The most important problem that capitalism has with the classical literature is not that it is not accessible enough, but that they have become to accessible. Allow me to explainIn the 1930's the USSR, like all socialist states, saw literacy as a major priority (to this day Cuba has a greater literacy than America). The scientist Alexander Luria was given the opportunity for a rare study: in rural and illiterate areas, what were to be the differences, all else being equal, between those taught to read and write, and those not, in everyday thinking? His findings were tremendous, he posed questions similar to, "How would you feel if you hadn't eaten breakfast this morning?" Those who were literate easily understood and answered. Those who had not been taught how to read and write, kept saying they couldn't answer hypotheticals, and even grew angry if the question was explained to them and kept insisting such questioning was ridiculous. Pattern recognition was also decent in those taught to read and write, but for those who had yet to learn, they couldn't even identify 3/4 shapes with each other, one woman insisted a 3/4 circle was the moon and didn't belong with a 3/4 square.Today we know now that learning literacy significantly rewires and restructures the brain. While it's no secret that America made it illegal for slaves to read or write, today there has been a steady decline in literacy in America, across all races, for similar reasons: they make better workers, but also without critical though, better consumers. They're fungibleBack to the classics. Lenin of course loved classical literature, but how does capitalism's animosity toward them to do with literacy? Well first of all, literacy is a scale, it gets worse and worse. Secondly, by making literature as uninteresting as possible, capitalism discourages literacy. And thirdly, great literature, according to Brecht, forces the reader to critique himself. Marx did not condemn Aristotle for his tolerance toward slavery, to give an example, he said he was as critical of a thinker as his society could produce. Capitalism however is frightened of us questioning our taste because it can expose false consciousness. Thus instead of asking us to do some soul searching on what we find in common with Odysseus or why, on some level, we actually identify with his values, we are forced to put him on trial. Because otherwise we are forced in an abstract way of thought, we start imagining the motives of difference characters and their perspectives and societies, and if we do enough reading like this, we start interrogating our own taste, and this makes far, far more likely to question our society: the false consciousness of media becomes far more easy to spot and it ceases to satisfy us as an arbiter of good and evil.
>>25280895Not buying it
>tattooed slut >capitalism in the headernot reading
>>25280900Ironic
Art thrives in fantasy land where your work doesnt have to make money and be liked by peopleIn communism you can make "artistic" disguting shit while sustained by goverments and then your "art" gets overhyped by woke fags in the futureFuck literary fiction
That has to be a tranny right?
>>25280905You're a prime example. What grade level books do you read?
>>25280895Capitalism isn't a person. It doesn't hate anything. It doesn't have an intent, it doesn't have a goal. It's not a being. Now to your argument: Capitalism was thriving and dominating and unregulated in ways your tiny brain can't even imagine, when all those great authors that we now consider classical, were writing. Their works were created, funded, sold within a capitalistic economic system. Capitalism didn't begin when Marx showed up and it also didn't begin when industrialization happened. Complete literacy had been reached in Europe in the 19th century, no socialist country had a greater rate of literacy than Germany, France, England etc.) (because you be better than 99-100%)America's history is a different story and it's absurd to compare Cuba to it. Literacy had been a primary goal of all societies, no matter their economic functioning. and last>but how does capitalism's animosity toward them to do with literacy?kys
>>25280955Capitalism is a social virus> Capitalism was thriving and dominating and unregulated in ways your tiny brain can't even imagine, when all those great authors that we now consider classical, were writing. You don't even know what capitalism means, or what capital means
>>25280905holy shit the retards are awake>>25280955lol it does have an intent and it does have a goal and it does hate, as all the motives of its believers and ideological actors demonstrate time and again.america's story is one of disenfranchisement on all levels.deal with it.
>>25280955>Capitalism isn't a person.But I met her yesterday. Nasty bitch
Ah the discord browns are here to start shilling marxism to own the chuds again. Wonderful.
>>25280987This is a Marxist board, newfag.
>>25280997
i reject the premise that uneducated proles make better workers. Nobody is easier to market to than midwits who love reading, and the fact that readers in our society tend to lean revolutionary is because it's a hobby of intelligent middle class nerds, who are have the security to do unconventional things in general. Marxists have this sort of narcissism in thinking that any educated person will just naturally gravitate towards their specific ideology even after the purges their states carried out against intellectuals.
>>25281014https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5619461/
>>25281014>the way I see, what good is being "smart" if you don't awoo? If you don't awoo, you are not smart because reading books is for trannies
>>25280895>The most important problem that capitalism has with the classical literature is not that it is not accessible enoughKek, nice try. Yet is the marxist academia destroying the western canon for not being diverse enough. If anything capitalism benefits from classical literature because they don't have to pay the right for those works.
>>25281135>the new left is MarxismNice try
>>25280895It obviously doesn’t. The west loved its own classics until the socialists took control of more and more of the society. You are stupid enough to assume you are god and thus project all of the evils which originate from what you want unto the opposite.
xisters why didn't you ping the discourse flair before starting the brigading?? you need to read the pinned before doing this xtuff...
>>25281136>the left isn't the left
>>25281142 The New Left are not socialists>>25281148 >In the United States, the CIA, through the Congress for Cultural Freedom, funded various intellectuals, cultural organizations and magazines affiliated with the New Left that championed anti-communist ideas and Western values.[7][8][9][10
>>25281146>I don't think Trump is a very good president>Help help! I'm being brigaded I gotta awoo help help change my diaper or you're brigading me!
>remember borders as kid>remember the book store was huge multiple floors>barnes and nobles still around>stores are compact smallI dont think its just classics. This world feels very off like there are forces trying to mess with our thinking down to restructuring our brains, encouraging lesser and lesser thinking. AI and internet is some nefarious technology to rewire our brains. Lower our IQ over thousands of years then wipe us out. Maybe the /x/ annunaki DNA thing is real, could be some cryptids hiding manipulating us.
>>25281197Jacobin actually had an article about this that inspired my OP, you can read it on the author's substack>All democratic politics assume a literate population; people who are willing to think in abstract terms about the kind of world they want to live in. Without that, democracy becomes a kind of tribal headcount, or a struggle for state resources between competing patronage networks.>Meanwhile, a lot of Silicon Valley ideologues agree, they just think this is a good thing. In their future, the vast majority of people will be wireheads, hooked up to an AI-powered pleasure machine that will keep them in a state of permanent hedonic bliss. At which point democracy becomes impossible, the masses are evicted from history, and a natural elite emerges to rule the world. The reactionary ideologues assume that they’ll be part of that literate elite, and not plugged in to the infinite porn machine. Given how many of their leading lights have already developed AI psychosis, I wouldn’t be so sure.https://samkriss.substack.com/p/reading-is-magichttps://samkriss.substack.com/p/reading-is-magic
>>25281197>>remember borders as kidlol u thought u meant back like 30 years ago when people accepted that nations can have borders and could decide who and what crosses them lol
>>25281208>completely deranged sci-fi scenariowow jacobin is goofier than i thought
>>25281220The sci-fi scenario is the nrx dream, Curtis Yarin has articulated it. It is only a parenthetical in the article to show the mindset of a new anti-literacy ruling class
>>25281014It's bullshit entirely imagined by people who have no clue how much of a liability a coworker or employee can be when they can't even read a manual properly.
>>25281256In what workplace do employees read manuals?
>>25280895Capitalism erodes tradition and aristocratic values. Our overlords are not the best of the best now but narcissist nepo babies like Trump, tards like Musk and trannies
>>25280898>>25280900>>25280895>Why capitalism hates classical literatureIt's a commodity of weird values that it can't sell or feels it shouldn't, since some of it contains alternatives to capitalism.>>25281452And yet here we are on a road to feudalism Oh and the aristocracy were not the best of the best, they too were narcissistic LITERAL nepo-babies
Capitalism is not a conscious entity. It is not a person nor a board of powerful people who conspire together. It is simply the end result of the market system under modern production and financial paradigms.Similarly, the decline of classical literature is not the consequence of some nasty plot by some guys in suits to keep the poor ignorant. Other forms of media are more profitable than books, and even among books it is easier to sell YA, self-help and slop than classics. Therefore publishers double down on what brings them money with no presumptions of enhancing civilisation or enlightening the minds of the masses, whatever is your grand vision for the role of literature. It's very straightforward.
>>25281458>narcissistic LITERAL nepo-babiesYes. But there was some incentive to at least pose as a man of culture
>>25280895Didn't read the thread yet or know who this person is but I do instantly know it's a man pretending to be a woman.
>>252808953/4 circle is more like the moon than a 3/4 square. Matching the circle with the square is thinking in autistic categories alienated from the real world.
>>25281136>>25281182Reminds me of this passage.
>>25281579Where is this from
>>25281460If states regulate certain industries why not regulate social media and low IQ slop?Alexander Pope would be a nobody if he was born today but in the 19th century he made capitalism work in his favour by being good
>>25281458>And yet here we are on a road to feudalismNo. You people are just delusional neurotics.
>>25281452>narcissist nepo babiesI love how braindead so-called anti-burgeois marxists proclaim burgeois meritocratic values by calling everyone who is of good birth a "nepo baby."
>>25280895You're a fucking retard. It was leftists that purged classic literature from the curriculum, because it was all "dead white males." Reading them would lead to White Supremacy, Patriarchy, homophobia and Christian Fundamentalism, so they had to be replaced by books written by bitches, fags, niggers, but primarily kikes.
>>25281704>In the United States, the CIA, through the Congress for Cultural Freedom, funded various intellectuals, cultural organizations and magazines affiliated with the New Left that championed anti-communist ideas and Western values.[7][8][9][10]>The New Left was a broad political movement that emerged from the counterculture of the 1960s and continued through the 1970s. It consisted of activists in the Western world who, in reaction to the era's liberal establishment, campaigned for freer lifestyles on a broad range of social issues such as feminism, gay rights, drug policy reforms, and gender relations.[1] The New Left differs from the traditional left in that it tended to acknowledge the struggle for various forms of social justice, whereas previous movements prioritized explicitly economic goals>Some who self-identified as "New Left"[5] rejected involvement with the labor movement and Marxism's historical theory of class struggle;[6]
>>25281462Implying this made all the difference.>At least king Charles is classy about his pedophilia >>25281656>He doesn't knowIt's worse than that actually. But I'm sure they see it as just a stage. The one they expect to follow will most resemble their feudal order
>>25281657The Trumps are of good birth by their reckoning
>>25281579>>25281591I would think the dumb asshole in the narrative is a strawman if I'd never been to this website! hahahaMost people can read, technically. But i agree we have a problem, and with so much video and audio content, screen readers, scanning and AI summary, you will not have to be able to read in the future to get by. We know the problem with "literacy" in a figurative sense in the 2020s is short form video content. Brain rot. Video essays /infotainment are the drug of choice of pseuds (myself included). I do learn from those things. Im not sure if its the same as literacy. Do I get the same effect if I listen to wonderful literature as an audiobook? Marshal Mcluhan, pls help!I used to have a hard time understanding dense texts. I still do somewhat, but it's a muscle that you flex and it gets easier. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but once I became more literate, I could see that a word can be a thousand words! James Joyce- a fractal writer! Strive to be poetic.Anti-intellectualism is present in all of the big three political flavors of the west. It just comes across differently depending on your persuasion, but i think literacy in the arts as an end goal is fundamentally petit bourgeois, i personally link it to the German pasttime of Bildung - self cultivation. Snobbery is a virtue. Its just as easy though, to view self cultivation as so pragmatic that art is seen as degenerate for its lack of "purpose," frivolous. IE: the self-help grind mindset cliche. >>25281657On that note of nepobabies (read Will to Power!), The aristocracy has pressure to show what they cultivate with their money and their time. The gossiping and the performative bullshit ideally is a selection process that defines and refines the highest virtues of that society. Nobles collected the best musical compositions, the best violinists, decorated the study by hiring the best Rococo remodeling architect. The main thing that old money found repugnant about nouveau riche (capitalists) is their gauche taste. Money alone isnt enough to create class. How do elitist boards like /mu create a Canon? Same way. Gatekeeping. Ideally, the people doing this are intelligent and literate and have fine taste. Sometimes they do not and act like an idiot mob.
>>25281960Literacy in the arts allows the working class to create their own art instead of having to see the world through the eyes of the ruling class. This is not the same as art theory qua conspicuous leisure
>>25280895
>>25281136The new left is the spawn of marxism.
>>25281208Let people enjoy things chud.
>>25281718Yeah, leftism has always been a tool of the elite. First time learning this?
>>25283608This. China has the most successful best lucky system
>>25281718>the cia made me burn the classics
>>25283608>not sucking capitalist penis has always been a ploy by capitalists to trick me into not sucking
leftoids have spent decades calling the western canon racist and doing all they can to erase itthen they turn around an say actually it's capitalism's faultyou slugs deserve everything you get
>>25283793>a leftism championed by capitalism to uphold capitalism is not due to capitalismAll that magacum is going to your brain bro
>>25281014>i reject the premise that uneducated proles make better workers. Nobody is easier to market to than midwits who love readingYeah. It is actually true that the Soviet Union's approach to literature and classics was downright 19th-century bourgeois in taste. Maybe that's a historical irony but it's a fact that people don't really understand when they talk about communism. The Leninists were extremely elitist in a way, but with a self-regarding mission to educate the proles in classical lit because they saw themselves as the inheritors of the Enlightenment (this is something Zizek is right about). All that being said, there might have been other aspects of "real-existing socialism" that were very conformist as well, and Marxists can definitely be insufferable and think too highly of themselves. Lastly there is something very deep in me just rebels against the idea that I can't consume slop. Or pulp. I'm not defending slop but I just want the choice to read it. Think of Robert E. Howard, he wrote pulp.I also hate to break it to the Marxists, but fiction isn't true. It's often said that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" helped lead to the American Civil War, but maybe not. It's hard to tell. I need some evidence of the real effects of fiction, and it's going to need to be more than a stirring blurb or a mere assertion. I'm not opposed to fiction, and it's legitimate to enjoy it, but your amusements don't have to be turn out to be the meaning of life. It just doesn't have to be God, or truth, or human connection in general. It's just Dungeons & Dragons, don't be that sort of nerd who says it's true. Once you start doing that then you start censoring people, which is what the communists did, because they believed in fiction. Wonderful fictions, but they were just stories they told themselves. I don't want to completely condemn them though. An interesting thing is there were white nationalists who were going to see The Northman which is a depiction of Vikings that doesn't make them look good, and if communists/Marxists/socialists/leftists can do anything productive regarding fiction, it's to be so critical of the past that they can present the past or what people in the past believed in with brutal honesty and without kitsch, and also without judgement, so you can appreciate the past:https://youtu.be/jzIDlIrYX40
>>25280997Marxist wanting to claim this board as his private property
>>25283805so control your bitch then
>>25283782Leftism *is* the embodiment of sucking capitalist penis.
>>25283805No true leftist.
>>25283819My penis is my private property. Dont know if I would rent it to a leftist, I dont quite see the return on investment here
>>25283819Anti-capitalism is leftist, furry
>>25280895Capitalism hates classical literature because it views itself as ahistorical, as being synonymous with "human nature", and being confronted with written narratives featuring social mores and ethical values utterly alien to its own shatters this conception. Hence why liberal academia these days loves to rewrite the Classics in ways the reify neoliberal identitarian politics; they attempt to make history conform to their ideological worldview because the alternative is untenable in their minds. Put simply, capitalist ideology as our hegemonic ideology can only understand itself as the natural order of things. When confronted with classical art that contradicts its prime values like fairness, equality, equity, pacifism etc. it must either reject this art or rewrite it in a way that now shares these values.
