terrible, as the legacy of the Soviet Union slowly crumbles and dies.

This, for sure. At least the commie posters aren’t blatantly sexist, and often advocate for the equality of the systematically oppressed.

This is what I mean when I say I like 1950s aesthetics. Well, that and the Cold War. Not that I miss Western views of communists being even worse than present day, but, I do miss “The Commies” having some power and cultural impact.

Western liberals say communist propaganda plastered everywhere in socialist states is dystopian, but I’d massively prefer it over the advertising plastered everywhere in Western capitalist countries. Or better yet, don’t cover every square inch of available space with a poster or banner or billboard.

You get what you pay for, and the only people willing to babysit that many toddlers for free are commies!

Red nap mats, and blankets with a Soviet flag design on them! Consistent lessons on sharing the toys! Naptime story each day is read out of Lenin’s collected works! Everyone has to do their share cleaning up the toys at end of day! Lots of plush grizzly bears and panda bears, no other plushies in the toy bins! Most of the toys are “roleplay grownup jobs” type playthings, complete with a dress up box full of stereotypical job uniforms! There’s a portrait of Stalin hung in every room! The front hallway corkboard decorated with the children’s drawings is full of commie symbols and crude crayon depictions of Soviet leaders!

But hey, at least desperate working parents don’t have to pay for it! Sure, you have to deal with a baby Red after work, but if you can’t afford a daycare that’ll teach capitalist propaganda or religious values instead, it might seem worth it!

(Maybe we’d end up with less liberals if the majority of children ended up in places like that because they have two working parents who can’t afford pricier childcare.)