Permanently Deleted
rational and humble take from an evil dictator who eats ukrainians, pfff soviet propaganda right here
Previously, the landlord and capitalist was a demiurge
:matt:
The idea here of essentially a bottom-up cult of personality (as opposed to the western propagandist idea of it being enforced top-down) is pretty interesting. Reminds me of the anecdote about Augustus, who was trying to tone down some of the imperial cult stuff, as part of his broader strategy of maintaining the illusion of the Republic still totally being a thing. Except, a bunch of people in the eastern parts of the Empire who didn't give a shit about the notion and aesthetics of Republicanism clearly saw that he was the big boss, and wanted to start building temples to worship him, as was tradition, which he kept trying to stop, but eventually had to give in.
The "Culture is not immediately achieved" is a good point to make too.
You beat me to :matt:
Hell of a pull for a guy that Trots spent decades slandering as an intellectual third-rate.
Yeah I think that's a good point. "Cult of personality" is just a way to disparage a bottom-up, groundswell enthusiasm for leadership that arises from liberation projects. Liberals would never chastise such a phenomenon in their own nations but they have to force enthusiasm from the top because their policies don't naturally inspire any such enthusiasm within the masses. Since they can't obtain obtain the admiration of the people in earnest, they resort to disparaging the phenomena as unhealthy and unjust.
MAGA dipshits
These are fascist enthusiasts, not liberal enthusiasts.
KHive, Hillbots, Bidenites, and Buttigieg bootlickers
No one organically likes these people, anything resembling "fervor" is forced from the top down through MSM
Maybe a more clear way to get my point across is they call it "Cult of Personality" abroad and "vulgar populism" domestically.
well that goes without saying but they are a stark minority
and they are lizards.
I don't think I'm going to qualify propaganda or beneficial economic policies favoring institutions & small business as "organic". That to me is clearly driven down from the top rather than rising from the base of the population.
As for the identity component - it is more chimeric/nebulous but often these components are magnified via propaganda and people's propensity to place value on such incidental things can also be amplified by propaganda.
Our disagreement is largely semantic.
40k corpse emperor: NOOOO UR SUPPOSED TO BE RATIONAL ATHEISTS IM NOT A GOD NOOOO :wojak-nooo:
Citizens of the imperium: haha cathedrals go brrr :improve-society: :gigachad:
Carlos Martinez discusses this in his series on the collapse of the USSR. You had tens of millions of people who probably didn't have all that great an understanding of Marxism or socialism. What they do know is their material conditions improved massively under Stalin. So in a lot of ways, they may not have understood how exactly but they knew they were in a socialist system led by Stalin, to the point that "socialism" and "Stalin" become a bit co-mingled in hearts and minds. So when Khrushchev denounced Stalin, in some ways the people of the USSR interpreted that as denouncing socialism itself, doing great harm to the validity of the system in peoples' minds.
Wow pretty marxist and materialist analysis for someone i was told didnt understand Marx and historical materialism :stalin-feels-good:
Jokes aside i do believe they would have successfully moved away from the cult of personality and it would burn out if not for the war of anihillation that was waged against them shortly after this, obliderating tens of millions of lives and the country it self , changing the priorities in education and culture and necessitating a post war "build everything from scratch" era. On those conditions and eras the trend is towards cults of personality and concentration of the people behind singular visions, grand goals and actions . So whether Stalin liked it or not the "cult of personality" stayed and got solidified till his death
Eh he shouted out the Hebertists
edit: looking a bit into the author, really interesting guy. It is interesting how many western leftists quit their parties after finding out about the purges, while people who lived through those moments but also fled the Nazis and knew what was happening had their heads upon their shoulders about it and didn't back down from support for stalin one bit
The Stalin Interview with Emil Ludwig also touches on this subject https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1931/dec/13a.htm
Ludwig: Marxism denies that personalities play an important role in history. Do you not see any contradiction between the materialist conception of history and the fact that you, after all, do admit the important role played by historical personalities?
Stalin: No, there is no contradiction. Marxism does not deny that prominent personalities play an important role, nor the fact that history is made by people. In The Poverty of Philosophy and in other works of Marx you will find it stated that it is people who make history. But of course, people do not make history according to their own fancy or the promptings of their imagination. Every new generation encounters definite conditions already existing, ready-made, when that generation was born. And if great people are worth anything at all, it is only to the extent that they correctly understand these conditions and know how to alter them. If they fail to understand these conditions and try to change them according to their own fancies, they will put themselves in a quixotic position. So you will see that precisely according to Marx, people must not be contrasted to conditions. It as people who make history, but they make it only to the extent that they correctly understand the conditions they found ready-made, and to the extent that they know how to change those conditions. That, at least, is the way we Russian Bolsheviks understand Marx. And we have been studying Marx for a good many years.
Ludwig: Some thirty years ago, when I studied at the university, many German professors, who considered themselves believers in the materialist conception of history, taught us that Marxism denied the role of heroes, the role of heroic personalities in history.
Stalin: They were vulgarisers of Marxism. Marxism never denied the role of heroes. On the contrary, it admits that they play a considerable role, with the provisos that I have just made.
Love how he casually quotes Marx
Yeah, the whole take of "Stalin was just a dumb strongman" is so completely moronic. On one :wtyp: episode some time ago Alice went "oh, Stalin wasn't a very theoretical communist" and I was just like :mao-wtf:
He wasn't a great writer in comparison to some of his fellows, but he clearly had an insightful mind.
That legit a great interpretation of Marx's line about people not making history as they please. Literally helped me wrap my head around it just now.
Well I'm sure glad we don't have a cult of personality in the United States. Now excuse me while I drive my kids in my Lincoln Continental down Jefferson Avenue to Roosevelt elementary school, the best school in all of Washington County! Where they will hear the real history of our glorious founding fathers.
I remember working for a construction firm and they had a big framed picture of Trump inside the vestibule.
